A Gray Haze Over the Rice Fields by Jayanta Mahapatra

Jayanta Mahapatra was born on October 22, 1928 in Cuttack, India. He earned a Master's degree in physics and started teaching at different colleges in 1949. Mahapatra started writing poetry at age 38. When he wrote the Relationship, he won the Sahitya Akademi award in 1981 and was the first Indian English poet to receive the award.

A gray haze over the rice fields.
The black cow grazing with her newborn calf—
long-legged, unsteady—
or trucks going past the high road;
such things only claim
that I am looking out in search of memory,
not death. Those little kisses on my cheeks
my long-dead grandmother gave me, or
the soft dampness of my tears when
my mother didn’t notice me
from beyond the closed door of her youth.

Today the dangling thread stops halfway down,
where my hands cannot touch it.
It’s not that I wait for judgment.
But at times I see a shadow
move slowly over these, a shadow freed
from the past and from the future,
that contains the footsteps of that childhood
so light I can only think of squirrels
slipping in and out of the mango trees.

When I first saw the title of this poem, I thought it would be about a man growing rice in a hazy climate. Actually, the poem is more about a man's growth from a troubled past as a child. Also, I think the speaker of the poem is the author considering his background.

"A gray haze over the rice fields. The black cow grazing with her newborn calf— long-legged, unsteady—" I believe this line describes the speaker's unsteady relationship at home. The stanza goes on to describe the source of pain as "Those little kisses on my cheeks my long-dead grandmother gave me, or the soft dampness of my tears when my mother didn't notice me..." From the sounds of it, the speaker lived with his grandmother and mother, but once the grandmother died, the speaker did not receive any affection or acknowledgement at home.

The speaker tries to reach something whether it be affection, recognition, etc, but he struggles to reach it. This idea is described by "Today the dangling thread stops halfway down, where my hands cannot touch it." Luckily, the speaker is able to learn and grow from the past by the lines "But at times I see a shadow move slowly over these, a shadow freed from the past and from the future, that contains the footsteps of that childhood." This line describes the idea that if the speaker had not been able to grow or move on from his past, he would have been stuck in a future that was shaped from what happened during his childhood. The speaker would have gone by unnoticed as he experienced life like "squirrels slipping in and out of the mango trees." During his childhood, the speaker slipped by unnoticed, but the future will be different. If the author was the speaker, I am impressed by the accomplishments he has made considering his childhood struggles.