Samikhsya Bureau
There is nothing more beautiful than the beauty in simplicity. If that is aided with a purpose of honesty, it becomes a robust inner bearing for anyone who remains busy in the quest of an intimacy with people at the bottom.
That is the beauty the newly elected member of parliament from the Bharatiya Janata Party, Pratap Chandra Sarangi, more known as the ‘nana’ (elder brother) in the lanes of his native village Gopinathpur under Nilagiri block in Balasore district.
As a commoner in his native, when Sarangi cycles down the lanes of his village in his bicycle, his thatched house slowly receding in the background, he always betray a purpose for people.
Clad in white kurta-pyjama, Sarangi from his early days as a student also had shown inclinations at a spiritual goal. His journey towards self-realisation once led him to the Belur Math to become a monk, where the monks reminded him that he had left his God behind and advised him to rush back to his village where his widowed mother needed to be looked after. Sarangi suddenly discovered the virtue he had failed to realise and came back to his mother.
After his return he tried to rediscover the missing links and dedicated his time to social service. He had very little means to pursue his foremost goal that is spread of education. But Sarangi was unstoppable and he opened a few schools in the name of Samar Kara Kendra where poor children could read. After being a member of the Odisha legislative assembly, Pratap spent a major part of his remuneration as MLA to ensure the schools ran.
Sarangi epitomise simplicity, probity in public life but his penchant for certain religious inclinations become too overbearing.
In any profession, honesty should never be a virtue alone because whoever pursues it, is not doing that without any dividend. Sarangi can’t be a wholesome exception at all yet his life style can at best be viewed as an interesting one by his ilk but in the present day politics it can hardly be emulated.
His elevation from Gopanathpur’s ‘nana’ to become an union minister was a journey that was full of rigour, tenacity and perseverance. One wishes he professes his political life under self-scrutiny.
