Dikhyaa Mohanty 
The revered Odisha-born poet Jayanta Mahapatra, who passed away at SCB Medical College and Hospital Friday night, will be laid to rest with full state honors at Khannagar Cremation Ground on Monday at noon. According to his ‘My final wishes’ section of his will, the Padma Award recipient will be cremated in an electric cremation rather than buried. “My body will be burnt rather than buried at Khan Nagar, Cuttack’s electric crematorium. A small group of close friends and family members who would be there at the moment should transport it in an ambulance or vehicle. In his will, he stipulated that this should be completed as soon as feasible following his passing.
A plot should be handed to someone who has served their family for 35 years, he added. “That Smt. J. Sarojini, who has devotedly and diligently served us for the past 35 years, be awarded a parcel of ground measuring 20 feet by 20 feet in the north-west corner of our current acreage. After considerable deliberation, my late wife Jyotsna Mahapatra, our son Mohan Mahapatra, and I came to this decision.
His daughter-in-law and grandchildren are still living in Singapore, but his wife and son passed away before him. Additionally, he requested that all of his letters, typescripts, and unfinished writings be burnt following his passing.
Mahapatra was born on October 22, 1928, into a well-known family in Cuttack. He was taken to SCB MCH on August 7 owing to pneumonia. Stewart School in this city provided him with his early schooling, and Patna, Bihar, is where he obtained his MSc in Physics. His teaching career began in 1949, when he was hired as a physics instructor at a number of government institutions in Odisha, including the former Gangadhar Meher College in Sambalpur, the BJB College in Bhubaneswar, the Fakir Mohan College in Balasore, and the Ravenshaw College in Cuttack. In 1986, he left his position as a Reader in Physics. In the latter half of the 1960s, he began writing.
