CHAPTER II THE TRADITION OF INDIAN IN ENGLISH

2.1 INTRODUCTION:

2.2 THE RISE OF IN ENGLISH:

2.3 THE GROWTH OF :

2.4 THE MATURATION OF INDIAN POETRY IN ENGLISH: CHAPTER II THE TRADITION OF INDIAN POETRY IN ENGLISH

2.1 INTRODUCTION:

This chapter is an attempt to map creative writing in English right from the time of its inception. Whatever divisions have been made are approximate and provisional. There are no water-tight compartments between them as such. The first division, The Rise of Indian Poetry in English (the first half of the nineteenth century), can also be called as The Seedlings. The second' division, The Growth of Indian Poetry in English (the second half of the nineteenth century), can be that of the Sprout or Early Plant-state. And the last division, The Maturation of Indian Poetry in English, may be regarded as a Tree, of many branches, spreading new aerials of literary sensibility to seek, to find human reality. All these divisions show' the most distinctive features of Indian poetry in English which has a history of nearly three hundred years. The present chapter is a modest attempt to assess the achievement of Indian so far, judging the poetry of each phase strictly on its merits, without losing sight of the total literary concerns and historical perspectives.

2.2 THE RISE OF INDIAN POETRY IN ENGLISH:

Creative writing in English began in India in the early nineteenth century. Much of this early writing laboured under English influences (Daruwalla, 1980: xiv). Henry Louis Vivian Derozio, Kashi Prasad Ghose and Michael Madhusudan Dutt made a creative use of Indian

6 fables, myths and* legends in their poetry. As King rightly puts it, "'...early were interested in Indian legend...” (King, 1987: 79). The origins of Indian poetry in English are shrouded in the dim pre­ history of the Indo-westem encounter, centuries prior to the birth of Henry Derozio (Paranjape, 1993:1). Henry Derozio published collections of poems such as Poems (1827), The Fakeer of Jungheera: A Metrical Tale and Other Poems (1828) and Poems (1923). Most of his poems are influenced both by the British neo-classical as well as the Romantic poetry as far as imagery, sentiment and emotions are concerned. He is the first in the lineage of Indian English Poetry. In poems like “The Harp of India” (1827) and “To my Native Land” (1827), he strikes a nationalistic note.

Those hands are cold - but if thy notes divine May be by mortal weakened once again, Harp of my country, let me strike the strain. (“The Harp of India”)

His reminiscences about his native land are as follows:

My country! In thy days of glory past A beauteous halo circled round thy brow And worshipped as a deity thou wast — Where is that Glory, where is that reverence now? (“To My Native Land”)

He aims at expressing the glory of the country in the past and repents the loss of it in the then present asking: “Where is that Glory, where is that reverence now?”

7 Kashi Prasad Ghose published his first collection of verse, The Shair and Other Poems (1830). His “Shair” is nobody else but Scott’s ‘Minstrel’ in Indian garb. His poems about the Hindu festivals and lyrics like “The Boatman’s Song to Ganga” show an honest attempt to strike a native chord. His “To a Dead Crow” reveals a crow not as a natural phenomenon but a creature that goes long back in legends as an eternal and spiritual soul:

That life in thee is full and warm. Not cruel death could mar thy form. (“To a Dead Crow”)

A contemporary' of Derozio and Kashi Prasad Ghose, Michael Madhusudan Dutt, a major contributor to the Indian poetry in English in this phase, published a long narrative, The Captive Ladie (1849) and a long reflective poem, Visions of the Past (1849) of which the first reveals historical India while the Visions of the Past (1849) deals with the Christian themes of temptation, fall and redemption of Man, and legend. “Many of the older poems on Indian subjects suffer from “lack of relationship to an environment” (King, 1987:110). Most of Dutt’s poems deal with episodes and incidents from Indian history and legends. All the poets of this early phase primarily handle the legendary subject in their poetry.

2.3 THE GROWTH OF INDIAN POETRY IN ENGLISH:

It was a bit tragic that in this century the Indian muse fell willy- nilly into the hands of those who were either involved in the freedom struggle or were in the forefront of religious revivalism (Daruwalla, 1980: xv-xvj). V. K. Gokak, in his introduction to his book, The Golden

.. r ..t 8 A h* -" gVUViN* K Treasury of Indo-Anglian Verse, classifies the Indian poets in English before Independence into two groups: neo-symbolists and neo- modemists. The neo-symbolists, he argues, dive deep into mysticism and the neo-modernists’ vision is coloured by humanism. Tom Dutt, , Sri. Aurobindo Ghose and emphasized on expressing an Indian sensibility in terms of its rituals, customs, myths, legends, spiritual consciousness and ancient Indian mystic traditions. In general, as King rightly points out by saying that “ Indian English poetry at independence was still set in a no-where land of poeticisms or set in an India generalized by mysticism, mythologies or legends of great emperors, typical of a colonial poetry in which writers feel a need to assert a national past” (King, 1987: 111). In this phase, the central concern of poets of their creative art was to make use of the rich Indian myths and folklore. Most of the stories and subjects taken from religious books and Puranas have been reflected in their creative art. Tom Dutt, a prolific writer of the time, published a collection of poems such as A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields (1876) that contains 165 lyrics written by a hundred French poets mostly translated into English by her. Her Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan (1882) was published posthumously in which the figures drawn constitute the mythical and the heroic tradition of India. Even the most beautiful flower of the lotus reminds her Greek myth.

And Flora gave the lotus, “rose red” dyed, And “lily-white”, queenliest flower that blows. (“The Lotus”)

9 "The Lotus" makes us feel not the pure natural essence and beauty of that flower itself but the sense of tradition and legends conglomerated in it. Parthasarathy rightly observes that the poets of the nineteenth century were interested in traditional India (Parthasarathy, 1976: 6-7). The Ancient Ballads and legends of Hindustan consists of nine legends, most of them chosen from the Mahabharata, the Ramayana and the Vishnu Purana. They are Sita and Savitri, Lakshman, Dhruva and Pralhad, goddess Uma and many others. Her “Sita” is a remarkable poem whose subject is taken from the Ramayana. The nostalgia expressed so distressingly in her poem, “” does not any appeal to environmental sensibility, but merely shows her nostalgic restlessness and want of company.

Dear is the Casuarina to my soul: Beneath it we have played; though years may roll, O sweet companions, loved with love intense, For your sakes shall the tree be ever dear! Blend with your images, it shall arise In memory, till the hot tears blind mine eyes! (“Our Casuarina Tree”)

Sri Aurobindo Ghose has made major contribution to Indian poetry in English. His Short Poems (1890-1900) deal with love, sorrow, death and liberty, Short Poems (1895-1908), Short Poems {1902-1930) and (1930-1950) show mystic awareness and Savitri (1950-51) is a conventional recital of an ancient Hindu legend. Aurobindo himself said that Savitri is the Divine Word and Satyavan, the Divine Truth. “The Savitri-Satyavan legend, which is culled from the great epic of the soul of the , the Mahabharata, is transmuted to recover the

10 human ‘wholeness’. It is spiritual in its theme, conception and execution” (Bhatnagar, 1998: 13). Sri Aurobindo declares that the material of the poem comes from within. This is the representation of the spirit and the inner world in its totality. writes: “To my mind... ‘Savitri’, a poem on the relation of the spirit to matter, unwinding like an interminable Sari through twelve books and about 2400 lines, is a vast onion of a poem. The layers gradually fall away to reveal nothing” (Jussawalla, 1973: 76). His intuitive realization leads his creative imagination not to environmental awareness and reality around but to the inter-penetration of a diviner nature.

Then the doomed husband and the woman who knew Went with linked hands into that solemn world Where beauty and grandeur and unspoken dream, Where Nature’s mystic silence could be felt Communing with the secrecy of God. (“Savitri”) Sri Aurobindo’s poetry is, by and large, spiritual, mystic, symbolic and philosophical. For instance, his “A Tree”, shows that spirituality.

A tree besides the sandy river-beach Holds up its topmost boughs Like fingers towards the skies they cannot reach, Earth-bound, heaven amorous (“A Tree”)

Further his spirituality and mysticism reach the peak in his poem, “The Blue Bird”, in which he flies high with the ideas of heavenly bird rather than the earthly one: I am the bird of God in His blue; Divinely high and clear I sing the notes of the sweet and the time For the god’s and the seraph’s ear (“The Blue Bird”)

Here, though it seems to us that there is a use of a concrete image of a bird from nature, the poet is not talking about the actual bird as such but is rather interested in creating an imaginary bird as the harbinger of God. Rabindranath Tagore was another highly gifted figure of this^ phase in creative art. Gitanjali (1912), his finest work, is firmly rooted in the ancient tradition of Indian saint poetry. It reveals a highly personal quest for the Divine. His The Crescent Moon (1913), The Gardener (1916), Fruit-Gathering (1916), Lover’s Gift And Crossing (1918), The Fugitive (1921), Fireflies (1928), The Child{ 1931), were subsequently published. His Poems (1942) was posthumously published. Gitanjali, Tagore’s masterpiece, approaches the infinite glory of God through many finite centres. Rejecting institutional forms of religion, Tagore discovers God in man and woman and in the living creation. Tagore evokes here the most ancient Indian traditions beginning with the Rig Veda. From the saguna (name and form), Tagore advances towards the nirguna (qualityless, nameless). Tagore’s other collections also' deal with love, devotion, glory of God, and so on (Singh, 1997: 204).

Togore’s creative work moved round the world of the senses. His poetic sensibility is idealistic. Most of his poems in Gitanjali reveal his idealistic view by attacking the contemporary customs and traditions.

Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit Where the mind is led forward by thee

12 Into ever-widening thought and action (“Where the mind is Without Fear")

So his creative imagination moves round either idealistic sensibility or nationalism. Furthermore, Tagore’s mysticism finds expression through images and symbols used in his poetry. Many of his symbols are drawn from the world of nature. The Symbol ‘flower’ has many connotations. It stands not only for beauty but also for the life and vitality of nature. The flower is closely linked with the seed and the fruit i.e. birth, growth, death and rebirth. The flower symbolizes love, worship, complaisance and copiousness. He employs such symbols as the ‘boat’, ‘boatman’, and the swiftly flowing ‘river’. The ‘boatman’, particularly, has a deep mystical significance in Tagore’s poetry. The ‘river’, ‘boat’ and ‘boatman’ all move towards the same goal of the sea. He expresses:

The morning sea of silence (Gitanjali)

Further asserts

I dive down into the depths of the ocean (Ibid)

And a little more

On the seashore of endless worlds (Ibid)

This is the mystic symbol for eternity. So Tagore’s Gitanjali is exquisite specimen of his ‘mystical thought’ and philosophy. Like Tagore, Sarojini Naidu is ah all-India poet. Her all Indianness is different from that of Tagore. She published collections of

13 poems: The Golden Threshold (1905), The Bird of Time (1912), The Broken Wing (1917) and The Sceptred Flute (1946). And her Feather of the Dawn was posthumously published in 1961. Most of her poems explore many facets of love: love in union, love in longing, love in separation; the pain of love, the sin of love, the desire of love, earthly love, divine love and so on. For instance, her collection of verse The Bird of Time (1912) is concerned with these many facets of love:

In her youth she hath comforted lover and son, In her weary old age, O dear God, is there none To bless her tired eyelids to rest? — Tho’ the world may not tarry to help her or heed, Move clear than the cry of her sorrow and need Is the faith that doth solace her breast: “ La ilaha ilia -1- Allah, La ilaha ilia -1- Allah, Muhammad-ar-Rasul-Allah.” (“The Old Woman'”)

She has explored the rich traditions of several Indian languages, regions and religious. Her love ceases to express at the destination of divine. So it is ultimately religious phenomena. On Sarojini Naidu Narasimhaiah writes:

“where she succeeded in keeping her emotion somewhat tidy, her sentimental genuine and her rhythms faithful to the folk songs of south India she did compose some very good verses as in the poems, ‘Com Grinders’, ‘Indian Weavers’, ‘Festival of Serpent’(Song of Radha and Milkmaid) and ‘Leile’. In ‘To a Buddha Seated on a Lotus’, the poet rejoices inaccessible desire and heavenward hunger and in doing so she sums up the central philosophy of the Vedantas” (Narasimhaiah, 1969:29).

14 2.4 THE MATURATION OF INDIAN POETRY IN ENGLISH:

Modem Indian poetry in English began to emerge after the end of colonialism. In pre-colonial and colonial period there was not direct relationship of Indian poetry to the cultural movement in general and to the immediate physical environment in particular. “Genuine Indian poetry' in English really began in the nineteen fifties” (Walsh, 1990: 127). Keki N. Damwalla denounces the contribution of the earlier poets saying that “they were untouched by either the reality around them, drought, famine, plague, colonial exploitation or by the reality within namely erosion of faith and the disintegration of the modem consciousness” (Damwalla, 1980: xvii). Damwalla’s criticism of the pre-Independence poetry helps us to understand the direction that Indian poetry in English took after the Second World War and Indian Independence. The poetry written by many modem Indian poets such as Shiv Kumar, , Jayant Mahapatra, A. K. Ramanujan, Aran Kolatkar, Kamala Das, R. Parthasarathy, Kersy Katrak, Keki N. Damwalla, , Dilip Chitre and many others ceased to be overtly nationalist. Nissim Ezekiel published anthologies such as A Time to Change (1952), Sixty Poems (1953), The Third (1959), The Unfinished Man (1960), The Exact Name (1965), Hymns in Darkness (1976), Nudes (1978), Latter Day Psalms (1982) and Collected Poems (1989). The title of Nissim Ezekiel’s first book of poems, A Time to Change (1952) suggests a rejection of the past. It heralds a new climate: \

We who leave the house in April, Lord, How shall we return?

5 Debtors to the whore of Love, Corrupted by the things imagined Through the winter nights, alone, The flesh defiled by dreams of flesh, Rehearsed desire dead in spring How shall we return? (“A Time to Change”)

His creative imagination “in the fifties showed the way for the efflorescence of poetry. In terms of language used, the context of the poems and the sensibility from which they were derived, a clean break had been made with the past” (Daruwalla, 1980: xix). Ezekiel is essentially an urban poet. There are several excellent poems on the city of Bombay revealing the poet’s insight into the life of that barbarous city. He has a profound sense of compassion, understanding and acceptance and sympathy for the city. In his poem “Morning Walk”, he has pictured many aspects of the city.

Barbaric city sick with slums, Deprived of seasons, blessed with rains, Its hawkers, beggars, iron-lunged, Processions led by frantic drums, A million purgatorial lanes, And childlike masses, many tongued, Whose wages are in words and crumbs. (The Unfinished Ma)

“Ezekiel showed that it was, possible to write about oneself without being self-consciously Indian and that an Indian poetry could express the experiences of the educated and urbanized and need not be obsessed with mythology, peasants and nationalist slogans” (King, 1987: 92). His , another poem, “In India” reflects the city’s eye.

16 Always in the sun’s eye, Here among the beggars, Hawkers, pavements sleepers, Hutment dwellers, slums, Dead souls of men and gods, Burnt-out mothers, frightened Virgins, wasted child And tortured animal, All in noisy silence (The Exact Name)

The reinforcement of the same conviction is found in his poem, “Background casually”:

The Indian landscape sears my eyes. I have become part of it.... And then a little more— I have made my commitments now. This is one: to stay where I am.

(Hymns in Darkness)

This is not the physical companionship with the city but that of the identification with the scene. His attitude to the city expressed in “Island” is as follows:

Unsuitable for song as well as sense the island flowers into slums And skyscfapers, reflecting Precisely the growth of my mind I am here to find my way in it. I cannot leave the island, I was horn here and belong. (Ibid)

17 The dense darkness of the city life informs the,whole of his poetry. The party craze in the city in the poem, “At the Party’’, leads to the spiritual decay and empty existence:

Ethereal beauties, may you always be Dedicated to love and reckless shopping; Your midriffs moist and your thighs unruly, Breasts beneath the fabric style plopping. (The Third) Moraes’ first book of poems, A Beginning (1957) went on to occupy a pre-eminent position among Indian poets’ writing in English. Most of the poems in his collections, Poems (1960), John Nobody (1965), Later Poems (1967-1987), Collected Poems (1969) and Serendip (1990) are confessional poetry. “Eroticism and self-probing are frequent resources in his poetry. Classical, medieval myths are shaped in terms of good and evil forces symbolized by the dragon and the dwarfs, Cain and the Unicom, and so on” (Singh, 1997:207). Though some of his poems deal with confessional elements, most of his poems show his sense of alienation from his own country that is India. It is “Babur”, a poem from his Collected Poems (1969), from which the person, Babur represents the poet’s own sense of alienation.

The dead in the dust. Familiars of the field, vultures Alight as angels on each corpse. One, in that sleeping, seemed my son With a great cry I drove them away, Awoke weeping, ate opium confection: Drowsy afterwards, saw myself As I am, lonely in all lands. (Collected Poems)

9 18 His recent book of verse, Serenclip (1990) brings the landscape of Ceylon alive in his poetry. The title is taken from the old name of Sri Lanka (Serendip). In this, the interaction between the colonial past and post-colonial present gives rise to a new kind of poetry. Dom Moraes expresses ‘the feel’ for the place in the introduction of this book:

Ceylon was at one time known to travellers by this name. The associations it has acquired are such that ‘Serendip’ now seems mythical place. As a child I lived for two years in Ceylon, and in its forests encountered the Veddahs, shy tribesmen who are said to have been the first inhabitants of the island. My recollections of these people, and of pilgrims with lamps climbing Adam’s peak, are very clear, and on these sonnets I have tried to turn them into myth and symbol. (Moraes, 1990: 10)

The first major characteristic of the modem Indian poets was a rejection of the past:

A whole generation turned its back on tradition and found itself alienated in the new India. Secondly, they declared themselves opposed to the idealism and romanticism of their predecessors. They wanted a poetry which was without escapism and flights of fancy, a poetry written in a clear, hard, unsentimental voice, and in everyday language. Thirdly, the poets believed in a secular muse. They had little faith in mysticism and other-worldly ideologies. Instead, with relish, they introduced a bold, new frankness into their poetry. Turning away from religion, they sought meaning and order in personal relationships. They explored the human sexuality and wrote about it with confessional candour. Nature for them was no longer the

19 ennobling and grand proof of God's faith in the world; instead they wrote about the city and its dirty, poverty-stricken, and dehumanizing environs. Finally, the poets increasingly resorted to irony as the best means of representing their love-hate relationship with their surroundings. (Paranjape, 1993:20)

There is no doubt that during the 1950s the dominant tone in Indian poetry in English changed. The new generation which had come of age in the 1950s and 1960s found itself betrayed by its elders. It was impatient for change and fed up with the platitudes of the past. “A change was, however taking place in the ways Indian poetry in the 1950s and 1960s focused on reality. The first major shift of perspective was to the poet himself; this also included awareness of others, specific situations, and on the edges an awareness of an often urban environment” (King, 1987: 111-112). A. K. Ramanujan published The Striders (1966) and Relations (1971). The major theme in his poetry is a pensive obsession with the familial and racial reminiscence. Parthasarathy points out that the family is one of the central metaphors in Ramanujan (Parthasarathy, 1976:195). He draws his themes from anthropology, linguistics, folklore, religion and myth to shape his creative imagination. His chief concern has been to reconcile the recollected emotions with the vulnerability of the present and the future. He draws upon our cultural traditions and the ethos of the orthodox Hindu family life:

Just to keep the heart’s simple given beat through a neighbour’s striptease or a friend’s suicide To keep one’s hand away from the kitchen knife through that reluming weekly need to maim oneself or carve up wife

20 and child. Always and everywhere, to eat three square meals at regular hours— ("The Hindoo: the Only Risk”)

Ramanujan himself defined rootedness into the family in his English poems, Relations:

Like a hunted deer On the wide white salt land, A flayed hide turned inside out, one may run, escape. But living among relations binds the feet.

{Relations: 35) “Ramanujan is basically a poet of memories. Of all the memories, the ones that are anchored to his familial, personal past make his poetry redolent with the characteristic native element or the Indian experience” (Chindhade, 19-96: 63). Furthermore, William Walsh observes that Ramanujan’s manner has “neither the agitation of his American context, nor the foggy quality inseparable from British English, and it communicates with complete ease an Indian sensibility” (Walsh, 1979: 118). K. D. Katrak recoils from the unpalatable encounters with the outer world and tries to take refuge in domestic love and the comforts of a home. His two collections of verses, A Journal of the Way (1969) and Diversions by the Wayside (1969) hold the firelight peace of the hearth and domestic love:

First, my childhood history which was small

21 And uneventful Except for this: I was ordained a priest And sanctified at twelve. All my later life, embarrassed, I ran from this event: until I took a wife, Who loved and understood me: and ran to join The old diversions of the mind And share the common feast.

(“A Bend in the Middle of the Road” from A Journal of the Way)

Kamala Das published her first book of poems, Summer in Calcutta in 1965. Her other important verse collections are The Descendants (1968) and The Old Play House and Other Poems (1973). She hardly ventures outside her personal world and there is a remarkably felt confessional strain in her poetry. In some of her poems there is a touch of pathos bom of nostalgia for home and childhood:

There is a house now far away where once I received love. That woman died, The house withdrew into silence, snakes moved Among books I was then too young To read, and, my blood turned cold like the moon. How often I think of going There, to peer through blind eyes of windows or Just listen to the frozen air—

(“My Grandmother’s House” from Summer in Calcutta)

Kamala Das always desires warm support of love. Her unseen frustrations were unfathomable. In most of her poems, she expresses her need for love and affection with a sense of urgency. “Kamala Das \ explores her inner world of failings, frustrations and relationship” (Daruwalla, 1980: xxvi). She is, therefore, predominantly a poet cf love and pain.

22 The city constantly reduced her to a sexual object. A. N. Dwivedi has rightly remarked, “As a poet of the city, Kamala Das constantly employs the metaphor of the city for life such as in the poem,’ A New City’” (Dwivedi, 1983: 25). She says:

I have come with only a picnic bag To this new city To seek a blind date, to shed as snakes do, In coils and coils, my Weariness. (“A New City” from Summer in Calcutta: 38)

Keki N. Daruwalla made his contribution to Indian poetry in English by writing volumes of poetry such as Under Orion (1970), Aloparition in April (1971), Crossing of Rivers (1976), Winter Poems (1980), and The Keeper of the Dead (1982). He puts his views on poetry:

It is unfashionable to say so, but I feel that even in poetry content is more important than form. For me poetry is firstly personal exploratory, at times therapeutic and an aid in coming to terms with one’s own interior world. At the same time it has to be a social gesture, because on occasions I feel external reality bearing down on me from all sides with pressure strong enough to tear the ear-drums. My poems are rooted in landscape which anchors the poem. The landscape is not merely there to set the scene but to lead to an illumination. It should be the eye of the spiral. I try that poetry relates to the landscape, both on the physical, and on the plane of the spirit. For me a riot-stricken town is landscape. So is tragedy with its, thespian trappings, as shown in the poem Tragedy Talk. (Daruwalla, 1980: 21)

23 Much of Daruwalla’s early poetry is concerned with such things as floods, famines, riots, and anniversaries. And indeed it is with just such a landscape that Daruwalla opens his first book:

Blood and fog are over half the town and curfew stamps along the empty street (“Curfew - In a Riot-Tom City”)

In such riot-stricken town, man’s existential pain is reflected in many of his poems. R. Parthasarathy has written Rough Passage (1977), his only collection in English. The poem is in three Parte: ‘Exile’, ‘Trial’ and ‘Homecoming’, dealing with the theme of an identity exposed to two cultures simultaneously. The essential tension in his poetry lies in the dilemma caused by this disenchantment and his late awareness of a loss of identity with his own culture.

There is something to be said for exile: You leam roots are deep. That language is a tree, loses colour Under another sky. The bark disappears with the snow, And branches become hoarse. (“Rough Passage”)

The lines above explore the problem of how one becomes an exile in one’s country by speaking and writing an alien language and examine “the bifurcation of self into its own rootedness and the allurement of a foreign culture” (Singh, 1997: 208).

24 Shiv. K. Kumar has published such collections of poetry as Articulate Silences (1970), Cobwebs in the Sun (1974), Subterfuges (1976), Woodpeckers (1979) and Trapfalls in the sky (1986). The major themes in his poetry are love, sex and companionship, birth and death and the sense of boredom and horror arising out of the anguish of urban life experiences. Even in most of his poems, he explores the self through interaction with others. Speaking of death he writes:

Perched on the wall a vulture cogitates Upon human avidity-flesh offered to the flames, bones and ashes to the Ganges. No leavings for the living. (“Crematorium in Adikmet, ” from Woodpeckers)

His recent book of verse, Trapfalls in the Sky (1986) deals with three sections: ‘On Native Grounds’, ‘Under Alien Skies’ and Genesis’. Kumar gives a distinct touch to his Indian sensibilities in these sections. The picture of the capital city of India is brought alive his poem, “O’ Delhi”. Kumar also handles the theme of the fear of death in most of his poems. He exhibits a gradual progress from the fear of death to completely befriending it. He describes death as an unknown traveller.

What is beyond the track’s end? Hills haunched upon hills like snails mating. I’ll stick in here under the last seat till- they come to mop up. (Subterfuges: 48)

25 Death psychosis gnaws at him and he dithers. At last he expresses his willing acceptance of death.

I know I must take the cold ash like my ancestors. But don’t hustle me. Let me first come to after the day’s logic. (Trapfalls in the Sky: 18)

So death is an unavoidable thing that persona at last accepts, though there is fear in his mind. Jayant Mahapatra published such collections of poems as Close ■ the Sky Ten by Ten (1971), A Rain of Rites (1976), A Father’s Hours (1976), Waiting (1976), Relationship (1980), The False Start (1980), Life Signs (1983) and Temple (1990). He is deeply steeped in Indian tradition, a mythic consciousness and Orissa landscape. There is an abundance of local details like shrines, temples, homebound cattle and rickshaw pullers in his poetry. Most of his poems reflect the way of life and experiences of region.

White-clad widowed women Past the centres of there lives are waiting to enter the Great Temple. (“Dawn at Puri”)

Speaking of Orissa landscape he writes:

Everything here is palpable. Here and there the muggy breeze from the river bursts with the sour smell of feces,

26 crushed grasses and wet earth. (“Orissa Landscape")

As Professor K. Ayyappa Paniker rightly suggested, “the ‘Sun of the Eastern Coast of India’ shines through his poems. The Eastern Sea sends its morning wind through them. Mahapatra, a child of the Sun and the sea, delights in invoking the god of fire and the god of water in poems like ‘Sunrise’, ‘The Exile’, ‘Indian Summer Poem’, ‘This Stranger, My Daughter’ and ‘The Beggar Takes it as Solace’. Puri is a living character in several of these poems” (Narasimhaiah, 1978: 129) has published his collection of poems, Jejuri (1976). Most of his poems from Jejuri have a surrealistic vision. There is also a juxtaposition of dead tradition and modem industrial civilization. The striking sense of emotional non-involvement is persistent feature of Jejuri from beginning to the end. The poet himself has been an ouster and observer in one of the holy places like Jejuri throughout the poem. As R. Parthasarathy rightly points out “Kolatkar expresses what he sees with the eyes of a competent reporter in a language” (Parthasarathy, 1993: 40). Asked by an interviewer whether he believed in God, Kolatkar answered, “I leave the question alone. I don’t think I have to take a position about God, one way or the other.” Yeshwant Rao, Mass of basalt, bright as any post box, the shape of protoplasm or a king-sized lava pie thrown against the wall, without an ann, a leg or even a single head. (Jejuri: 46)

27 He simply looks at God as the thing made up of rock. It is the God who has no arm and leg that could mend our broken bones.

But if any bones are broken You know he’ll mend them. He’ll make you whole in your body and hope your spirit will look after itself. (Ibid)

M. K. Naik detects a three-valued system in Jejuri: (i) the ancient religious tradition (ii) the modem industrial civilization and (iii) the life principle in nature and its ways (Naik, 1982: 25).

If it knows when The next train’s due It gives no clue the clockface adds its numerals (Ibid: 52)

Aran Kolatkar has used images of hill, butterfly, Tigers and horse, but all these images are exploited to provide an ironical expose' of the legends and traditions of the native place. In comparison with his predecessors and contemporaries, the most distinctive feature of poetry written by Dilip Chitre, the present * researcher would like to argue, is the expression of the feelings of disinterestedness, alienation and unrelatedness which result from the poet’s shifting from Baroda, where he was bom and brought up in the constant communion with his grandmother, different trees, birds and even insects, to and the other urbanized, industrialized and overpopulated places.

28