International Journal of English and Literature (IJEL) ISSN(P): 2249-6912; ISSN(E): 2249-8028 Vol. 5, Issue 1, Feb 2015, 71-80 © TJPRC Pvt. Ltd.
A POSTMODERN READING OF A. K. RAMANUJAN
GOUTAM KARMAKAR Assistant Teacher, Department of English, Bhagilata High School (H. S), Raiganj, Uttar Dinajpur, West Bengal, India
ABSTRACT
After 1980, a new identity, new characteristics, new sense of direction came in Indian English Literature and came to be viewed both as an Indian Literature and also a part of Commonwealth literature. This new identity came to be knows as Postmodern Indian English Literature and Postmodern Indian English Poetry is a great chapter in that whole literature. Several poets made their contribution to give Indian English Poetry much international attention and readers as well as critics are still mesmerized by the older generation of poets- Nissim Ezekiel, Kamala Das and A. K. Ramanujan. Salman Rushdie’s ‘Midnight’s Children’ marks the postmodernism in Indian English Fiction and in the same way A. K. Ramanujan’s poetry embodied postmodernism. In this paper I have attempted to highlight some of the postmodern characteristics in A. K. Ramanujan’s poetry.
KEYWORDS: Family, Irony, Myth, Nature, Postmodernism, Social Concern
INTRODUCTION
“Ramanujan is neither nostalgic nor an advocate of modernization and westernization. He is a a product of both and his poems reflect a personality conscious of change, enjoying its vitality, freedom and contradictions, but also aware of memories which form his inner self, memories of an unconscious ‘namelessness’, which are still alive, at the foundation of the self.” (Ghosh, 190)
No discussion of Indian English Poetry in the postmodern period can begin with any other poet than Attipat Krishnaswamy Ramanujan. He occupies a important place as a poet in the cosmos of Indian English Poetry. His poetry is somewhat different and unique from Kamala Das and Nissim Ezekiel. A close reading to his works show that his poetry consists of a que3st- a quest for roots in the tradition and a quest for a higher self. As a postmodern poet he tries to show in his poetry irony, humour, pastiche, family relations and impact of nature, Hindu consciousness and myths with typical Indian sensibility. And these characteristics are found in some of his notable volumes of poetry like The Striders (1966), Relations (1971), Second Sight(1986) and The Collected Poems of A. K. Ramanujan (1995)
Ramanujan is a unique, individual voice and as a postmodern poet his poetry symbolizes Nature with Indian ethos and sensibility. Man has a great connection with Nature. In “A River’, he shows Madurai city with traditional Tamil culture:
“In Madurai,
city of temples and poets
who sang of cities and temples:
every summer
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a river dries to a trickle
in the sand.” (A River)
In his ‘Christmas’, his connection with Nature is also shown. The tree in this poem is leafless and this leafless tree in U. S. A reminds him of the tree in India. And such was his connection with Nature that he feels that he is unable to distinguish the branch from the root of the tree and he can’t distinguish himself from the tree:
“For a moment, I no
longer know
leaf from parrot
or branch from root
nor for that matter
that tree from you or me.” (Christmas)
In his ‘A Hindu to His Body’, he says that he wants to born again in the form of a tree as he wants to feel the weight of honey-hives in his branches. His identification with the Nature is really unique:
“when you muffle
and put away my pulse
to rise in the sap of trees
let me go with you and feel the weight
of honey-hives in my branches
and the burlap weave of weaver-birds
in my hair.” (A Hindu to His Body)
Ramanujan in his ‘Leaky Tap after a Sister’s weeding’ shows his pity, sympathy for the tree because of the pain given to it by woodpecker. And what he wishes is shown in these lines:
“My sister and I always wished a tree
could shriek or at least writhe
like that other snake
we saw under the beak
of the crow.” (TS 7-8)
In some other poems like ‘Chess Under Tree’, ‘Ecology’, ‘An Image for Politics’, ‘Epitaph on a street Dog’, ‘Army of Ants’, ‘Lac into Seal’, ‘Snake’, his love, pity, sympathy for tree and animals are shown. Even he says that man’s isolation can also be removed by the company of them. As in ‘No Man is an Island’, he says:
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“Certain small sea-birds are said
to pick its teeth
for yellow crabs and jelly-fish
But this man,
I know, buys dental floss”. (TS 26)
In this connection it can be also said that apart from a connection between body and Nature, he also shows that time and culture make him to do so and these all are part of human life in general and it is shown in these lines:
“Time moves in and out of me
a stream of sound, a breeze,
an electric current that seeks
the ground
Morning brown
into evening before I turn around
in the day.” (Sonnet CP 220)
As a postmodern poet, Ramanujan feels the need of relations, family bonding in one’s life and he has shown it with vivid imagery along with Indian sensibilities. Poems like ‘Of Mothers, among other things’, ‘Extended Family’, ‘Still another for mother’, ‘Love poem for a wife 1’, ‘Love poem for a wife 2’, ‘Small Scale Reflections on a Great House’ illustrate these theme.
In his ‘Of Mothers, among other things’, he shows the Indian mother’s youth, her care for her children, her devotion to her work as she gives her all to do her domestic responsibility. The last stanza illustrates these all:
“My cold parchment tongue licks bark
in the mouth when I see her four
still sensible fingers slowly flex
to pick a grain of rice from the kitchen floor.”
(Of Mothers, among other things)
In ‘Love poem for a wife 1’, he shows many family members like father, father-in-law, cousins, grandparents, sister-in-law and brother-in-law with details:
“…you cannot, for instance
meet my father. He is some years
dead. Neither can I meet yours:
He has lately lost his temper
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And mellowed
only two weeks ago, in Chicago
you and brother James started
one of your old drag-out fights
sister-in-law
and I were rather blank, cut-outs
sitting in our respective
slots in a room.” (Love poem for a wife 1)
Actually Ramanujan had cherished in his heart the image and pleasure of shared childhood. In his ‘What He Said’, he says:
“What kin was your mother
to mine? What was my father
to yours anyway? And how
did you and I meet ever.” (What He Said)
In his ‘Small Scale Reflections on a Great House’, we find the management power of a house as it contains both good and bad things. On one hand it welcomes all types of people and on the other hand it also manages others in a familiar way:
“Sometimes I think that nothing
that ever comes into this house
goes out. Things come in everyday
to lose themselves among other things
lost long ago among
other things lost long ago.”
(Small Scale Reflections on A Great House)
He shows his love and care for not only to his wife but also for children as he writes in ‘Entries for a Catalogue of Fears’:
“I’ll love my children
without end.” (Entries for a Catalogue of Fears)
Being a postmodern poet, he shows elements of love in a new way. In his ‘Still Another View of Grace’, he shows his burning desires and tension in a vivid way. In this poem the speaker gives many eloquent arguments against lust as lust comes to him in the shape of a woman and not him but his mind is overwhelmed. As he shows:
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“I burned and burned, But one day I turned
and caught that thought
by the screams of her hair.” (Still Another View of Grace)
It should be also mentioned that behind his search for family connection, he actually wants to find his roots. In ‘Waterfalls in a Bank’, he says that he is haunted with the country of his birth till the end of time:
“As I transact with the past as with another
Country with its own customs, currency,
stock exchange, always
at a loss when I count my change.” (Waterfalls in a Bank)
As a post modern poet, Ramanujan in his poetry tries to show contemporary condition, social problems, obstacles, issues and socio-cultural concern. In “A River”, he tells the old and new poets to show not only happiness but also misery in a large scale. He says here in a sad tone:
“The new poets still quoted
the old poets, but no one spoke
in verse
of the pregnant woman-
drowned, with perhaps twins in her,
kicking at the blank walls
even before birth.” (A River)
Concern and anxiety for Indian woman is also showed in his “The Opposable Thumb”. Here the poet shows the ill treatment received by Indian woman from their husband:
“Just one finger left to five, a real thumb
no longer usual, casual, or opposable after her husband’s
knifing temper one Sunday morning half a century ago.”
(The Opposable Thumb)
Ramanujan feels sympathy for woman as they leave their own house and come to a man’s house with no hesitation but with utmost belief on that man. But man easily leaves her and even walks straight on without looking back and this happens only for some trivial incident. As in ‘Still Another or Mother’, the poet says:
“Perhaps they had fought
worse still, perhaps they had not fought.” (Still Another or Mother)
He had deep concern for the poor people of India. The poor almost in every day face death-in-life situation to earn
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“The snakeman wreathes their writhing
round his neck
for father’s smiling
money.” (TS 3)
Not only the poor, he in his poems describes the miserable plight of lepers as they are exposed to heat and dust. In his “One Reads” he shows to us:
“Then, one sees
the leprosy of light and shade
the sunlit beggar squatting
on his shadow, clotting
the antlers of bare April’s trees:
pondering lies
for our charity’s
counterfeit pice.” (One Reads)
Ramanujan handles the Indian myth and shoes the various incarnation of God. In this respect intertextuality and pastiche are also found in his poetry. In “Zoo Gardens Revisited”, he prays to God to save the animals:
“Lord of lion face, boar snout, and fish eyes, killer of killer
cranes, shepherd of rampant elephants, devour my lambs
devour them whole, save them in the zoo garden ark of your
belly.” (CP, 154)
As a postmodern Indian English poet, he had to convey the message of God and had to reflect Indian customs, thoughts, rites, rituals of religion in a different way. And he did so in ‘Mythologies 1’, ‘Mythologies 2’ and ‘Mythologies 3’. In ‘Mythologies 1’, he tells us the Putana myth and shows that Putana ultimately got a new life by getting killed while she offered milk to Lord Krishna:
“The child took her breast
in his mouth and sucked it right out of her chest
Her carcass stretched from North to South
She changed, undone by grace
From deadly mother to happy demon
Found life in death.” (CP 221)
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In ‘Mythologies 2’, he shows how a man got a boon not to be killed and ultimately is killed by Lord Krishna:
“Come now come soon,
Vishnu, man, lion, neither and both, to hold
Him in your lap to disembowel his pride
With the steel glint of bare claws at twilight.” (CP 226)
Ramanujan in his poetry wants to show his Hindu consciousness. His thinking is also based on these consciousnesses. In spite of his living in different country, he does not forget his religion. As he says:
“As we enter the dark,
Someone says from behind
You are a Hindoo, aren’t you?
You must have Second Sight.” (Second Sight)
In his ‘The Hindoo: He doesn’t Hurt a fly, or a spider either’, he shows the kindness, gentleness of Hindu people:
“It’s time I told you why
I’m so gentle; do not hurt a fly,
Why, I cannot hurt a spider
Either, not even a black widow,” (CP 62)
Ramanujan was not only a poet but also a folklorist. And he tried to show this in his ‘No Fifth Man’ from the collection ‘The Black Hen’. Here he tells a story about common sense and how this common sense saved the fifth Brahmin. Apart from him, all other Brahmins lost their life in the process of bringing a dead tiger back to life in order to show their power of knowledge. Here he shows:
“The fifth man, the coward
cried, ‘wait, wait’,
just one second
and climbed up a tree in a hurry
while the fourth chanted a mantra
gave the tigress life
and the creature pounced on him
his three friends pounced on him
his three friends roofed
in their fear, killed them all
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and ate them up for starters
Nothing was left of them
Not even a bone.” (No Fifth Man)
The discussion regarding A. K. Ramanujan as a postmodern poet will be incomplete without the discussion of irony and hum*our in his poetry. In his ‘A River’, the irony reaches its climax when he mentions the name of the cows but not the woman and he also exposes the incapability of the old and new poets who were unable to portray the destruction caused by the floods. As he says:
“The new poets still quoted
the old poets, but no one spoke
in verse
of the pregnant woman-
drowned, with perhaps twins in her,
kicking at the blank walls
even before birth.” (A River)
In his ‘The Guru’, he exposes the disciple’s hypocritical nature. In the poem we see that Guru advised to his disciples about what to do and what not to do, but the disciple did according to his will:
“I gave the dog his bone, the parrot
his seed, the pet snake his mouse
forgave the weasel his tooth
forgave the tiger his claw
and left the guru to clean his shoe
for I remembered I was born of a woman.” (The Guru)
In ‘Obituary’, he uses irony many times. In the poem the speaker’s father left nothing for him after death except a table full of papers, debts. Further he comments ironically on ceremonies and rituals associated with the dead. The concluding lines are also ironic:
“…to pick gingerly
and throw, facing east
as the priest said
where three rivers met…
that I usually read
for fun, and lately
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in the hope of finding
these obituary lines.” (Obituary)
In ‘Pleasure’, his irony holds a Jain monk its captive. Actually this monk because of his long celibacy is caught by Spring fever. As the poet says:
“…whips, self touching self,
all philosophy slimed by its own saliva,
cool Ganges turning,
sensual on him.” (CP 139)
Ramanujan in his ‘The Hindoo:he reads his Gita and is calm at all events’, ironically comments on the situation:
“I do not marvel
when I see good and evil: I just walk
over them as over the iridescence
of horsepiss after rain.” (The Hindoo:he reads his Gita and is calm at all events)
In his ‘Prayer to Lord Murugan’, he wants to show the corrupted modern man’s mind and the degeneration in the society. As the concluding prayer in this poem is full of irony:
“Lord of the lost travelers
find us. Hunt us
down.
Lord of answers
Cure at once
Of prayers.” (Prayer to Lord Murugan)
Not only these poems but in some others poems like ‘Still Life’, ‘Self portrait’, ‘Image for politics’, ‘Relations’, ‘The Last of the Princes’, ‘Conventions of Despair’, he shows irony as a characteristic feature. And with this he truly stands as a postmodern voice of Indian English Poetry.
CONCLUSIONS
In the concluding lines, it can be said that to read Ramanujan’s poetry is to believe in immense human possibilities. He combines the post modern characteristics in his poetry with his Indian sensibilities, Indian ethos, potentialities and genuine poetic images with expressions. He has tried ton create a link between life and art. Actually he has fully explored the opportunities ven to him and he had tried to uplift Indian English Poetry to a new lever. And this all happen because of his inner poetic technique as M. K. Naik said about him: “In Poetic technique, of all his contemporaries, Ramanujan appears to have the surest touch, for he never lapses into romantic lapses into romantic cliche. His unfailing sense of rhythm gives a fitting answer to those who hold that complete inwardness with language is possible only to be
www.tjprc.org [email protected] 80 Goutam Karmakar poet writing in his mother tongue. Though he writes in poen forms, His verse is extremely, tightly constructed.” (Naik, 201)
REFERENCES
1. Ramamurti, K. S, Twenty-five Indian Poets in English. New Delhi, Macmillan India Limited, 1995
2. King Bruce, Modern Indian Poetry in English, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987
3. Parthasarathy, R. Ed. Ten Twentieth Century Indian English Poets. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002
4. Ramanujan, A. K, The Striders (TS) London: Oxford University Press, 1966
5. Ramanujan, A. K, Relations London: Oxford University Press, 1971
6. Ramanujan, A. K. Fifteen Poems from a Classical Tamil Anthology, Calcutta: Writers Workshop, 1965
7. Dharwadkar, Vinay. Ed. The Collected Poems Of A. K. Ramanujan.(CP) New Delhi: Oxford University Press,1995
8. Naik. M. K. History of Indian English Literature. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi,1982. P-201
9. Bhatnagar. M. K. The Poetry of A. K. Ramanujan. New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, 2002
10. Ghosh, Sumana. A. K. Ramanujan As a Poet. Jaipur: Book Enclave, 2004
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