CU-MA-Eng-SEM-IV-Specialization I - Postcolonial Poetry-Second Draft

experience. He interprets this structure in terms of “the educated, Westernized Indian’s threefold mode of development.” Even from the thematic viewpoint, the threefold structure holds good. The three sections of the book are, so to say, the articulations of the poet’s cultural, amorous, and linguistic predicaments. The predicament or tension is the red thread that runs through all the sections. It provides the book with a pattern and a logical cohesion. The first section of the volume, “Exile,” opens with “As a man approaches thirty, he may,” wherein the poet having attained the age of thirty starts taking stock of himself. Not that at this age something significant happens, but that the experience of life and the world around thickens and a clearer picture of one-self emerges - ‘At thirty the mud will have settled but at this age, one continues to ‘make the same mistakes.’ The ‘images’ of the past get slowly dissolved as the poet begins scrutinizing himself. He has arrived at the tether-end of his belief and conviction. He feels an exile in his own country because of his easy command of the English language, which is usually linked with the colonial past and with an alien culture. His ‘whoring after English gods,’ as Parthasarathy puts it, entails an acute sense of estrangement from his own land and culture. In a suppressed tone, he says: There is something to be said for exile: you learn roots are deep. That language is a tree, loses colour under another sky. But the recognition of ‘deep roots’ in Tamil does not improve his situation. His loyalty remains divided between the two great repositories of Eastern and Western cultures, between Tamil and English. His English writings come between himself and the city of his birth. There is nothing to rest his eyes on soothingly: The streets are noisy, and trees, on Malabar Hill blind with dust. Spring had gone unnoticed... The return of the exile (i.e., the poet) to his native city is painful and uneventful. The foreign tour taken to promote the linguistic learning in Leeds merely disappoints him. His dreams are now shattered, his hopes are now belied. So, he returns ‘a euphoric archipelago’, and his native city greets him with nothing but fog and smoke, regulated traffic and buzzing crowd, the scorching sun and the struggling birds, the in collate babbles and the distracting noises, the tired sea and the littered lanes. In such a surrounding, he feels exhausted, and asks: What have I come here far from a thousand miles? As in England, here too he comes across the 51 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

frowning faces and the scowling glares of the people, and feels ill at ease inescapably— ‘A grey sky oppresses the eyes. Fed up with the unhappy life at home and expecting some sort of relaxation in the bosom of the beloved, the poet starts off for Jadavpur, where she supposedly lives. Here he hurtles himself into a tense and passionate experience with her. The poet persona in ‘Exile I’ is a man in an introspective mood crossing the border of adolescent youth on the way of maturity. He feels responsive to retrospection, though his stance is detached and controlled, it is all the while infused with emotion. He recalls the thirty years of mistakes he has committed in his past life and the experience he has gained. As he perceives his past, self-delusion overtakes him “You stir, and the mirror dissolves/Experience doesn’t always make for knowledge/you make the same mistakes” and rejects the image seen in the mirror as his own. While evoking the moments of his past the poet persona remembers the lost women whom he loved but never married: “.......These many years You warmed yourself at her hands. All night your hand has rested on her left breast.” Here the image of the hand resting on the left breast evokes his intimate association with the English literature he has been in passionate love with and has spent whole nights to her whispers. But in actual life he fails to identify himself with the world of English language and culture and so: “In the morning when she is gone You will be alone like the stone benches in the park, and would have forgotten her whispers in the noises of the city.” If this harlot’s image is compared with the image of whoring in the next poem “Exile” the interpretation gets further clarified. “He had spent his youth whoring after English Gods. There is something to be said for exile: you learn roots are deep.” “The metaphor of whoring” as P.D. Chaturvedi points out “associated with the image of exile results in the ironic realization of the poet that roots are deep” and suggests the inter-relation 52 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

between the roots of an individual and the roots of language. The loss of identity is owing to the fact that “language is a tree loses colour /under another sky.” The stock taking that began with ‘Exile’ leads the poetic self to the realization of personal crisis in ‘Exile’. Struggling to find out the situations that rendered the ‘self-false, he comes to know that the ‘self is nothing but a product of time and place and that one’s creative life can never be authentic or fertile if one follows the wrong gods. The predicament of the poetic self-highlights the exhaustion and rootlessness of an exile whose vision of life and goals lie unfulfilled. The ambivalent fascination of Parthasarathy with two different cultures and the consequent desertion - intellectual allegiance to English and the emotional withdrawal of his allegiance - is brought out in the images of ‘lamps’ and the ‘holes in a wall’. “Through holes in a wall, as it were, lamps burned in the fog. In a basement flat, conversation filled the night, while Ravi Shankar, Cigarette stubs, empty bottles of stout and crisps provide the necessary pauses.” The poet persona here attempts in vain to pull down the culture wall, and his attempts only make insignificant dents- ‘the holes’ -in the wall and hence the lamps in the fog only lurk dim. Added to this is his realization that his urban experience is detrimental to his self. A city is a city anywhere. “London, the city that appears as a jewel from India when seen from close quarters is just like any other city: ‘lanes full of smoke and litter/with puddles of unwashed/English children’. While the incongruous details presented such as cigarette stubs, empty bottles of stout, Crisps, and Ravishankar, emphasize the flux of experience within the ambivalent poetic self, the traditional image among them - Ravishankar - indicates the desired sense of relief from the sense of loneliness and exile. The later part of ‘Exile’ is the evocation of the atmosphere of metropolitan London, where “under the shadow of poplars/ the river divides the city from the night” and where Victoria “an old hag” sleeps alone “shaking her invincible locks”. If Victoria is the symbol of British imperialism, against her statue is silhouetted the statue of Boadicea,10 the symbol of victory of the human soul and love for freedom. ‘Exile 3’ presents the poetic seifs intercontinental journey during which he gets himself accustomed to the city walls in Istambul and Jerusalem and to the deserts in Syria and Iran. It was against the setting of Samothrace - an island -(“In the distance/Samothrace barely visible”)that the new wisdom about the cultural heritage of Asia dawned on him. 53 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

“Across the seas a new knowledge, sudden and unobtrusive as first snow transforming the landscape, rinses speech, affirms the brown skin and the heart beating to a different rhythm.” The “new knowledge” that dawned on him is about the possibility of affirming the identity of his Indian self. “Exile 4” records the poetic seifs passage from England to India, “to the city I had quarreled with”, to the city which is the symbol of intellectual alertness and emotional passivity with its “traffic of regulated affections”. His return to the city - to his roots - is only a frustrating experience, where, what he encounters is only the impact of the west which he wanted to run away from. The visionary artistic selfishat war with the collective consciousness of the crowd of the city. Here after the poetic seifs responses to the city are those of the “stranger, the observer and the performer”; Stranger because the poetic self is a visionary artist basically and hence lonely, and performer because of the fact that the city, for him, is a part of his own consciousness. It is when the poetic self tries to contain its own identity as an individual and as an artist along with the “scrap of community, the crowd” in the city, that he fails to establish any valid reference or communication with the collective consciousness of the city: “Like a hand at rest, the pelagic city is immobile. Between us there is no commerce.” “I am through with the city No better than ghettos, the suburbs. There, language is a noise, and streets unwind like cobras from a basket.” The sixth section of the “Exile” finds the poetic self-continuing its journey in quest of selfhood in the direction of Goa and to Ilhas. A carreer a takes him “to the heart of Goa. In old Goa his attention is drawn by the statue of Camoens, the Portuguese poet where while stopping to take a picture “a storm of churches breaks about my eyes.” In “Exile 7”, the voyager reaches his ancestral home, Madras. But here also he is far from being at home. Raising a desperate cry against the imitation of the west in his hometown he asks: “.....what have I come 54 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

here for from a thousand miles The sky is no different. Beggars are the same everywhere. The clubs are there, complete with bar and golf-links.” There is overall decline around. The hourglass (representing the pre-scientific stage of Tamil and by implication the true Indian civilization) of Tamil mind is replaced by the exact chronometer (symbolizing the European influence) of Europe. The streets of Madras are disfigured by the high breasted cardboard-and-paper goddesses; the worst of all is that: “The sun has done its worst: skimmed a language worn it to a shadow.” In the final section of “Exile” the poetic self finds itself on the banks of the Hooghly in the city of Calcutta which is another major bastion of the British Raj and culture in Eastern India. As he walks, “my tongue hunchbacked with words” through the city that testifies the decadence of the British Raj through its dusty appearance, “a grey sky” oppresses his eyes and he discovers as to what he has attained during the last thirty years: “The years have given me little wisdom and I’ve dislodged myself to find it.” Thus, the poetic seifs craving to embrace freedom lost in an alien land remains unfulfilled even in his own native soil, be it Bombay, Madras or Calcutta. The ‘Exilic’ predicament of the poet remains prominent wherever he moves to. If in Madras he encounters those materialistic concerns of civilization have supplanted the spiritual overtones of the Dravidic values (“The hourglass of the Tamil mind/by exact chronometer/of Europe’), in Calcutta the sky oppresses the eyes. His old love into whose arms he walks with his “tongue hunchbacked with words” smells “gin and cigarette ash”. “Your breasts, sharp with desire, hurt my fingers.” The image of the fascinating harlot reappears here to highlight the poetic seifs predicament of non-relationship. If the alien land has rendered him a “euphoric archipelago” his own land, her people and her language bring about only a sense of estrangement in him. His efforts for a tense and passionate relationship with his old love - his own land, people and language - hurt him. In such a predicament, in which he finds himself at a total loss of contact with the 55 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

environment, language is not led towards the expression of one’s consciousness but towards emaciation and towards the ever-widening gulf between experience and expression: “Feelings beggar description, Shiver in the dark alleys of the mind, hungry and alone”. It is at this point of his voyage that the self learns the lesson on the art of losing and finding oneself. In spite of the sense of dislocation encountered in his predicament the poetic self comes to the realization that though he has wasted his youth (“The ashes are all that’s left/ of the flesh and brightness of youth”) he cannot disown his twin inheritance and has to accept life as it is. “This is an experience which he can neither take nor reject because of its paradoxical nature. Here he learns that: “Nothing can really be dispensed with. The heart needs all.” This is the moment of truth for the poet as exile. The ‘self needs its success as well as failures to arrive at an authentic perception of the world.....he resolves to carry this new found wisdom in the bone urn of his mind to another city.” “I shall carry this wisdom to another city in the bone urn of my mind ................I am thirty I must give quality to the other half.” Thus, if the exiles stay in an alien land awakened within him a sense of cultural uneasiness, arising out of the sense of need to re-establish roots, the seduction he has encountered in his own land necessitated the sense of need for renewal and a sense of need for the infusion of permanence into the flux of experience which in turn may offer a “comfortable sense of continuity and performance”. Thus, the period of ‘Exile’ becomes the period of conceptualization. “Parthasarathy’s poetry seems to be unified by three recurring preoccupations: at the apex is the basic questions of language as a mode of identity; the loss of identity in this regard is as much the result of cultural alienation as of seduction by an “alien” language. This sense of a private predicament is reinforced by the urban landscape with the city as the centre of consciousness and the newspaper as its linguistic fulcrum. Finally, both the loss of identity and the inadequacy of language are sought to be neutralized by the affirmation of the unified experience of love itself. Consequently, Parthasarathy’s poetry intersects three basic tensions: the personal historical tension which is reflected ironically in the choice of the very language which creates the tension between the language of the city with the newspaper as its vocal 56 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

mode, and the language of generic human emotion, with its inevitable commitment to image and symbol; and finally, the tension between experience itself and its verbalization. The eventual pre-occupation, accordingly, is to contain both the cacophony of the city and the alienation of the culturally exiled by an affirmation of experience with love as its generic base.” The second section, Trial (a series of 16 love songs) “celebrates love as a reality here and now. Against the turmoil of non-relationship, personal love holds forth the promise of belonging. The impulse to preserve is at the bottom of Trial.” Primarily, it is the effort to preserve one’s identity, one’s childhood and cultural roots through the experience of physical love because it also helps to preserve, assert and continue one’s creative urge How should I not scream, ‘I haven’t finished’? Metaphorically the Trial section celebrates in passionately sensuous and sensual imagery the moment of seduction and infatuation by the English whore. Thus, the poet’s effort in ‘Trial’ to celebrate love ends up as a more intensified personal crisis with the revelation that love cannot be everlasting. His effort to locate his genuine self in the native environment through the invocation of the undefiled past brings in only a self- recognition of limitations. This accounts for the melancholic tone and the sense of darkness, despair and inevitable gloom that pervades through the entire section. “Disappointment is his principal theme”, writes William Walsh in this context, “whether with the edgy complications of love, with the insoluble problems of poetic composition or with England in face of the actuality of what he expected”. Nevertheless, the lesson the poetic self-had learnt towards the ends of “Exile” of the need of acceptance of things as they are (“Nothing can really/be dispensed with. The heart needs all”) stands him in good stead during this phase of its evolution when the self is painstakingly ascertaining whether love would survive in the face of life’s bitterness and complexity. This is the ‘Trial’ that the self undergoes during the second phase of his rough passage; The very first poem of this section intones the sense of mortality: “Mortal as I am, I face the end with unspeakable relief, knowing how I should feel ifI were stopped and cut off. Where I to clutch at the air, straw in my extremity, 57 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

how should I not scream, ‘I haven’t finished’?” Even the soothing touch of love makes the protagonist aware of his limitations and the circular movement of the “night”: “Love, I haven’t the key to unlock His gates. Night curves, I grasp your hand.” While attempting to recreate the childhood of his beloved for the purpose of rejuvenating the self, the poet persona looks at the family album; but through the image of the small girl whose “unruly hair silenced by bobpins and ribbons, eyes half-shut.” he is reminded of transcience: “........How your face bronzed, as flesh and bone struck a touchwood day”. While passion bums “quicker than candles” “smoking the glass, our bodies” the image of death intervenes: “Evening disfigures vision; stones of the day turn phantoms.” The pleasure achieved from touching the beloved’s breast is “Elliptic” and “wholesome”: “I am all fingers when it comes to touching them. Their fullness keeps the eyes peeled with excitement.” But the pleasure is overtaken by the ‘night’: “.............O night, darker than ever in our arms.” While the lover in ‘Trial 7’ is content with the experience of “lucid exclusiveness” offered by the night - “Time that had dimmed /your singular form/by its harsh light now 58 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

makes/recognition possible /through this opaque lens” -in the very next poem ‘Trial 8’ he finds that “Night closes in.......” One can go on citing extensive examples showing conflicting passions within the poetic self- wherein the invigorating and refreshing quality of love is juxtaposed with the transitoriness of bodily fulfilment and with the images of death and despair. The predominant voice in each case is one of moderate melancholic acceptance of disappointment with an irritable but unprotesting glumness and a bleak recognition of the seifs and life’s own limitations. Thus when “You entered Undressed quietly before the mirror Of my hands.” the euphoria of love’s primitive passions helps redeem the poetic seifs roughed-up exilic experience: “The sweet water Of your flesh I draw with my arms as from well its taste as ever as on the night of Capricorn.” As “touch of your breasts is ripe in my arms”, he feels that the love is real and he could put aside the past in a comer: “I have put aside the past in a comer, an umbrella now poor in the ribs.” But the relevance and unavoidability of the past enters the ambivalent self unobtmsively: “...................with lamp and pen I blow the dust off my past.” He compares his beloved’s hand, in an image of rare beauty and passion: “...........your hand was a galaxy I could reach, even touch in the sand with my half-inch telescopic fingers” and then with an intense awareness of the opposite extreme he broods over the fact that the momentary excitement offered by love is not a durable refuge: “...........Thus celebrate 59 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

something so perishable, trite.” In “Trial 4” the feeling that “the thought of you” can bum “distance to stub” and that “your flesh / was the glass that cupped its hands over me” is associated with the uncomfortable awareness that loves’ s passion invariably faster and itself in an instant of time and hence “An uneasy world swarmed around us.” It is the awareness about the seifs ambivalence that induces within the poetic self the mood of self-questioning “whether he and his beloved should lose their way in the ‘undergrowth of tears and ‘stumble’ over the articulating of their innate feelings and end up merely by wearing a ‘wreath of empty words’.17” (Incidentally in an unpublished introduction to ‘Rough Passage’ Parthasarathy says that his love poetry may be seen as his stumbling footsteps through the field oflove.18) “Should we lose our way in this undergrowth of tears and stumble over pebbles of eyes, leap fences of reassuring arms to wear at the end of the race not flowers but a wreath of empty words?” Then with an unnerving sense of futility of expression (reminiscent of a similar sense as aired in ‘Exile’ that “feelings beggar description” and that tongue is “hunchbacked/with words”) the poetic self finds itself choked by the tyranny of words: “Our world, love, moves within the familiar poles of eye, hand, is eclipsed by the word. And words, surely, are no more than ripples in the deep well of the throat.” “........The tight fist of my throat reeks of the sweet of words: their unmentionable order sustains me” It is this sense of basic disillusionment that leads to the mood of self-mockery and wryness in which he calls himself “a disused attic” whose walls were brightened by “the skylight of your face”. In the predicament in which love fails and word ‘eclipses’ the body the redemption offered by physical love is only a passing phase, which cannot sustain the poet’s sense of authenticity. The clock - the symbol of transcience - is an unromantic counterpart of the moon. In such a predicament nothing nullifies the seifs degenerate state: “The clock was my simple unromantic moon I counted the digits Of the years on.” The confession in “Trial 13” that “These days I often think of death” has to be viewed in this light. The images of body -touch, flesh, bone, hand, arm, forehead, eyes - are ultimately led towards the images of death and decay: “Sleep becomes impossible: 60 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

the eyes shut in apology hinges which the mind turns its fragile door on, as I hob-and-nob with death.” “And my fingers, an open grave with only the bones ofyour touch.” “Myopic eyes strain to catch every straw in the wind as touch after tomb explodes. .....................Weigh love in the scales of a pool of water my five-year-old son erases with the drop of a ball It is then night.” Thus, the expeditions of love as a search for a new identity in terms of body experience only aggravate the crisis within the self. His investment in love ends up in loss with the realization that he had only been a tenant in his beloved’s heart and that there is no hope there of any durable refuge; love can never materialize the promise of a home and the heart can never be hospitable anywhere. Added to this is the awareness of the bitterness of the past that looms large in his consciousness oppressing him remorse and guilt: “Curled around me are not the familiar arms but an octopus past, blurring the plate-glass of my days.” In such a predicament, the self can only caress the wounds of the past and is unable to evolve a perception of the present: “My past is an unperfect stone: the flaws show. I polish the stone, sharpen the luster to a point.\" 61 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

‘Homecoming’ is the last part of ‘Rough Passage’. When it was first published in 1977 fourteen poems were included in it. In the 1980 edition, ‘Homecoming’ comprised fifteen poems and later one more poem was added to this part. Most of these poems were written in Tamil Nadu between 1971 and 1978. (Poems are being added to this part off and on.) In the poet’s own words “homecoming” “explores the phenomenon of returning to one’s home. 19” ............. “Explores, after the tortuous labyrinths of solitude and dissolution, the sense of finally coming home20” and initiates “a dialogue between myself and my Tamil Past”. According to him “Homecoming” derives its sustenance from grafting itself on to whatever he finds usable in the Tamil Tradition. It follows up the process of desalination by plunging its roots in the environmental humus to assimilate in English, the style and content of Tamil verse. It is also an effort, according to the poet, to rip the mask of euphoria off the face of the Tamils to expose the sterility of their civilization which, since the twentieth century had withdrawn into itself and as a result atrophied. “Above all”, says Parthasarathy, “‘Homecoming’ attempts a redefinition of myself - what it means to be a Tamil after having whored after English Gods.” ‘Homecoming’ begins with a contrast between the poet’s desire to give up English for Tamil and the corrupted condition of that language; ‘Now, hooked on celluloid, you reel / down plush corridors. The language of classical Tamil is dead, impotent, a symbol of its present culture; all the poet can do is ‘Turn inward’ to the past: ‘perhaps, strike out a line for yourself/ from the iron of life’s ordinariness’. The sense of the past, as represented by his Brahmin childhood and by family relations, is sharpened by the now uncommon occurrence of a family reunion, representing continuity, union and security. A cousin with whom he climbed trees stood there, that day, forty years taller, her three daughters floating like safe planets near her. Continuity is asserted when, watching the cremation of his father, he thinks ‘I shall follow. And after me / my unborn son’. Although far different in their nostalgic view of family and childhood the poems in ‘Homecoming’ often use situations and events found in Ramanujan’s poems, such as memories of a girl cousin who has now grown up, a topic found in Ramanujan’s ironic ‘Looking for a Cousin on a Swing’. A comparison of the distanced irony of Ramanujan’s ‘Obituary’ with Parthasarathy’s assumption that he and his son will be cremated like his father with the family assembled at the burning ghat shows a difference in attitudes. Whereas in his poem on Madurai Ramanujan brings out the truth about the river, which seldom floods of the last shred of family likeness. I am my father now. The lines of my hands hold the fine compass of his going. I shall follow. And after me, 62 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

my unborn son, through the eye of this needle of forgetfulness. All human relationship however close they might be, must invariably be terminated, hence the first line of this section is a repetition of what he has said earlier: “We live our lives forever taking leave”. His extreme vulnerability at this most heart-breaking farewell, his father’s death, makes the “glass-house” simile cogent, yet the profound realization that the last vestiges of family resemblance is removed by the all-consuming fire, brings home, more strongly than ever, the temporariness of the family as a befitting entity, in the search for identity. It is into this world symbolized by the phrase “the eye of this needle/ of forgetfulness” clouded by desires that man is born. You were born in this island: rains sprouted all over its large, Arabic eye. I see myself in you as you bend daily, our world to yours. Chase the sun from one window to the next till sleep ties knots in your limbs. Old, I smart under your absence. The long years break out in a sweat down the spine of pillows. “Rains sprouted” is an inept image aiming at a sure realistic effect which is unnecessary. In reality the self is not subject to birth of death. It is the inner consciousness that utilizes the sense organs as instruments of cognition. Perception is not possible without this inner sentience. Space, time and causality cannot be conceived without the Self, though the Self is beyond such limitations. If one admits the existence of pure being as the immutable field for creation one can understand proximity in space, passage of time and the correlation and reciprocity between cause and effect. The Supreme Selfbeing free from causality is neither created nor destroyed. Its apparent duality of existence, however, is only seen from the phenomenal universe of finite beings. I see myself in you as you bend daily, our world to yours. Despair old age, death fear and various other miseries that the embodied self-suffers necessitates the conception of a liberator of a personal god, benign and compassionate to whom he can turn in the hour of need, thus for the poet his father assumes this vital role. His father’s birth in “this island” the “euphoric 63 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

archipelago” of the poet’s child mind, was like rains over the desert, “the arabic eye”. He sees himself in his father, a strict disciplinarian who bent the world of the younger generation tohis. He was constant in his duty as the years passed until death claimed him. In old age the poet feels deeply the absence of his father, and the thought of facing many more years without him arouses fear. The concept of God Himself was born with the creation of sentient human beings, hence in the wider area of interpretation the Supreme Being was born in the minds of men, “in this island”, providing the life-giving rain, of inspiration. The macrocosmic effort of the Supreme Will worked outin the cosmos is the enlarged form of the microcosmic labour of the individual, samashti as against vyashti, hence the physical life of man measured in days is inclined to the Divine world. The sun symbolic of time is used to denote an entire kalpa at the end of which all creation is dissolved again to bring them forth at the beginning of the next kalpa “till sleep ties knots/in your limbs.” Man, in the old age of his existence on earth, corrupted by pampering his desires, suffers under the absence of this primeval knowledge and faces an uncertain future with dread that cannot be assuaged by indulgence in physical comforts. The remarkable adaptability of this section to the double interpretation amply reveals the poet’s skill with words, and his sincerity in attempting to carry on the tradition established by the stalwarts of Tamil and Sanskrit poetry. Over a horizon of noises, a clock strikes. I rise, as sleep melts on the Himalaya of bed clothes. And face the mirror in the bath, I am under lock and key, for good. Now that all the silver at the back of faces I have loved has worn off. Silent, eyes saccadic, I stare at myself. Often confront a stranger in the scratched glass, older perhaps, Who resembles my father? The striking clock is important for it signifies not only the beginning of another day but an arousal within the self, not unlike that which comes to sages practicing deep meditation on the Himalayas, but perhaps not as intense, being surrounded by indispensable luxuries. Not 64 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

having overcome worldly distractions to reach Himalayan peaks of consciousness the image in the mirror discloses the inescapable fact that he is a prisoner. Superficialities of Westernization that he had appreciated in himself in the faces that confronted him each day in the mirror, has worn off, yet his enslavement is not terminated. A silent appraisal in them mirror of his mind assists him in understanding the duality of identities, the physical self that ages visibly and the inner Self that is older than all creation. One bears a physical resemblance to his father in the scratched bathroom mirror, while the other identifies with father, though this realization is obscured by worldly distractions, symbolized in “the scratched glass”. In analyzing his relationship to his parents, the poet attempts to express the exact nature of kinship not only as parents, but as people whose lives have been changed or modified after his birth. Thus, if father left his resemblance on the son, the son eviscerated mother’s rustic smug childhood. The triadic interdependence of a family makes a “sniff at Mother’s turmeric days / in Nanjangud”, contraposed to father’s authority over his children, and is as essential in the poet’s analysis of influences on self as other factors. The importance of father and mother in creation and growth of the self has been emphasized by ancient poets who envisaged the creation of the entire universe itself as a product of the combination of the Supreme Consciousness, the procreating father, and Nature or Prakriti the mother. With paper boats boys tickle her ribs, and buffalos have turned her to a pond. There is eaglewood in her hair and stale flowers. Every evening, as bells roll in the forehead of temples, she sees a man on the steps clean his arise. Kingfishers and egrets, whom she fed, have flown her paps. Also, emperors and poets who slept in her arms. She is become a sewer, now. No one has any use for Vaikai, river, once, of this sweet city. The two subsequent sections, namely eight and nine, explore the hinterland of Tamil Nadu in an attempt to satisfactorily conclude the observations offered in “Exile” namely that the identity of a country does not lie in peripheral seaports, that encourage a cosmopolitan society, but in the interior regions that hold the heart of Indian tradition. Thus, the River Vaikai that flows through the ancient city of Madurai, itself a symbol of tradition, is neglected by the modem inhabitants of that city. Boys use it to float paper boats, buffaloes sully the water, eaglewood and stale flowers block its flow, while men show it the greatest disrespect by using it for washing themselves. Exotic tropical birds have flown away from its banks, while emperors and poets are no longer remembered. Degraded to the condition of a sewer the true historic significance of the river and the city is obscured by the deterioration of the present generation. Similar to the Themes that “clogged/ the chariotwheels of Boadicea to a stone” the poet decries an entire age, not a particular civilization. Yet the Vaikai has a greater significance to the poet for the loss is felt more keenly when it relates to a personally cherished ethos. 65 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Having conclusively indicated the identity of this vast subcontinent Parthasarathy now reverts to his personal self-discovery of which is significantly carried out in the evening, the twilight zone of human consciousness, when the mind is neither in deep sleep nor aware of the surrounding world of material things: The street in the evening tilts homeward as traffic piles up. It is then I stir about. Rise from the table and shake the dust from my eyes. Pick up my glasses and look for myself in every nook and comer of the night. The pavement turns informer hearing my steps. A pariah dog slams an alley in my face. I have exchanged the world for a table and chair. I shouldn’t complain. The street tilting homewards contradicts the alley slamming on his face. He has stretched the metamphor too far causing this incongruity. The “traffic of regulated/ affections” and the deside-rata of the mind blocks up the path that leads homewards, towards that inner self which gives lasting peace and is the tome home of any seeker of the Self. Cleverly analogized to the city this section on surface reading appears to be tired office worker’s relief on bending his steps homewards, but the symbolization does not obscure the inner meaning. Evening is the hour to “stir about” in mental preparation for search of the true divinity in man. The dust of desire being shaken off, a clearer perception is possible. The lack of visibility, which is the prevading motif of “Exile” is here overcome, and “glasses” of spiritual disciplines are picked up to aid the normal vision, to see the self-hidden in some dark nook or comer of the being which is enveloped in ignorance, hence experiencing “night”. The next line is an adaptation of Shakespeare’s bringing out the contrast in the two situations. Where Macbeth would prefer the stones not to hear his steps in case, they “prate of my whereabout”, for he is intent on the most heinous crime against the Self, the poet here expresses this line almost triumphantly for his purpose is one of renewal and recharging of the self by exploration, discovery and contact with the Self. “The blab of the pave” as Walt Whitman remarks expresses the variegated emotions of people in a city “The impassive stones that receive and return so many echoes/... What living and buried speech is always 66 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

vibrating here...”25 Thus the pavement of the poet’s mind, echoing his “living and buried speech” is justified in turning informer. Continuing the metaphor, the poet visualizes stray distractive thoughts as a pariah dog which by its barking would deter any pedestrian from choosing that alley or by lane of the mind. This crepuscular journey into the self is a rewarding experience hence he has nothing to complain, for having “exchanged the world/ for a table and chair”. The activity of the mind that impels the poet to “Rise from the table” to shake of fall worldly matters, leads ultimately to the peace and privacy offered by a table and chair. The claustrophobic feeling of being trapped is clearly envisaged in the eleventh section; Pressed between one day and another I am short of breath. True freedom comes only at night, that limited period between two days. The air leaning towards the sun and reverberating in tune to the sun’s message of the transience of day, is ignored by mankind that refuses to tune in to the spirit of nature. Like dogs fighting for a bone, man wastes his time in wrong priorities. The noises of day that reveals that pettiness in man is an “indigestible lump” in the throat, when once more, the poet turns his direction “homeward” and at the doorsteps of his home” the Supreme Consciousness, he can only enter awkwardly. I see him now sitting at his desk. The door is open. It is evening. On the lawns the children play. The lines here are prose statements employing the short sentence to no specific advantage. The peace that accompanies discovery of self being achieved, the poet visualises himself in this sedentary serenity. On reviewing his past he realises his juvenile errors: wrong objectives enhanced by marriage. Teaching, reviewing verse and attending conferences, it took him a long time to realise that poetry was not just an ability to express himself with a nice turn of phrase, it was a latent talent, the god within him. There is no solution, no grand conclusion to the aesthetic dilemma except that being an artist he must strike the inevitable deal with his self with a self-recognition of limitations on the one side and with a readiness for attempting to collect the local, temporal experience into universal wholes on the other. Thus comes the final acceptance - “the Indian virtue of resignation” -of the life which is nothing greater than are petition of monotones: “Hereafter, I should be content, I think, to go through life with the small change of uncertainties.” 67 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Though the tone of acceptance and resignation in these lines is unconcealed the self that emerges from such a modest assertion has evidently undergone an evolution -intellectual as well as emotional -provided an artist’s ultimate effort, despite his own awareness of himself lacking in wholeness, to grapple with the present-day reality, is conceded as an asset and achievement by itself. Having gone through the continuing process of getting himself lost and found what the poetic self has achieved is the understanding that past is useful to acquire a perception of the present and that in the contemporary context the challenge a poet has to face is to equip himself to espouse the poetry of life’s ordinariness. This understanding in itself is a testimony to the seifs potentiality for further expansion so that he could face yet another crisis when it comes. Critics have dwelt much on a stanza that occurs in ‘Home Coming 15’: “it’s time I wrung the handkerchief of words dry. Dipped it in the perfume of silence.”, nothing in it the poet’s aspiration for “aphasia” by cultivating the “language of silence” as a means to articulate the religious vision of the absolute. But this, I feel, is stretching things too far. Such lines, in fact, should be included in the category of his poems dealing with the poet’s agitation about problems of composition. For instance, in “A supererogatory silence” he says: “Much Experience, they say dulls the mind the hands touch the lips meet at the evocation of a word only we haven’t the words to bring it off But stumbling on experience I chanced on an implement a supererogatory silence.” There are lines which occur in ‘Home Coming 15’ indicating that “the creative urge of the poet pours forth itself in an urgency ofexpression26”: “A poem breaks out incandescent, on the type writer, stripping night to the thinness of dawn. “The direction in which such a poetic stance moves on, is towards a philosophy of positive acceptance of facts - “Now, hopefully, I clutch at straws /of unevent.” That Parthasarathy’s poetic self-moves not only towards the balancing act but also towards the elimination of the sense of not being at home is confirmed by a more recent poem, ‘Home Coming 15’. 68 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

“Life, at forty-five is a breath of fresh air The children are grown up Their eyes hone my nights: I soften to the touch The wife keeps house From after shapes the poems till they become familiar as prayer To be oneself, strike no postures, on rare occasions stumble upon the blessing of simplicity - I could not ask for more.” If the tone of being at peace with oneself in these lines is compared with the tone of self- delusion in the opening poem of Exile - “you stir, and the mirror dissolves/Experience does not always make for knowledge” - one cannot but help noticing the evident growth that the self has gained through the several phases of its odyssey. One of the salient features of R. Parthasarathy’s art is the use of startlingly sensuous and concrete images. These images are often evocative, erotic and suggestive. They evoke the picture of a person, place, or thing seen and visualized, tend to elaborate a point, expand an idea in a little space, and make clear the meaning of the otherwise inexplicable. They are often arranged in such a manner as to capture the reader’s attention at once. The following image graphically portrays the loneliness of a man on his beloved’s going away: you will be alone like the stone benches in the park.... and this image is concrete and visual in a moving manner: And words, surely, are no more than ripples in the deep well of the throat, and this is yet another striking image: The balloon Of poetry has grown red in the face with repeated blowing. 69 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

In truth, the whole book abounds in apt and memorable images- ‘I have put aside the past/in a comer, an umbrella/now poor in the ribs’ ‘through the eye of this needle/of forgetfulness,’ ‘I rise, as sleep melts/on the Himalaya of bed-clothes;’ ‘the many-clawed sea;’ ‘A bus spits me out at my doorsteps;’ etc. Parthasarathy has fertile imagination to conjure up a string of images at a stretch and fit them in their proper contexts. He has the necessary poetic capability to employ suggestive and evocative images, such as in: Through holes in a wall, as it were, filled the night, while Ravi Shanker, cigarette stubs, empty bottles of stout and crisps provided the necessary pauses. He had spent his youth whoring after English gods. The cultural predicament is very well articulated suggestively in this passage. Ravi Shanker, the famous Indian musician, represents the East, whereas cigarette stubs and empty bottles of stout and crisps provide the Western atmosphere. The poet tries, for personal reason too, to unite the two, but he does not wholly succeed. His efforts only create ‘holes in a wall’ but cannot pull down the cultural wall altogether. Another interesting feature of Parthasarathy’s poetry is its eroticism and sensuousness. The very opening poem abounds in sensuous and sensual details. In a tone of remonstration and repentance the poet begins to say: The woman you may have loved you never married................. The luminous pebbles of her body stayed your feet, else you had overflowed the banks, never reached shore. The sides of the river swell with the least pressure of her toes. He speaks of the beloved’s ‘breasts/sharp with desire’ that hurt his fingers. The following extracts from his poetry are being given here for the delight of the reader: The body sputters: your flesh was the glass that cupped its hands over me. Hours glowed to incandescence. and: My hands fill up, slowly, 70 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

with your breasts. Curve to the pressure of spheroids. Your hair tumbles in the dark, instantly gathers the room in a knot. Our bodies scrape home for passions, older than the stones of Konarak. In these extracts, the reader finds absorbing descriptions of woman and her body, her hair and breasts. A wave of passion wells up within him as he goes through them. They are suffused with love, life, and lust, and send electric sensations. They are surely the glowing examples of erotic and sensuous poetry. They also serve as a rebuttal of the charge of drabness and prosaicness being levelled against the poetry of Parthasarathy. They demonstrate that he is not only a serious poet of cultural and linguistic tensions, but also a delightfully readable poet of love and sex. We need not quote any further extracts to show Parthasarathy’s propensity for tense and lively diction. In the view of Gauri Deshpande, “His sense of language is competent enough for him not to be obtrusively bizarre. It is also sensitive and lively enough to allow him to come up time and again with delightfully surprising and unerringimages.”28 Parthasarathy is choosy in matters of words, phrases, and expressions. His expressions are direct and dashing, more cerebral than spontaneous. He hardly ever indulges in unnecessary details. His command of the English language is so complete that many IndoEnglish poets envy him. He has had the necessary apprenticeship to make his words, phrases, and metaphors living and captivating. He could do so because he had mostly drawn upon his experiences. One of the notable traits of his diction is that it is tempered equally with emotion and reason. Parthasarathy is a skilled practitioner of an extremely austere style. He has, therefore, resorted to the literary device of mono-syllabism. Take the following as an illustration: I see him now sitting at his desk. The door is open. It is evening. On the lawns the children play. 71 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

3.3 SUMMARY  Parthasarathy is a conscious craftsman, and his austerity is the outcome of his intention to be concise and precise.  Iyengar brands it as “austerity indeed with avengeance.”  The style is quite in keeping with the complexity and tension of modem life, and also with the great personal dilemma of the poet, and tends to be unadorned, direct, and matter-of-fact. AdilJussawalla has characterized it as “deliberately prosaic  It undergoes the rigours of conscious selection or rejection of poetic wares.  Most of the words used here are monosyllables. 3.4KEYWORDS  blaze - a large and often dangerous fire  bondage-the state of being a slave  House of Congress-the House of Representatives and the Senate. The two houses of Congress have equal but unique roles in the federal government  Anti-Slavery - opposed to slavery an antislavery activist the antislavery movement.  Clattering -to make or cause something hard to make a series of short loud repeated sounds  Critic-a person who says what is bad or wrong with somebody/something.  lecturer-A lecturer is a teacher  Sahitya Akademi -The Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters, is an organisation dedicated to the promotion of literature in the languages of India.  Indian English poetry -is the oldest form of Indian English literature  Nativize - to modify in conformity with local customs or usages 3.5 LEARNING ACTIVITY 1. Analyze Parthasarathy as a translator and critic. ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ 2. Cultural Concerns in Rajagopal Parthasarathy's works 72 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ 3. Bring out views on the Poetry of R. Parthasarathy ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ 3.6 UNIT END QUESTIONS 73 A. Descriptive Questions Short Questions 1. What are the main themes of R. Parthasarathy? 2. What are the major works of R. Parthasarathy? 3. Describe R. Parthasarathy's self-revelation in his works. 4. Explain the Indianness explored by R. Parthasarathy in his poems 5. Write the R. Parthasarathy’s personal touch in his ‘Exile’ Long Questions 1. Analyze the characteristics of Parthasarathy 2. How Indianness can be proved Parthasarathy’s work 3. Justify Parthasarathy as a translator 4. Bring out the main themes in the Parthasarathy’s works 5. Critically analyse the works of Parthasarathy B. Multiple Choice Questions 1. Rough Passage is ______ masterpiece a. R.Parthasarathy b. Walcott c. Derrida d. Hope 2. ________ is an autobiographical work of R.Parthasarathy a. Rough Passage b. Exile CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

c. Trial d. Home coming 3. Rough Passage narrates the experiences of a person who leaves his ______ a. Motherland b. Forest c. Migrant d. Relative 4. Rough Passage brings out the sense of ______experienced by him in the other country a. Alienation b. Coolness c. Ambiguity d. Freshness 5. Parthasarathy’s love for his _____finds expression in many of his poems a. mother tongue b. friends c. relative d. language Answers 1-a, 2-a, 3-a, 4-a 5-a 3.7 REFERENCES References book  Patel, G. (2007). Poetry with young people. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi.  Thomas J. T. (2004). Child poets and the poetry of the playground. Children’s Literature 74 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

 Bishop, Edward. (1989). A Virginia Woolf Chronology. Macmillan Press, London.  Spiropoulu, Angeliki. (2010). Virginia Woolf, Modernity and History: Constellations with W.Benjamin. Palgrave, London. Textbook references  https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/56907/raw-meditations-on-money-1-she- speaks-a-school-teacher-from-south-india Websites  https://d7.drunkenboat.com/db20/reviews/finds-larger-chaos-meena-alexanders- birthplace-buried-stones-wallis-wilde-menozzi  https://ijllnet.com/journals/Vol_5_No_3_September_2018/23.pdf  https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Raw+Meditations+on+Money-a077035217  https://poem.shivyogastudio.in/2021/03/a-school-teacher-from-south-india.html 75 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

UNIT – 4 R. PARTHASARTHY: “HOMECOMING”, “EXILE” STRUCTURE 4.0 Learning Objectives 4.1 Home Coming Poem 4.2 Analysis 4.3 Exile - Poem 4.4 Analysis 4.5 Summary 4.6 Keywords 4.7 Learning Activity 4.8 Unit End Questions 4.9 References 4.0 LEARNING OBJECTIVES After studying this unit, you will be able to:  Understand the analysis and interpretation of the poems  Expound the theme of the poem  Examine the importance of Parthasarathy’s poem 4.1 HOME COMING - POEM I am no longer myself as I watch the evening blur the traffic to a pair of obese headlights. I return home, tried, my face pressed against the window of expectation. I climb the steps to my flat, only to trip over the mat 76 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Outside the door. The key goes to sleep in my palm. I fear I have bungled again. That last refinement of speech terrifies me. The balloon. Of poetry has grown red in the face with repeated blowing. For scriptures I, therefore, recommend the humble newspaper: I find My prayers occasionally answered there. I shall, perhaps, go on. Like this, unmindful of day melting into the night. My heart I have turned inside out. Hereafter, I should be content, I think, to go through life with the small change of uncertainties. 4.2 ANALYSIS R. Parthasarathy’s poem “Homecoming” portrays a picture of his native state, Tamil Nadu as he returns from his sojourn abroad. He perceives a marked change in his native language. He comprehends that it was his lack of familiarity with the native language that rendered the language alien to his perception. His persistent use of the foreign tongue dispossessed him of his inherently rich native language. His association with English appears to be like imprisonment as he wrestles with English chains. His mother tongue is emblematic of his rich Dravidian heritage that he cherishes. In his chains, that disable him to move freely, he falters, he stumbles. He also stumbles as he has lost his ground. His native language is now relegated to other concerns. At the time of Thiruvalluvar, the language was a sign of rich cultural heritage. He senses that the language has begun to 77 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

deteriorate as it is adulterated, and declines owing to lack of use. Language proves to be an effervescent medium with the Savant Nammalvar who handled it as it were a bull held by its horns. She penned several devotional songs par excellence, and therefore favourites with the masses. In the present situation, the language is like a dead animal, infested with fleas at Kodambakkam. This figure of speech enhances the theme of stagnation and decay. Death of the Past There appears to be no redemption from this predicament. The present poets do not look for the richness of the past literature for inspiration. Rather, they look up to foreign writers as idols. Genuine models thrive in their own roots, and native speakers must therefore refrain from imitating alien culture. The poet travels down the memory lane of his childhood when his grandfather used to narrate to him the celebrated poem “Nalayira Divya Prabandham” before going to bed. The poet’s grandfather used to pinch him when he wavered in his attention. The grandfather was sincerely determined to instill in him the literary and cultural values through his rendition of the classic. After grandfather’s death, they held a ceremony where all the relatives were reunited. Cousins arrived in overcrowded buses. They recognized each other eventually. They witnessed the rituals as they sat on the steps of a choultry. He reflects how they did not dwell in the ‘inside’ of the culture; they were half-way out. The surroundings had not much to offer other than uneventful and undistinguished scenes. Rites and rituals seemed to lose their luster. They were served food sparingly: rice and pickle in the evening. The poet then records his encounter with a tall woman and her three children. He identifies his childhood friend Sundari, an agile girl climbing tamarind trees. She is forty years now; the poet senses the lack of emotions towards her at this juncture. The memory of her is fresh, but they can no longer relate or communicate with each other as time has changed everything over the years. Similar is his relation with his mother tongue. His childhood friend who is no longer familiar to him stands parallel to his feelings towards his native tongue. In Section 12 of the poem “Homecoming” from Rough Passage, the poet celebrates the eminence and relevance of The Poet. The poet talks of himself in the most objective manner when he asserts: “I see him now sitting at his desk”. He claims that he made the mistake of opting for the wrong gods from the start; he had gone for the wrong kind of inspiration. His course of action was erroneous right from the beginning. It began with his experiments with the English language. It started when he set off to England for his English education. Another major obstacle to his career was his having got married. He states that he should have paid heed to the classical poets: it was better to bury a woman than marry her. 78 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Now, as he has failed in his area of interest, namely, poetry; he teaches. Parthasarathy seems to echo George Bernard Shaw who said: “He who can, does. He, who cannot, teaches.” He teaches probably as he had learnt from experience that poetry cannot provide him with a source of livelihood. He now tries to prove his mettle by reviewing verse written by others. In other words, circumstances had made him a critic.This label of being a critic had endowed him with invitations to conferences. It had taken him quite some time to realize that he had no talent and wondered how words flowed so easily. He substantiates this by claiming; “One can be articulate about nothing.” Articulate as an adjective signifies “spoken so as to be intelligible”, and also means “expressed in articles or in separate items or particulars”. The poet means to say that a person can endeavor to sound intelligible about anything or nothing. And one can compartmentalize certain subjects so as to sound like a scholar. Perhaps in this regard, the role of a critic suited him better. He continues his self -interrogation: Was it that his gods had left him. Was he left with no source of inspiration? Again, at this juncture, we understand what the poet meant by saying that he followed the wrong Gods from the start. He had the wrong sources of stimulation. By “Pedaling his bicycles glasses”, the poet implies the progress of his vision. Just as a bicycler peddles to move forward; the poet “peddles” to move his vision forward. As we go through the poem, one can discern a distinction between the “I” and the “He”. The “I” stands for the current role of the speaker in the present tense-that of a critic. The “He” shows the speaker in a mode of transition: from the poet to the critic. The answer to the question:”What’s it like to be a poet?” is answered by the speaker in uncertain terms. He first goes on to reprimand himself as a critic. In an act of vituperation, Parthasarathy terms the critic as “the son of a bitch” who “fattens himself on the flesh of dead poets”. To be more precise, the critic is a parasite who depends directly on the Poet. Therefore, the critic who takes himself to be “His Eminence” has no significance, but for the poet. In castigating terms, the critic is likened to a fly that feeds on the dung-heap of old texts and obscure commentaries. “His eyes peel off”: reality presents itself with indubitable clarity. Where would the so-called critic be, if it were not for poets that splashed about in the Hellespont or burned about in the Java Sea? This is a direct allusion to the classical poets and the modern poets. The poem thus drives home the significance Parthasarathy imparted to the Poet. The family members gather at a Tiruchchendur for family function, which happens after 1959, when his grandfather died. They come in crowded buses loaded with dust of many years of memory. The relatives gather in groups and sit without much formality. They ear the packed food they have brought for lunch. He looks at Sundari, probably his relative, who had once climbed up and down a tamarind tree with the poet. She is married and has three daughters clinging to her like three planets. The poet cannot relate himself with his relatives and with the circumstances. He stays aloof and he claims expertise when it comes to 79 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

farewell. He feels guilty of losing his familiar tradition. He regrets for throwing stones from a glass house built by his father. He has evaded from his father’s footprints, and he hopes that his son will not follow him in the future.The poet walks near river Vaigai that flows in Madurai, his hometown. He is not satisfied with the sight it offers him. He calls it as river once and not as a river. The river is barren and empty without water. Boys get into the river to play with paper boats. Buffaloes also loiter in the river and they diminish it into a pond. It is filled with hair and stale flowers. Though the banks of the river are full of temples and other sacred things, the happenings inside the river are mean and degrading. No emperor or poet can talk or boast of river Vaigai. Not even birds like kingfisher and egrets come to river Vaigai. The poet walks home. The roads are dusty, which fills his eyes. The streets are jammed with traffic. His thoughtful walk is answered by the barking dogs. He goes home and climbs up the stairs carefully only to be tripped off over the mat.The poet persona becomes fed up with things around the world. He considers himself as a poet and a creator. All he could do is defined a poet. He looks himself as a poet and comes out defining him. A poet is someone who becomes fat (fills his brain) by reading many old poems and poets. He also reads more commentaries. He has been invited to conferences and sometimes to schools and colleges to teach. The poet is against himself being a poet and abuses himself of being one.The poet persona is finally willing to retire from life, yet he is not content with life. He establishes himself as a freelancer. He prays to God that a few of his articles should be published in newspapers and his prayers are sometimes answered. He concludes the poem with a compelling thought of contentment that he should go through his life with “small change of uncertainties.” 4.3 EXILE - POEM As a man approaches thirty, he may take stock of himself. Not that anything important happens. – At thirty the mud will have settled: you see yourself in a mirror. Perhaps, refuse the image as yours. – Makes no difference, unless you overtake yourself. Pause for breath. 80 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Time gave you distance: you see little else. – You stir, and the mirror dissolves. Experience doesn’t always make for knowledge: you make the same mistakes. – Do the same things over again. The woman you may have loved you never married. These many years – you warmed yourself at her hands. The luminous pebbles of her body stayed your feet, else you had overflowed – the banks, never reached shore. The sides of the river swell with the least pressure of her toes. – All night your hand has rested on her left breast. In the morning when she is gone – you will be alone like the stone benches in the park, and would have forgotten her whispers in the noises of the city. 4.4. ANALYSIS Ln ‘Exile’, the first part of, rough passage, the poet opposes the culture to Europe with that of India and the consequence of British culture on an Indian. He experiences a loss of identity within his own culture and therefore the need to trace his roots. 81 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

The poem begins with the scene of a room in a London flat where young men sit together talking of their country (India) and its art. This young man had spent his youth idolising the Englishman as God. Since he was so captivated by them. The young men realise that the language flourishes in its own cultural backdrop and loses its vitality when imported. lt is like a tree transplanted into a new climate. The bark withers in the new climate and the branches lose their vitality. The only reassuring thought is that the past is there to be cherished. lt is something concrete, something real. ln, this new world, flaunting the dress and poise of the new folks, you are nothing but the, coloured among the white” London city is no ‘jewel’ as was believed by the Indian during the British rule like any other Indian city with its squalor and poverty, London too has its share of smokes and litter and poverty-stricken children. ln the ninth stanza, he hears an old man speaking a great truth, a truth which he himself had come to realize. lt is that “you” cannot change people from what they are. They belong to the past and the new environment cannot change them except superficiality. The British empire seems to be losing its glory. From Africa could be heard the voice of protest and stanzas eleven and twelve speak of the all of the British empires. And in this context, the river Thames appears as a retraining force. Just as the martial powers of Boadicea, Queen of Iceni was defeated by the Romans, so too the progress of the British Empire comes to a grinding halt. Now sitting under the shade of the poplars, overlooking the Thames, watching London up to a new day, the young men realise that England has also lost touch with the past. The young man is now back in Indian among the familiar scenes porters, rickshaw pullers, barbers, etc The bridge hovers over them and trees in the maiden offer shade to one and all. He is full of excitement and rushes to enjoy companionship. He still remains thee smell of gin and cigarettes, reminders of the habits acquired in England. Passions overweight words and you succumb to them. Right now, he wants to experience life, experience emotional security. Maturity comes with the passing of years, and it brings wisdom. The city of Calcutta on the banks of the Hoogly gives him to the end. He has now passed from youth to adulthood His youth he has left behindand now his duty is to be loyal to himself as an adult. ln his hurry to be a man of experience, he has given up innocence In Exile R. Parthasarathy reveals that the poet’s infatuation with the English language and culture is under strain. The more he sees alien English life the more he becomes conscious of his Tamil roots.He dressed in his foreign clothes. England also had polluted lands filled with smoke and litter. There were unbathed English children in a dirty setup. However, people were only disgusted with the coloured. The poet described how the river divides the city from the night. Perhaps that is the only thing that divides the city from the night, indicating the nightlife there. And the noises reappear as the mechanical routine returns to the day with 82 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

trains and milkmen foregrounding the scene. The events of the day assume vocal overtones with the newspaper boy. the noises reappear as the mechanical routine returns to the day with trains and milkmen foregrounding the scene. The events of the day assume vocal overtones with the newspaper boy. The poet’s tongue is hunchbacked due to words held back, and the burden of words left unsaid as he heads for Jadavpur to his beloved. She smelt of gin and cigarette ash. Her breasts were aroused and therefore sharp due to desire. The speaker makes sure that he carries this wisdom of the colonial past in the bone urn of his mind. His mind now carries the ashes of his own existence that he now presumes to be dead. It also carries the remnants of a colonial past. Nevertheless, all that is left are the ashes of things that were once young and beautiful, of the flesh and glow and all that youth stood for. He comprehends that his life has come to a full circle now as he is thirty. When something comes to a full circle, it either completes a cycle or has come back to its beginning. He makes a resolution to give quality to the other half. He regrets that in the scramble to be a man in terms of sexual maturity and in the materialistic march for success, he has forgone his innocence. 4.5 SUMMARY  'Home coming' the poet portrays his experience with the present problem of settling down to a mode of living life fully with contentment.  Rough passage is from England to Bombay to Goa (Exite), then to Calcutta (Trial).  In this poem he finally comes to Tamil Nadu (Home Coming).  The poet looks for relationship through reflection and gains the knowledge that the self can perceive itself only in relation to others.  Parthasarathy explains \"In attempting to formulate my own situation, perhaps I stumbled upon the horns of dilemma.  From the beginning I saw my task as one of acclimatizing the English language to an indigenous tradition.\"  The poet is conscious of the hiatus between the soil of the language he uses and his own roots.  Parthasarathy also admits this \"Even though I am Tamil specking and yet write in English, there is the over whelining difficulty of using image in a linguistic tradition that is quite other than that of my own.\" 83 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

 Parthasarthy advises Indian English Poets to return to their respective linguistic traditions.  The persona opens the poem by sharing his linguistic instability or inability.  He accepts that his tongue is been tied by English and he is not fluent with Tamil, as he was abroad.  He expects people to speak good Tamil, has been used in good old Tamil literature and scriptures.  His expectations are in vain and his hopes vanish, when he hears people use Tamil that is articulated by the characters in celluloid world or cinema.  The persona moves on to brief his attempts to establish relation with his relatives. 4.6 KEYWORDS  Autobiographical -(of a written work) dealing with the writer's own life  Sanskrit - Sanskrit is the primary sacred language of Hinduism  Erotic - causing sexual excitement  Curated - selected, organized, and presented using professional or expert knowledge.  Vernacular - the language spoken in a particular area or by a particular group of people, especially one that is not the official or written language  Anonymous - whose name is not known or made public  Scriptures - also called sacred scripture, the revered texts, or Holy Writ, of the world's religions  Celluloid - a tough flammable thermoplastic composed essentially of cellulose nitrate and camphor  Tiruchchendur- is a municipality located in the southern tip of India, in the Thoothukudi district of Tamil Nadu. It is home to Subramanya Swamy  Aloof - not friendly to other people; distant. 4.7 LEARNING ACTIVITY 1. Acclimatizing the English language to an indigenous tradition. ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ 2. Justification of the Exile and Homecoming 84 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ 3. Indianism in Rajagopal Parthasarathy’s Home Coming ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ 4.8 UNIT END QUESTIONS A. Descriptive Questions Short Questions 1. What does Homecoming mean in the poem by R Parthasarathy? 2. What is theme of the poem from Homecoming? 3. Who is the Sundari in the poem Homecoming? 4. What is the setting of the poem from Homecoming? 5. Discuss the poem Exile. Long Questions 1. What is the theme of R Parthasarathy's exile? 2. What does exile refer to in the Parthasarathy poem? 3. What is theme of the poem from homecoming? 4. Critically analyse the theme of exile. 5. Summarize the poem Exile. B. Multiple Choice Questions 1. R. Parthsarthy perceives a marked change in his native ___________. a. Tamil Nadu b. Andhra Pradesh c. Kerala d. Delhi 2. R. Parthasarathy then records his encounter with a tall woman and her ______children. a. Three 85 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

b. Five c. Two d. One 3. R. Parthasarathy identifies his childhood friend __________, an agile girl climbing tamarind trees. a. Language b. Land c. Discourse d. People 4. Rajagopal Parthasarathy was born in ____________. a. Sundari b. Sumathy c. Sandhya d. Sofia 5. R. Parthasarathy was Lecturer in English Literature in Mumbai for ten years before joining Oxford University Press in ___________. a. 1934 b. 1936 c. 1935 d. 1937 Answers 1-a, 2-a, 3-a, 4-a, 5-a 4.9 REFERENCES References book  Patel, G. (2007). Poetry with young people. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi. 86 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

 Thomas J. T. (2004). Child poets and the poetry of the playground. Children’s Literature  Bishop, Edward. (1989). A Virginia Woolf Chronology. Macmillan Press, London.  Spiropoulu, Angeliki. (2010). Virginia Woolf, Modernity and History: Constellations with W.Benjamin. Palgrave, London. Textbook references  https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/56907/raw-meditations-on-money-1-she- speaks-a-school-teacher-from-south-india Websites  https://d7.drunkenboat.com/db20/reviews/finds-larger-chaos-meena-alexanders- birthplace-buried-stones-wallis-wilde-menozzi  https://ijllnet.com/journals/Vol_5_No_3_September_2018/23.pdf  https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Raw+Meditations+on+Money-a077035217  https://poem.shivyogastudio.in/2021/03/a-school-teacher-from-south-india.html 87 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

UNIT – 5GABRIEL OKARA: “YOU LAUGHED AND LAUGHED AND LAUGHED”, “PIANO AND DRUMS” STRUCTURE 5.0 Learning Objectives 5.1 Author’s Introduction 5.2 You Laughed and Laughed and Laughed –Poem Text 5.3 Analysis - You Laughed and Laughed and Laughed 5.4 Piano and Drums – poem Text 5.5 Analysis - Piano and Drums 5.6 Summary 5.7 Keywords 5.8 Learning Activity 5.9 Unit End Questions 5.10References 5.0 LEARNING OBJECTIVES After studying this unit, you will be able to:  Understand the analysis and interpretation of the Gabriel Okara’s poems  Expound the characteristics of the poetry  Examine the importance of Nigerian poems 5.1 AUTHOR’ S INTRODUCTION Gabriel Imomotimi Okara (born 24 April 1921) is a Nigerian poet and novelist who was born in Bumoundi in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, Nigeria. The first Modernist poet of Anglophone Africa, he is best known for his early experimental novel, The Voice (1964), and his award- winning poetry, published in The Fisherman's Invocation (1978) and The Dreamer, His Vision (2005). In both his poems and his prose, Okara draws on African thought, religion, folklore and imagery, and he has been called \"the Nigerian Negritudist\". According to Brenda Marie Osbey, editor of his Collected Poems, \"It is with publication of Gabriel Okara's first poem that Nigerian literature in English and modern African poetry in this language can be said truly to have begun.\" 88 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Gabriel Imomotimi Gbaingbain Okara, the son of an Ijọ chief, was born in Bomoundi in the Niger Delta in 1921. He was educated at Government College Umuahia, and later at Yaba Higher College. During World War II, he attempted to enlist in the British Royal Air Force but did not complete pilot training, instead he worked for a time for the British Overseas Airway Corporation (later British Airways). In 1945 Okara found work as a printer and bookbinder for colonial Nigeria’s government- owned publishing company. He remained in that post for nine years, during which he began to write. At first, he translated poetry from Ijaw into English and wrote scripts for government radio. He studied journalism at Northwestern University in 1949, and before the outbreak of the Nigerian Civil War (1967–70) worked as Information Officer for the Eastern Nigerian Government Service. Together with Chinua Achebe, Okara was roving ambassador for Biafra's cause during part of 1969. From 1972 to 1980 he was director of the Rivers State Publishing House in Port Harcourt. Just as black writers in the United States and the Caribbean have faced the problem of how to express themselves in the language of those who enslaved them, black African writers have experimented with different ways of communicating in European languages the experience of colonization and the feel of their traditional cultures. Among the most famous West African writers working in the English language is Gabriel Okara, considered one of the founders of modern African literature. In his novel The Voice he constructed an unusual bridge over the divide between English and African languages: parts of the novel are written in a unique form of English that reproduces the patterns of Okara's native Ijaw language. Okara's equally well- known poetry is also poised between European and African modes of expression. A descendant of a noble family of the Ijaw ethnic group and the son of a businessman, Gabriel Imomotimi Gbaingbain Okara was born on April 24 (or 21), 1921, in Bumoundi in British- occupied Nigeria. His family adhered to the Christian Scientist religion, and Christian imagery would play a part in some of his mature works although they were rarely explicitly religious in theme. After attending local schools, Okara entered Nigeria's British- administered higher education system when he was 14. He attended Government College in the Nigerian city of Umuahia and later Yaba Higher College, studying art as well as writing. He is said to have been inspired to become a poet when he read the poem \"Lines Written in Early Spring\" by the British Romantic writer William Wordsworth. Worked for British Airline During World War II, Okara attempted to enlist in the British Royal Air Force but did not complete pilot training. Instead, he worked for a time for the British Overseas Airway Corporation (later British Airways), taught school and dabbled in business, and traveled to the small British colony called The Gambia on Africa's west coast. In 1945 Okara found work as a printer and bookbinder for colonial Nigeria's government-owned publishing 89 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

company. He remained in that post for nine years, during which he began to write. At first, he translated poetry from Ijaw into English and wrote scripts for government radio. You Laughed And Laughed And Laughed By GabrialOkaraYou Laughed And Laughed And Laughed is one of those poems of Gabriel Okara which areagain a call back to Africa and African landscape doing the rounds with their populace,mannerism, language, way of life, culture, tradition, society, dance, rhythm and musical beats.To understand him is to understand the man, the culture of the place, the environment and Okarais no exception to it. As his poems are, this too is a song of Africa, of Nigeria, the black spaceand he is putting before the psychic things, the stories of sun-burnt earth and the Dark Continent. A black man he tries to put before his black thoughts, what it in his consciousness, but in a heartyway without doing differentiation or discrimination. In a very light way, he says all these thingharmoniously. He is sure of that the things will remain as they are and we cannot the shape of things. Instead of there must be an attempt to interpret and re-interpret the same for acomprehensive understanding which the wide world may not be aware of. A writer of soliloquies, he tries to carry the discussion with the white listener, who keeps hearing as well as smiling and laughing and this adds to the poem and here the reader-response theory lies itimplied within. Okara as a poet is of the beats, the beats of Africa, the musical beats and dancedramas and poems generally carry in the music of Africa and their vibes. To share the things of his race, caste, class, society and the country is the focal point of deliberation. What is it in black culture? What is in white society? How do they think? How do they go by? What is that bindingthem all into a whole? The things of interaction he seems to be carrying it forward through hislively poetic talks, conversations and dialogues. Outwardly, these are not at all solid poems, butare simple ones of representational poetry, representing the art, culture, society and landscape of Africa, more especially Nigeria, the indigenous society and trend of it. The poem too forms a basis of black literature, but the poem if we compare with William Blake’s The Black Boy, thelatter will excel it. Something it is of his persona and something it is of the white people whichhe came to learn while living in their contact. So all those things of colonialism, post-colonialism, modernism, post-modernism, race and racism, living time-spirit, movement withtime, human thought and development are inherent in him and these extend him a poetic visionof own widening the spectrum of his thought and idea, image and imagery. One from the Ijawcommunity of Bayelsa State of Nigeria, he is a recipient of the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for 1979, Pan African Writers’ Association Honorary Membership Award for 2009 and so on.Okara contrasting the olden black indigenous culture of Africa with the white people bring tolight the issues pertaining to racism, colonialism and post-colonialism, poor life and modernadvanced culture in a very light way full of laugh and joke. The tales of Africa are different fromthose of history, culture and living of the white peoples. So, against the backdrop of all that,addressing the white fellow, the poet says it what in engages his mind and heart. The Africantales, songs and dances to the white ear may be pleasing or may not be pleasing as because this isnot their 90 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

arena. His songs appear harsh and jazz, too much loud just like a motor car misfiringand stopping, seem to be choking. But hearing it, you laugh and laugh Writing After leaving school Okara wrote plays and features for radio, and in 1953 his poem \"The Call of the River Nun\" won an award at the Nigerian Festival of Arts. Some of his poetry was published in the literary magazine Black Orpheus, and by 1960 he had won recognition as an accomplished literary craftsman, his poetry being translated into several languages. One of his most famous poems is \"Piano and Drums\". Another popular poem, \"You Laughed and Laughed and Laughed\", is a frequent feature of anthologies. Okara is very concerned with what happens when the ancient culture of Africa is faced with modern Western culture, as in his poem \"Once Upon a Time\". He pursues that theme in his first novel The Voice (1964,) Its protagonist Okolo, like countless post-colonial Africans, is hunted by society and haunted by his own ideals. Experimenting linguistically in The Voice, Okara \"translated directly from the Ijo (Ijaw) language, imposing Ijo syntax onto English in order to give literal expression to African ideas and imagery. The novel creates a symbolic landscape in which the forces of traditional African culture and Western materialism contend.... Okara’s skilled portrayal of the inner tensions of his hero distinguished him from many other Nigerian novelists.\" In addition to his poetry and fiction, Okara has also written plays and features for broadcasting.Many of his unpublished manuscripts were destroyed during the Nigerian Civil War.Gabriel Okara, in full Gabriel Imomotimi Gbaingbain Okara, (born April 21, 1921, Bumodi, Nigeria—died March 25, 2019, Yenagoa, Nigeria), Nigerian poet and novelist whose verse had been translated into several languages by the early 1960s. Gabriel Okara is a Nigerian poet and novelist whose work has been translated into several languages. After his first poem, “The Call of the River Nun,” won an award at the Nigerian Festival of Arts in 1953, several of his poems were featured in the Nigerian literary journal Black Orpheus. In his poetry, Okara draws from Nigerian folklore and religion while exploring extremes within daily life through circular patterns. In addition to a novel, and several books of adult poetry, including The Fisherman’s Invocation (1978), Okara has published two collections of children’s poetry, Little Snake and Little Frog (1992) and An Adventure to Juju Island (1992). A largely self-educated man, Okara became a bookbinder after leaving school and soon began writing plays and features for radio. In 1953 his poem “The Call of the River Nun” won an award at the Nigerian Festival of Arts. Some of his poems were published in the influential periodical Black Orpheus, and by 1960 he was recognized as an accomplished literary craftsman. 91 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Okara’s poetry is based on a series of contrasts in which symbols are neatly balanced against each other. The need to reconcile the extremes of experience (life and death are common themes) preoccupies his verse, and a typical poem has a circular movement from everyday reality to a moment of joy and back to reality again. Okara incorporated African thought, religion, folklore, and imagery into both his verse and prose. His first novel, The Voice (1964), is a remarkable linguistic experiment in which Okara translated directly from the Ijo (Ijaw) language, imposing Ijo syntax onto English in order to give literal expression to African ideas and imagery. The novel creates a symbolic landscape in which the forces of traditional African culture and Western materialism contend. Its tragic hero, Okolo, is both an individual and a universal figure, and the ephemeral “it” that he is searching for could represent any number of transcendent moral values. Okara’s skilled portrayal of the inner tensions of his hero distinguished him from many other Nigerian novelists. During much of the 1960s Okara worked in civil service. From 1972 to 1980 he was director of the Rivers State Publishing House in Port Harcourt. His later work includes a collection of poems, The Fisherman’s Invocation (1978), and two books for children, Little Snake and Little Frog (1981) and An Adventure to Juju Island (1992). Awards 1953: Best All-Round Entry in Poetry at the Nigeria Festival of Arts, for \"The Call of the River Nun\" 1979: Commonwealth Poetry Prize, for The Fisherman's Invocation 2005: NLNG Prize, for The Dreamer, His Vision 2009: Pan African Writers' Association Honorary Membership Award \"Chronology\", Gabriel Okara: Collected Poems (2016). Evelyn Osagie, \"Echoes of Achebe’s works at writers’ show\", The Nation (Nigeria), 25 November 2015. 5.2 YOU LAUGHED AND LAUGHED AND LAUGHED - POEM TEXT In your ears my song is motor car misfiring stopping with a choking cough; and you laughed and laughed and laughed. In your eyes my ante- 92 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

natal walk was inhuman, passing 93 your ‘omnivorous understanding’ and you laughed and laughed and laughed You laughed at my song, you laughed at my walk. Then I danced my magic dance to the rhythm of talking drums pleading, but you shut your eyes and laughed and laughed and laughed And then I opened my mystic inside wide like the sky, Instead you entered your car and laughed and laughed and laughed You laughed at my dance, you laughed at my inside. You laughed and laughed and laughed. But your laughter was ice-block laughter and it froze your inside froze your voice froze your ears froze your eyes and froze your tongue. And now it’s my turn to laugh; but my laughter is not ice-block laughter. For I know not cars, know not ice-blocks. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

My laughter is the fire of the eye of the sky, the fire of the earth, the fire of the air, the fie of the seas and the Rivers fishes animal’s trees and it thawed your inside, thawed your voice, thawed your ears, thawed your eyes and thawed your tongue. So a meek wonder held your shadow and you whispered; ‘Why so?’ And I answered: ‘Because my fathers and I are owned by the living warmth of the earth through our naked feet.’ 5.3 ANALYSIS - YOU LAUGHED AND LAUGHED AND LAUGHED You laughedandlaughedandlaughed is one of those poems of Gabriel Okara which are again a call back to Africa and African landscape doing the rounds with their populace, mannerism, language, and way of life, culture, tradition, society, dance, rhythm and musical beats. To understand him is to understand the man, the culture of the place, the environment and Okara is no exception to it. As his poems are, this too is a song of Africa, of Nigeria, the black space and he is putting before the psychic things, the stories of sun-burnt earth and the Dark Continent. A black man he tries to put before his black thoughts, what it in his consciousness, but in a hearty way without doing differentiation or discrimination. In a very light way, he says all these things harmoniously. He is sure of that the things will remain as they are and we cannot the shape of things. Instead of there must be an attempt to interpret and re-interpret 94 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

the same for a comprehensive understanding which the wide world may not be aware of. A writer of soliloquies, he tries to carry the discussion with the white listener, who keeps hearing as well as smiling and laughing and this adds to the poem and here the reader- response theory lies it implied within. Okara as a poet is of the beats, the beats of Africa, the musical beats and dance dramas and poems generally carry in the music of Africa and their vibes. To share the things of his race, caste, class, society and the country is the focal point of deliberation. What is it in black culture? What is in white society? How do they think? How do they go by? What is that binding them all into a whole? The things of interaction he seems to be carrying it forward through his lively poetic talks, conversations and dialogues. Outwardly, these are not at all solid poems, but are simple ones of representational poetry, representing the art, culture, society and landscape of Africa, more especially Nigeria, the indigenous society and trend of it. The poem too forms a basis of black literature, but the poem if we compare with William Blake’s The Black Boy, the latter will excel it. Something it is of his persona and something it is of the white people which he came to learn while living in their contact. So, all those things of colonialism, post-colonialism, modernism, post- modernism, race and racism, living time-spirit, movement with time, human thought and development are inherent in him and these extend him a poetic vision of own widening the spectrum of his thought and idea, image and imagery. One from the Ijaw community of Bayelsa State of Nigeria, he is a recipient of the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for 1979, Pan African Writers’ Association Honorary Membership Award for 2009 and so on. Okara contrasting the olden black indigenous culture of Africa with the white people bring to light the issues pertaining to racism, colonialism and post-colonialism, poor life and modern advanced culture in a very light way full of laugh and joke. The tales of Africa are different from those of history, culture and living of the white peoples. So, against the backdrop of all that, addressing the white fellow, the poet says it what in engages his mind and heart. The African tales, songs and dances to the white ear may be pleasing or may not be pleasing as because this is not their arena. His songs appear harsh and jazz, too much loud just like a motor car misfiring and stopping, seem to be choking. But hearing it, you laugh and laugh. To the western white people his appearance and walk may incite bizarre opinions, many make you burst into a laughter. The indigenous songs ofAfrica and the African peoples they may not understand it what the song says it, what does it mean. Again, he gives a magic dance and the drums start talking, so full of loud beats and human thuds, so vocal and vociferous and hearing it the western persona covering the eyes and having covered, smiles and laughs and laughs. The poet opens the song again in full which seems to echoing around. The white man moves into car and sits and laughs and laughs from there. With the beating and singing of songs, skies keep unfolding, many a door opening and the skies and the earth become one and he seems to be approaching with the mystic vision of own doing the rounds which but the foreigner cannot the nuances and idiosyncrasies of the native speech-dialects and their musical rhythms. The strange listener laughs at his song and dance and movement 95 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

as well as at his inside knowing it not what it is within as it is quite intelligible to him and to his mind. But his too is a space, a diaspora, a platform to perform and to rehearse and to do the recitation. The earth is his theatre, the dancing ground, the sky with the stars the lookers- on, the fishes, animals and others all, the animate and inanimate objects partaking in that which but with western logic and reasoning cannot be understood the things of the heart. The Africans take the things in their way and the white people in their own way of scrutiny and reflection as far as traditions are concerned, racial, archetypal, indigenous and ethnic. Everything is but cold and dead with no room for earthly contacts and realities in the western world. They are lost in their gala and glitz, material prosperity and mechanical living. The words, laughed and laughed and laughed add to the beauty of the poem and as because outplays the things of racism and racial discrimination and the western observer, friend or listener is but a friendly image of his just for a cultural share though there may be the points of differences to be cited before. 5.4 PIANO AND DRUMS – POEM TEXT When at break of day at a riverside I hear the jungle drums telegraphing the mystic rhythm, urgent, raw like bleeding flesh, speaking of primal youth and the beginning I see the panther ready to pounce the leopard snarling about to leap and the hunters crouch with spears poised; And my blood ripples, turns torrent, 96 topples the years and at once I’m in my mother’s laps a suckling; at once I’m walking simple paths with no innovations, rugged, fashioned with the naked warmth of hurrying feet and groping hearts in green leaves and wildflowers pulsing. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Then I hear a wailing piano solo speaking of complex ways in tear-furrowed concerto; of faraway lands and new horizons with coaxing diminuendo, counterpoint, crescendo. But lost in the labyrinth of its complexities, it ends in the middle of a phrase at a dagger point. And I lost in the morning mist of an age at a riverside keep wandering in the mystic rhythm of jungle drums and the concerto. 5.5 ANALYSIS - PIANO AND DRUMS In the poem, the piano and the drums, the poetic persona shows the difference between the normal lifestyle of Africans and that of the modern world. The setting of the poem, as is seen in the poem, dates from the advent of civilization to the modern time. The central theme of the poem hinges on the effect of foreign culture to Africans. This theme he elaborates using the effect of music on the poetic persona as an analogy. The poem tries to emphasize the purity of African content before the interference of civilization. In essence, Gabriel Okara perceives the desecration of the African way of life from the musical perspective and comes out to lament about it through the instrument of poetry. Stanza one In this stanza, the poetic persona speaks of the sound of the jungle drum. This sound of drum he feels is mystical, that is, there are so many supernatural things that comes with it. The sound of the drum to him, creates agility, strength and quickness of action. This can be seen from lines 3 to 4 as he runs into imagination to the primordial time picturing what this sound would do to the jungle residents: “… Speaking of 97 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Primal youth and the beginning I see the panther ready to pounce The leopard snarling about to leap And the hunters crouch with spears poised” All is action and natural. The poetic persona with a straight use of imagery and comprehensible words draws the readers’ attention to the fact that everything about this sound is in their natural states using words like, “riverside, jungle, raw, fresh,” names of animal in the jungle – natural habitat, and the last line of the stanza speaking of a hunter with spear ready to strike and hunt. Everything about this stanza depicts the freshness of nature and life as of the old. Stanza two Once again, the poetic persona remembers of years back when he was still an infant in his mother’s laps suckling her breast (lines 9 to 11). Suddenly, he is walking the paths of the village with no new ideas of a way of life different from the one he is born into: “At once I’m walking simple Paths with no innovations, Rugged, fashioned with the naked Warmth of hurrying feet and groping hearts In green leaves and wildflowers pulsing.” Stanza three Then, here in stanza three, reality changed as the poetic persona came in contact with a different sound from a faraway land: “Then I hear a wailing piano Solo speaking of complex ways in Tear-furrowed concerto; Of far-away lands” The change in the sound came with a different instrument other than African native drum, and it also produces a sound that is different with so many musical technicalities which the poetic persona expresses with musical dictions in words like, “concerto, diminuendo, crescendo.” He deploys them to emphasize the difficulty in understanding this new sound “… but lost in the labyrinth Of its complexities…” 98 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Consequently, in the last four lines, the poetic persona laments on the level of confusion the new sound brings when it mixes with the drums: “And I lost in the morning mist Of an age at a riverside keep Wandering in the mystic rhythm Of jungle drums and the concerto”. 5.6 SUMMARY  The poem “Piano and Drums” focused on the poets position with two opposing cultures (African and European)  Gabriel Okara’s African background which was symbolized with “Drums” was deeply explained all through the first and the second stanzas  The third stanza, he revealed his feeling towards his newly embraced way of life (the European civilized living) which was symbolized by the poet with the image of “Piano”.  Gabriel Okara's poem consists of 10 stanzas and describes the interplay of different interpretations of the same sounds, sights, and dances.  The interaction that takes place within the poem is commonly thought to be between a white colonialist and an African native.  The poem follows a trope in African literature of \"The White Man Laughed\", which embodies the notion of dismay and cynical derision of the beliefs, practices, and norms of an African.  However, Okara's poem can be seen to transcend the acceptance of the derision of the White Man and present a wiser African intellectual.  The poem concludes with the African man teaching the White Man of his ignorance and helping him realize that the native beliefs of the African are not primitive nor removed from intellectual thought. 5.7KEYWORDS  Loiter - to stand or walk around somewhere for no obvious reason 99  Sacred-connected with God, a god or religion  kingfisher - a small bright blue bird with a long beak, that catches fish in rivers  contentment - a feeling of happy satisfaction. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

 Choking - to be or to make somebody unable to breathe because something is stopping air getting into the lungs  Natal - relating to the place or time of one's birth  Magic - the secret power that some people believe can make strange or impossible things happen if you say special words or do special things  Mystic - a person who spends his/her life developing his/her spirit and communicating with God or a god 5.8 LEARNING ACTIVITY 1. Analyze the Happiness in Freedom and the Pursuit of Happiness in Bondage: A Postcolonial study of Gabriel Okara’s “You Laughed and Laughed and Laughed. ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ 2. Compare the poem You laughed and laughed and laughed and Piano and drums. ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ 3. Discuss the theme of Childhood Reminiscence and its Effect in the poem ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ 5.9 UNIT END QUESTIONS A. Descriptive Questions Short Questions 1. What is the theme of the poem You Laughed and Laughed and Laughed? 2. When was the poem You Laughed and Laughed and Laughed published? 3. What is the poem once upon a time about? 4. What is the setting of the poem piano and drums? 5. What does the piano symbolize in the poem? Long Questions 1. Analyse the title piano and the Drums. 2. Bring out the central theme of piano and Drums. 100 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)