A River by A.K Ramanujan (Summary)
The Poem implicitly comments wryly on the lack of realism with which other poets have treated the same topic.
Attipate Krishnaswami Ramanujan (1929–1993) was an academic and creative writer from India who was highly honored during his career. Sometimes he wrote in English, but he also wrote in the Indian language known as “Kannada.”
What poet wants to show to readers in his poem?
His poem “A River” is a realistic description of a river that flows (or sometimes does not flow) through the city of Madurai. The poem implicitly comments wryly on the lack of realism with which other poets have treated the same topic. At the same time, the poem itself seems ultimately a violation of the realism it at first seems to endorse. With his fondness for themes drawn from his Indian background, Ramanujan up the subject of how Tamil poets, old as well as new, choose to enthuse about the Vaigai river in flood, but fail to be moved by the anguish that follows in its wake. The poet presents with irony, the similarity in the attitudes of poets ancient and modern, and brings out a certain insensitivity to suffering that they show. The lines in the poem run on smoothly from one to other like the flow of a river and the language used is typically simple but suggestive.
“Let’s begin with our poetry. It is divided in four stanzas with uneven set of lines. It means first stanza has 16 lines second stanza has 11 lines third stanza has seven lines and last/fourth stanza has fifteen lines. So, here we can se uneven set of lines in each stanza. ”
1st Stanza:
In Madurai,
city of temples and poets,
who sang of cities and temples,
every summer
a river dries to a trickle
in the sand,
baring the sand ribs,
straw and women’s hair
clogging the watergates
at the rusty bars
under the bridges with patches
of repair all over them
the wet stones glistening like sleepy
crocodiles, the dry ones
shaven water-buffaloes lounging in the sun
The poets only sang of the floods.
In the poem “A River”, according to the poet,the main concern of the earlier poets was to sing of the beauty of the city, its temples and its river. Here, we get two pictures based upon two different kinds of description. In the summer, the river is almost empty. Only a very thin stream of water flows. So the sand which is so dry is just like human ribs on the bed of the river which are visible. The river is so dry that everything is clearly seen by the poet like straw and women’s hair which are struck to the watergates under the bridges with rusty bars and patches of repair (means it can be seen that bars were repaired )all over them.
The stones that lie on the bed of the river also exposed to view. Some stones which are wet are here compared with sleeping crocodiles and those stones which are dry are appear to be water-buffaloes without hair relaxing in the sun.The portion of the river under the bridge has also been described. We get a vivid picture of the river in the summer season. However no poet sings of this. They only sing of rainy season that too without mentioning the sufferings of common people caused by the river in monsoon.
2nd Stanza:
He was there for a day
when they had the floods.
People everywhere talked
of the inches rising,
of the precise number of cobbled steps
run over by the water, rising
on the bathing places
and the way it carried off three village houses,
one pregnant woman
and a couple of cows
named Gopi and Brinda as usual.
Poet was there for a day and witnessed the river when there was a flood during monsoon. People remember the rising of the river inch by inch from time to time They remember how the stone steps of the bathing place are submerged one by one.
They see how three village houses were damaged and carried off by the flood They know how two cows named Brinda and Gopi were carried away.
3rd Stanza:
The new poets still quoted
the old poets, but no one spoke
in verse
of the pregnant woman
drowned, with perhaps twins in her,
kicking at blank walls
even before birth.
They also know how a pregnant woman was also drowned in the river during the flood. Both the old and new poets have mentioned these things in their poems. But the way they have described these things in their poems shows that they were not much alive to or sympathetic with human suffering. They did not mention the name of the woman who was carrying twins. Before their birth, she was drowned in the flooded river. At the time of drowning, most probably the twins must have kicked the sides of her womb to escape while their mother was drowning but they could not and ultimately drown to death with their mother. She must have got much pain out of this. But both the new poets and old poets did not refer to all these miseries of the woman in their poetic creations.
This becomes ultimately clear that they are not sympathetic with suffering human beings. They are totally callous and indifferent. This kind of attitude makes their poetry weak and unappealing, dry and cheerless.
4rth Stanza:
He said:
the river has water enough
to be poetic
about only once a year
and then
it carries away
in the first half-hour
three village houses,
a couple of cows
named Gopi and Brinda
and one pregnant woman
expecting identical twins
with no moles on their bodies,
with different coloured diapers
to tell them apart.
The poet refers to himself using the third person ‘he’. According to the him the river becomes poetic only once a year to satisfy the romantic and aesthetic feeling of the poets. Then in a sudden turn the poet tells that in just half an hour,the river takes away three houses,a couple of cows and a pregnant woman who was expecting twins and was also thinking of having diapers of different colours to distinguish between them.
Poet in his poetry compares and contrasts the poetry of the other poets of his age with that of his own. On one hand,all other poets are very much interested in praising the beauty of the river on the other hand;our poet makes a balance between the beauty and the sufferings inflicted on the people by it.
I hope you liked it !!
