Cherished Cherries
Poetry of Plenteous
Premises
Dr. D. C. Chambial:
Editor—Poetcrit, Maranda (HP)-176 102
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Dr. K.
Rajamouly, a Ph. D, on the concept of Time in Philip Larkin’s poetry, is
multifaceted personality: Professor of
English, poet, short story writer, essayist, critic, and translator all in one.
He has more than forty books and more than fifty critical articles to his
credit. In his collections of poems, the
themes are as varied as the number of poems. Rajamouly’s Cherished Cherries
(2016) is a compendium of his 243 poems in nine collections of poems: Dawn
of Poetry, Rising Rays of Musings, Sights of Insights,
Rays in Rhythms, Petals of Melodies, The Interior Rainbow,
Quest for Bloom, Quest for Bliss, and Echoes of Woes.
Each collection has a set of twenty-seven poems: all written between Sept. 1979
and May 2013. The intent of this paper is to study diverse themes of his poetry
as manifest in some select poems of this collection.
In the very
first poem, ‘Dawn of Poetry’ – a poem in five quatrains, the poet hints at his
“ecstatic mood”, when his imagination soars in the sky of his inspiration. The
melodies hum in his heart “in multitude” full of “myriad thoughts” and illumine
his imaginative sights and sounds. This Muse – “Sri Vani” – enriches his
growing art of poetry. His poems come out from “the inexhaustible fountain”
through his pen “like the flower in its bloom” that swells its perfume. In such
an ambience the poet writes:
In the flow, shatter my glooms in my infancy
Wide-open are the floodgates of wisdom
In the realm of radiance, the dawn of poesy
To render the raw ripe in its rays random. (37)
This is how the poetry
dawns to him, and he marches on the road of his creativity to enjoy its beauty
and lilting music.
From poetic
imagination and inspiration, the poet moves on to describe ‘Poetic Flow’: how
it moves and from where it originates. He says:
Poetry is spontaneous in its flow
And surely marvelous in its glow
Originates from profound oceans
Of maxims, precepts and dictums; (176)
Poetry delights
one and all with its themes, cadence, and melodious music. He speaks about its
function:
It aims to shoot evils for reform,
To ground realities. It to conform
As a sermon for all not to cripple
As a lesson not to taste the Apple.
The word “Apple”
suggests the forbidden apple (alludes to Paradise Lost by John Milton)
eaten by Eve in
Nature is another theme of his poetry. ‘Lark’,
a poem in eighteen lines, begins with the natural scene of sun rising from “far
realms” sending forth its first rays on the earth all around that stimulates
his heart to feel “the new awakening of the scenes” – the beauties in nature.
He realizes that “bitter realities” of life that “groped in the dark” stay
entrenched in “broken hearts”. There emerge
Unscreened pictures and unseen tears
Untold stories and unheard tunes,
Robbed sweats, stolen treasures,
The lamb-like and their plight
To bring into broad daylight.
This is how the
poet’s pent-up emotions seek release in ink on “silent paper” and he begins to
sing like a lark:
The young rays reflect in magnitude
Inspire me to sing as happily as the lark
Gingerly to hook [out] the weeds like evils
Only to replace with the plants like virtues. (58)
Thus, the poet
presents his poems before the readers full of virtues without evils. The
similes: “as happily as the lark”, “the weeds like evils”, and “the plants like
virtues” – make the poem lively and melodious.
In ‘Gifts of Nature’,
the poet relishes the gifts, the sun, river, tree, the earth, and the air that
nature has given to Man and other living beings. The sun is ever moving, giving
light without any selfish motive. A river gives water to the soil for the
growth of vegetation including food and fodder and all living beings. A tree
gives shade and fruit for free to all men, animals, and birds. The earth is
full of natural beauty with “its rich sights and sounds”. The air gives life to
all living beings including plants and “presents fragrance for the pleasure of
all”. While all these are selfless, have no goal of their own, but, on the
contrary, man is ever selfish: whatever he does is never altruistic. It
reflects man’s egocentricity and avarice. The poet sums up the poem beautifully:
God’s supreme creation, the best of all species
Enjoys His gifts of gaiety but forgets to sacrifice
And never to create a paradise in favour of God’s will
With a goal of his own. (97)
In “Rhythms of
My Heart” (102), the persona becomes a vigilant watcher of contemporary society
and partaker of every “tear and smile”. He is overwhelmed to see the beauty in
Nature; man is never true to his words; peace lives in every human heart and
“human fragrance spreads for all”. But, at the same time, he says:
My heart sinks at appalling events
When human relation disappears
When hearts echo their fears
When faces are marked without cheers
When lives are filled with baleful tears (102)
These lines show
him as a champion of the down-trodden and empathizing with them in their
sufferings. He himself says that such happening, “never go unnoticed on his
heart”. A true spectator of the events in his environs makes him
socio-political conscious.
He muses on
‘Practices Today’ to reflect on our polity and their hypocrisy: They represent
themselves as the “jewels of human values” by exhibiting themselves as the
custodians of “human virtues”. What is manifest is not the reality: “Like glow
of fruits never to see inside”. Promising justice to the common man, the “vices
are non-stop” in them. These pseudo-politicians exhibit the following traits:
All practices of vices are in non-stop:
All crazed hands to mint sans limits
All craved powers to rule at summits
All evils done at the helm of affairs,
All sins committed on thoroughfares. (61)
In this poem, Dr
Rajamouly exposes the hypocrisy of the contemporary polity because their
politicking harms and hurts the fellow-beings and create chaos not only in
society, but also “in the minds of the co-beings” – among people, in the
society, the country and also in the world. This makes politicking and polity
alike everywhere – a universal phenomenon.
‘Oracle’ is
another poem on the contemporary politicians: they are full of avarice; “pose
as Gandhi” and sing “Anna Hazare’s chimes” to satiate their hunger for power.
The poet prays that none should “fall victims to the(se) Satans”. His advice to
these politicians is ingrained in the following lines:
Not to see gaps, not to create rifts
Not to cause ripples are his real gifts
This is my oracle echoed to the human
To be humanistic and humanitarian. (360)
This is a poem
rife in ironic tone directed toward humanitarian end.
The poem, ‘Man
of Virtues’, is woven around the theme that the world is governed by the futility
of worldly power and pelf. If a man is rich – “wealthy man” – he has the power
to enslave all. If one is “strong man” – rich in physical power, he can
overpower all; and a ruler “with his unrivalled powers” becomes autocrat and
makes all his slaves. A proud and arrogant man does not care a little for
anyone. The poet calls them people of “monopoly-reigns”. They keep on ruling as
long as they have their riches, physical power, sovereignty, and arrogance. But
all these things are transitory: for human life is short. There is only one
thing that passes the test of time: it is virtue. Therefore, the poet
beautifully sums it up:
All do not remain unaffected
By the ravages of time
Except a man of virtues prime,
For whom acclaims, awards, and laurels
Mean to be ephemeral and material.
He craves never for false prestige
Spiritual rewards themselves bestow
On him for his virtues and his values,
Turning his life beyond the terrestrial,
And his fame and name eternal. (78)
Thus, it is
always the virtues and virtuous life that makes one eternal on this earth and
not the riches, the physical strength, and/or the power of rulers. P.B. Shelley
has beautifully conveyed the futility of riches and political power of a proud
ruler named Ozymandias:
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that Colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away. (‘Ozymandias’, ll.12-14)
With the passage
of time all the worldly power and pelf becomes defunct, and nothing remains to
reminisce.
Patriotism surfaces in the poem, ‘Love for My
Country’. Herein, he displays his love for his country even “more than my [his]
mother”. It is here where he is born, grew up and got his education and
discipline that have become his pleasure troves. He is unable to forget his
innocent adolescent days that he has spent on this land. He earnestly requests
his relations living in foreign lands “To come to
To go back as an American-fed Indian
Or to live as an Indian-born American
With my most beloved children.
Days in slow flight with an option:
Right to live here an to serve
The land that taught me to lisp, to toddle
To scribble and to shine as a candle, (83)
These are the
proud words of a patriot who loves his country than those who forsake the
country of their birth for the sheen of money and face several humiliations in
the countries of their domicile as one can see in the writings of Indian
diaspora.
The poet, in
‘Animals Vs Man’, says that animals are better than men. It narrates the story
of a dying animal that had starved for many days – “No fodder to eat, no
shelter to seek / No water to drink, no man to respond” – and in consequence to
weakness, was unable to stand on its legs. There was none who knew about it nor
there someone to tell others, but its “eyes filled with tears” told a lot about
its suffering. Hungry dogs and vultures surrounded it, while it struggled for
survival. They wanted to satisfy their hunger by eating its flesh. There was a
struggle between the dogs and the vultures for enjoying the cadaver: “Dogs bade
vultures fly away by barking; / Vultures bit dogs to make them run away” and,
thus, the ox fell prey to dogs and vultures “for their biological need / For
their instinctive greed / But not the animals of its own class”. On the
contrary man makes man “victim” for his selfishness and covetousness and
doesn’t bother any harm or loss caused to others. He takes advantage of men in
their need to gratify his own ravenousness. He wants to be rich overnight
without caring for any ethical values. The poet sarcastically observes about
man in the putrid society:
For riches overnight …
Forgetting moral values
Ignoring human virtues
In the society stinking (88)
‘Wants of the Poor’
is another short (seven lines) but beautiful poem:
Wants of the poor,
Beautiful toys,
Trampled under the feet of evil forces
Crushed between the teeth of prejudices
Arrested with the shackles of vested interests
To remain unfulfilled
Beneath the layers of failures. (115]
The poet tells
how the poor live their lives in want and drudgery.
As a scholar of
Larkin’s poetry on the premise of Time, the concept of time is bound to
permeate into his thought and contemplation. So, “Time and We” presents time as
that never stops and all efforts against it go down the drain. However, a hope,
in some future time, produces smiles on the faces. Despite instilling
confidence in the present that does not clearly show about the future fruits,
it is still oblivious about future. He beautifully observes life: “Life’s an
illusion, a victim in time’s ascent / But our faces are aglow with prospects to
cherish”. Though life is time’s victim, human hearts are happy to contemplate
unborn prospects hidden in the womb of time to be born. One can enjoy the poem:
Time, on going, never to stop its ride
Any efforts in this result in the futile
The hope, seen in the distant, to provide
All the faces in optimism ripple with smile.
Still, we instill confidence though the
present
Shines in faded colors about
the future to flourish
Life’s an illusion, a victim
in time’s ascent
But our faces are aglow with
prospects to cherish. (180)
The poem has
less emotion and more prudence. Then he describes how time falls heavy on
everything and this entire world in ‘Ceaseless Flow’. In this poem, the poet
sings about the ravages of time: time flows ceaselessly, and everything falls
prey to it. Sun rises and sets; seasons come and go; a bay grows into a youth
and then old age overtakes him; rivers merge with ocean; kingdoms flourish and
perish; flowers bloom, then “fade and fall”; “smiles wipe out tears”;
everything of this world/universe is ever changing with the passage of time.
Human desires also grow sky-high. The poet puts it thus:
Wants fly to heaven
To collapse and it is proved
Nothing stops anything
When time goes on flowing (129)
The poet, in
this poem, sings about the omnipotence of Time.
Human virtue
also figures as one of the themes in his poetry. ‘A Spark from the Dark’ banks
on the idea of human virtues surfacing above the “wicked shadows of evils” and
“the crooked shackles of ills”. Human virtues survive like “sunshine” behind
clouds, like diamonds hidden deep in earth, and pearls found at the bottom of
the seas and oceans. They cannot be clouded or hidden for long as luster of
lightning shines brightest in pitch dark. Nonetheless, virtues demand of their
host
.... a strong will with a long trial
To shatter the glooms ephemeral
Definitely to win laurels
Specially to own new feathers
And for regards and rewards
And for indelible imprints in records. (171)
After the long
trials are over, a virtuous man is sure to win success, glory, and incentives.
Wisdom is the
true ‘Diamond’. Though diamond, being the hardest, cuts all, yet its worth is
limited: “No jewel ventures to reach its high towers”. On the contrary, a wise
man is respected by all. Rajamouly, the poet, weaves this idea in the following
words:
A wise man unopposed in his kingdom
Venerable in society for his values
Others shine in the glitter of his virtues
Since he contributes to others his wisdom. (157)
The poet, in this poem, illustrates how a man
of wisdom is the real diamond, in fact, in the society.
Good teachers
also become the idea of his poetry. “Unique Service” reveals the good qualities
of the dedicated teachers. They perform “selfless service” for the
“enlightenment” of students. They join hands to “excel … visions” and share
knowledge with their students. A teacher doesn’t aspire for any laurels for
himself but for imparting good knowledge to his students and loves them like
his own children. A good and exemplary teacher shares his knowledge with his
students “like the sun”. As the sun shoots “rays for equal mirth” of all
mankind and “like the almighty to create all initial birth”, so a teacher
serves as the beacon of knowledge. These very lines reveal that one must be
very, very sincere, passionately devoted, and dedicated teacher in profession;
whereas there are also teachers, who bother only about themselves and their
profits (see TV Reddy’s poem, “University Wits”, for comparison) without caring
a whit for the students. The poet sings:
What every pupil gets is surely cent percent
Knowledge on par with to his heart-consent
Not like a father to share his wealthy stature
In equal parts to his kin to the size miniature
But like the sun to shoot rays for equal mirth (135)
Thus, a true
teacher serves as the source of knowledge as sun is the source of alight to one
and all. However, the tribe of true teachers is declining day by day.
The poet, in
‘Democracy Today’, satirically hums the qualities of democracy at present.
Democracy gives “all rights without any prejudices” to all. In elections “all
are welcome with a currency note to vote” and the voter is reminded of his
active role, “king of poll”, in democracy and voter becomes the celebrated
guest “to drink to the brink”; for, wine flows free for the voters. The voter
is very badly exploited by our leaders. He, for the moment, forgets his misery
under the intoxication of wine (depending upon its brand). The poet rightly
observes:
His innocence sings the song of exploitation
While rocking in the swing of intoxication
The moment next, this one-day king
Without any crown appears suffering. (140)
This poem is a
bitter satire on the leaders of contemporary democracy: how the poor are
exploited with currency notes and wine to secure their power for full five
years.
‘Hunger’
embraces the theme of labor class’s drudgery, helplessness, and suffering. A
laborer knows his severe, harder, bitter, and deeper hunger better than any
other person. He lives in penury and wants and dies in penury and want. The
poet writes in this regard:
How severe
Definitely knows well his hunger
How harder
Undoubtedly is the labor of a laborer
How bitter
Certainly, is the failure of a dreamer (163)
He is seen
working hard in field without knowing any torpor. He fails even to stop the
cries of his baby. He is ever busy in his “struggle for existence”. All work
and no rest to pacify the hunger. He also includes a soldier and a teacher in
the category of laborer for they also toil to meet their necessities of life
away from their homes and hearths. The poet gives vent to this notion in these
words:
For the safety of his motherland
A soldier’s pledge
A teacher to spread all his knowledge
Man travels longer
With the facts bitter
For his goals sweeter
The ideal fruits of real hunger. (164)
All those who
work to pacify their hunger, but the hunger of a laborer is the severest,
hardest, and bitterest: he never gets enough to take even a breath in respite.
Life becomes an
“Illusion” for the poet in the eponymous poem. For him it is a dream, good or
bad, but experience is the teacher and changes life with the passage of time
“Into nullity or futility on one side / And mortality and transience on the
other”. While experience is always different to expectations, life confines to
transience against any prediction. Hence, the poet says that
Experience smells different from expectation
And life confines to transience against prediction
To one’s great dismay
This is the life-way. (198)
The poet firmly
holds that reality is always bitter and different from anticipation; life is
governed by change taking place and not by any prophecy.
According to the
poet, ‘Hypocrisy’ withers in the same guise in which it appears.
Time witnesses your true color
You are found ever to linger
Over the edges of sweet lips
A honeyed smile of high wit (205)
He opines that
time is witness to all shades of hypocrisy and is found over beautiful lips and
in the smile of wits. Then he compares it to a cobra, a beast, a beggar. It
becomes
A decent road to degradation:
Deception through protection
Corruption through cooperation
Exploitation through co-ordination (205)
in this world of
apparent duplicity and disloyalty. It entices innocent human beings through its
smile. It acts majestically to fulfill its dream.
‘Distant Stars’
to the poet are “like reflections in mind’s horizon” always decoying the
beholder with their beautiful twinkling far, far away in the sky. However, they
are “reflections of [one’s] want” and seem to mock the observer. Therefore, the
poet confesses:
I can’t strive at ease to feel free
From them like shadows chasing me
Their appearing to be appeasing me (227)
Thus, distant
stars remain distant for the protagonist of the poem and never come closer –
unbounded and unfounded desires always stay behind unrealized.
The poet begins
the poem, ‘Sculptures for Sermons’, with the commonly held view that they are
without action, without expressions, emotions and static – devoid of any
movement. But the poet maintains that sculptures “move to move the onlooker”
and give him joy despite their stillness and possess beautiful features and
expressions. He proceeds to eulogize them banking on the repetition of first
word of each line to heighten the effect:
You’ve charms to scatter
You’ve postures to impress
You’ve gestures to capture
You’ve sermons to preach
You’ve lessons to teach
You’re superior to the animate; (229)
In this manner,
the poet proves that they are superior, in every respect, to the living beings.
These have been created “by the sculptor’s hands / With perseverance and
patience”. Though these fall prey to time and “jealous eyes”, yet they look
wonderful. It seems somewhere deep in the protagonist’s consciousness rests the
destruction of Buddha sculptures in the Bamiyan valley,
Still, you look beautifully capable
Of expressing the inexplicable
Every unbroken remains
As whole reflect lessons
Expressions and sermons. (229)
In ‘Twilight’,
the poet tells how the birds safeguard their young ones during snowfall. They
keep them warm under their plumes during nights, between dusk and twilight,
till the sunrays reach their cozy nests. They begin singing before sunrise to
be safe from the risks of daylight predators. Thereafter, they go away in
search of food and safely return, “at sunset”, to their “little ones” in nests.
All parasites – snakes and hunters – plan to catch the birds. Hungry snakes
look “to swallow” the new-born babies and hunters spread seeds to catch the
birds in their nets. The birds in the evening, safe from the traps of hunters,
return to their nests and little ones. The poet gives vent to this moment of
joy in the following lines:
Fluttering back to nests for glowing glance
Of their young ones to coo in full delights
Indeed, the happiest moment in their daily lives
A tension to be faced between the twilights. (235)
The poet makes
use of pun of the phrase “between the twilights”: it refers to night as well as
day. During nights their tension is to save their young ones from the chill and
during daytime they are worried about their and little ones’ safety from the predators
described in the poem as parasites.
The poem, entitled “Darkness to Light” (247),
echoes the spirit of Vedic hymn, “Tamso ma jyotirgamaya …”
The poet tells
the readers that it is time that leads, contrary to the spirit of the hymn
basically sung in praise of Sun god in soma yajna, from darkness to light.
Time, through bitter realities and unveiling many secrets of life, leads to
light and knowledge from darkness and ignorance, both almost synonymous. The
secular Sun knows no difference between caste and creed and spreads its rays to
bring smile to the sad and sombre faces alike. The rainbow colours on ‘seeded’
wetlands urge life out of them for bearing fruits (heat, water, and light
essential for the growth of vegetation). Dr Rajamouly expresses it in the
following words:
The sun is to shoot rays for miles
To sing the sunshine of smiles
Quelling all fears
Wiping out all tears.
And life becomes
a winding journey. The poet gives voice to this thought:
Life to journey long paths
From the desert to oasis
Quenching thirsts
Hosting feasts. (247)
The aim of human
life, on this earth, should be to end suffering and bring happiness to one and
all irrespective of one’s color and creed. One should not forget that all human
beings are alike. It is the life-circumstances that make one rich and the other
poor.
“Paradise Lost’
sings about the first disobedience of man and woman in their “sheer innocence”.
As a result of it death and seven sins were hurled on the inhabitants of the
earth for their lives – Adam and Eve expelled from Heaven to Earth, though it
was “against the Will of Providence”. Men now claim that they have super brain
yet have again lost the paradise:
Man today with super brain
Got
Than that of Adam and Eve
due to their
over ambition to possess money and power and control the world (as is evident
in America-China-Russia race for supremacy and inventing more to most
disastrous arsenals and war-heads). The poet winds up the argument of the poem
with the following lines:
To place themselves high on the tower
And justify their ways to the men
In Adam and Eve-like innocence
At the feet of the clever lying lower
Humbly bowing in permanence
Slavishly living in independence. (250)
It is, in fact,
a satire on the contemporary man and polity. However, he writes ‘True Paradise’
to supplement it and know that, despite his endless desires, this earth is the
true paradise:
He climbs the tallest apex to be free
And the highest peak to fly
But falls down to the earth
To glimpse the true paradise (25-52)
In truth, one
may dream of varied heavens to live in, but earth is the only and the best
heaven to live. The only need is for the equal distribution of amenities,
opportunities, and resources available here.
In ‘Beauty’, the
protagonist does not cherish the physical beauty of any damsel or that of
nature, but, instead, remembers the sacrifices of parents to bring him up and
provide him with the desired education that has made him what he is today. He
still enjoys the memories of his childhood days when used to see “glimpses of
farthest realms” in the care of his father. His encouragement at his early
successes – “his ecstatic clap for my topped merit” – he cannot forget. The
poet still remembers the expenses that his father bore on his education by
doping “laborious work in the scorching sun”. He still remembers the “unbound
joy” on the receipt of father’s letters. He equally remembers how his mother’s
“lulling lap” became the seat when he was fed, and she instilled in him the
love for nature by “pointing [to] the gay objects of nature” and her
Tearful waiting on late return from school
And offerings of holy lamps to deities
For the blessings for my life in smiles
In the freedom from poverty-shackles.
Now when he is
grown up and well-established in life, he falls in reverie of those old days
and fails to forget the sacrifices his parents had made and their prayers for
his life well off. He fondly remembers:
I perceive them at the sight of my eyes,
The eyelids to save the eye of my life
When I’m keen on looking into my palms
Where my father and my mother abide
For lively evocation of lovely memories. (272)
It is not only a
beautiful tribute to his parents but also full of beautiful sentiments of
gratitude for his mother and father. Here lies the true beauty o f this poem that imparts title to this poem.
“Mahatma’, in
fact, celebrates the ideas and ideals of Mahatma Gandhi in free
Sheer virtues are values
In misuse for abuse
For mere money and power: (277)
The last stanza
brings to fore the character of Mahatma Gandhi:
He once in high acclaims
As Mahatma, the Great Soul,
Now echoes the wail of woes
In the deep vales of his soul. (278)
The flower, in
“My Quest for Bloom” (287), grows to spread its fragrance and be offered to the
deity, contrary to Mahadevi Verma’s “Pushpa Kee Abhilasha” [iq"Ik dh vfHkyk"kk], wherein it wishes to be offered not to any God, but, at the feet
of patriots. When a drop falls from the dark clouds in an open oyster, it
becomes pearl to give pleasure to one and all. Similarly, the poet says that
each verse should have so much melody in it that it should delight one and all
alike. The poet sings:
It dawns ever at my heart’s core
From its most fantastic origin for sure
And spurts forth from the fountainpen
To flow to the paper in the scenic form,
Anxious to delight the heart with sense
Each to say: “It’s my quest for bloom.” (287)
The last line
seems to echo P. B. Shelley’s line, from “Ode to the West Wind”,
…, by the incantation of this verse,
Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among Mankind! (lines 65-67)
‘Life Vs Time’
is in form of a dialogue between life and time. Life has come a long journey –
“long traverse” and has tried to keep pace with Time – My pace bound as fast as
yours / With challenges to your force”. Life admits that it tries hard to win
over Time yet remains a loser in the end:
I’m in trials life long to conquer
Like the hard struggle of a creeper
But miserably fail to grow further
You’re a winner; the fact I concur.
Time tells life
that human life is short and mortal – “a guest for temporary stay”. While life
is a rivulet that loses identity when it merges with the river, time is the
“living river”. Time is immortal and eternal:
At all hours, I’m the wind to churn
The earth to rotate, the stars to glow
The cloud to pour, the sun to burn
The cock to crow and water to flow. (304)
And then, it
tells life:
I’m the sea with you, a tidal guest
For your rise and fall in my powers
All beauty in novelty is my quest
You concur with me in my orders. (305)
The poet laments
the loss of human values in ‘Fading Values’. Ethical values are the rocks of
sound humanity, but now, it seems these have gone on holiday due to the
negligence of the “watchful gardeners”. The vents his despair in these words
that values
Fade now in fast measures
When watchful gardeners
In deep slumbers
In stead, the
values that are practiced in society are harmful than the weeds (youth becoming
drug-addicts):
Weeds to emit the narcotic
Plants to spread the fragrant
Weeds to outgrow plants
Omitting human essences
From the
With law in undue hands
For misuse and abuse. (312)
While singing
about the loss of values, the poet considers the present guardians of law
(politicians) as incompetent and misfit. They misuse and abuse it in place of
using properly and wisely.
“Secret of Joy”
is about one’s utmost jubilation on attaining success and fame. It is the
result of one’s hard work and devotion. The beautiful poem, and also the
shortest (six lines) in the anthology, is cited in full:
The scorching ray of toil
With utmost swearing devotion
Trickles down to sparkling beams
Through the prism of scintillating success
To glitter in the rainbow colors of fame
That is the secret of one’s joy. (315)
The true secret
of joy lies only in hard work and deserves comparative study with Robert
Frost’s poem ‘Mowing’ that also epitomizes the theme of labour beautifully:
“The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows” (line 13). There is one more
poem, ‘The True Sense of Labor’ (338) on the same theme by the poet under
study.
The poem,
‘Hamlet’, presents the character sketch of Hamlet from Shakespeare’s eponymous
tragedy. He had a complex bent of mind though kind. In him he had the qualities
of “head and heart” in full measure. Through his actions, he “Thwarts various
thoughts nefarious” though serious. He keeps on vacillating without reaching
any solution. ‘To be or not to be’ is the greatest dilemma with him.
Ultimately, he feigns madness which turns out to be a suicidal situation for
him. The poet summarizes in the concluding couplets:
Most noble and sovereign in merit
But ‘an apotheosis of human spirit’
The scintilla of verdict of the jury
A victim of smiling villain’s fury. (326)
Despite being
intelligent and kind, Hamlet remains servile to his indecisive nature that
leads to delays in solving the riddle of his life – the reason behind the
murder of his father and his mother marrying his uncle. It reminds the reader
that the poet is an academician and has studied and taught Hamlet - a tragedy
play by William Shakespeare.
The poem, ‘To Be
Human in Actions’, seems to echo the spirit of Chambial’s poem, ‘Masks’,
published in his second anthology, The Cargoes of the Bleeding Hearts (1984).
However, the mode of saying differs. Both strike at human hypocrisy. Rajamouly
says:
Whether it is false or true
Depends solely on its two faces
Shaped well and carved well (346)
And “To have the
two faces right owns a right / To be valued in its real validity on par”. The
poet wants to inquire whether “man with two facets” – in professional and
personal life – is necessity. He says that the two faces (good and bad) of man
are inseparable like the two sides of a coin. The poet sums up the poem:
Not only the head but also the heart
Not only sagacity but also gaiety
Two in one to have all won to be human
One with two to win the life thin spun. (347)
On the other
hand, Chambial writes that one must have two faces to succeed in the present
age. He writes:
To live successfully
at the present hour
one must have two faces— (Chambial 39)
Chambial
concludes the poem thus:
We must live by two
or lag behind
in the race to knock
our rivals down
on the ground
to prove the prowess
and succeed in the struggle. (40)
‘True Essence’ is the sad tale of an
intelligent girl who “cherished a dream” in her life to serve her nation by
doing service “of distinction”. But her dreams were not to be fulfilled, she
was gang-raped – “It was a gang-rape of pathetic plight”. The poet describes
this tragedy:
‘Meast’, m in ‘man’ in appearance
And east in ‘beast’ in performance
As cobras bit her in the way insolent
Her heart cried still; her voice silent (351)
The poet invents
a portmanteau word “Meast” from the two words “man” and “beast” to describe the
rapists. Perhaps, the poet while writing this poem had the tragedy of Nirbhaya*
in his mind. It was the horrendous crime committed by the social hyenas. One
shudders to remember the tortures, she was put to after gang-rape. She wanted
to live; struggled for life but ultimately succumbed to the fatal wound
inflicted on her. The poet wants poetic justice for the criminals (the four
accused were sentenced to death on 22 Jan. 2020). Poetic justice was met. The
poet writes:
Before law, tit for tat; life for life;
Here the white pigeon is in strife,
Tongue-tied and wing-tied in verity
Chased and caged against its liberty. (352)
This is a poem
on the gruesome crime perpetrated on 23 year young physiotherapist
intern in the history of free
In “Woman”,
the poet praises the qualities of a woman from her childhood when she takes
birth as a flower to swell the smell of love and affection; she serves to
bridge and cement the relationship of two, hitherto strange, families. She
Enters the venue of wedding
As a bridge of families, spreading
The sunshine of relation on earth
The marital wine of bridal mirth
And then
As a lovely bird in the love-nest
A heaven she cherishes the best
All her long life as a better-half
As a fruit to spread its seeds off
In her land for race-perpetuation (375)
with “her kin in
every generation”. Such is a woman “Born in the Indian soil to shine / Under
the aegis of her reign”. The last two lines of the poem, seem to me, restrict
the glory of a woman to Indian sub-continent and make the poem regional. How I
wish it should have been: “as a woman everywhere / in every land and clime” to
make it universal.
‘My Love’ the
first poem on the tender emotion of human beings. It begins, when he saw her:
I saw her, her unsurpassed majesty
Unrivalled virgin of seraphic beauty,
Sweet blend in bounteous charms
She almost
blazed him with her marvelous beauty. And then
Her smiles smile hearty welcome to her side
As a bride for her groom in her pride,
Her lips gaily carved on my lips the song,
The most lavished words cherished long
Later he tells,
in the poem, that it seemed to him that cuckoo has learnt her tune from his
beloved – a poetic corollary. Thereafter,
Like the swan she walked by my side
So gracious in our providential ride,
Singing the song of her love as my bride
On hearing her
song, the protagonist’s heart
……. let flow from its interior
The lyric of my enshrined love for her; (63)
Which runs into
nine lines and promises that their mutual love will culminate in “pure and
true” love. And then he muses:
Sharing our pleasure in a welcome gesture
To treat our union as a divine treasure
For our everlasting pleasure (63-64)
The last stanza
sums up the fancy of his dream:
All seemed happy—with me in a look—
All of a sudden, my glimpse at my better-half
When she woke me up with jealous look
To see my joyous Love off. (64)
This stanza
echoes the protagonist’s desperation like that of the knight-at-arms in Keats’s
poem ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ when his dream ended on a cold hillside.
Beautiful poem both in conception and execution.
‘Love’ is the
other poem on the same theme. In this poem the protagonist compares her beauty
to “the lightning in the dark” that held him spellbound. And he says:
I felt my senses swinging
In the school of lovemaking
Learning ‘LOVE’ and its
spelling (137)
The use of
capital letters in “love” emphasizes the impact on him both fell in love
without any disruption: “You love me and I love you / But no distraction in the
view”. Hearing these words, the protagonist voices his love for her like Cupid:
“Pure remains the love of
ours:
That of uniquely adorable lovers
And be fresh like the glowing flower
With a chance to fade away never” (138)
Thus, he assures
her of the purity of their love and prays for its incessant freshness without
wilting in the time to come.
Then this love
transforms into ‘Gift of Love’ and becomes a “magnificent token of love”
shining as
Marvelous and fabulous
Priceless and spotless
Given to gladden with its chime
Me in prime all the time
While the
beloved is estranged from the protagonist (may be in marriage with someone
else), yet it remains,
… still a flower of fresh fragrance
And a jewel with blissful radiance
That multiplies the mettle of my memory
To cherish its beauty in bounty
The protagonist
accepts separation with a philosophic heart as the effect of all powerful Time:
“Time in its flow governs life
With mellifluous memories
In mouth dissolving
cherries.” (264)
As the taste of
cherries lingers for long after having eaten them, so the memories of love also
stay long in the memory of the love’s heart. How can one forget!
In the poem,
‘Maiden Love’, the poet acquaints the reader with his first love in life. While
it describes the beloved’s flawless beauty, her memory ever keeps alive in his
mind, tickling and tingling his heart. It makes the reader spellbound. Here I
quote the poem in full for the delight of the readers:
With angelic features to
excel
A blush with dimples aglow
A glowing smile over her lips
Immaculate without blemish
In tender age that entails
No barriers and no frontiers
Her figure on the inner screen
Indelible and inerasable
She shoots beams like the moon
Inexhaustible and inextinguishable
Her voice clings at my threshold
Still rings in my interior ever
So glittering her amorous glance
Straight at my countenance
Even today bestows fragrance
Like freshly bloomed tulips
Full graceful her pace
Like the dazzling daffodils
With spontaneous bliss
All her at once all together
Memories to evoke rapture. (301)
The entire poem
flows with the speed of a hilly stream but the last line becomes heavy and slow
as a river flows down from the hills and comes to plains and flows placidly as
if resuscitating breath.
In sum, poetry,
nature, political hypocrisy, futility of power and pelf, patriotism,
selfishness, poverty, Time, human virtues, teachers, democracy, human
suffering, life, human duplicity, human desires, sculptures, care and concern
for young ones, love for culture, loss of human values, hard work the essence
of life, personalities like Gandhi, atrocities on women, sacrifices of women,
and the primordial instinct of love are some of the themes dealt with in this
article.
Thus, Dr K. Rajamouly emerges as an advocate of
human virtues, a scientist probing Nature for human delight, a detractor of
social evils, decline in democratic polity and a philosopher. It is the need of
the hour that our critics, who turn to foreign authors for exploring their
works, take notice of the indigenous writers and show to the world that we also
have poets of the stature of Wordsworth and Shelley.
*Note: The
23-year-old physiotherapy intern, who came to be known as ' Nirbhaya'
(fearless), was gang-raped and savagely assaulted on the night of December
16, 2012, in a moving bus in
Works
Cited
Frost, Robert. “Mowing.” Selected Poems. Ed. Ian Hamilton. Rpt.
1975. Penguin Books, 1973.
Raghupathi, K V, ed. The Rural Muse: The Poetry of T. Vasudeva Reddy.
Authors Press, 2014.
Rajamouly, Dr. Katta. Cherished Cherries: A Collection of Nine
Anthologies. Authors Press, 2016.
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