Like Daruwalla, Raja Gopal Parthasarathy has also given a new dimension to Indian

English poetry. As an Indian writer in English language he felt doubly alienated from

the English language as well as from his own culture. Because of his continuous

engagement with the English language and his urge for the Tamil culture he can

neither belong to the language properly nor to his Tamil culture. As a diaspora his

sense of belonging is always shattered by the conflict between past memories and the Manash Pratim Borah: Influence and Individuality in Modern Indian English Poetry

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present social reality. Thus, it becomes a characteristic feature of his poetry that he

always deals with this emotional and spiritual dilemma caused by his sense of

rootlessness and urge for belongingness. In this process the poet often, beside his

assertion of the mental upheaval and frustration, seems to be reconciling the Tamil

past and the impotence that he felt in acquiring a foreign language and also shows his

increasing interest in long poems as a means of going beyond the fragmented vision

and isolation associated with short lyrics.

During his stay in England, Parthasarathy had found that his English was not

idiomatic. Britishers had still retained the oriental binaries and imperialistic attitudes

towards India and Indians. These binary positions ultimately brought an orient into the

position of “other” and create in him the sense of belonging to his/her culture. As the

poet saysThere

is something to be said for exile:

You learn, roofs are deep. That language

Is a tree, loses colour

Under another sky.

(Under another sky)

Although in some of his earlier and later works, the significance of love, its essences

and emotional complexities with the English language still occur as his major themes.

But here love is treated in a more realistic manner, if not like that of his early

sentimental ways. In these poems the influence of the British English poets are

explicitly revealed. The poet refers to this influence as false teeth:

For many years now he has had his teeth

In the English language- false teeth

His earliest poems were rhymed.Manash Pratim Borah: Influence and Individuality in Modern Indian English Poetry

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Now rhymes are more fashionable in toothpaste ads.

(False Teeth)

As the poet recognized his faults, he started experimentations over his writing to

create something authentic.

His masterpiece Rough Passage (1977) comprises three distinct parts namely ‘Exile’,

‘Trial’ and ‘Homecoming’, which were written over a period of fifteen years between

1961-1975. All these three sections reveal Parthasarathy’s ceaseless experimentations

of the English language as well as his predicament as an English language poet. In the

journey, he has recognized the fact that the new environment can change the past

superficially; past is always potent in the subconscious. His exile i.e. his diasporic

identity has deteriorated his self in such a way that the persona of his poem in now

alienated from his own culture:

The hourglass of the Tamil mind

is replaced by the exact chronometer

of Europe

(Exile)

It is this realization of his inability to recover his linguistic roots and his Tamil past,

which brings him the realization of the man-woman relationship in the second section

namely “Trial”. But his love relation could not make him free from his predicament;

dissatisfaction of love relation again brought the sense of alienation into his mind:

My past is an unperfected stone.

The flaws show, I polish

The stone sharpen the luster to a point.

(Trial)Manash Pratim Borah: Influence and Individuality in Modern Indian English Poetry

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His anxieties regarding colonial influence are freeze in his mind like a stone; through

the process of appropriation the poet constantly seeks to ‘polish’ the stone up to the

point of its transformation.

In the final section, the poet explores his experience of returning back to his home and

tries to revitalize his Tamil past. By remembering the articulations of his mother

tongue, he now glorifies his past and like Whitman in “Song of Myself”, tries to be in

contact with various significant and insignificant homely activities. The complete

journey in the Rough Passage shows the poet’s resistance and internalization of the

colonial legacy and also his gradual development towards construction of a native

self. Like Eliot, he believes that a writer is a product of his own culture.

A book of poems, as such A Rain of Rites, brought out by the Univ. ofGeorgia Press, Athens (USA) , in 1976 carries it forward the imagisticportals. It’s difficult to say what he takes up and what he means, as it means not what he says, just goes on viewing, without any comments. You cannot summarize what he has as the meaning is notand the words turning on, without anything to reveal, just the things in a flux. Nothing is concrete, everything in a flux, floating and passing, so much abstract and condensed, with blank thinking and reflection. Dawn is the first poem to begin with, later taking on Village, A Missing Person, The Whorehouse in a Calcutta Street, Myth, Dawn at Puri, Hunger. Summer, Silence, Main Temple Street, Puri, Listening to a Prayer, Indian Summer Poem, Samskara, A Rain of Rites, tell of his poetic escapades. So deep in time, consciousness and flux, they take their own recourse as for reflection and shedding of light, so inner and internal. The lonely countryside dotted with the nondescript villagesshaded by the bunyan and peepul trees, the mother and the daughter sitting in the mango orchard, the missing person and her image haunting. The title poem too likewise where the meaning is not, just the word-plays and fleeting images of the things in a constant flux, always coming, always passing. Most probably rains ofthe coastal region and the rites performed in the rock-built temples, but the mud-built houses the tales of his. They made the grand temples for faith’s sake and to house in the deities, not for themselves

and the masons and architects remaining anonymous. The rock-builttemples are splendid and grand, an example of architectural and sculptural excellence, but the beggars still visible at the entrances ofthe temples. Faith and doubt seem to put him into a conflict, if faith be so strong, why doubt seems to be lurking in, leaving the scope for? The benefit of doubt befits him and he goes on revelling, dwelling and delving with the light, faith so frail, darkness enveloping and encompassing it all. The cattle coming back at twilight, drinking water from and returning back, the darkness enveloping the countryside just lie with the flickers of the oil lamp burning for sometime. - See more at: http://www.boloji.com/index.cfm?md=Content&sd=Articles&ArticleID=14762#sthash.cKNJsrOK.dpuf

Rains and rites

A Rain of Rites by Jayanta Mahapatra opening with the first poem named Dawn and continues on with the poems, as thus, Village, Old Places, These Women, A Missing Person, Samsara, Five Indian Songs,A Rain of Rites, A Rain, The Exile, Listening, Summer, Ceremony, Main Temple Street, Puri, The Whorehouse in a Calcutta Street, The Sentence, A Twilight Poem, Appearances, Myth, Four Rain Poems, A Dead Boy, Moving, Silence, Dawn at Puri to the poems, Listening to a Prayer, Sunburst, On the Bank of the Ganges, Girl Shopping in a Department Store, A Tree, Indian Summer Poem,The Ruins, Evening, Idyll, The Bare Arms in Packing Cases, Ikons, I Hear My Fingers Sadly Touching an Ivory Key, Somewhere, My Men, Hunger, An Old Country, The Desert under the Breath, Hands, Of Armour, This Stranger, My Daughter, India, The Landscape of Return, The Face, The Faces, The Tattooed Taste, Now When We Think of Compromise. A poet neither of rains nor of rituals, he is of aguilty consciousness, marking the malignant purpose in the nun’s eye, in the dark room, a woman searching her reflection, this is the samsara, a business of man, gods and priests and the worshippers, at land’s distance, there lies a mouldy village, resting rawly against

the hills, the charred ruins of sun, the long-haired priest of Kali, putting the plucked and stolen jasmines of his villa, whose door never closed he as per his father’s instructions, as for to be put into the goddess’ morning eyes. In the poem, Myth, the poet catches the incantation of the drift of years and the chants, the long years as the incense, man as worshipper coming and going, the same old and brassy bells laden with memories tolled and the scene recurring again with the same meditational sadhu in sadhna telling of the sanctum lying on the fringes of Annapurna and Dhaualgiri or elsewhere pointing to, but the poet dares not enter into the temple as myth keeps changing the track of, shifting from hand to hand, eye to eye, the offered, crushed and dried leaves and flowers smiling at him, maybe it that the bearded and saffron-man may ask f he a Hindoo or not. A poet so imagistic, he just keeps playing with words, frolicking with thoughts, ideas and images, coming as converted imagery, pure anddistilled, but unexplainable, just as the scenes and sights continue to be, art-pieces seen on the canvas, how to describe them, how to penetrate into something very artistic? - See more at: http://www.boloji.com/index.cfm?md=Content&sd=Articles&ArticleID=14762#sthash.cKNJsrOK.dpuf

A poet of the seventies, he is a recipient of several accolades and prizes, honors and certificates and has delivered his lectures and speeches world-wide, going to the overseas. Jayanta received SAARC Literary Award for 2009, Allen Tate Poet Prize for 2009 and an honorary doctorate from Ravenshaw University in the sameyear. A recipient of Padma Shri from the Govt. of India in 2009, he is acclaimed for his service to literature and society.

A poet of Orissa, Oriya history, art, culture and thematics, he writes with Cuttack, Bhubaneswar, Puri and Konark as the hub of his poetry which he keeps rounding about, referring in a multiple way. The Chilka Lake with its natural habitat and migratory birds, the Konark Sun-temple with the chariot, the Jagannath Puri-temple with the statues of Jagannath, Balabhdara and Subhadra and the Lingaraj-temple telling of rock-cut splendour, the Puri sea-beach with calm and commotionand the Mahanadi and the Chandrabhaga rivers flowing through hold the poetic

pen of Jayanta to write about and he does too in demarcating a cartography of that. As an imagist, he is Ezra Poundian, exploiting imagery and imagism and poems come to him as images and reflections and you go on seeing them rather than deriving for meaning just like a passenger peeping out of the window of the moving train bogey.

A myth-maker, he weaves the myths personal and private, deriving in the way as Yeats did in Sailing to Byzantium and others, as did Wordsworth while tuning to the reaper’s song. A singer of Ireland not, but of Orissa, its history, art, sculpture, tradition and space, he goes in the way of his to be a Gregoryian ballad singer. Just like David Herbert Lawrence, he sees the erotic sculptures carved on the outer temple-walls telling of man-woman relationship, telling of the dharma, artha, kama and moksha motif and the yoga-yoginis and it is form there that he got the dark daughter of his Relationship.

Who is this dark daughter, a yoga-yogini or a nautch girl turned into stone or a temple-serving devadasi? How to identify her? Is she an attribute of the Mother Goddess or a working class girl standing speechless and benumbed? Maybe she womankind upon whom atrocities are heaped upon. How to identify her?

A historiographer, a curator, a conservator, a photographer, he photographs the rock-built temples, in their full splendor and long-standing, the poet tries to go deep into their history, as for who made them and when did they? But there is none to answer. Everything is but anonymous and the history silent about all that. The history of Orissa is his subject and the culture of it the space of his poetry. Heis first and foremost an Oriya rather than an Indian. An Oriya poet in an English garb is the thing to be dealt and this is true in respect of the poet. His poetic spectrum and the horizon of thinking match with that of Samuel Beckett’s in Waiting for Godot. Just waiting continues, not sure of whether Godot will turn up or not. Why are the tramps waiting for? Or, are we the tramps in reality passing our days in doing absurd and useless things? Is our life meaningless as Shakespeare says in the extract from Macbeth that life is a series of tomorrows ending death? Life is nothing but a walking shadow. Is it not? We do not know if his existentialism from the book of physics or from Kierkegaard, Kafka and Sartre. Poetry as seems to us from a reading of his poetry is but a book of physics,more specially the light chapter of it. To understand him better, Jayanta is but an absurdist and his poetry a study in absurdism. As Khushwant Singh is of the Punjab and its legacy and heritage so is Jayanta Mahapatra in his delineation of Odisha and the Odias.

He is an imagist and this is the reason for which the images cannot be resolved, analyzed and annotated. Apart from an imagist’s foray and delving, he is a nihilisttoo, drawing from vacant thinking, random reflections and the shadow space, and this all shows his journey from here to astronomy to where? To read him is not to be light and happy, but to be laden and down, tense and fretful. A serious poet, he takes life seriously. Many read him, but fail to derive from as he is obscure and meaningless. The meaning is not there in his verse-lines. He is so abstract and condensed that words fail to claw at. Shifting shadows and images can never be explained and this is the case in the context of the poet in pursuance to meaning not, but linguistic presentation. Light and darkness are two sides of the same coin and these go swapping places in the poetry of his. A poet of some Oriya heart and soul, he cannot dwell anywhere barring it, the mind cannot lift to barring the placewhere he was born, got his schooling from, just falling short of being a Rupert Brooke.

Jayanta Mahapatra went on publishing one book after to substantiate and consolidate his position. Svayamvara and Other Poems was just a little bit better than the former. A Rain of Rites is actually the book to be reckoned with and here his poetry takes the flight. The famous poem, Dawn At Puri is herein. The False Start too is a good attempt whereas Waiting is a book of historical background. Relationship brings him the laurel in the form of the Sahitya Akademi Award. Butone should not take for the Temple of Jayanta Mahapatra as for George Herbert’s The Temple, as the title is contradictory and there is nothing like that which Herbert has detailed upon in his poetry. Apart from being a poet, he is a prose writer, a short story writer, an editor, a translator and a reviewer and his books have arrived from small and big presses. Before getting name and fame in India, he had been famous elsewhere as he used to send his poems to foreign journals. Some of these were rejected definitely, but instead of that, he got rewards for his poetry. Sometimes the editors misjudge the entries and the same make a way when published elsewhere.

We question Nissim Ezekiel with regards to his identity and he suffers from the quest for identity too, but Jayanta passes the test without any doubt, as he is an Indian poet writing with Oriya blood and soul. The defeat of Ashoka he has not forgotten, the blood which it spilled from the slaughtered Oriyas when lay they lifeless and motionless in blood, writhing in pain and death on the banks of the Daya river, as the fields of Dhauli littered with the dead bodies, innumerable in number. On seeing the men killed and butchered, the heart of King Ashoka changed and he begged for penance through his rock edicts and turned into a Buddhist.

Apart from an imagist and a photographer of scenes and sights, temples and picnic spots, lakes and beaches, villages and village-ways, he is a realist, a social thinker and a feminist. Rape, violence, murder, atrocity, corruption, terrorism, communal unrest, bombardment, poverty, exploitation and injustice rake him badly and he longs for an expression. The newspaper items dealing with hunger, poverty, rape and death take the canvas away from him and he seeks to dabble in ink with a very heavy heart of his rarely to be found. What can poetry if the ills are not diagnosed and cured? The dowry deaths sadden him and he feels morose and broken. In the earlier poems of his, he had been so much imagistic and lyrical, but in the latter he turned to feminism and social realities.

An orange flarelights the pale panes of the hospitalin a final wish of daylight.It’s not yet dark.− Twilight(Burden of Waves And Fruit, ibid, p.23)

We do not know as to how to re-designate and rechristen him by calling a modernor a post-modern, a colonialist or a post-colonialist. When he just started to write, he had not been sure of what the future critics would designate him as for his verse. Like an Indian poet, quite insecure of his rank and placement into the annals, he just chose to dabble in verse. It is also true side by side that there had not been too much of competition then. A few used to think of publishing in English and the poetry-collections of the then time used to. To be a modern Indianlanguage poet was but a difficult task rather than being an Indian English poet.

To see the things in the eyes of K.S. Ramamurti,

“Mahapatra is again a poet whose poetry shows the stamp of the modernist and post-modernist influences. The recurrent themes of his poetry are loneliness, the complex problems of human relationships, the difficulties of meaningful communication, the life of the mind in relation to the life of the external world and the complex nature of love and sex.” − (K.S.Ramamurti, Twenty-five Indian Poets in English, Macmillan, Delhi, Reprinted 1996, p.55)

“Mahapatra has a feel for some rare moments which, even if they appear to be ordinary and insignificant, can mean a great deal for a poet of such delicate sensibility when he looks back upon it and contemplates it in retrospect. As in

most modernist poetry, there is in Mahapatra’s poetry greater emphasis on subjective memory and inner self than on the external world or actual events.” − (Ibid, p.65)

“There is a photograph still hangingon the wall in my father’s house. It is quite old;and against an elaborate backdrop the photographer used,are my parents, my younger brother and I.I want to shut it from my mindbecause it reminds me of a useless moment.”− The Dispossessed(A Whiteness of Bone, Viking Penguin, New Delhi,1992, p.29)

People call him a very tough poet to be dealt with, as because he is imagistic, linguistic, lyrical, nonsensical, nihilistic, blank, abstract, mythical, psychological, philosophical, introspective, multi-dimensional, rural, landscapic, social, humanistic, liberal, factual, real, regional, personal, private, patriotic, national andinternational at the same time when we sit to assess a genius like that of him. His poetry is a poetry of pinda-danacontinuing in on the beach and of the asthi-kalsha hanging to be disposed off into the holy waters, the rituals going on the seashore adjacent to the Puri temple. The poet marking the skulls and thinking of the dawn at Puri, the pyres lit around, flames going up in the air, the trails of blazing smoke rising upwards and the sands shifting, these strike not the heart, but the image-taker’s lenses. He is there to present and picture life and the world as they are rather than to be remorseful. The same world, the same man and the same time, what does it make the difference! The same time is fragmented into ages, decades, years, months, hours, minutes, seconds and moments. Poetry is perception, poetry is impression, poetry is unconscious mind at work, whatever tell you is true in connection with Mahapatra and his poetry. Poetry is blank thinking and the poet a blank thinker, nothing in the mind, consistent and stable, everything in a flux, this may also be true and his poetry can be explained throughthe light chapter of physics.

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R. Parthasarathy : His Poetic AchievementsEveryone will agree that R. Parthasarathy is one of the greatest names in Indo-English poetry since Independence. .His collection of poems Rough Passage has a three-tier structure . In the first sectionExile the

poet describes his life in England where he felt like an exile uprooted from his culture . In the second part Trial Parthasarathy celebrates love and human relationships . In the third section Home-Coming he gives expression to his joy of discovery when he discovers his native roots and tries to harmonize the English language with Tamil culture.

Cultural conflict is at the heart of R.Parthasarathy's poems . As a young student he was \infatuated with England and the English language . But his life in England put an end to his anglomania !He was caught in a cultural dilemma . His poetry is the product of this cultural dilemma. The first section Exile. reveals that the poet's infatuation with the English language and culture is under strain . The more he sees alien English life . the more hebecomes conscious of his Tamil roots . Parthasarathy says :"English forms part of my rational make-up , Tamil my emotional make-up ". This discovery , which must have been very painful to the poet ,is expressed in the first section . His infatuation with English has taken its toll>He has lost his Tamil identity! The poet's enlightenment is expressed in these lines of haunting beauty

"You learn roots are deepThat language is a tree, loses colourUnder another sky. "

In Trial the poet is celebrating love . In England he had non- relationships . Back in India he has formed bonds of love with his own people . Love is a reality here . A look at the family- album fills Parthasarathy with nostalgic memories.. Love gives one a sense of belonging . He realizes that there is no place like home . In the last section of the poem Home- Coming the poet is in an ecstatic mood, though his ecstasy is tinged with regret.He expresses his joy when he comes back to his cultural heritage . He says

"My tongue in English chainsI return after a generation to you "

The poet feels at home when he is amidst his own people . The poet regrets his "whoring after English gods " But an important fact to be noted here is that Parthasarathy is not perfectly at home with the present-day Tamil culture . Alas! Tamil culture is now devoid of all its former glory . The poet expresses his sorrow at the decadence in modern Tamil culture . The poet says that Western civilization has sapped the vigor and vitality of Tamil culture . Even the language of Thiruvalluvar has not been spared, its pristine beauty is irrecoverably lost !. There was a time when the Tamils flocked their temples to worship their gods and goddesses, but today they worship a new set of goddesses --"the high-breasted card-board and paper goddesses of Mount Road!" R Parthasarathy laments the present state of Vaigai river , the river that flows through the temple city of Madurai . There was a time when this majestic river symbolized the vibrant culture of the Tamils The Vaigai was like the Thames of Spenser , but today she looks like Eliot"s Thames - a symbol of decadence! ..R.Parthasarathy"s criticism of present-day Tamil culture shows that he is honest to the core as a poet , and he is not a mere mouthpiece of Tamil jingoism.

As a poet R Parthasarathy is much ahead of his times .His vehement denunciation of Westernization may not be readily appreciated by a generation dazzled by the glitter and glamour of Western civilization .He will definitely have more and more admirers when people realize that a nation dies when it loses its cultural identity and starts worshipping "wrong gods"

"These ashes are all that's leftof the flesh and brightness of youth,My life has come full circle:I'm thirty

I must give quality to the other half,

I've forfeited the embarrassing giftinnocence in my scramble to be man."

Poetry Analysis: R. Parthasarathy’s “Homecoming”SEPTEMBER 22, 2014 / RUKHAYA / 0 COMMENTS

Dealing with Change

R. Parthsarthy’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 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.

Now, as he has failed in his area of interest, namely, poetry; he

teaches. Parthasarthy 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 endeavour 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, Parthasarthy 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.

Love as a Synaesthetic Experience in R. Parthasarathy’s Rough

Passage

Joyanta Dangar

‘Synaesthesia’ is supposed to be the most complex but effective form of what

is called ‘sensuousness’ in art and literature. Besides, synaesthesia is a medical

condition, and it has nothing to do with I. A. Richards’s concept of “synthesis”, nor

with the processes of perception explored in Gestalt psychology. Rajagopal

Parthasarathy (b. 1934) is one of the most successful modern Indian poets writing in

English to use the device with great ingenuity. In fact, Parthasarathy’s fondness for

the tool leads him to create a synaesthetic language itself for expressing the

predicament of a modern man torn between home and abroad. Above all, employment

of synaesthesia helps the poet re-define love --- love as a synaesthetic experience

that relives him for the time being of the pangs of being exiled, though it is not eternal

joy or everlasting love.]

A poem ought to, in effect, try to arrest the flow of language,

to anaesthetize it, to petrify it, to fossilize it. Ultimately, it is

the reader who breathes life into the poem, awakening it from

its enforced sleep in the language.

--- Parthasarathy (11)

Whenever I read the oft-quoted line by Robert Burns: “O my love’s like a

red, red rose”, I can hear a tribal beating his kettledrum accompanied by cymbals ina

distant valley where the people feed on red petals, despite my disclaimer that I,

despite my love for synesthesia, am not a synaesthete. ‘Synaesthesia’ is supposed to

be the most complex but effective form of what is called ‘sensuousness’ in art and

literature. Etymologically, the word is a combination of ‘syn’ (together), from New

Latin and ‘esthesia’, from Greek aisthesis (sensation or perception). Chris Baldick

defines synaesthesia as

“a blending or confusion of different kinds of sense

impression, in which one type of sensation is referred to in

terms more appropriate to another. Common synaesthetic

expressions include the descriptions of colours as ‘loud’ or

‘warm’ and of sounds as ‘smooth’. This effect was cultivated

consciously by the French Symbolists, but is often found in

earlier poetry, notably in Keats” (1259).

Besides, synaesthesia is a medical condition, and it has nothing to do with I.

A. Richards’s concept of “synthesis”, nor with the processes of perception explored in

Gestalt psychology. Diane Ackerman, a poet from Illinois observes in her seminal

work A Natural History of the Senses (the section entitled “Synesthesia”):

[……………………………………………] Those who

experience intense synesthesia naturally on a regular basis are

rare -- only about one in every five hundred thousand people -

- neurologist Richard Cytowic “traces the phenomenon to the

limbic system, the most primitive part of the brain, calling

synesthetes "living cognitive fossils," because they may be

people whose limbic system is not entirely governed by the

much more sophisticated (and more recently evolved) cortex”.

As he says, "synesthesia ... may be a memory of how early

mammals saw, heard, smelled, tasted and touched."

www.the-criterion.com The Criterion: An International Journal in English ISSN (0976-8165) Vol. II. Issue. III 1 September 2011Opposed to “the equilibrium of opposed impulses” (197), that is contended by

Richards as “the ground plan of the most valuable aesthetic responses”, synaesthesia

is a state of distraction.

Many a poet starting from especially Shelley and Keats, the first English

masters of the device, has employed it to add to pleasure of poetry. Donne hears a

“loud perfume”, Crashaw a “sparkling noyse”. Shelley perceives the fragrance of the

hyacinth as “music”; Keats prescribes to “taste the music of that vision pale”. “To the

bugle every colour is red”, writes Emily Dickinson. In George Meredith’s “Modern

Love: I”, a woman’s heart is found to “drink the pale drug of silence.” Dame Edith

Sitwell in her poem “Green Geese” writes: “The moon smelt sweet as nutmeg root/

On the ripe peach trees’ leaves and fruit…”

Though the earliest extant of the use of synaesthesia in Indian poetry in

English can be traced perhaps in Toru Dutt’s description of the Semul’s red flowers in

her “Sonnet”: “And o'er the quiet pools the seemuls lean, / Red, red, and startling like

a trumpet’s sound”, Rajagopal Parthasarathy (b. 1934) is one of the most successful

modern Indian poets writing in English to use the device with great ingenuity. In fact,

Parthasarathy’s fondness for the tool leads him to create a synaesthetic language itself

for expressing the predicament of a modern man torn between home and abroad.

Written over a period of fifteen years (1961-1976) and divided into three parts

“Exile”, “Trial” and “Homecoming”, Parthasarathy’s Rough Passage (1977) is a

sequence of thirty seven pieces, chronicling the traumatic experiences of

transplantation. In 1963-64 Parthasarathy had been working as a British Council

scholar at Leeds University, which gave him a ‘culture shock’ (163), to use the words

of Ramamurthy. In his autobiographical essay “Whoring After English Gods” he

records:

My encounter with England only reproduced the by-now

familiar pattern of Indian experience in England:

‘disenchantment’.

(qtd. in Ramamurthy 163)

However, Parthasarathy’s penchant for synaesthetic language is evidenced at

its best in the second part “Trial”. Celebration of carnal love is central to this part. To

the poet exiled into a foreign country for long, life amounts to a sate of utter difficulty

and, hence “Trial”. And carnal love is a sedative antidote to the present traumatic

state. To depict the excitement of physical love Parthasarathy uses a language, both

sensuous and synaesthetic, that salvages his poetry from being reduced to gross

sensuality.

Learning that “roots are deep” (Rough Passage 75) the poet, who had “spent

his youth whoring after English gods” (ibid.), tries to mitigate his present agony by

remembering the happy days of the past spent in company of his true love, i. e.,

Tamil language. Regarding the theme of “Trial” Parthasarathy writes:

The second part, “Trial”, written between 1961and 1974,

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”.

(qtd. in Sahu 79)

www.the-criterion.com The Criterion: An International Journal in English ISSN (0976-8165) Vol. II. Issue. III 2 September 2011 In section 1 of “Trial” the poet transmutes Tamil into a beloved and

represents the relationship with its characteristic accompanying passion in terms of

‘synaesthesia’:

I grasp your hand

in a rainbow of touch.

(Rough Passage 78)

The metaphor “a rainbow of touch” involves not only a confusion of the

senses but also a subordination of one sense to another. It is a touch-colour

synaesthesia, the tactile image being expressed in terms of colour. The touch has a

sort of prismatic effect in that the poet perceives seven colours by grasping her hand.

In section 2 where the poet goes down memory lane, flipping through the

family album, the visual has been subordinated to the auditory:

“I shared your childhood:

the unruly hair silenced by bobpins

and ribbons, eyes half shut”.

(Rough Passage 78)

As if, the poet, who has been listening to the rustling of her dishevelled hair through

the sense of vision, is disappointed to find it stopped by pins and ribbons. The

expression “a ripple of arms round Suneeti’s neck” also baffles the reader. Has the

poet got the arms with rippling muscles (i. e., muscles which look like ripples)? Does

the poet mean that the touch of the poet’s arms has a ripple effect on Suneeti’s body?

If we choose the second, then it would be the visualisation of the tactile since rippling

is a visual image. English was never Suneeti’s cup of tea; it could not provide

emotional sustenance to her. The “spoonfuls of English / brew” never quite quenched

her thirst of knowledge. Instead, her imagination was fed on folktales told by the

family cook which were tasty and juicy:

“Hand on chin, you grew up,

all agog, on the cook’s succulent folklore.”

(Parthasarathy 78)

The culinary metaphor involves an intermingling of the two senses - the sense

of hearing and the sense of taste, the former being rendered secondary. She rolled

herself into a ball the afternoon her father died but “time unfurled you / like a peal of

bells.” A precedent of this kind of transmutation of sensation may be found in G. M.

Hopkins’s poem “The Windhover”: “High there, how he rung upon the rein of a

wimpling wing / In his ecstasy! Then off, off forth on swing”. In Hopkins the reader

can at once perceive that “[g]oing high up there the bird seems to have become a hung

bell, as it were, ringing the glory of God”(27), to use the words of Prof. Rama Kundu,

the kinetic/ visual being tempered by the auditory. So happens in Parthasarathy here.

Night helps the speaker to achieve a sort of privacy for lovemaking in section

7. In a paradoxical way the body of the beloved that had been dimmed by the harsh

light of Time is now being recognised by the opaque lens of darkness:

It is night alone helps

to achieve a lucid exclusiveness.

Time that had dimmed

your singular form

by its harsh light now makes

recognition possible

through this opaque lens.

(Rough Passage 79)

www.the-criterion.com The Criterion: An International Journal in English ISSN (0976-8165) Vol. II. Issue. III 3 September 2011 It is here worth mentioning that Synaesthetes can visualise colour even in the dark

places. To validate the paradox the poet, however, resorts to another startling use of

touch- colour synaesthesia:

Touch brings body into focus,

restores colour to inert hands,

(Rough Passage 79)

How colour can be translated through touch is here exemplified by Parthasarathy. The

correspondence between touch and sight is finely delineated in Ackerman’s A Natural

History of the Sense (the section titled “Touch”):

Touch, by clarifying and adding to the shorthand of the eyes, teaches us that we live

in a three-dimensional world.

[……………………………………………………………]Touch allows us to find

our way in the world in the darkness or in other circumstances where we can't fully

use our other senses. [4] By combining eyesight and touch, primates excel at locating

objects in space. Although there's no special name for the ability, we can touch

something and decide if it's heavy, light, gaseous, soft, hard, liquid, solid. As Svetlana

Alper shrewdly observes in Rembrandt's Enterprise: The Studio and the Market

(1988), though Rembrandt often took blindness as his subject (The Return of the

Prodigal Son, the blind Jacob, and others):

Blindness is not invoked with reference to a higher spiritual

insight, but to call attention to the activity of touch in our

experience of the world. Rembrandt represents touch as the

embodiment of sight.... And it is relevant to recall that the analogy

between sight and touch had its technical counterpart in

Rembrandt's handling of paint: his exploitation of the reflection

of natural light off high relief to intensify highlights and cast

shadows unites the visible and the substantial. (Bold original)

Similarly, by equating his hands with the mirror before which she undresses

the poet shows his fascination for the sense of touch:

A knock on the door:

you entered.

Undressed quietly before the mirror

of my hands

(Rough Passage 79)

Now the ‘hand’-mirror makes a woman, whose beauty has been dimmed by Time’s

‘harsh light’, beautiful. Here I feel tempted to mention Ackerman’s observation on the

effectiveness of touch in the section titled “Touch”:

Touch fills our memory with a detailed key as to how we're

shaped. A mirror would mean nothing without touch.

[………………

………………………………………………………]But, above

all, touch teaches us that life has depth and contour; it makes

our sense of the world and ourself three-dimensional. Without

that intricate feel for life there would be no artists, whose cunning

is to make sensory and emotional maps, and no surgeons, who

dive through the body with their fingers.

The poet’s obsession with the tactile is further embodied in the following

synaesthesia:

[ ……….] The touch of your breasts is ripe

in my arms. They obliterate my eyes

www.the-criterion.com The Criterion: An International Journal in English ISSN (0976-8165) Vol. II. Issue. III 4 September 2011 with their tight parabolas of gold.

(Rough Passage 79)

Such a multi-sensory metaphor inevitably reminds us of the voluptuous lines of Keats

in “Bright Star”: “Pillowed upon my fair love’s ripening breast, / To feel for ever its

soft fall and swell, / Awake for ever in a sweet unrest.” It involves a confusion of

multiple senses – tactile, gustatory (‘ripe’), and optical (‘obliterate my eyes’).

Besides, it is a shape-colour synaesthesia in that the lover’s eyes are dazzled not by

the golden glitter of her breasts but by their tight parabolas of gold. Again, parabolas,

which being geometrical shapes are likely to be perceived in terms of vision, are

perceived as a tactile experience. Here we get another dimension of the metaphor, that

is, shape-touch synaesthesia.

A confusion of the sense of taste, of touch and kinesis also can be traced in the

following metaphor:

It’s you I commemorate tonight.

The sweet water

of your flesh I draw

with my arms, as from a well,

its taste as ever

as on night of Capricorn

(Rough Passage 79)

Touch along with kinesis allows the lover to taste the ‘sweet water of your

flesh’.

Under the starlit sky at an august night the speaker gazes at the beautiful

hand of the beloved which seems to him a far-flung galaxy. But it is the touch of his

telescopic fingers which helps him bring the distant to his reach:

Yet, by itself, your hand was a galaxy

I could reach, even touch

in the sand with my half inch telescopic

finger […………]

(Rough Passage 80)

This is how touch corresponds to vision, adding to the effectiveness of this

metaphor.

Is the poet a synesthete? does he affect synaesthetic experience? is he on

LSD? are the questions that crop up from the discussion. Oxford Companion to Body

explains that synaesthetes inhabit “a world slightly, but magically different from that

of most people” — a world of additional colours, shapes, and sensations. As Diane

Ackerman observes:

Synesthesia can be hereditary, so it's not surprising that

Nabokov's mother experienced it, nor that it expressed itself

slightly differently in her son. However, it's odd to think of

Nabokov, Faulkner, Virginia Woolf, Huysmans, Baudelaire,

Joyce, Dylan Thomas and other notorious synesthetes as being

more primitive than most people, but that may indeed be true.

Great artists feel at home in the luminous spill of

sensation, to which they add their own complex sensory

Niagara. It would certainly have amused Nabokov to imagine

himself closer than others to his mammalian ancestors, which

he would no doubt have depicted in a fictional hall of mirrors

with suave, prankish, Nabokovian finesse. (Bold original)

www.the-criterion.com The Criterion: An International Journal in English ISSN (0976-8165) Vol. II. Issue. III 5 September 2011It is hard to establish that Parthasarathy was a born synaesthete like

Baudelaire, Dylan Thomas, and et al. Nor is he known for his any “remarkable tricks

of synesthesia” (Ackerman, ibid.) like Dame Edith Sitwell who used to lie in an open

coffin for a while to harness her senses before she started her writing, or Schiller who

would keep rotten apples in his desk drawer and sniff the intense smell to discover the

right word to use in his poetry. But Parthasarathy’s liking for synaesthesia is also

testified in his another exquisitely beautiful poem “Remembered Village”, where the

poet disgusted with the priest’s erroneous Sanskrit in the temple hears ‘Bells curl up

their lips’. It shows the transference of both epithet and sense. Preoccupied with the

prospects of transferred sense the poet also sniffs the odorous howls of the stray dogs

outside:

A black pillaiyar temple squats at one end of the village –

stone drum that is beaten thin on festivals by the devout.

Bells curl their lips at the priest’s rustic Sanskrit.

Outside, pariah dogs kick up an incense of howls.

May be all this is a case of acquired synaesthesia, or the poet consciously

affects synaesthetic experiences. The effects of the physical love as celebrated by the

speaker here also seem to be similar to those of LSD synaesthesia. Contemporary

medical research on hallucinogens shows that a man on LSD (Lysergic Acid

Diethylamide) may have synaesthetic experience. Dutch author and scientific

researcher Crétien van Campen records:

[…………………….]Often I read wild-sounding descriptions

by poets proclaiming the merits of their drug-induced

synesthesia, and then I’d switch to science and read the

pharmacology and neurology of the same experience and

compare notes. The writings in both sections made it clear to

me that there is definitely a special relationship between drugs

and synes-thesia, but that relationship turns out to be quite

different from what I expected.( 104)

He also observes:

In eighteenth-century England, opium was considered a

normal medicine and was used in much the same way that

people use aspirin today: opium was considered a good

remedy for pain, fatigue, and depression and could be

obtained at the local shop.

[………………………………………………………………

………………………………………………] Several English

writers and poets of the Romantic period wrote about their

opium experiences, including Thomas de Quincey, Samuel

Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, George Crabbe, and Francis

Thompson. Their descriptions some-times include visions that

remind me of contemporary reports by synesthetes. For

instance, the poet and opium addict Francis Thompson (1859–

1907) noted on one occasion that he saw the sun rise “with a

clash of cymbals”; on another occasion, he described how

“tunes rose in twirls of gold” when “light through the petals of

a buttercup clanged like a beaten gong.” He also heard “the

enameled tone of shallow flute, and the furry richness of

clarinet”. (ibid.)

www.the-criterion.com The Criterion: An International Journal in English ISSN (0976-8165) Vol. II. Issue. III 6 September 2011Nowhere can be found any mention of parthathasarathy’s being addicted to any such

hallucinogen, although Nissim Ezekiel, one of his contemporaries is said to have

experimented with hallucinogenic drugs. Pritha Chakravorty in her essay “Nissim

Ezekiel (1924-2004)” records:

The 1960s brought major change in his [Ezekiel’s] lifestyle,

turning a sceptical rationalist into drug-taking promiscuous

believer. In 1967while in America, he experimented with

hallucinogenic drugs, probably as a means to expand his

writing skills. (65)

And if Parthasarathy be an addict he was addicted to love as recorded in “Exile”:

as I walk, my tongue hunchbacked

with words, towards Jadavpur

to your arms. You smell of gin

and cigarette ash. Your breasts,

sharp with desire, hurt my fingers.

Feelings beggar description…

(Rough Passage 76)

To suppress the agony of exile he uses physical love as a drug or hallucinogen, which

results in love as a synaesthetic experience. The excitement of love is so much that

one sense overlaps another, creating a sense of confusion as it happens in case of a

man on LSD.

Nandini Sahu observes:

It [“Trial”] is a series of 15 love songs suffused with passion

and sensuousness. The poet accepts love because it offers him

an “unspeakable relief” at the most needed moments. Thus the

period of exile becomes a period of conceptualisation. As a

development to it, “Trial” is an effort at recapitulation of the

poet’s youth against the background of the misery and

loneliness he underwent during the period of exile. It is an

attempt to bring meaning to the present by reassessing the past

and by giving shape to his early youth. (84-85)

However, the speaker is also aware of the inadequacies of love as a synaesthetic

experience:

[……….] thus celebrate

Something so perishable, trite.

(Rough Passage 80)

It is invigorating and refreshing, but transitory. Regarding this Prof. P. K.J. Kurup

rightly comments:

One can go on citing examples showing conflicting passions

within the poetic self where the invigorating and refreshing

quality of love is juxtaposed with the transitoriness of bodily

fulfilment and with the image of death and despair. The

predominant voice in each case is one of modern melancholic

experience of disappointment with an irritable and

unprotesting glumness and a blead recognition of the self’s

and life’s own limitations. (261)

www.the-criterion.com The Criterion: An International Journal in English ISSN (0976-8165) Vol. II. Issue. III 7 September 2011 Parthasarathy’s employment of synaesthetic language, rather touch-oriented

language, in Rough Passage (“Trial”) may be justified by the following observation

by Ackerman on the symbiosis of language and sense of touch:

Language is steeped in metaphors of touch. We call our

emotions feelings, and we care most deeply when something

"touches" us.

[………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………

……….] As Frederick Sachs writes in The Sciences, "The

first sense to ignite, touch is often the last to burn out: long

after our eyes betray us, our hands remain faithful to the

world.... in describing such final departures, we often talk of

losing touch."

And, there is not only a preponderance of the sense of touch, but the tactile sensory

input either invades the territories of other senses, or gets invaded by them, making

the poem both rich and complex. Far from being “the extraordinary heterogeneity of

the distinguishable impulses”(196), that is claimed by Richards as the very hallmark

of such poems as “Ode to a Nightingale”, “The Definition of Love”, “Nocturnal upon

S. Lucies Day” etc., the poem in question is a state of conflicting impulses, where the

impulse of touch rules the roost. However, this border-crossing of the senses never

limits the aesthetic value of the poem, rather makes physical love more enjoyable by

supplementing the inadequacy of one sense by effectiveness of another one. Perhaps

no other literary device can express the excitement of physical love in a better way.

Above all, employment of synaesthesia helps the poet re-define love --- love as a

synaesthetic experience that relives him for the time being of the pangs of being

exiled, though it is not eternal joy or everlasting love.

Works Cited:

Ackerman, Diane. A Natural History of the Senses. (Sections titled “Synesthesia” and

“Touch”) New York: Vintage, 1990.Web. 5 July, 2011.

http://www.american-buddha.com/lit.naturalhistsenses.synesthesia.htm

http://www.american-buddha.com/lit.naturalhistsenses.touch.htm

Baldick, Chris. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. New York: Oxford

UP, 1990. Print.

Campen, Crétien van. The Hidden Sense: Synesthesia in Art and Science. Cambridge: MIT

Press. Web. 1 July, 2011. http://www.scribd.com/doc/55530967/8/ExploringDrug-Induced-Synesthesia

Chakravorty, Pritha. “Nissim Ezekiel (1924-2004)”. Studies in Poetry in English. Eds,

Benoy Kumar Banerjee, Kaustav Baksi. Kolkata: Books Way, 2008. Print.

Dutt, Toru. “Sonnet”. Web. 25 August, 2011.

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/sonnet-81/

Kurup, P.K. J. Contemporary Indian poetry in English. New Delhi: Atlantic

Publishers, 1991. Print.

Kundu, Rama. Wrestling with God. Burdwan: Burdwan UP, 1996. Print. .

Oxford Companion to the Body. Web. 29 June, 2011.

http://www.answers.com/topic/synaesthesia

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Parthasarathy, R. Ed, Ten Twentieth Century Indian Poets. India: Oxford UP,

2002.Print.

-----------------,----. “Rough Passage”, ibid, pp75-84.

----------------, ----. “Remembered Village”. Web. 25 August, 2011.

http://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/users/amit/books/thayil-2008-60-indian-poets.html

Ramamurthy, K.S. Ed, Twenty- five Indian Poets in English. Delhi: Macmillan India

Ltd., 1999. Print.

Richards, I. A. Principles of Literary Criticism. New Delhi: Universal Book Stall,

1991. Print.

Sahu, Nandini. “Between Chronometer and Lost Love: The Poetry of R Parthasarathy”.

Recollection as Redemption. Delhi: Authorspress, 2004. Print.

www.the-criterion.com The Criterion: An International Journal in English ISSN (0976-8165) Vol. II. Issue. III 9 September 2011