Dr. Pallavi Srivastava
Guest Lecturer, English
Department,
C.M.P.Degree College,
University of Allahabad.
Attipat Krishnaswami Ramanujan
(1929–1993) occupies a prominent position in Indian English poetry due to his
intellectual stamina, his ineluctable language and ability to depict the inner
struggle. The noted English critic William Walsh in his scholarly introduction
to Readings in Commonwealth Literature (1973), states that the
‘highest achievement’ of Indian writing in English is in fiction, in the works
of Mulk Raj Anand, R.K. Narayan and Raja Rao, but the future, the promise, lies
in poetry, in the works of Ezekiel, A.K. Ramanujan and Parthasarathy.1 Ramanujan
exiled himself in the United States but his voluntary exile could not cut him
from his immediate native environment and roots. Ramanujan himself describes
the factors that contributed to the forming of his sensibility:
English
and my disciplines (linguistics, anthropology) give me my ‘outer’ forms –
linguistic, metrical, logical and other such ways of shaping experience; and my
first thirty years in India, my frequent visits and field-trips, my personal
and professional pre-occupations with Kannada, Tamil, the classics and folklore
give me my substance, my ‘inner’ forms, images and symbols. They are continuous
with each other and I no longer can tell what comes from where. 2
Although his translations have created a
vogue for the study and propagation of Kannada and Tamil in the West, it is his
poetry which bears the unmistakable marks of his extraordinary genius. He has
published four volumes of poetry to date: The
Striders (1966), Relations: Poems
(1971), Second Sight (1986) and The Black Hen (1995), a posthumous
publication. Ramanujan is determined to seek his identity in India’s past – “I
must seek and will find my particular hell only, in my Hindu mind” (CP, p. 34). His ‘particular hell’ is our
common heritage. His sense of history and his projection of individual
experience as a part of a social milieu are astonishing indeed. R.
Parthasarathy praises his poetry as a “product of a specific culture” and points
out that his real greatness lies in his ability to translate this experience
“into the terms of another culture.” 3 His interests centre round
folklore, anthropology, structuralism and biculturalism. Before him ancient
Indian literature was considered to be mainly Sanskritic and it is his
pioneering translations of ancient Tamil poetry into modern English that
altered perceptions of the Indian literary map in the West. One can easily
confront with Hindu myths and legends, gods and goddesses, customs and rituals
in his poems. In fact, he has brilliantly and poetically fused the experiences
of the outer world with the responses of the inner world. He has combined the
powerful ancient myths and legends with the ironic skeptical view of actual
life.
In both collections of verse The
Striders and Relations, we find Ramanujan quite desirous to discover
his roots and the manifestation of this desire in a variety of ways strengthens
his poetry. His second volume of verse, Relations is richer in mythical
content and narration. The poem “One, Two, May be Three Arguments against
Suicide” puts forward its logic against the act of committing suicide by a
person. It is in the third part of the poem that the suggestion is made that
desire is ‘endless’ and that a person prone to suicide must keep himself calm
and burn all his desires, including the desire of Kama (passion). In
fact, the poem directly mentions Kamasutra, the Treatise of Love and the
legend of burning Kamadeva, the God of Love and Passion by Lord Shiva. It is
Ramanujan’s superb mastery that he has introduced the ancient Hindu myth in
barely seven lines:
Remember
what the wise callous hindus
said
when the love-god burned: keep your cool,
make
for love’s sake no noble gesture.
All
symbol, no limbs, a nobody all soul,
O
Kama, only you can have no use
for
the Kamasutra.
Ashes have no posture. 4
Kamadeva’s daring attempt
to stir passion in during Lord Shiva’s deep meditation causes him punishment.
Afterwards, the heavenly wedlock of Lord Shiva and Parvati results in the birth
to Kartikeya, the War God who eventually slays Tarakasura in a fierce battle.
Thus, Ramanujan has marvellously intertwined the Kamadeva-Shiva myth with the
Parvati-Shiva myth and thereby emphasised the futility of ‘desire or passion’.
The poem “Compensations” also takes us to
the Shiva myth though in a different context. The poet refers to the disastrous
Tandava dance of Lord Shiva on the Doomsday, indicating the inevitable
deluge of the entire creation. The poet watches the speeding motion of watch
thus:
surpassed
only by the last
miracle
of grace, the three-eyed
whirlwind
of arms, dancing on
a
single leg though he can dance
on
many, kind returning god
of
Indian deluges, 5
According to Hindu
mythology, the Lord Shiva performs the destructive dance when the dooms day is
about to come. The Hindus believe that after the deluge caused by the Lord
Shiva, the Lord Brahma, the creator of the Universe, reconstructs and
reinvigorates the entire creation of the universe in order to start a new era.
Another poem “Prayers to Lord Murugan” is
composed on the Dravidian god Murugan. Murugan is defined as the ancient
Dravidian god of fertility, joy, youth, beauty, war and love, represented as a
six-faced god with twelve hands. Murugan occupies an important place in the
life of South India in its folklore and mythology. The Lord has been treated
with considerable length in eleven stanzas of the poem. The poem has an element
of aphoristic wisdom of the vacanakaras. It is the intelligent use of
folklore with an ironic awareness of the modern situation that lends the poem
its distinctions.
Ramanujan’s next volume Second Sight
abounds in Hindu myths and legends, god and goddesses. The volume opens with
the poem “No Amnesiac King”, mentioning the well-known legend of Raja Dushyanta
and forest beauty Shakuntala, the adopted daughter of Kanva Rishi. The story is
marvellously narrated by the celebrated Sanskrit poet-dramatist, Kalidasa in
his famous work Abhijnan-Shakuntalam. The story narrates an act of crime
on the part of the king Dushyanta for not remembering all about his beloved
Shakuntala whom he meets and falls in love in the ashram of the sage Kanva and
with whom he enters into a fruitful union after Gandharava marriage in
the thick part of a forest. The cause of the King’s absented-mindedness is the
curse given by Durvasa rishi to Shakuntala who ignores his presence at her
door. Consequently the King does not recognize Shakuntala in his court. Her
ruffled condition does not move the amnesiac King as she loses the wedding ring
gifted to her by the King while she is bathing in a river. A fish engulfs the
ring. The fish is later caught by a fisherman and sent to the royal cook who
cuts it open and finds the ring. The ring is restored to the King that causes
the recovery of the king of all his lost memory as well as the repentance. This
ancient tale retold by Ramanujan is worth noting:
the one well-timed memorable fish,
so one can cut straight with the royal knife
to the ring waiting in the belly,
and
recover at one stroke all lost memory 6
The next poem “A Minor Sacrifice” relates
the old story of Raja Parikshit and his son Janmejaya who vows vengeance and
performs a sacrifice:
that draws
every snake from everywhere,
till snakes of
every stripe
begin to
fall
through
the blazing air
into his altar fires. 7
Under the terrible grip of
Kaliyuga, Raja Parikshit
kills a snake while on a hunting spree and for mere fun places it around a
sage’s neck and thereby, invites rishi’s anathema in wrath of an early death of
the king by snakebite. The King’s son, Janmejaya performs the snake holocaust
to avenge the snakes. Such is the overpowering effect of the magic that draws
every snake leapt into the altar of sacrificial fire and got burnt. But, unfortunately,
amongst them, a poisonous snake Takshak remains stuck to the leg of Lord
Indra’s throne. When mantras recited by the sages and pundits begin to shake
Lord Indra’s throne, the Lord advises Takshak to assume the shape of an
ogre-dressed Brahmin. By doing so, Takshak changes his shape and comes to the
site of the magic rite. When the sages and pundits see through their intuitive
insight that there is no snake left in the universe, they end their so-called
‘minor sacrifice’.
In Second Sight, the poem “Zoo
Gardens Revisited” makes a mournful commentary on the lack of warmth and
sympathy in humanity at large for the innocent creatures. The poet invokes
various Hindu gods to protect them and alludes to various incarnations of Lord
Vishnu. The paragraph of this prose poem deserves to be quoted:
Lord of lion face, boar snout, and
fish eyes, killer of killer
cranes, shepherd of rampant
elephants, devour my lambs,
devour them whole, save them in the
zoo garden ask of your
belly. 8
The phrase “Lord of lion
face” indicates to the incarnation in which Lord Vishnu assumes the shape of
Half-man and Half-lion. The Lord is the deliverer of the world from tyrannical
clutches of Hiranyakashyapu, the father of Prahlad, a great devotee of Lord
Vishnu, “boar snout” indicates to the Lord’s assuming the shape of Varaha,
who saves the stolen earth from the clutches of the demon thief by lifting it
from waters of the deep. The succeeding incarnation of Lord Vishnu is of Matsya
– “fish eyes” that takes place to save Manu, the progenitor of the human
race from a great deluge. While referring to another phrase “shepherd of
rampant elephants”, the poet recalls an Indian myth, according to which, the
Lord Vishnu rescues Gajendra from the jaws of a mighty crocodile. Hindu
mythology also mentions the Lord Vishnu’s incarnation of Kurma, the
tortoise. By sitting on the back of it, the Lord recollects some lost but
valuable things during the deluge. All the same, during the churning of ocean,
the same Kurma’s back
has been utilized by the Gods as an oscillating shaft of the mountain Mandra,
in a tug of war between gods and demons. The poem also refers to the
incarnation of Lord Vishnu as Kalki, the white horse who makes the
purgation of the world possible. The expression “zoo garden ark of your belly”
alludes to the Biblical story, telling the humble effort of the God to save the
creation. He saves two of every kind of creatures in Noah’s ark at the most
crucial time of destruction. The poet attempts to harmonise both mythologies,
Eastern and Western and thus transcends the local for the universal and the
familiar for the mythical.
In the poem “The Difference”, the poet
illustrates the Hindu myth of Lord Vishnu assuming the shape of “the Dark One”
– i.e., the Vaman God. According to the tale told in the myth,
the Lord Vishnu appears before the king Moradhavaj in order to examine his
world–renowned liberal and generous nature. In his alms, the Lord demands mere
three steps of earth. The Lord measures the entire region of earth in the
second and the entire region of underworld in the third step though this is not
mentioned herein. But the plight of the king is not over as the lion, the
chariot of the Lord is terribly hungry. The Lord asks the king to feed the lion
the fresh flesh of his only son by slashing him into two halves but without any
sign of lamentation. The king and his wife ultimately decide to move the saw
over the head of their lovely son closing their eyes completely. But the Lord
shows His true mettle and catches hold of the hands of the king and his wife.
The Lord blesses them with everlasting fame and glory.
The last paragraph of the poem “Moulting”
is also mentionable as the poet invokes Garuda, the Lord of snakes and
eagles in order to obtain the blessings for the security of his lovely son:
Lord of snakes and eagles, and everything in between, cover
my son with an hour’s shade and be the thorn at a suitable height
in his hour of change. 9
In Ramanujan’s last volume of poetry, The
Black Hen, one can clearly discern the memorable illustrations of various
Hindu gods and goddesses. The poem “A Devotee’s Complaint” is quite religious
or instructive mentioning the three Hindu deities – Lakshmi, Saraswati and
Shiva and the way of worshipping them:
Try to curry favor
with Lakshmi,
you lose an eye-tooth.
Saraswati, she slaps you hard
and where her fingers touch
your cheek, you’ve no hair
…. ….. …..
…..
If Siva touches you –
when you cut your finger
in the kitchen
not blood but ash spills
from your cut as it did
for that ascetic
who dried out for Siva. 10
The poem “No Fifth Man” is based on a
Sanskrit parable from Vishnusharma’s celebrated Panchatantra. The poem
is an illustration of the foolishness of four learned but egoistic Brahmins who
know the miraculous Sanjivini Vidya that breathes life into dead
creatures. According to the parable, five Brahmins “go abroad to learn / all
the sixty-four arts” (CP, p. 243)
mentioned in Sh
stras. Afterwards, when they meet in the woods,
there creates a stir “to show off” their learning. The first man picks up a
bone randomly and by blowing syllable or mantras on it, he produces “a
tiger’s skeleton” there. At this the second man endows it with “liver, lungs,
arteries / inferior and superior” (p. 243), paws and claws and veins and a
gender. The third man provides it “the pelt of stripes / and gold” (CP, p. 244) while the fourth Brahmin
breathes the most precious life into its structure. The fifth Brahmin is
ignoramus and unlettered and climbs up a tree hurriedly in fear. After coming
into full life the tigress pounces upon the four talented Brahmins standing
before it and swallows them up. The poet equates the making of a poem with Sanjivini
Vidya and reflects his own thoughts about writing poetry which once done
takes hold of the creator.
Further Ramanujan’s deep love of the Hindu
myths and legends and folktales culminate in the three mythology poems –
“Mythologies I, II, and III”. The first two mythology poems are remarkable for
their juxtaposition of the reality of the myth with the fact of the poet’s
self. Using a myth, related with the past, Ramanujan has showed the continuity
of his own self from the past to the present. All the same, in these poems, he
tries to incorporate some sort of prayer motif as that of a true devout Hindu
at the last stage of his life. These poems evince the sense of death and not
the fear of death unmistakably but the most implicit thing that is evident in
the prayer motif is the willingness to have a union with the divine. In “Mythologies
I”, the poet revokes the myth of Krishna and Pootna. The myth relates the story
of the notorious king of Mathura and the uncle of Lord Krishna, Kansa who was a
cruel king and about him it was prophesied that he would be killed by the
eighth son of Devaki, Kansa’s sister. With the intention of killing the baby,
Kansa sends Pootna, the she demon to Gokul, the abode of Yashoda where Lord
Krishna was then being reared under her motherhood, to feed the baby from her
poison-coated nipple to kill him. The poet’s precise depiction of the myth is
remarkable:
The
child took her breast
in
his mouth and sucked it right out of her chest.
Her carcass stretched from north
to south.
She changed, undone by grace,
from deadly mother to happy demon,
found life in death. 11
In “Mythologies II”, the poet highlights
the myth of Lord Vishnu, the slayer of the tyrannical king Hiranyakashyapu, the
atheist father of Prahlad, a staunch devotee of Lord Vishnu. The poem sketches
graphically “the perfect boon” obtained by the king:
not to be slain by demon, god, or by
beast, not by day nor by night,
by no manufactured weapon, not out
of doors nor inside, not in the sky
nor on earth, 12
However, when the
torturous behaviour to Prahlad reaches its culmination, Lord Vishnu, assuming
the shape of Narisingh, a half-man – half-lion, appears from the
concrete pillar of the palace to prove his omnipresence and to protect the
staunch faith of his devotee, Prahlad. The Lord tears off the king, keeping him
on his knees at threshold with his “bare claws” at twilight.
“One More on a Deathless Theme” is yet
another poem in which the poet refers to the Ardhanarishwar concept of
Hindu mythology. Lord Shiva accepts His consort Parvati as one half of His body
and hence the Hindu concept of Ardhanarishwar points to an image of the
Lord Shiva as half-man and half-woman.
Thus by making superb use of myths and
folklore as themes in his poetry, Ramanujan has revived old forgotten myths and
legends in his poetry. His poetry very aptly conforms to the norm of
post-colonial literature as he has successfully converted his expatriate
condition and post-colonial situation to his advantage and brings the image of
India alive in his poetry.
REFERENCES
1.
Walsh,
William. “Introduction”, Readings in Commonwealth Literature (Oxford: At
the Clarendon Press, 1973), p. xviii.
2.
Parthasarathy,
R. (ed.) Ten Twentieth-Century Indian Poets (New Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1976), p.96.
3.
Ibid., p.95.
4.
Ramanujan,
A. K. The Collected Poems (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000,
including the unpublished The
Black Hen), p.72.
5.
Ibid., p.110.
6.
Ibid., p.126.
7.
Ibid., p. 144.
8.
Ibid., p. 154.
9.
Ibid., p. 176.
10. Ibid., p. 237.
11.
Ibid., p.
221.
12.
Ibid., p.
226.
Dr. Pallavi Srivastava
Guest Lecturer, English Department,
C.M.P.Degree College,
University of Allahabad,
8H/10, Shivkuti,Allahabad,211004.
Ph. – 9839036991, 9307638385.
E-mail:
pallavi_manu2001@rediffmail.com