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.
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 fal,l through the blazing ai,r 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 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
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, 1
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
- Walsh, William. “Introduction”, Readings in Commonwealth
Literature (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1973), p. xviii.
- Parthasarathy, R. (ed.) Ten Twentieth-Century Indian Poets
(New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1976), p.96.
- 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.
- Ibid., p.126.
- Ibid., p. 176.
8.
Ibid., p.
221.
9.
Ibid., p.
226.
