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 Parthasarathys 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 poets 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. of

Georgia Press, Athens (USA) , in 1976 carries it forward the imagistic
portals. Its 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 not
and 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 villages
shaded 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 of
the 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 faiths sake and to house in the deities, not for
themselves

and the masons and architects remaining anonymous. The rock-built

temples are splendid and grand, an example of architectural and
sculptural excellence, but the beggars still visible at the entrances of
the 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
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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 a
guilty consciousness, marking the malignant purpose in the nuns
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 lands 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 fathers 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 and
distilled, but unexplainable, just as the scenes and sights continue
to be, art-pieces seen on the canvas, how to describe them, how to
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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 same
year. 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 Puritemple with the statues of Jagannath, Balabhdara and Subhadra and the Lingarajtemple telling of rock-cut splendour, the Puri sea-beach with calm and commotion
and 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 reapers 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. He
is 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 Becketts 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 imagists foray and delving, he is a nihilist
too, 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 place
where 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. But
one should not take for the Temple of Jayanta Mahapatra as for George
Herberts 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 flare
lights the pale panes of the hospital
in a final wish of daylight.
Its 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 modern
or 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 Indian
language 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 Mahapatras 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 hanging
on the wall in my fathers 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 mind
because 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 and
international 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 asthikalsha hanging to be disposed off into the holy waters, the rituals going on the sea
shore 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-takers 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 through
the light chapter of physics.
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R. Parthasarathy : His Poetic Achievements

Everyone 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 he
becomes 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 deep
That language is a tree, loses colour
Under 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 chains
I 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 presentday 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 left
of 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 gift

innocence in my scramble to be man."

Poetry Analysis: R.
Parthasarathys
Homecoming
SEPTEMBER 22, 2014 / RUKHAYA / 0 COMMENTS

Dealing with Change

R. Parthsarthys 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 poets 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 grandfathers 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:Whats 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. Parthasarathys 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. Richardss 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, Parthasarathys 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 loves like a

red, red rose, I can hear a tribal beating his kettledrum accompanied by cymbals in
a
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. Richardss 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 (09768165) 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 Merediths Modern
Love: I, a womans 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 Dutts description of the Semuls red flowers
in
her Sonnet: And o'er the quiet pools the seemuls lean, / Red, red, and startling
like
a trumpets 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,

Parthasarathys 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, Parthasarathys 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, Parthasarathys 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 (09768165) 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 Suneetis 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 poets arms has a ripple effect on Suneetis
body?
If we choose the second, then it would be the visualisation of the tactile since
rippling
is a visual image. English was never Suneetis 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 cooks 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.
Hopkinss 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 (09768165) 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 Ackermans 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 Times
harsh light, beautiful. Here I feel tempted to mention Ackermans 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 poets 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 (09768165) 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 loves 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 lovers 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:
Its 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 (09768165) 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 Parthasarathys liking for synaesthesia is also
testified in his another exquisitely beautiful poem Remembered Village, where the
poet disgusted with the priests 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 priests 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 Crtien van Campen records:
[.]Often I read wild-sounding descriptions
by poets proclaiming the merits of their drug-induced
synesthesia, and then Id 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 (09768165) Vol. II. Issue. III 6 September 2011Nowhere can be found any mention of
parthathasarathys 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 [Ezekiels] 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
poets 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 selfs
and lifes own limitations. (261)
www.the-criterion.com The Criterion: An International Journal in English ISSN (09768165) Vol. II. Issue. III 7 September 2011 Parthasarathys 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, Crtien van. The Hidden Sense: Synesthesia in Art and Science.
Cambridge: MIT
Press. Web. 1 July, 2011. http://www.scribd.com/doc/55530967/8/ExploringDrugInduced-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 (09768165) Vol. II. Issue. III 9 September 2011