Rajagopal Parthasarathy is a bilingual poet who wrote in two languages – Tamil and English. His magnum opus “Rough Passage” took him fifteen
years (1961-1975) to complete. The essence of the poem is definitely the
influence of the two different cultures on the life of the poet speaker, Mr.
Parthasarathy. The poem is painted in the clash between two different cultures
– English and Tamil. The poem is written in three parts:
I.
“Exile”
opposes the culture of India to the Europe and examines the consequences of
British rule on an Indian, and especially an Indian’s loss his identity and
therefore his need to go back to his roots.
II.
Second part “Trial” celebrates love as a reality here and now.
III.
“Homecoming”,
the third and final part explores the phenomenon of returning of one’s home.
The
strength of his poem derives from the writer’s sense of responsibility towards
crucial personal events in his life.
Y.P.
Kalra in his essay entitled “The Indian Literature Today” says
that Parthasarathy is concerned with the problems arising from the use of
English Language and his as aspiration to become an English poet. This blind
inclination towards foreign language alienated him from Tamil culture. As a
result he has sensed a loss of identity of his own in the own cultural arena.
The first part of the poem, named “Exile” depicts the kind of life the poet had
to lead among the alien people in England.
Parthasarathy,
having been born as a Tamilian and having inherited
a glorious Tamil past, went to England for his higher education. But there
he received a big shock on realizing that, although he had learnt a good deal
in pertaining the English language, the English literature, and the English
people, he had been delinked from the roots of the whole process. Something of
this feeling is indicated in the following lines:
“You learn roots are deep;
That
language is a tree, looses colour
Under
another sky.”
He
also discovered, to his utter surprise that England is a dirty place, and quite unlike what he had thought it
to be:
“Lanes full of smoke and litter
With
puddles of unwashed
English
children.”
The
British people’s imperialistic arrogance
towards Indians are also offended his sensibility. He found that they referred
the Indians as “coloureds”. On returning to India, Parthasarathy felt that, by
having achieved some command over the English language, he had lost much of his
native identity. He has now become a mismatch of his own country:
“School was a pretty kettle of fish:
The
spoonfuls of English
Brew
never quite slaked your thirst.”
(Poem
No. 2 in “Trial”)
He
felt that the best time of his life had been lost on making use of foreign
language and that results him social separation:
“My tongue in English chains
I
return after a generation, to you
I
am at the end.”
(First
poem in “Home coming”)
The
use of foreign language impoverished the
Indians as they adopted it at the cost of their own culture. He points an
accusing finger at the sin committed by the English in having led the Indian
mind to the English poets only:
“How long can foreign poets
Provide
the staples of their lives?”
The
Indians are unable to understand the perfect knowledge of the English poets
because of their ignorance of the English myths and customs, English seasons,
English culture, English history. Parthasarathy forces on the futility of time
and energy which the Indians consume having this learning. This deficiency or lacuna has made many of
the so-called urban a mock-replica
of the westerns with their manners and fashions. The poet considers the
imperative necessity of rejuvenation by linking oneself to one’s cultural past:
“Turn inward. Scrape the bottom of your
past.
Ransack,
the cupboard
For
skeleton of your Brahmin Childhood.”
In
an ingenious style Parthasarathy expresses the slavish mentality of the Indians in blindly aping the West:
“...the clubs
Are
there, complete with bars and golf-links.”
With
an undercurrent of mild irony, and
feeling distressed and sullen, he attacks the Indian for imitation Western ways
and manners:
“What have I come
Here
for from a thousand miles?”
In
“Rough Passages”, Partasarathy describes the sense of isolation and the feeling
of disillusion which constitutes the modern man’s predicament. The modern man’s
heart remains barren and starved although he appears to be surrounded by all
sorts of company. His eyes are the:
“hinges which the mind turns
Its
fragile door on,
As
I hob-and-nob with death”
Through
the course of his life he observes the change in life-style and the mental
lacuna in the outlook of the modern generation. Noise, hurry, impatience and
emptiness have made modern life meaningless. The fragmentation of the joint family system has aggravated the
feeling of loneliness:
“its a dogfight
All
over, noises, noises.”
Man
has to compromise with life:
“I have exchanged the world
For
a table and chair.”
Parthasarathy
believes that a poet should be the nucleus
of wisdom and joy . A poet like the sun, should cast light on the
regions engulfed in darkness and make them radiate happiness. He would carry
the wisdom to another city “in the bone
urn of my mind”. The saga of human mind is full of sadness and consists
only of noise and fury. Human beings are unable to comprehend the magnanimity
of the Creator. But a poet can give artistic expression and permanence to the
worldly activities of human beings and thus celebrate “something so perishable, trite”. Parthasarathy advocates the need
of mental stability and fortitude in the face of the emptiness and the
vicissitude which constantly threaten human life.
Parthasarathy
is severely critical of the Indo-Anglican poets who are prospering either by
being articulate about nothing or by
fattening themselves on the flesh of foreign poets.
“One can be articulate about nothing...
The
son of a bitch
Fatten
himself on the flesh of
Dead
poets.”
“Rough
Passage” is ultimately a document of self-assessment of a highly sensitive poet
who is haunted by the feelings of cultural alienation and rootlessness. He is
fully conscious of the transitoriness of human life:
“I shall follow. And after me,
My
unborn son.”
He
wishes his poetic powers to decline and to be extinguished in this age of spiritual emptiness:
“Its time I wrung the handkerchief
Of
words dry. Dipped it
In
the perfume of silence.”
He
finds the way to courage through defiance
and by deflating the situation:
“I’ve rolled the fate
Into
a paper ball and tossed it
Out
the window.”
The
poem in “Rough Passage”, says one critic, constitute a three-tier group with a unilateral theme on a primary level and
with multi-lateral theme on a secondary level. In this work we hear the voice
of sensitive man who is deeply conscious of his social and personal commitments.
Through “Rough Passage”, Parthasarathy wishes to awaken the fashionable middle
class Indian society which mortgaged its conscience for material gains during
British rules.
~~~~~*~~~~~
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