CHAPTER-3
Middle Poems: Winter Poems, The Keeper of the Dead, and Landscapes
The fourth book of Daruwalla‘s poetry is Winter Poems Published in 1980. It
contains forty-nine poems which are arranged in five sections: ―Winter Poems‖ (7
poems), ―Hunger-74‖ (9 Poems),‖Variations‖ (4 poems), ―Graffiti‖ (5 poems), and
―Bombay Prayers‖ (1 poem having twelve sections). Michael Hulse calls it ―an uneven
collection‖1 because it is somewhat loosely structured in diffuse sequence of personal
poems. But Vinay Dharwadkar finds ―an unusual cohesiveness‖2 in this book. The use of
the word ‗winter‘ indicates the poet‘s awareness of his growing old (terminating in
death).
We have come of age:
Those who grew up with us
Have already started dying.
(Section 7 of ―winter Poems‖, CP,
p.131).
The themes employed in the book are almost the same as in the previous volumes:
disease, death, pains, poverty and hunger.
Winter Poems (1980), does not have much on the landscape-portrayal, except for
the title-piece ―Suddenly the Tree‖, which offers us such lines as the following:
The tree is now all bark and bough.
Leafless twigs scratch
Against the glass
Like skeletal children
Scribbling on a state,
The just-widowed wind
Beats her head against the glass-panes.
The poet thinks of the wind as a widow in suffering.
Winter Poems (1980) provides us with some poems which deal with the theme of
hunger, sorrow and death. These poems include ―Notes‖, ―Rhapsody on a Hungry Night‖,
and ―Curfew2‖. The shorter poem ―Notes‖ offers us details of hunger, foul, smell of
kerosene, hoarding, death by starvation, selling of utensils, silver anklets, and animals at
cheap prices.By sheer chance, the town does not have any brothel where poor girls can be
sold. The poet says:
There is no red-light area in the town
Where starving daughters can be sold.
(CP, p.135).
The poem is decidedly a fine piece of social criticism.
―Rhapsody on a Hungry Night‖ is again a poem of social realism. The following
passage is quoted here for highlighting corruption in our society:
At way side flag stations
Profiteers offer us
Ten thousand per wagon.
Waif women are offered
One buck for a roll.
(CP, p.136).
Profiteers‘ and ‗waif women‘ are mentioned here as sources of corruption. Financial
corruption and moral degradation are specially noted in the above passage. Afterward, the
poet proceeds to describe political corruption prevailing in India. He hastens to add that
our democracy is in danger because leaders and people are corrupt:
‗Democracy in danger!
The men are corrupt!
‗Democracy in danger!
The Plan is in danger!
Foreign hand in all this!
(CP, p.136).
Not only Indian democracy is in danger, but also its Five- Year-Plan which was started to
set up a socialistic pattern of society. It is also suggested here that for all the failures of
our country, foreign powers are to be held responsible.
Another poem, ―Variations : Curfew 2‖, dwells on a curfew imposed on the city in
the wake of rising acts of violence and bloodshed. Out of fear, people do not dare to
come out of their houses:
Let no one stir. No door should swing
On its rusty hinges and gape with light.
The roads should be clear.
No one stirs at the time of curfew. At the close of the poem, a plea is made for peace and
silence.
Winter poems (1980), is definitely richer in social contents. In this book, we find such
poems as ―Notes‖, ―Rhapsody on a Hungry Night‖, and ―Curfew 2‖. Though a short
poem, ―Notes‖ gives details of hunger, the foul smell of kerosene, hoarding, death by
starvation, selling of utensils, silver anklets, and cattle at throwaway prices. Luckily, the
town does not have any brothel:
There is no red-light area in the town
Where starving daughters can be sold.
The river bank comes to the rescue.
Its sand soft as volcanic ash.
(CP, p.135).
The above passage is a fine piece of social realism directed at a hard-hitting criticism of
bad social practices.
―Rhapsody on a Hungry Night‖ is a poem of socio-political reflection. Corruption
is so rife in Indian society, and this is reflected in the following passage:
We are moving in freight cars
Loaded with rice stocks.
This is our mandate,
No food bandit
Must get near the freight cars.
And further:
At way side flag stations
Profiteers offer us
Ten thousand per wagon.
Waif women are offered
One buck for a roll.
(CP, pp.135-136).
Here bribery paid by profiteers and allurements to ‗waif women‘ are emphatically
mentioned. After mentioning the financial corruption, the poet also writes about the
political corruption. He points out that our democracy is in danger because people are
corrupt:
‗Democracy in danger!
The we are corrupt!
…….. …
……
…..
‗Democracy in danger!
The plan is in danger!
Foreign hand in all this!
But look out for hope‘.
(CP, p.135).
It is suggested here that our democracy is in danger because of rampant corruption
prevailing in Indian. Also, along with democracy, our Five-Year- Plan is also in peril, and
for this the blame is put on the foreigners. In such a situation, how can one be hopeful?
The poem ―Variations: Curfew 2‖ deals with a curfew imposed on the city which
is completely in the grip of violence and bloodshed. As a result, the people are not
coming out of their houses, and total silence prevails around. The poet expresses it as
follows:
Let no one stir. No door should swing
On its rusty hinges and gape with light.
The roads should be clear.
(CP, p.137).
In a troubled situation like this, everything keeps indoors – no one stirs. Even thoughts
and passions cannot be articulated freely. Hence the poet asks us to –
Plug all the cracks.
Fear, love and hate must crumple where they are.
Nerves exposed upon the tarmac must be hacked.
(Ibid.)
Towards the end of the poem, there is a plea for peace and silence. The poet thinks, ―One
passion walls in another‖, and nobody knows whether ―the killer urge/is within the prison
or without‖ (Ibid.). The overall stress is on silence.
In describing the scenes of tension and violence, Daruwalla remains largely nonsentimental and objective. In a way, the social critic has prevailed upon the poet in such
cases. This attitude of the poet is aptly pointed out by A.N. Dwivedi in one of his essays:
―The poet‘s attitude towards India and her prevailing malpractices is ‗unsparingly
unsentimental‘ and daringly realistic.‖3
Winter Poems (1980) is much richer in social criticism. It contains such poems of
great social relevance as ―Notes‖, ―Rhapsody on a Hungry Night‖, and ―Curfew 2‖. Of
these poems, ―Notes‖ is a short piece detailing hunger, foul-smelling kerosene, hoarding,
death by starvation, selling of utensils, silver anklets, and cattle at throw away prices, by
way of sheer good luck, however, the town does not have any brothel:
There is no red-light area in the town
Where starving daughters can be sold.
(CP, p.135).
A social realist is definitely at work here.
Corruption is so rampant in Indian society today (and hence Anna Hazare had to
take to fast for five day in April 2011) that any sensible person is sure to be stung
inwardly over this issue, Daruwalla is also a very sensitive poet who raises the issue of
profiteering and corruption in his poem. ―Rhapsody on a Hungry Night‖is in a powerful
manner. He writes as stated earlier:
We are moving in freight cars
Loaded with rice stock.
This is our mandate,
No food bandit
must get near the freight cars.
And again:
At wayside flag stations
Profiteers offer us
Ten thousand per wagon.
Waif women are offered
One buck for a roll.
(CP, pp.135-136).
After painting such a lucid picture of profiteers and waif women, the poet proceeds to
point out political corruption:
‗Democracy in danger!
The men are corrupt!
(CP, p.136).
And for political corruption, the blame is usually put on ‘foreign hand‘ often, political
corruption and financial corruption are in league with each other in India.
THE KEEPER OF THE DEAD
Daruwalla‘s next book, The Keeper of the Dead (1982), is an Oxford Publication
having twenty-one poems in total. This book fetched the Sahitya Akademi Award for him
in 1984. Reviewing this book for the Indian Book Chronicle, D.S. Maini remarks as
follows:
In short, poetic effects are created only when words do duty in response to the
requirements of the imagination, and the imagination, in turn, invests them with
meanings beyond their putative aspect. I venture to suggest that Daruwalla is precisely
seeking to do this in most of the poems that comprise his latest volume, The Keeper of the
Dead.4
The book is divided into three sections: ―The Keeper of the Dead‖, ―The Unrest of
Desire‖, and ―In the Shadow of the Imambara‖. It has some powerful poems in it, like
―Hawk‖, The Mistress‖, ―Mehar Ali, Keeper of the Dead‖, ―The Night of the Jackals‖,
etc.
The Keeper of the Dead (1982), contains a poem like ―Pestilence in Nineteenthcentury Calcutta‖, which portrays the picture of Calcutta in the terrible grip of the
dreaded disease called Black death or cholera. The following extract presents a terrible
image of this contagious disease:
Bacteria and bacillus throve in the well,
Nestled under the spawnbeds
And killed. the fires burnt higher,
And the dead went up
Like fragments of liturgies
Lost in a great wind.
(CP, p.155).
Here ‗bacteria‘, ‗bacillus‘, ‗spawnbeds‘, and fires‘ point to the killing‘ of so many
persons by the terrirble disease. The opening poem, ―Hawk‖, evokes the image of this
ferocious bird preying upon meeker birds and beasts. The Hawk is full of hate for other
creatures, as he runs mad in his rageAnd then he ran amok,
A rapist in the harem of the sky.
(CP, p.151).
The hawk has already captured a pigeon and kept it screwed up to his heel-talon. The
hawk, through its ferocity, becomes a symbol of power and dominance, of ferocity and
violence.
It has some poems on disease and death, violence and sorrow, -- poems like
―Hawk‖, the title poem itself (on Mehar Ali), and ―Pestilence in Nineteenth- Century
Calcutta‖, and also ―The Night of Jackals‖. The poem ―Hawk‖ is primarily on the theme
of the use of brutal force and violence, as the hawk symbolizes. The hawk is a bird of
prey, and other birds are afraid of it:
And then he ran amok,
A rapist in the harem of sky.
As he went up with a pigeon
Skewered to his heel-talon
He scanned the other birds, marking out their fate,
The ones he would scoop up next,
Those black dregs in the cup of his hate.
This time the hawk has picked up a pigeon, next time he will choose the things one by
one. At the end of the poem, we come across the following lines:
During the big drought which issurely going to come
Doves will look up for clouds, and it will rain hawks.
(CP, p.153).
The hawk is, thus, a fierce bird that brings death and destruction to other mild birds.
As for the poem ―Mehar Ali, the Keeper of the Dead,‖ it is so obvious that Mehar
Ali is doing a very hard duty of disposing off the dead bodies. He is a calm and quiet
man, performing his work sincerely in ―aTartar Cemetery‖ (CP, p.164). He is the last
survivor of his plan, and his days are numbered:
Mehar Ali, the keeper of the dead,
Remains the last of the living,
His days slowly embering into ash.
(CP, p.164).
Evidently, He is an old man counting his days while doing his duty. He has spent his life
with a sense of resignation to his lot.
The poem ―Pestilence in Nineteenth – Century Calcutta‖ describes, clearly, the
outbreak of cholera in the city of Calcutta which turned out to be fatal to human lives.
The poet writes about it thus:
Bacteria and bacillus throve in the wells,
Nestled under the spawnbeds
And killed. the fires burnt higher,
And the dead went up
Like fragments of liturigies
Lost in a great wind.
(CP, p.155).
The cholera was raging in its full fury, causing precious loss of lives. Not only the natives
but also the English officers and the French and Dutch officials were terribily affected by
it. Death had been a natural result of it – ―death was everywhere‖ (p.155). The whole
atmosphere was affected by it. The poet writes:
You lunched with a fellow and by dusk
He was dead, and the tolling from the belfy
Was the only way you heard of it.
(CP, p.156).
One day, a white man went down the Hoogly river on his winter tour where his Sikh
Abdar died all of a sudden. Thus, the pestilence had spread it dangerous tentacles far and
wide.
As regards ―The Night of the jackals‖, which is primarily a love poem; it
celebrates a woman with two kids suffering from cough and cold. In the ninth and last
part of the poem, the woman says like this:
The cough does not subside
But she says: ‗One day
I‘ll die like this,
On your shoulder, coughing‘.
(CP, p.171).
Thus the poem hints at the seriousness of her disease and at her impending death.
The Keeper of the Dead is a poem called ―Pestilence in Nineteenth- Century
Calcutta‖ which also describes in a tense language, the outbreak of cholera in Calcutta
which proved fatal and took away many lives. This is how the poet paints it‘s picture as
stated earlier:
Bacteria and bacillus throve in the wells,
Nestled under the spawnbeds
And killed. The fires burnt higher,
And the dead went up
Like fragments of liturgies
Lost in a great wind.
(CP, p.155).
The ferocity of cholera can be guessed from so many deaths. The English officers and
also the French and Dutch officials were also badly affected by it, as it is clear from the
following remarks of a British bureaucrat:
In this land
Of mud and mire, death was everywhere
(CP, p.155).
The cholera had assumed alarmiung proportions. The very climate had become
contagious. And henceYou lunched with a fellow and by dusk
He was dead, and the tolling from the belfry
Was the only way you heard of it.
(CP, p.156).
The ‗Whites‘ were specially alarmed by the dreaded disease and ‗the fear of‘ death‘. One
day, one of the sahibs went down the Hoogly on his winter tour where his Sikh abdar fell
stricken. Thus, the pestilence in Calcutta had taken so many lives and had created fear all
around.
The title-piece,‖Mehar Ali, the Keeper of the Dead‖, offers a pen-portrait of
Mehar Ali, the last of the living in his family, who performs his self-allotted duty of
burying the dead in a Muslim cemetery. Ali is a somber man who hardly ever smiles. He
hopes against all hope that the sky-woman will come to him and take him away. This is
nothing but the dream of a duty-performing by poor yet sincere man.
―Pestilence in Nineteenth-century Calcutta‖, presents the outbreak of fierce
cholera in the city of Calcutta in the nineteenth century.Not only the natives, but the
English, French and Dutch officials were all badly affected by the raging cholera. People
had become fearful of it, as it had spread in every nook and corner of the city.
LANDSCAPES
Then comes Daruwalla‘s sixth book of poetry, Landscapes (1987), which is
published by the Oxford University press. It contains twenty-six poems in all. The book
earned for the poet the valued Commonwealth Poetry Prize for Asia in 1987. In his
review of the book, John Oliver Perry has observed thus:
Keki N. Daruwalla in Landscapes still connects with his experience (as a
police official) in that world – rather than say, vainly attempting to revive a
Parsee heritage, he privately observes only for marriages and funerals.5
This review is definitely dominated by the ‗police official‘ syndrome, and seems to limit
the appeal of the poems. Another reviewer, Michael Hulse, is also not happy with the
book. He says as follows:The keeper of the Dead and Landscapes are disappointing when
read beside Daruwalla‘s best work.6
The reviews by some other scholars are, however, not so disheartening. Commenting on
this book, Gopal Gandhi says:
Daruwalla‘s Landscapes are vast and varied.His speed is great, his heights
greater.Cruising with him, one can lose ones breath, even become giddy. But at the end
of the journey there is regret at its being over. Homecoming after such a tour, seems ever
so banal.7
Keshav Malik, a well-known poet drawn from the world of journalism like comments on
the book as under:
Quite the contrary…. Is the voice of Keki Daruwalla in his Landscapes
…Daruwalla is as forthright, and as well-fortified, as a war – correspondent
on the battle scence giving out commentaries from moment to moment.8
The noted Australian scholar, S.C. Harrex lauds Landscapes as a collection of nature
poems, being Wordsworthian in content and treatment. He remarks :
As a nature poet Keki Daruwalla, a genuine out-doors man, has served his
country‘s literary interests laudably by producing a picture album of India‘s
unforgettable landscapes.9
Harrex sets Daruwalla in the tradition of the Romantics, but what one must note is that he
is a poet of social realism and matter-of-fact descriptions of real-life scence and events,
not a poet of escapism as the Romantics were.
―Mandwa‖ is one such poems,among many others. It paints the picture of an
Indian coast off the Arabian sea:
At night the harbor lights
Outflicker the stars.
The wind wheezes in through shuttered slats
As if a luck of the night
Were pierced by a glass silver.
(CP, p. 191).
After giving a detailed account of the sea, the harbor, the shining lights and the howling
winds, the poet approaches the innocent villagers to enquire about some myth associated
with the sea:
I ask the villagers, surely some sea-myth
Must have latched itself to this coastal shelf,
Through palaces of luminous coral;
Stories of piracies perhaps,
Of a Zamorian dropping anchor.
(CP, p. 194).
Daruwalla has a ―predilection for personification and what might be termed
‗beastification‖. It is said: ―This device is often used by him [Daruwalla} to boost the
wordsworthian significance of man‘s experience of nature, of the human and animal
presences in the vegetable and mineral world. 10 Obviously, about two-thirds of this book
abound in such natural descriptions. Sometimes the poet‘s affinities with the natural
world are established directly (as in ―mandwa‖), sometimes via a persona (as in
―Gulzaman‘son‖ and ―lambing‖), and sometimes by being impersonal (as in ―Fish are
speared by Night‖).
Daruwalla identifies himself with the Indian spiritual sensibility, such as in
―Crossing Chorhoti‖, ―The Round of the Seasons‖, and ―Striving‘s End‖. These are the
poems where the poet acknowledges the existence of gods, goddesses and deities as an
integral part of the Indian landscape. The poem ―Crossing Chorhoti‖ moves from a
Lawrentian sensitivity to ―the dark gods of fertility‖, reaches the buddhistic ―giant
prayer-wheel‖, and ―the wind gods‖, and finally invokes the blessing of ―Mother-goddess
Dolma‖. Daruwalla prays to the mother-goddess Dolma as follows:
Goddess I am seeking shelter
From the approaching storm
(CP, p. 209).
The tone of irony is perceptible here, as in A.K. Ramanujan‘s poem ―Prayers to Lord
Murugan.‖
One distinguishing feature of this book is the repeated description of the preying
bird ‗hawk‘ and the ferocious beast ‗wolf‘. But in describing them, the poet‘s compassion
is also to be marked:
The Wolves have been slaughtered now.
A hedge of smoking gun-barrels
Rings my daughter‘s dreams.
(CP, p. 196).
S.C. Harrex witnesses in this sort of compassionate description a synthesis of naturalism‘
and ‗humanism.‘ He remarks: ―…. it is natural that the better poems in Landscapes are
those in which these two elements are synthesized.‖?11
Keshav Malik has lauded the poems contained in Landscapes without any
reservations. He opines about this book thus:
The poet [Daruwalla] risks experience, all the exotica, and we are startled,
but quickly to recover poise. Even so, we admire his cool, unruffled
running commentary. Daruwalla has facility with the craft of verse, and so
the poems are well structured in their system of sound; and also, since the
poet is mainly an uninvolved observer of the scene they are rich in names
and nouns from several continents. ….. Rather, he acts as a guide to a
varied territory and its baffling demography. It is for this one enjoys his
work. The manner is straightforward, man to man, with no asides, few inbetween-the-line meanings, and no obscurities consequent on the adoption
of the creed of modernism.12
Daruwalla‘s direct method of narration of landscape is found throughout the
volume; he even obliterates the poet‘s persona in it. For example,‖Christmas Eve Walk‖
depicts the flying flakes of snow as follows:
The sleet is coming in and one
Lone expatriate flake of snow;
The double-deckers hustle past
To Kidlington and Cuttleslowe.
Distance and death are on my mind
As past the Ashmolean I come.
The sky is closing in, it is
A collapsing auditorium.
(CP, p. 219).
The phrases ‗lone expatriate‘ and ‗distance and death‘ reinforce the idea of loneliness and
alienation, of death and separation in this poem. The scene of nature described here is
none-too-happy, none-too-exhilarating. The two poems on Mohenjo Daro – ―Mohenjo
Daro at Oxford‖ and ―The Fall of Mohenjo Daro‖ – are though full of history,
archaeology and anthropology, yet the dominant strain found in it are one of ‗distance
and death‘. These two poems are the ―two nuggets that have come out of the sun-baked
‗dig‘ in Daruwalla‘s mind.‖13 They, like P.B. Shelley‘s poem ―Ozymandias‖, are repeated
with archaeological magnificence, but they go beyond the material that urban civilization.
The two poems are also ―specimens of superb poertry‖, and thus constitute ―a new genre
of ‗popular‘ history.‖14 They are, in a way to poetic imagination as well as to known facts
of history.
You fall where you pleases;
A woman chose a well,
Another chose a rope;
Axes rose and fell.
Only the dust spiraled up
And never came down.
(CP, p. 224).
The above passage puts history and poetry side by side in short and simple sentences.
The last poem, ―Four for Ted Roethke‖, consists of four sections centering on the
sufferings and nervous break-down of Ted after his father‘s [Otto Roethke] sudden
demise. In his footnote to the poem, Daruwalla writes that the father‘s death ―had a
traumatic effect on the poet.‖15 One has to clearly mark Daruwalla‘s propensity for
horrible and frightening aspects of nature, which he describes with all gusto at his
command.
In Landscapes (1987), we have a few on the wolf and the hawk, both being
symbols of ferocity and violence. The poems we have in mind are: ―Wolf‖, ―The Last
Howl‖, and ―Requiem for a Hawk‖. Of these, ―The Last Howl‖ brings out hunger and
death clearly. The poet says:
All the hungers of the world were caged in their bellies
And hungers for the wild.
And the wolves are dangerous creatures, and enter the village in pairs with a plan. One of
them caused a diversion by circling the village and snarling aloud, while the other ran
down the street and carried away a child:
They hunted in pairs, one caused a diversion,
Circled the village, bared his fangs, snarled.
The other raced down the street
And carried away a child.
(CP, p. 197).
Obviously, in cherishing a fearful memory of the wolves the poet goes to his childhood.
In this volume, however, we have a poem like ―Migrations‖ which directly dwells
on the theme of poverty and hunger. The village being in the grip of drought, the villagers
were compelled to leave their houses and to go out to cities for the means of their
livelihood. Initially, they went out in fewer numbers, but later they swarmed the cities in
thousands:
Later there were thousands;
Footsore hordes scouring the land for forage,
Numerous enough to start a tiger-beat
In every nullah.
(CP, p. 203).
But the image evoked of the hungry people is that of animals running here and there for
forage. They are in large numbers. No doubt, the poverty of the Indian people is
emphatically brought out in this poem.
Daruwalla is a different kind of poet, not like those who, confine their vision only
to the urban precincts (like Ezekiel, Pritish Nandy, Shiv K. Kumar, and some women
poets). He goes out in the fresh, open air,watches scences and human conditions, and
reports about the vast and spacious countryside landscapes with all the verve and gusto of
a keen observer of his surroundings. Scholars have specially marked this remarkable
feature of Daruwalla‘s poetry. In this connection, R. Parthasarathy comments thus:
The landscape of northern India – hills, plains and rivers – is evoked in
many poems, notable in ‗The Ghaghra in Spate‘, where the terror of the
villagers at night as they fought the river‘s is recorded with compassion and
understanding. Daruwalla writes, ‗I am not an urban writer and my poems
are rooted in the rural landscape. My poetry is earthy, and I like to
consciously keep it that way, shunning sophistication which, while adding
gloss, takes away from the power of verse.‘There is an obviously Indian
element inDaruwalla‘s verse, especially in his use of the landscape. When it
isn‘t ornamental, the landscape comes alive as a presence on its own. The
language then is pared to the bone. Images are concretc and exact.16
The above-noted quotation throws light on a few things to be noticed about Daruwalla:
(1) that he is a poet of the landscape of north Indian, (2) that he lis a Pinter of rural
landscape, (3) and that the landscape adds a typically Indian element to his poetry.
Answering a question, Daruwalla once remarked as follows:
I do feel strongly about our environment while we are wrecking the forests
being cut to make paper, (what a terrible waste) the vanishing fauna and the
ozone belt and the expanding population.17
The poet feels strongly about the deforestation in our country, about the cutting of forest
to make paper, and about the vanishing fauna and the ozone belt. This indicates the poet‘s
sensitivity towards Nature. Prof. M.K. Naik rightly remarks that ―Daruwalla‘s mind is
continuously busy establishing relationship between nature and man, in various ways and
in different contexts and it is on the working out of these relationships that the success
and failure of these poem would appear to hinge‖.18 Daruwalla makes his nature poems
not merely a means of offering the physical details of natural objects but also a source of
reflection. This is possible by means of his metaphors and symbols (to some of which we
will revert later on). Speaking of Daruwalla‘s portraiture of landscapes, A.N. Dwivedi
writes thus:
The vast landscape of this sprawling and comes alive in the pages of
Daruwalla‘s poetry through his masterly touches. It gets its articulation in
various forms and features,-- as hills, rivers, valleys, trees, plains and
pastures. It grips the poet‘s imagination inescapably, and he tackles it both
in its wild and mild aspects.19
Thus, Daruwalla is a notable poet of Nature and its landscapes. Writing on Daruwalla‘s
landscape poetry, Dr. Ravi Nandan Sinha observes as follows:
Daruwalla landscape poetry is definitely an important part of his oeuvre …
very often the stimulus from without is a starting point for the poetic
process to beging …….. Daruwalla is often thoughtful, almost brooding,
when describing a visual experience. A good deal of reflection merges with
the creation of sights
and
appealing to the reader at many levels
simultaneously.20
From the above quotation it is clear that Daruwalla‘s landscape is full of ‗sights and
sounds‘ which generate thoughts in him for poetic reflection.
Hereafter we shall deal with some of the dominant metaphors and symbols as
found in his poetry of landscapes. These metaphors and symbols include the hawk, the
wolf , the jackals, the tiger (among birds and beasts), the snake (a reptile) and curfew,
pestilence, and violence among human conditions. We shall study them here one by one.
The hawk is a powerful metaphor used by Daruwalla in his poetry. It is
marvelously employed in the poem ―Hawk‖ in The Keeper of the Dead (1982). Here it
operates as a metaphor of ferocity, strength, and violence. While it looks down from a
great height; it is filled with hate and fury:
But he was lost
In his widening wheel
A frustrated parricide on the kill.
The fuse of his hate was burning still.
(CP,p.151).
The usual victims of its passion/fury are crows, mynahs, pigeons and parakeets. And
when it is in a mood of hunting, it spots its victim and then swoops on it in great speed:
And then he ran amok,
A rapist in the harem of the sky,
As he went up with a pigeon
Skewered to his heel- talon
He scanned the other birds ….
(CP, p.151).
It scanned ‗the other birds‘ to prey upon them next time.
It is pity that man has turned to hawking as a pastime. The following lines reveal
this fact:
The tamed one is worse, for he is touched by man.
Hawking is turned to a ritual, the predators
Passion honed to an art;
As they feed the hawk by carving the breast
Of the quarry bird and gouging out his heart.
(CP,p.152).
The third poetic verse shows the hunting of a hare by ‗mother hawk and son‘, but they
can‘t kill him in one fell swoop. Eventually, the hare is killed by the two hawks.
The fourth and last verse has a change of tone, and the third person hawk becomes
the first person hawk. Now, the hawk is learning how to hunt the dreamer and the
freedom-lover‖
But I am learning how to spot the ones
Crying for the right to dream, the right to flesh,
The right to sleep with their own wives, -I have placed them. I am sniffing
The air currents, deciding when to pounce,
(CP,p.153).
Some scholars have associated the metaphor of hawk with a rebel who wants to do away
with the rotten or unjust social system, but he thinks it is, more rightly, associated with
the agency of exploitation, killing and destruction, as clearly mentioned in the above
passage. The hawk‘s aim is to spot the weak and the innocent, who are pursuing their
day-to-day activities in a peaceful manner and to pounce upon them to finish them off.
The expression ‗I am sniffing the air‘ denotes that the hawk is a great opportunist seeking
for the right moment to jump upon the other birds and beasts. Moreover, the hawk is
depicted as ―trained for havoc‖ (p. 153).
At the close of the poem, the idea of hawk being a destructive and ruinous force is
further reinforced. The last two lines run as under:
During the big drought which is surely going to come
The doves will look up for clouds, and it will rain hawks.
(CP,p.153).
Haer ‗the doves‘ are a symbol of innocence and loveliness, and ‗the hawk‘ that of
destruction and death in this poem.
Another poem dealing with the hawk is ―Requiem for a Hawk‖ in Landcapes
(1987). A note is appended to this poem, which runs thus:
According to a report the discovery of a rock- fossil of a hawk has
considerably intrigued both geologists and ornithologists. A well-known
birdwatcher disclose that the sea coast where the fossil was found was at
least a hundred miles away from ‗hawk country‘, 21
The poem was apparently inspired when the poet read the above-noted news
item in a newspaper. And it is written as a requiem‘ or dirge for the dead hawk that was
killed by the strong winds of a storm. When alive, the hawk was an awesome bird of
prey, but on being dead it depends on others for reading of any change in its physical
appearance.
Writing a requiem displays the poet‘s love for this ferocious bird. In this poem, the
hawk is a pitiable creature, - one who ruled supreme over birds and beasts till it was
alive. Like the hawk, the wolf is a metonymic metaphor for ferocity, Hunger and death. It
seems, Daruwalla has knack for wild animals like hawk, wolf, jackal and tiger and
whenever he gets a chance to portray them in his landscape descriptions he frankly does
so. The wolf, as painted in the two poems called ―Wolf‖ and ―The Last Howl‖, is clearly
linked with the poet‘s past, with his childhood, and haunts him even in his dreams.
The first verse of the poem partrays the wolf as it appears in its body. It is a
creature that is firelit‘ or fiery. It circles the poet‘s past, and walks on a bed of leaves
where it settles for sleep, putting its ―black snout/on extended paws‖ (p. 196). The wolf is
described asProwler, wind sniffer, throat-carcher,
His cries drew a ring
Around my night……
(CP,p.196).
Evidently, the wolf hunted the poet when he was a child:
A child‘s night is a village
On the forest edge.
(CP,p.196).
He had stories of the wolf/wolves from his mother, who painted a dark and dreadful
picture of this creature. At the end of the poem, the poet reports that the wolves are now
on the verge of extinction. He writes thus:
The wolves have been slaughtered now.
A hedge of smoking gun- barrels
Rings my daughter‘s dreams.
(CP,p.196).
The disturbed dreams of the poet as a child, while thinking of the wolf, have now been
transferred to his daughter‘s dreams. Obviously, the wolf is a dream-disturbing creature,
but the poet‘s sympathy goes within because it is on the verge of extinction.
The poem ―The Last Howl‖ also rings on the same note, and the wolf is depicted
here as a hunting animal, now on the verge of elimination. The poet used to hear stories
of wolves from his parents and elders. If a traveler ever crossed them in a wild place, he
was sure to be surrounded by wolves and torn into pieces (as in case of the Cossack serf).
In due course, the wolves came to be associated with the past, with the myth:
The wolves never left; their myths increased,
Glowing in the dark like fireflies.
When people talked of salamander fires
They had glimpsed a swarm of wolverine eyes.
(CP,p.197).
The burning eyes of the wolf are particularly to be marked; they glow like sparks. The
wolves are very tricky creatures. They never go out for hunting in singles; they rather go
out in twos:
They hunted in pairs, one caused a diversion,
Circled the village, bared his fangs, snarled.
The other raced down the street
And carried away a child.
As reported above and as rural stories are current, the wolves come to the village in pairs.
One of them cries aloud and diverts the attention of villagers to it, while the other carried
out the rest of planning between them; it enters the village and directly catches hold of a
child‘s throat and disappears in the wild spaces.Rightly does the poet indicate that the
wolves are the hungriest creatures on earth? The poet writes:
All the hungers of the world were caged in their bellies and hungers for the wild.
(CP, p.197).
Because they are the hungriest creatures, they are ever restless, moving to and fro
continuously. And for sure, the wolves are wild animals, like tigers, lions and jackals.
At the end of the poem, the poet is pained to point out that the wolves will soon be
counted among the extinct. Ant hence, the howl of the wolves may be the last one –―and
howled for the last time the howl of no hope‖ (p. 198). The poet clearly mentions that the
wolves are well on the way of extinction.
The poem ―The Night of the jackals‖ is a long poem running into nine sections.
Basically, the poem is a love poem, love between the beloved and the lover (or her
husband). It is a deserted night, and the jackals seem to be howling around in the night. In
the midst of gathering darkness and the howling of the jackals, the beloved/wife is
prompted to make love to her man. Moreover, the children are now sleeping. So, she falls
in his arms:
Suddenly
She is in my arms
Swarming.
(CP,p.166).
The thunder and lighting had frightened her. She presses him hard to herself:
I enter her
The way a boat starved of fresh water
Enters a harbour.
(CP,p.167).
Throughout the night the lovers go on making love—she being ever ready to give all that
she has and he enjoying himself. On a sudden thought, the poet is reminded of the hoarse
cries of the jackals in the night:
The jackals sink their fangs
Into the veins of the night.
Their cries herald
The death of the wilderness
The passing of ghosts.
(CP,p.170).
The beloved/ wife is a patient of cough and spasm, but she wants to pass her remaining
day with her man with utter abandon. Even she says:
‗One day
I‘ll die like this,
On your shoulder, coughing.‘
(CP,p.171).
Generally, the jackals are taken to be ominous creatures. In the poem, they are associated
with the deep, dark night, and thus they become a part of nature. In other words, jackals
are a metaphor of love-making in the midst of enveloping darkness.
Landscapes (1987) is though largely about various scenes and sights, yet it has a
poem like ―Migrations‖ on the theme of hunger and poverty. The suffering people had
fled to cities for means of livelihood in large numbers:
Later there were thousands;
Footsore hordes scouring the land for forage,
Numberous enough to start a tiger – beat
In every nullah.
(CP,p.202).
And these people are imaged as ‗animals‘ which are now out for forage. They come from
villages and come in large numbers. Obviously, the poverty of the Indian villagers is
brought to the fore here.
Notes & Refereces
1. Michael Hules, loc, cit., p.14
2. Vinay Dharwadkar, ―Changing Pattern‖, a review of Winter Poems, The Book
Review, 5, Nop. 6 ( May- June 1981),p.38.
3. Keki N. Daruwalla, Collected Poems : 1970-2005(new Delhi : Penguin Books,
2006)p,.200.
4. Darshan singh Maini, ― A Dream of Words‖, a review of The Keeper of the Dead,
Indian Book Chronicle, 9, No. 4 (February 126, 1984),p94.
5. Johnd Oliver Perry, a review of Landscapes , World Literature Today, 61,No. 4
(Autumn 1987),p.675.
6. Michael Hulse, loc. Cit.,p.14.
7. Gopal Gandhi, ― Bees of the invisible‖, a review of Landscapes, The Book Review,
11, No.4 (Julu- August 1987),p.19
8. Keshav Malik,
a review of Landscapes, Indian
Horizons, 36, Nos. 3-4
(1987),p.49.
9. S.C. Harrex, ― Ripening Vines‖, CRNLE Reviws Journal . Nos. 1&2 (1988),p.40
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.,p.38.
12. Keshav Malik , a review of Landscapes, Inian Horizon,36, Nos . 3-4 (1987), p.50.
13. Ibid ., p.14.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid.,p.15
16. Vrinda Nabar, ―Keki N. Daruwalla : Poetry and a National Culture,‖
Contemporary Indian English Verse : an Evaluation , ed. Chirantan Kulshreshtha
( New Delhi Arnold- Henemann, 1980),p.273.
17. Ravi Nandan Sinha, The Poetry of Keki N. Daruwalla : Critical study ( New Delhi
: BRPC (India) Ltd., 2002),.p.127.
18. D.S Maini, ― A Dream of Words, ― a review of The Keeper of the Dead, Indian
Book Chronicle, 9, No.4 (Feb.16, 1984),p.94
19. S.C. Narula, ―Images of Poetic Reality : an Exposition of Keki N. Daruwalla‘s
Poetry‖, Critical Spectrum : The Poetry of Keki N. Daruwalla ( New Delhi : Mittal
Publications, 1991),p.11.
20. Nissim Ezekiel, Contemporaty Indian Poetry in English, ed . Saleem Peeradina
(Madras : Macmillan India, 1972),p.67
21. R.N. Singh, op. cit.,p.132