Ecology: A.K. Ramanujan

By: Bijay Kant Dubey 

Ecology excerpted from Second Sight (published in 1986) is one of those poems of A.K.Ramanujan which deal with man and trees and their relationship, bringing to fore the ecology matter doing the rounds today. Here in this poem the poet talks of the red champak trees as well as his mother who is sick with migraine, the story of age-old relationship in between the two and the writer as the third person meddling in, taking the things from his own perspective, contradicting and arguing to establish, take a toll  upon. But apart from the champak discussion and migraine, what is more important is to know is this  that Ramanujan is first and foremost an ironist and his praise lies in his irony as he cannot help without it. The second thing is this that his is an oblique approach. To speak in the undertones and the overtones is the specialty of his poetry. If to see it otherwise, his is a base of vyangya  and vakrokti. He cannot say the things without a twist or turn, without a pinch of salt, a fillip taken. To spice the things and to see with the colourful eyes is the forte of the writer.

After the first rains he embarks upon catching the train hurriedly to land at to reach home in a rage, a mile away from his home, he feels about the trees in blossom, the champak flowers hanging by, bedecking as well as fragrancing enough which while on the other may cause harm to his mother in the form of severe unbearable headache. With an aura of their own, they have spread the heavily-hung pollen with fragrance which even the winds cannot sift. Even the house in which they live in cannot keep it aloof from and the scent entering into through the pores like unwanted guests prohibited from and fragrancing  all the time.

 

 

Ecology by A.K.Ramanujan

 

The day after the first rain,

for years, I would home

 in a rage,

 

 for I could see from a mile away

 our three Red Champak Trees

 had done it again,

 

had burst into flower and given

 Mother her first blinding

migraine of the season

 

with their street-long heavy-hung

 yellow pollen fog of a fragrance

 no wind could sift

 

 no door could shut out from our black –

 pillared house whose walls had ears
 and eyes,

 

 scales, smells, bone-creaks , nightly

 visiting voices, and were porous

 like us,

 

 but Mother, flashing her temper

 like her mother's twisted silver,

 grandchildren's knickers

 

 wet as the cold pack on her head,

would not let us cut down

 a flowering tree

 

There is nothing but the talk of the champak trees, the mother with the likeness, sense and sensibility of her own but the son complaining to cut it down as for migraine. The poet has personified the tree and it seems to be a part of discussion as the poem Felling of A Bunyan Tree by Dilip Chitre too is same in theme and content. The mother has the reasons of her own for her likeness. This is as because the trees have grown through the dropping of the seeds by the birds which are but providential in some sense. The other thing is this that the daughters like to keep them in the baskets and can be used for worship, can be for their wedding purposes if the time coincides with flowering. Flowers are also needed for worship. Some also like to keep it into the braid of the hair. Daughters and children like to possess the flowers.

The theme of the poem is whether man can live without the trees. Trees are important for us and our existence. The answer is clearly, no, man cannot without and this too Wordsworth says it in the poem, A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal. But as a poet Ramanujan is so much closer to Alexander Pope and John Dryden as the Augustan Age of poetry suits him best and his protagonist works as a buffoon, a scoffer, a satirist, a humorist and a mimic. Comic, humour, satire, caricature, laughter, joke and comment are the chief properties of his poetry. There is of course something of generation gap which we derive it from the ideas of his mother and son both as the mother is ready to bear the pains of migraine but the son in favour of cutting down. This states how we have lived with the trees, how have our sadhus and sadhakas with the beasts and brutes of the forests.

When we read the first stanza, the pictures and images of the first summer rain, a passenger alighting at the halt and coming and that too with a view to seeing the old house and solving some problem:

The day after the first rain,

for years, I would home

 in a rage,

 

The poet often comes to and puts before the proposal of cutting down the tree and the mother in turn declines to do in her each and every attempt of reconciliation and coming to terms to.

In the second small stanza of the poem, the poet talks of the champak blossoms, bedecking and beautifying the space, engaging the landscape with its flowering, beauty and fragrance, the pollen falling and letting the earth cover up  with the dust of it:

for I could see from a mile away

 our three Red Champak Trees

 had done it again,

 

Even from a distance he can see the red champak trees in flower and with the bounty of bliss and boon or bane every season. This is a quality of the flower tree that it keeps the environment pure. One can feel the scent or fragrance when passing through the ways.

The flowers in bloom and the headache blinding in their first spate lie it discussed in:

had burst into flower and given

 Mother her first blinding

migraine of the season

 

The lines speak of the burst into flowers, the season’s coming, and mother feeling the first bout of pain as for migraine. The lines in continuation of the same theme carry on theme, the Hamletian dilemma, to cut or not to cut.

When the champak flowers bloom, they strike us with their golden beauty and fragrance lying heavy with the air. Let us see how he writes:

 

with their street-long heavy-hung

 yellow pollen fog of a fragrance

 no wind could sift

 

The champak flowers yellowish and golden, in full beauty and fragrance charm us peculiarly apart from the pollens fallen, scattered over and the air thick with. The imagery is golden no doubt here draped in gold.

 

No door can shut out the smell, the strong odour, the heavy scent coming in and so is his house even though he wants to shut out and letting it not come. The black-pillared house too seems to be with eyes and ears.

 

no door could shut out from our black –

 pillared house whose walls had ears
 and eyes,

 

The house too is porous like us as because it too appears to be a part of the discussion going on between mother and son and the house seems to be hearing it about.

 

 scales, smells, bone-creaks , nightly

 visiting voices, and were porous

 like us,

 

There is something of the whispers going around, discussions taking place. The walls of the house seem to be partaking in the discussion around, maybe it a fuss, the fuss of Uncle Podger or the whispers of Macbeth after the dagger held into the hands of his smeared with blood thinking the walls have heard and the stars have seen. So is the case with the champak blossoms and the pollens scattering to enter in.

But mother gets displeased when the matter comes up for a discussion and she turns it down as for environment, sense of beauty and the daughters and granddaughters and sons. The picture of a grandmother huddling and caressing her son’s daughters and sons too flashes upon when we talk of her.

but Mother, flashing her temper

 like her mother's twisted silver,

 grandchildren's knickers

She will not let her cut down the champak trees so full of golden yellow flowers and sweet redolence catching our fancy and maddening us with its sweet redolence. The cchatim blossoms too are similar in scent and redolence, but the leafless standing palash and simul blossoms hang by peculiarly during the spring season.  The tiny seuli blooms blooming and scattering and the kaaminis white and icy cool have too an aura of their own.

 

 wet as the cold pack on her head,

would not let us cut down

 a flowering tree

 

It is a family matter and Ramanujan is a writer of his family matters and nowhere can he go leaving the periphery of it.

Ecology is no doubt a representative poem of A.K.Ramanujan wherein he talks of the family matter, the house he was born, the champak trees in blossom and motherly views and opinions, the pollens scattering, the air thick with the heavy scent and the disease migraine afflicting her. The son wants to get it cut, but the mother likes it not as for conventional views. Trees are but a part of life and Nature and the world inhabit and live in. They keep the environment fresh and lively. We get flowers and logs from. The second thing is this that people love flowers and their sweet scent. Even Gods need them. The other meaning of this poem is this that this world consists of all, the living and non-living things and both must co-exist as they have been for years and years and one cannot be imagined in the absence of the other. The poem opens up new vistas and avenues of thought and we start thinking of flower plants and exotic trees. The banyan tree with Savitri and Satyavan, the peepul tree with Buddha seated under it getting Enlightenment, the bel tree connected with Shiva, how can we forget our roots and connections? 

Time and Time Again by A.K.Ramanujan

 By: Bijay Kant Dubey

Or listen to the clocktowers
Of any old well-managed city

beating their gongs round the clock, each slightly
off the others’ time, deeper or lighter

in its bronze, beating out a different
sequence each half-hour, out of the accidents

of alloy, a maker’s shaking hand
in Switzerland, or the mutual distances

commemorating a donor’s whim,
the perennial feuds and seasonal alliance

of Hindu, Christian, and Muslim -
cut off sometimes by a change of wind,

a change of mind, or a siren
between the pieces of a backstreet quarrel.

One day you look up and see one of them
eyeless, silent, a zigzag sky showing

through the knocked-out clockwork, after a riot,
a peace-march time bomb, or a precise act

Of nature in a night of lightnings.

Time and Time Again by A.K.Ramanujan is a complex  poem with a hidden meaning lying under the poetic coating of time and its reflection upon mechanical time and the time of men and the world and in them lies it the psychic frame-work of communities of different faiths, ethnic groups and races. How their fracas and frictions and fusions, how the things tearing them apart and rejoining them thereafter? What is it in essence? It is really difficult to say it. An outer reading of it will tell it that this is a poem of the tower clock, but it is neither a Shakespearean tower nor a Hazlittian sun-dial. It is also neither Bergsonian mechanical nor cosmic time. It is more about human relationships, making and unmaking in the course of time, tangible human relations, forging alliances, different communities at strife and bonding. Had it been about the time, the clock tower, it would have been better, but it is about men and their relationships, communities at peace or strife. How do the narrow mentalities clash and it is time that rejoins them, makes them come to a compromise. Ramanujan often distorts thoughts and ideas with his clichés. To say ironically all the times with a forked tongue plunges us into a duality of meaning. To read him is to feel meaning at the crossroads of words. To him, poetry is but a puzzle, crossword. To twist and turn is the poetic job of Ramanujan. To  use fun, pun and irony is his forte as for a double meaning which he entertains in plenty. His poetry is replete with doublespeak. Does the poet mean to say it that the bells may be different but the time is the same? Does he mean to say that alloys too make a difference in sounds?  But what it strikes us most is the heaviness of engulfing situations, circumstances entangling. While the tower clocks keep tolling, striking, times fleeting away, even during that time the communities seem to be at strife oblivious of the short span, duration of life.

What the poem is exactly we do not know. Is it about the time of the world? Is it about disharmony? What is it about? Will after the riot and the chaos, things will be created afresh? If the city is well-managed going by the strike of the clock tower, why does the tumult take in by surprise sometimes? In Time and Time Again Ramanujan has seen the people joining and rejoining, disintegrating and  integrating. What is more baffling to feel is that he is very complicated and intriguing. But after  the time of chaos, commotion and tumult, the people again return to normalcy in due course of time, trying to patch up it all, hush up the matter. The tower clock goes on striking, denoting time, maintaining and keeping so is human relationship. Even during the times of any change, the winds   reshuffle relationships. Time and Time Again as a poem is one of intricate human relationship and human society always at cross  irrespective of the striking tower clock.

How does the tower of the heart respond? How is the heartbeat of society? How the pulse of it, the nerve of? Everyone beats the gongs of its own.  If the communities keep clashing, what about the skies above the towers? Societies deal with tensions and troubles, quarrels and altercations. None cares about peace of mind, peace of soul. Does the poet mean to write about the tower clocks of different communities and their psychic spaces? Should the clocks go striking or their hearts too must change in time with the winds of change? None knows it that some clock-maker from Switzerland has made it.  The donor’s whims too it carries with.

 

The Lake Isle of Innisfree: Yeats

 

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

Where is the lake isle of Innisfree? Why does he want to go there? Is that the scenery and the landscape which but tempts him just like Tintern Abbey of Wordsworth and flashes upon the mind’s plane for a recollection? Or, for some romantic mood and its pensive reflection and the escapist temperament he wants to escape to? What is the matter? Where will he go lastly? What will he after gliding into? But whatever be the poetic ruffle, the crux of it, The Lake Isle of Innisfree is at first instance a poem of tranquil calm, serenity, peace, quietude and solitude. As his days spent in County Sligo, in being attuned to Irish folktales, myths and legends and the occult, Yeats as a poet reposes in the Irish lore and Irishness for a soothing influence away from the humdrum of life, the monotony and drudgery of it.  One from the Anglo-Irish descent, he is a Protestant with a standing of own to contradict and refute to conform. His mind can go nowhere barring Ireland where he was born, where grew up to be man, was educated and reared, felt to feel it personally and privately to reflect upon. The poem is just like Martha of Walter de la Mare, Sea Fever by John Masefield, Look, Stranger by W.H.Auden and Ode On Solitude by Alexander Pope. Away from the circuit of civilization, he wants to move away just like Lawrence writes in Sea and Sardinia and other travelogues. The magic and charm of dream and imagery take him away from. None but a daydreamer or a night dreamer can write such a poem. The dreamy surface and the visionary glide of the poem are marvellous together with the tell-tale narrative and the make believe element inherent in it.

The poet will arise and will go for Innisfree where in the calm surrounding of the lake and the land mass he will build a small cabin made from clay and wattles and will settle to see and observe and nine beans he will plant. A hive for the bees too will be there and he will like to live alone with the bees   hovering around imaginatively and gliding along. The scene is one of pollen scattering and dreamy glides taken. Where does he want to go in search of peace, silence and content?

He will have peace, peace enthralling the heart, peace, all around peace dripping as the drops of dew or honey. The peace of mind, the peace of heart, the peace of soul, it is all that he seeks for and he will feel complacent. It takes time to settle and to be at peace and so is the atmosphere and environment of Innisfree, the landscape and scenery of it. The morning time and its silence, the mist uncovering and the light getting visible, the start of day with a freshness of its own, how to take to?

Wherever he goes to, he carries with him the imagery of the water dripping, spilling from the shore to the lake with a flow, murmur and babble of own. He may not be there, but the music still does for him. He has not forgotten the images and landscapes seen and enjoyed as they remain still captured in his heart, the images restored in. The album of Innisfree, the still photos taken and snapped, he cannot forget them poetically. He may be away from in his busy life of dull routines and schedules, but his heart still goes to Innisfree to draw the inspiration from. The midnight is but a glimmer and the noon a purple glow and the evening a linnet’s wings.

Sometimes man confides in nature to get the inner counsel and wisdom. Silence has also the notes of its own. This is what constitutes his soul which is lodged in the body. Nowhere can man find joy besides the beauties and bounties of nature which are but a permanent source of happiness and the   other thing is this that man is but an indivisible part of nature. The mind recomposes itself in silence and silence gives consent. The poem if to see it otherwise reminds us of The Brook by Alfred Lord Tennyson. The poetic pictures take us to the description of Lucy half-hidden from the world just like a daisy by the mossy rock in Lost Love. There is something of dream allegory as well as dream sequence in it.

The Irish setting and the Irish background give a befitting imagery to the poem as the natural scenery is pictorial and scenic no doubt in evoking scenes, pictures and images. There is music in the words which is so captivating and charming enough. Without knowing Innisfree one may not do justice to the poem and if one can explain it, everything will be clear to us.

 

Partition: WH Auden

 By: Bijay Kant Dubey

Unbiased at least he was when he arrived on his mission,
Having never set eyes on this land he was called to partition
Between two peoples fanatically at odds,
With their different diets and incompatible gods.
'Time,' they had briefed him in London, 'is short. It's too late
For mutual reconciliation or rational debate:
The only solution now lies in separation.
The Viceroy thinks, as you will see from his letter,
That the less you are seen in his company the better,
So we've arranged to provide you with other accommodation.
We can give you four judges, two Moslem and two Hindu,
To consult with, but the final decision must rest with you.'

Shut up in a lonely mansion, with police night and day
Patrolling the gardens to keep assassins away,
He got down to work, to the task of settling the fate
Of millions. The maps at his disposal were out of date
And the Census Returns almost certainly incorrect,
But there was no time to check them, no time to inspect
Contested areas. The weather was frightfully hot,
And a bout of dysentery kept him constantly on the trot,
But in seven weeks it was done, the frontiers decided,
A continent for better or worse divided.

The next day he sailed for England, where he quickly forgot
The case, as a good lawyer must. Return he would not,
Afraid, as he told his Club, that he might get shot.

I do not know who can write such a poem as he has, if there is a poem like this? Is there a historian who has in this way? How was India partitioned? Who divided it and for what? How could it be? Can land be divided or it is settled? Who is here to answer? All are but silent about with the lips held tight and answerless. All these lie inherent in unmindful of what the politicians, constitution-makers, historians, nationalists, freedom fighters and so on say it or put it otherwise. Had they at least the land department fellows they could have at least resolved the issues lying pending and unsettled? But the politicians cannot be believed, in no way at all. The selfish men and liars can never be. Who the guilty men of the Partition and how would India be in a haste? Whose vested interests were what? Who wanted what? The intentions are clear and if not, we may sense. How is this transition for power, the transfer of power? Can things be shipped so easily? It takes time. Can the things be partitioned as it was? With the Bench of the Five in which we can feel the echo of the Panch-parameshwara, wherein God is, can settle the things is our old perception, but can judgement be made in its negation, from the Indian perspective? Who really a fanatic, who really a patriot, who is who of, God knows, time will say it. Those whom we think of fanatics may not be and those whom we nationalists may not be. Who is what, it is very difficult to say it, it is very difficult to judge. Without consulting the peoples, the lands were partitioned at the behest of communal and divisive forces, politicians with vested political interests. Auden though he had not been during the Partition time catches the true spirit and frenzy, the fever and fret of the moments hanging so heavy upon with ill-will, brutality and irresponsible handling of the sensitive situation. Could the leaders not feel it then? Could the administrators not? Could the politicians not? How the chroniclers of history as Auden fails them through his sense of law and justice? Here he is no doubt John Galsworthian in his disposition of law and justice.

Had Sir Cyril Radcliffe been to India, he could have taken time, doing it not in haste, but he was called, reined in to demarcate the boundaries. The answer is not, he had not been before. If this could be the thing, how would he in a huff the vehemently opposed parties, the things of those peoples who are fanatically at odds with their different diets and incompatible gods?

Unbiased at least he was when he arrived on his mission,
Having never set eyes on this land he was called to partition

Between two peoples fanatically at odds,
With their different diets and incompatible gods.

With the time briefed in London, schedules given, it was too late for a rational debate or conciliation and he thought of drawing the line as the contesting parties could not come to the table and the Partition appeared to be indispensable which but needed to be dealt with tougher iron hands, giving a deadly blow to the frenzied communal forces, given the vast mass of varying customs, sects, creeds, religions so differing from each other but aligning in the end    to a synthesis. The British too lacked that spirit and sense of dedication as they could not take it to be own failing to understand it properly and India too had been so ismic. The problem is none administered it well keeping the spirit of it and taking time to modernize.

The separation is the last solution. But the real story we do not know it. The problem lay it in illiteracy, black art, superstition, fatalism, inaction, backwardness, caste system, poverty, maladministration, mismanagement, backwardness, underdevelopment, ignorance, medievalism, conservatism, narrow nationalism, regionalism, parochial thinking, religious bigotry, fanaticism, ritualism and so on.

'Time,' they had briefed him in London, 'is short. It's too late
For mutual reconciliation or rational debate:
The only solution now lies in separation.

But the Viceroy had the company and band of own. So keeping it in view he maintained distance from and avoiding him tried his utmost to dispense with which but needed rough works done before. As for to reach at, he was offered the Hindu and Muslim judges, but we wonder that the judges too could not be of any use in bailing out of the political crisis. He too was at wit’s end as for how to begin and where to end, how the lot of his to dispense with.

The Viceroy thinks, as you will see from his letter,
That the less you are seen in his company the better,
So we've arranged to provide you with other accommodation.
We can give you four judges, two Moslem and two Hindu,
To consult with, but the final decision must rest with you.'

Shut up in a lonely mansion with the police patrolling the house to drive the suspected assassins away, he got down to work, demarcate and oversee the Partition plan which was not at all timely and up-to-date as he had been just with the old maps:

Shut up in a lonely mansion, with police night and day
Patrolling the gardens to keep assassins away,
He got down to work, to the task of settling the fate
Of millions. The maps at his disposal were out of date
And the Census Returns almost certainly incorrect,
But there was no time to check them, no time to inspect
Contested areas. The weather was frightfully hot,
And a bout of dysentery kept him constantly on the trot,
But in seven weeks it was done, the frontiers decided,
A continent for better or worse divided.

A barrister he sailed for after his hectic activity and wrangling but so fraught with mistakes and miscomprehension, with so much misconception and misdemeanour. He went to and forgot just as a good lawyer does it for his profession sake as he misapprehended his presence could his life in trouble as for the trouble brewing and taking a drastic change with bloodshed, murder, loot, seize which K.A.Abbas’ The Refugee explains it best.

The next day he sailed for England, where he quickly forgot
The case, as a good lawyer must. Return he would not,
Afraid, as he told his Club, that he might get shot.

But without knowing the history unbiased at least he was when he arrived on his mission, critical context one may not do justice with the poem. Who is the man whose arrival is awaited? One needs to know it. And Radcliff is the person here partitioning.  As for the judges, Hindu and Muslim, we are not sure of which Auden knows it best. Or, if we go through the minutes of the Partition, we shall know it by the way, but what pains us most is this that they divided it in a haste and with so much brutality doing justice to  a serious life matter in a childish way. The British too had not been serious in any way and their purpose too was to use and extract economically from rather than doing any good to. Can the lands be settled in such a way? Are the lands divided or settled? May I know it?

What the historians could not W.H.Auden has in his one small poem, has said it all what it happened, what they did and what our leaders and politicians. Could lands have been divided and settled in such a way? Is this the method of demarcation, drawing the line? Could Partition be done in such a way? Was it pre-planned, well-conceived, well thought-about? The answer is clearly, no. The reasonable men do not do as such, those who are logical at least. And I know it that they will not prescribe it into the courses of study as it open our eyes and the hidden truths will come out, if asked out of curiosity and logic is given to unravel the formulae of the Partition.

When we read the poem, Partition, we could not make a way, as for if Auden would take up Indian Partition and what interest will he get  from. But understood it through his indications that he was going to deal and grapple with a more sensitive and psychological matter which needed a sense of historicity and judgement which but a leftist like Auden and a socialist like George Bernard Shaw could have. Neither the Indians nor the so-called Pakistanis could think of the drastic consequences, the horror and terror of the Partition. It was not a partition of a nation, but of a sub-continent.

The Partition was a lapse on the part of judgement and the then time high court judges inducted in as the members too could opine in such a way is strange to think of toeing the religious lines as for the division of Mother India which is but a fallibility of human judgement as man is not above all those vested petty considerations, is the truth never to be put aside. What the people have got from is true from the prediction of Auden, better or worse the people of India and Pakistan can say it well. The times too had been awkward as such were the fellow people.  Nehru and Jinnah too could not feel about the   complications in their lust for sitting on chair. How can man be so cruel, we feel it on seeing the politicians, colonists and the colonized; the fundamentalists, fanatics and conservatives!

It was really a blunder to partition the sub-continent, a sin which Gods will never pardon it. Had there been no philanthropists and charitable people? Were there only the fundamentalists and communal forces involved in loot, plunder, murder, capture, violence and bloodshed? The fangs of the communal, divisive forces needed to be broken the moments it grew or appeared to be lethal and venomous. The census reports too were not up-to-date. The Governor-General too saw it tearlessly standing in the no-man’s land which could have been averted somehow, but in the absence of some wise judgement the mistake was committed in which the all as the parties were involved in practically more or less. Whose agendum was the Partition? How the resolutions taken? Was it done just to slaughter the innocent lives, to wipe out the common families mercilessly, to uproot them from their nativity? But something twitched him when he found the Partition taking a bad turn and people losing lives, getting displaced and dislocated and driven out of their homes and for that reason he refused to take the fee for his plan, burnt the papers and left in a huff. He really felt guilty of conscience, but what could he have if the times were so heavy upon and the situations so adverse? How strange is it that the judges too could not counsel him in the right way upholding judicature and jurisprudence, the Divine Justice, invoking the Goddess of Law from the human lapses, errors and trials of judgement?

Fire Hymn: Keki N. Daruwala

By: Bijay Kant Dubey

Fire-Hymn is one of the best hymns ever written by Daruwalla who is not only a poet, but a novelist, a short story writer, a travelogue-writer and an anthologist too besides being an IPS officer who has worked in various capacities. One from Lahore, he is a Parsi by faith and upbringing, but an Indian writing in English. After serving  the U.P., mainly the Terai regions and being posted in Delhi, he joined the RAW wing and worked as a Member of the National Minorities  Commission. His first book of poems appeared from Writers’ Workshop, Calcutta.  A recipient of the Sahitya Akademi award and the Padma award,  Daruwalla is a modern Indo-Anglian poet so robust,  bombastic, verbose, masculine and optimistic. Generally, disease, death and  tragedy, loss, suffering, violence, bloodshed, curfew and tragedy are the code words of his poetry. To read the hymn is to know the Parsi texts, beliefs and rituals. To understand him is to cut the ice of the Parsi psyche, is to delve deep into the things archetypal and  racial enough. To read him is to be reminded of the dramatic monologues of Robert Browning and the masculine toughness of Ted Hughes. As a poet, he is more inclined to tragedies,  Greek, Shakespearean and so on.

Fire-Hymn as a poem describes the scene of a ghat, a burning ghat near the river where the dead bodies are cremated, consigned to the flames. The poet visits the ghat and sees the bodies burnring or the the ashes with the embers within. He also sees the bodily parts and limbs while goign along the river-bank.

A  Parsi though he should not have but instead of as for compulsions, the Tower of Silence being away from, miles and miles away, he consigned to once, as he says about his first child. We know that the Parsis dispose off their dead on the Tower of Silence, an erected structure on which the dead bodies are placed and the birds of prey keep on perching, cleansing the flesh. Whatever be that, it is no doubt a fire-hymn, fire which had been so sacrosanct, is it still now and side by side which is also at the same time so dubious too in wreaking havoc. When we read the poem, the pictures and images of the Fire Temples flash upon the  mind’s plane, how were the fire-worshippers of  beyond India were in the past.

One day while strolling by the river-bank, the poet comes to mark the sudden blaze, flaring up of the fire, burning logs, sometimes quelled under the ashes or sometimes ignited by the  wind which but takes him by surprise. All those things take him over, draw the attention and they talk of the Fire, the Holy Fire and the jobs it does, the obsession with it and the aberration felt thereof. It is quite natural that the people like it not to see the burning ghats and even if, they try to avert their gaze or divert their attention. The burning pyres, smoking, fire catching upon and feeding, so playful and flirting, sometimes disgusting and annoying are the heart-rending scenes. Talking about the fire, his father hints towards the half-burnt bones lying on the ghat. How does sometimes fire leave it undone? How does it forget to cleanse it all?

The poet himself a Zoroastrian clinches the fist and feels the pain and swears to save the fire from the sin of forgetfulness which it occasionally forgets and as thus he gets hitched to some twenty years ago remembering it how he lost his first born baby which he consigned to the flames though he wanted it not personally as the Tower of Silence was some thousand of miles away and away from the place he was.  

The burning ghat erupted phosphorescence:
and wandering ghost lights frightened passers-by
as moonlight scuttled among the bones. 
Once strolling at dawn past river-bank and ghat 
we saw embers losing their cruel redness 
to the grey ash that swallows all. Half-cooked limbs
bore witness to the fire's debauchery.
My father said, "You see those half-burnt fingers
and bone-stubs? The fire at times forgets its dead! "
A Zoroastrian I, my child- fingers clenched 
into a little knot of pain,
I swore to save the fire
from the sin of forgetfulness. 

It never forgot, and twenty years since
as I consigned my first-born to the flames---
the nearest Tower of Silence was a thousand miles--- 
the fire-hymn said to me, "You stand forgiven."
Broken, yet rebellious, I swore this time
to save it from the sin of forgiving. 

The starting lines of the poem take us to Dawn at Puri written by Jayanta Mahapatra wherein he describes the funeral pyres on the sea beach adjacent to the Puri temple and the blaze taking the lookers on by surprise. On reading the poem, we think within if this the way of the world, of human life.

Fire-Hymn as a poem is Miltonic, Donnian as well as Shelleyian in the sense that Daruwalla invokes it like Milton writing Paradise Lost as well as sides with the rebellious questioning of Satan, is metaphysical like Donne and is Shelleyian for the revolt adding to the dimension of thought and idea. The duality of his soul is Hamletian, to be or not to be, whether he should have consigned or not. Why does fire take it on and finish it? Is it not ashamed of its deed? Is it not cruel and callous? How the Divine Scheme of things! The other point of deliberation may be his personality, psyche split in between the two, the Hindu way and the Parsi way, which way he should be with. This is but human nature because sometimes man thanks fire as for doing the holy job and sometimes rebukes for being so callous and hard, burning to ashes, wiping or erasing out of memory. Sometimes it takes time in dispensing with and it appears to be tedious to complete. There is something of the Book of Job and the Kathopanishada, Job mourning and questioning and Nachiketa and Vajashrava discussing and in the end Nachiketa and Yama left in the fray. There is something of prayer whispered, something confessed, something asked for condoning or pardon and he stands pardoned, a sinner I, sinful is the activity of mine, the sinful soul seeks the Almighty to pardon, to condone all the guilt committed out of ignorance, unmindfully. When he talks of cleansing of sin and purity and something as holy overtaking his guilt and consciousness, he seems to be reverting  to George Herbert and G.M.Hopkins. Fire-Hymn as a poem is purgatory and cathartic.

It is very dramatic and full of internal action though outwardly laden with weighty words. It is good to know the Parsi heart and soul, the Parsi spirit; the Parsi psyche and self. What Daruwalla has in this poem is similar to that one expressed in Bombay Prayers. Nissim Ezekiel's Philosophy and Hymns too are the same in spirit and tone. There are the images of three, father, son and the lost newborn. The poem is spooky and ghostly too as one shudders at generally in seeing the sights continuing around, going by near the crematorium seconded  with the coming and going of man. There is something of memoir and remembrance when he talks of the consigning of the first new-born to the flames.

The title is apt and suggestive because it is about the Holy Fire doing the job, sometimes doing in totality and sometimes keeping it half-done as the case is herein. The Zoroastrians are not fire-worshippers, but they take it for holy representing God and His Light and this light is but knowledge, the knowledge of the self.

Fire-Hymn is a poem of the fire flame, how it goes on leaping and licking, how the tongue and stride of it, but sometimes misses the target or say forgets it to do its duty.

The dialogue between father and son is very philosophical and observational:

My father said, "You see those half-burnt fingers
and bone-stubs? The fire at times forgets its dead! "
A Zoroastrian I, my child- fingers clenched 
into a little knot of pain,
I swore to save the fire
from the sin of forgetfulness 

The discussion is lively as well as down to relities. What does it last here? What does it happen to the body which appears to be own? The  reference to half-burnt fingers and bone stubs atatches to the pathetic   and tragic side of the body. But the son as a Zoroastrian feels the pain of cosigning to flames and wants it not to repeat it again.

Let us see how he relates to what it had happened to him some twenty years ago, as in the absence of the Tower of Silence, he consigned to flames:

It never forgot, and twenty years since
as I consigned my first-born to the flames---
the nearest Tower of Silence was a thousand miles--- 
the fire-hymn said to me, "You stand  forgiven."
Broken, yet rebellious, I swore this time
to save it from the sin of forgiving.

The Fire-Hymn in response to the dilemma going within, the spiritual malaise raking him murmured that he has been forgiven so keeping it in view the poet too seeks to save it from the sin of forgiving. The fire is burdened with the disposal of the dead. 

The burning ghat, erupted phosphorescence, wandering ghost lights,  frightened passers-by, moonlight scuttled among the bones, etc. add to the spooky element and to suspense. It arouses fear and terror.

Everything but finishes it here, nothing remains it for ever, the poet comes to feel it, as because when the pyres extinguish they, only the white ashes lie in, the fire embers too put out after losing their lustre:

Once strolling at dawn past river-bank and ghat 
we saw embers losing their cruel redness 
to the grey ash that swallows all. 

The embers, the cruel redness and the extinguishing fire with the remnants of white grey ash tell of the body turned to dust. Cruel redness tells of how fire reddening and feeding upon destroys it all.

Half-cooked limbs are but the fire’s debauchery as sometimes it forgets to do away with:

Half-cooked limbs
bore witness to the fire's debauchery. 

Whatever be the note of rebellion or the rebel taking up the cudgels against, the Fire, Holy Fire finally forgives the soul in askance or feeling the crisis within. Fire-Hymn is one step forward in the direction of the acquiring of good thoughts, good words and good deeds as for the spiritual crisis felt within and resolved. John Donne’s ‘Death, Be Not Proud’ too is a poem of this type wherein he talks of the rest of this body of flesh and bones and the soul’s delivery.