november 2015 - ashvamegh indian journal of english literature · ashvamegh: issue x: november...

2015

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November 2015 (Issue X)

11/15/2015

ASHVAMEGH… the literary flight!

ISSUE XNOVEMBER

ABOUT US: Ashvamegh Issue X: November 2015: ISSN: 2454-4574

Ashvamegh New Delhi, India [email protected], +91 9709949971

Editorial Board on Ashvamegh:

Alok Mishra (Editor-in-Chief) Murray Alfredson (Sr. Editor) Dr. Shrikant Singh (Sr. Editor) Vihang Naik (Sr. Editor) Hitaishi Grover (Editor) Munia Khan (Editor) Leilanie Stewart (Editor) Ravi Kumar (Editor) Ravi Teja (Editor) Charles McKinney (Editor)

Advisory Panel on Ashvamegh: Dr. Swarna Prabhat Ken W Simpson N. K. Dar Alan Britt

Ashvamegh is an online international journal of literary and creative writing. Publishing monthly, Ashvamegh has successfully launched its tenth issue in November 2015 (this issue). Submission is open every day of the year. Please visit http://ashvamegh.net for more details.

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Table of Contents: Ashvamegh Issue X: November 2015: ISSN: 2454-4574

What is inside to read?

Cover

About us

Table of contents

• Editorial• Poetry Section• Short Stories Section• Interview with Kevin Kiely• Book Review (Moirae, Mehreen Ahmed)• Research Articles Section

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Ashvamegh: Issue X: November 2015: The Editorial: Alok Mishra

Beginning with the expression of a satisfaction and happiness that Ashvamegh has become fresh, new, and more stable, better and eventually will strive for the best… The Ashvamegh Team has worked its best to redesign the new website. I am very happy to let all our readers and contributors know that all our issue since the launch will be available for readership in online version as well as pdf; you will be able to locate them for online perusal or to download on our Archive page. I personally see this as a big success for Ashvamegh, as every writer wishes to see his or her work permanently embedded somewhere! I will keep things short in the terms of praising our own achievements in design and concept. However, there are other serious things to talk about!

Recent Literary Scenario in India:

I know, however, that I am not still in the position so authoritative that I can pass comments about the ongoing events in my country. Nevertheless, as other authors and intellectuals in my country is free to express their thoughts and even return the awards given to them by government, I am also democratically free to opine. I will start by putting a straight forward question on the desk. Dear authors, poets, and intellectuals, do you think an award can ever be returned? Do you think that returning the mere shield made of brass, silver or even gold can give back just everything? Taking one more step ahead, do you think at all a writer should return the award to register the protest? Does not this symbolic (I do not, however, find myself able to see what is symbolic here) gesture mean the loss of a writer, and writing?

A writer’s pen should never stop. Yes, obstacles will be there in the society; the very business of a writer is to make people aware to see the possible solutions of a problem – be that an ongoing or a temporary problem. I have an appeal for the writers in India who have returned their awards (be that politically instigated move or anything else) to do some real philanthropy if they are so much in pain with the incident that happened. Do something with your pen; let your ink say the story; let your writing talk to the society. Merely saying that the country is getting intolerant is not a solution. How many awards you will return? There are networks like ISIS which will swallow all the awards won by authors all over the world! Let us be optimistic and awaken your writer’s soul. Let not a nation, which is ready to emerge as a giant economy and strength, fall into the dilemma of hopelessness by trying to paint the landscape that did never exist!

(Dear Arundhati Roy, today, on 14th of November 2015, ISIS has attacked Paris. Will you please return your Booker prize? More than 200 have lost their lives!)

Dear creative people, the responsibilities of a writer is a manifold, having so much to do! Let there be the zest of bringing hope, harmony and sweetness, as once Jonathan Swift has pointed out – the story of bee and the spider! I pray for the lost lives in Paris. The Ashvamegh Team stands against these cowardly terror attacks.

Alok Mishra

http://alok-mishra.net

Editor-in-Chief,

http://alok-mishra.net/

Poetry Section: Ashvamegh Issue X: November 2015: ISSN: 2454-4574

Who are the poets selected in Issue X of Ashvamegh?

• Rachana Pandey • Puja Chakraberty • Churchit Naib • Ogana David

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Poems by Rachana Pandey

“That Day”

That day will come

when KNOTS will not remain an obligation

when Age will supersede everything else.

That day will come

When familial responsibilities will pass to the next,

when Age will supersede everything else.

That day will come

When work will take retirement itself,

when feeding and caring will pass to the next.

That day will come

When you will be encouraged

to meet, to “pass” time with your dear ones.

That day will come

When TIME will no more be a factor, an obstacle,

to stop you … rather it will become yours!

When Time will be in its last phase,

The last phase, the most beautiful it will be …

I believe.


Yes! That day will come

when we’ll meet, we’ll live together

till my ‘forever’, till yours ‘forever’

till the end of the light of the world.


“I am Alive”

Switch on, switch off!!

Smile ... no, no! Emoticons!!

Feeling… no, Status updating!!

Breathing … nah! Always ONLINE!!!

Switch on, switch off!!

We have life behind the screen, don’t we?

We do have love, life, friendship behind screen, don’t we have?

But …

Ah! Switch off actually to recharge oneself,

Not on data base, not virtually but

Lively, soulfully, with blood and emotions …

There might be a way

Yes! There might be …

A Brief note about the Poet:

Rachana Pandey belongs to Varanasi, the city of Ghats. A senior research

fellow in the department of English at Banaras Hindu University, her research

areas are Indian English drama, feminism and gender studies. She has

published some insightful research papers in different journals.

Betrayal and Forgiveness Revenge is like an ever-bemoaning shroud The more you seek, the more hollow and bleak So now, I grant forgiveness unto thou And let my soul rest in peace. Repentance and grudge adorn the fool’s brow Blurs his vision, casts him weak. So try as you might and force me down I will climb and flag the mountain peak I shall not let the past govern my present I am who I choose to be And not what you can make of me. Sorrow Weep aloud my faithful tears For thou art my only solace and company The observer of my pains The chronicler of my glee So howl and sob and beat thy breasts As oft as thou can be For when the storm departs after a lull of sombre agony I shall find you there like the glorious sunshine Leading me towards victory.

Introduction to the Poet:

Chakraberty, Puja is editor and writer at Upwork Inc. California, United States. She is an internationally acclaimed Larkin scholar, a prolific writer and an accomplished poet. She has authored a number of research papers, articles and works published in national and international journals and publications worldwide. She is also the author of a number of academic books, Understanding William Skaespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra and Hamlet: A Parapsychological Reading to name a few.

Poems by Churchit Naib

Lend me my childhood

Lend me a week of those days

When our thoughts could soar the sky

With head held up high.

When eyes dripped of innocence

And tongues loathed cries.

Lend me a day of those times

When mother's lap was a pillow of mine

And father's pat could make us fly

When our worries flew away like dust

Off a carpet we dirtied with mud.

Lend me a second

Of that childhood picture we hung

On walls that sung

The ode to distant times.


Hello Kid

Hello Kid!

Are you watching us?

We spark your life

Are you feeling us?

We carry your diminished pride

Are you praying to us?

We are the shadow of a curtained smile

Are you reaching to us?

Hey kid!

Isn’t there another of our kind?

Is there?

Don't you overlook their strikes?

Do you?

Can’t you carve external lies?

Can you?

Won’t you fool another eye?

Will you?

Hey kid!

Try not to look past the sky!

We are the ones who make your life!

Let's close these innocent open eyes!

We will snatch your Golden Pride!

We will bury your senses alive!

Cuff your third eye!

Hey kid!

Don't worry!

You will see the world Just as Fine.


Introduction to the Poet: Churchit Naib is 22, from Delhi. He is an engineering student

who happens to be an aspiring poet. He has been travelling with

his family since he was a small kid mainly because of their job,

and hence, he is a little multi-cultured and easy to get along with.

He started writing since fourth grade because of a teacher who

helped him understand basics of poetry (this was when he lived

in France) and since then it has been on and off. Now he has

become more and more interested in writing poems and it’s

basically what he does to vent out his thoughts. His work is

simple and complex at the same time. A little dark at times.

Poems by Ogana David

Mother CHANGES What is of salt stays in salt what is of flesh stays in flesh but what will be if things shrivel when the salt is added to the blood the body breaks then, emptying souls? the salt becomes the Alt and the flesh the essence - what is left untouch is now movable we feel the spring in sleep. The night in a pyjama wanting my legs to bed.

Poems by Ogana David

Drive GROWING. The wanton boys spin some citrus seeds in the late spring amongts garden flowers that grow slowly exploring roots in metal bars some lemon grooves of the wood magnet in a tensile stress makes it a pushing jack spinning lime tree or into flesh as it meat in meat. The hand drive that pushes seeds into the deepest ground are spoilt fingers as of all ages; the boys freezes plants. we manage to raise each seedling from clay pots, in the potting measures. Introduction to the poet: Ogana D. Okpah is a Nigerian obsessed with writing poetry and the art in general. He is an undergraduate of Plant Science and Biotechnology studying with Nasarawa state university, Nigeria. He has been published in The New Black Magazine, Africanwriter.com as well as Former People Journal: a journal of bang and whimpers. He is currently awaiting publication elsewhere.

Poem by Sabeet Raza : The Featured Young Poet

Those who hurt us?

For them we’d do it, a thousand times over

Yet for us, they run nothing but slower

It hurts us all, yet we do endure

For time, is yet, the ultimate cure?

So when I randomly hurt you back

Don’t turn around, leave me in black

For I did never, turn around

Stranded and hurt, yet walking the ground

For it tears us that those we love hurt us most

But who rather to get hurt by, them or a ghost

So as we celebrate the pain we face

Of us, don’t lose track, keep a trace

For we are not human, yet feel inside

We cry, we fight, yet hate the divide

We might be far, we might be close

It's genuinely something that god chose

But yet, does he exist in the skies

Or does he fly low, just like flies

Poem by Sabeet Raza : The Featured Young Poet

For if I were the Lord, I’d give them wings

So that they’d fly by; in their arms, give swings

As harsh yet benevolent as he might be

Nothing beats those that hurt us free

For it does tear us down, that those we love

They hurt us most, take away our dove.

Introduction to the Poet:

Sabeet Raza is a high school student and an aspirant author. He is an ardent contributor towards making a better society for people to dwell in peace and harmony. He is a founding member of an organisation in this field - Religion Humanity. Also the literary Ambassador of Ashvamegh, Sabeet has a passion for writing!

Stories Section: Ashvamegh Issue X: November 2015: ISSN: 2454-4574

Who are the authors selected in Issue X of Ashvamegh?

• Anna Cates • Ashok Patwari

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AN INDECENT PROPOSAL Anna Cates

The sun was just setting behind the Calumus Draca tree outside the “Pizza ‘Hat’” when Ahmed tossed off his white apron. His shift was ending, and he felt uneasy. He remembered the words of his boss, Mohammed Al Hamdani, from earlier that day: “I need to talk to you before you go home tonight.” The mysterious concern had worried him all afternoon as he’d prepped pizzas for tourists visiting Sana’a, Yemen’s capitol. What did Mohammed want? Would he fire him already? That morning, Ahmed had burnt some of the pizzas. He had little experience in fast food and had only been working at the Pizza Hat a week, but he needed money for plane tickets back to Ohio, where he and his American wife could finish their degrees at Ohio State. He’d lost his wallet with all his pre-paid credit cards, and now he regretted returning to Yemen. He’d wanted to introduce his wife to the grandmother who’d raised him, only to find out she’d taken ill and died. A wasted trip, Ahmed mused, fearing he’d be unable to save up enough money in the two months left of summer to return for the fall term.

Ahmed left the kitchen and spun around toward the back exit near the freezer. There stood Mohammed, waiting for him, his eyes strangely gleaming. “Come to the break room. It’s empty,” Mohammed said, furtive as a drug dealer. Ahmed followed like a camel with a rope around its neck.

In the break room, Mohammed moved a chair aside and sat on the table while Ahmed stood nearby. Mohammed eyed the metal door, waiting for it to slide shut with a click. When it did, he turned back to Ahmed. “I’d like to ask you something.”

“Yes?” Ahmed said, the clock ticking above his head with the thumps of his heart.

Mohammed, restless, slid back off the table. He seemed nervous like he’d drunk too much coffee that day.

Ahmed could feel his palms clamming up. “I know I burnt some of the pizzas this morning. You can take it out of my first week’s pay.”

Mohammed laughed. “Forget about it. That’s not what I want to talk to you about.”

Ahmed felt relieved. He wouldn’t be fired after all. “Thank you. Then what’s the matter?”

“Nothing is wrong. It’s something else, about your wife. She’s an American, right?”

Ahmed wondered what his wife had to do with anything. “Yes, from Ohio. Is there a problem with that?”

Mohammed grinned, ducking his head almost bashfully. “I was wondering if you two would like to do something with me and my wife, Aisha, sometime.”


Ahmed was beginning to feel uncomfortable. Mohammed was getting too familiar. “What do you want to do?”

Mohammed raked his fingers through his receding hairline. From an angle, his face was rat-like. He sidled closer to Ahmed, seeming unable to get to the point. He hands kept gesturing. “Maybe I could sleep with your wife for one night and you could sleep with mine,” he finished at a whisper, seeming glad to have managed to speak his mind.

Ahmed felt stunned. His boss couldn’t be serious. Ahmed had seen Mohammed at the mosque, kneeling on the front row, forehead pressed to the carpet. He seemed as devout as any Muslim. Sincere. Solid. But as Ahmed met Mohammed’s eyes, he could tell his boss wasn’t joking. A sick feeling entered him. Mohammed wasn’t solid after all; he was soggy as bread cast into water. A fake.

Ahmed wanted to say “no” immediately but felt unable. He didn‘t want to offend his boss. He had to maintain his employment.

“Look,” Mohammed continued as if he knew he hadn’t completely sold Ahmed on the idea, “It’s just for one night, just for fun. I’ve done it before many times,” he finished like a child bragging to his mother he’d tied his own shoelaces.

Ahmed could tell that the fact that they were both Muslims didn’t matter to Mohammed. Ahmed peered at the dirty floor, shaking his head. “I’m not sure my wife would be willing. You know how Western women are: Strong-willed feminists.” That didn’t exactly describe Ahmed’s wife, but Mohammed didn’t need to know that.

Mohammed laughed as if feminism amused him. Though not unusually muscled, something about his body suggested strength. “My wife and I, we’ve traveled all over Europe. To Greece. Italy. We’ve friends in France. I’ve wife-swapped many times. In Greece was my first time.” Too friendly, he grasped Ahmed by the sleeve of his white tunic. “Come next door and meet my wife. Our house is just across the street. She’ll give you some iced-tea. You can tell me tomorrow what you’ve decided after you talk to your wife.”

* * *

Mohammed’s house was posh. From the look of the antique candelabras, plush throw pillows of rose and purple, and Persian rugs and tapestries, Mohammed had wealth, and with wealth came power.

Ahmed sat, knees together, on the sofa beside the coffee table, where his too-sweet tea rested half drunk. Beside the window Mohammed stood like a dictator, gazing out at the passing headlights of cars, a fat cigar poking from his mouth, smoke smoldering around him as if he were


some demon. He drew the curtains and turned back to Ahmed, taking the cigar from his lips. “You want one? It’s Cuban.”

“No thanks.” Ahmed rose from his seat. “I must get going. My wife will wonder where I am.” He wiped his clammy hands on his white tunic.

Mohammed walked across the room and draped his arm around Ahmed’s shoulder before he could escape. “Talk to your wife,” he said, pointing at Ahmed’s chest with the burning tip of the cigar, “and let me know tomorrow.”

Ahmed nodded. From a hanging mirror across the room, he caught his reflection. With Mohammed’s arm around him, they looked like a gay couple. He remembered the gays he’d seen around Ohio State. Some people had unsavory tastes. Ahmed wondered what exactly Mohammed wanted to do with, or to, his wife.

Mohammed glanced at his watch. “You’ll have to excuse me. Aisha will show you out.” And with that, Mohammed left the room in mysterious haste. Soon afterward, his wife appeared in the doorway.

“Would you like more iced tea?” she asked, holding the pitcher, clinking with ice.

“No, thank you,” Ahmed replied, feeling naked as a raw chicken wing.

Until that point, Ahmed hadn’t gotten a good look at Aisha, feeling too embarrassed by the awkwardness of the situation to glance her way, but as she stood in the doorway, a hi-jab wrapped around her head, Ahmed stole a peek. Her face was pleasant. She seemed quiet and modest, dressed in the same flowing garments as all Yemeni women. She appeared like a decent Muslim wife, and Ahmed had to wonder again if his boss’s proposal was serious. Mohammed might be testing his character, trying to discern if Ahmed were a solid Muslim. But just as the thought entered him, Aisha’s face broke into a strange grin. Her visage assumed an expression that could only be described as porcine. It was the most horrible expression Ahmed had ever seen on any woman’s face, so brazen and shocking it almost pained him physically. It was as if her whole head had become a pig’s! He could tell Aisha was not only willing to be her husband’s accomplice in adultery; she looked forward to the opportunity! She was not a woman of any book; she was a woman of the world.

“My husband and I, we’ve been all over Europe,” she said as if that explained everything.

Have you ever been to Hell? Ahmed wanted to ask but instead just muttered “goodbye,” turned his back, and fled the abode, not caring, for the moment, if such an abrupt departure might be construed as rude.

* * *


Ahmed felt so disoriented as he stepped into the warm night air that he walked a whole block in the wrong direction before realizing his mistake and turning back toward his apartment. The world seemed disjointed, his current reality ill-fitting his childhood memories like a pair of shoes that pinch your feet. This can’t be happening to me, he thought, this insidious, sexual harassment. It was a concept he’d learned about in a seminar at Ohio State. America has driven me crazy, he mused, pacing down the street beneath the capital’s old sky scrapers, trying to erase his memory of Aisha’s pig-like face.

Getting a science degree from an American university and becoming a doctor had always been Ahmed’s dream, but that had come in second place to Islam. Before arriving in America to begin his studies, he’d pondered the strategies he’d use to lure unbelievers to Allah. He decided to keep the message simple and begin with the basics to not overwhelm their brainwashed minds. He practiced proselytizing, alone in his room. “There are five pillars of Islam,” he’d begin, gazing at himself in the mirror while straddling a chair. “Our sacred book is the Holy Quran,” he’d say, smoothing his fingers over the gold lettering of the cover. He’d imagined himself on the university lawn or in a room in the library before a throng of students, glassy eyed, transfixed. His hope to convert the infidels had been a living animal beating within his breast. But America was different than he’d imagined. Few students were interested in Islam. Some laughed when he said he was a Muslim. Some didn’t even believe him, those farm boys from, what Americans call, “the sticks.” They thought he was some joking Mexican! His only success was the reversion of two young men: a basketball player and a disillusioned Lutheran. As the fall term wore on, he’d become discouraged by his inability to convert whole multitudes and had retreated into his studies.

While at Ohio State, Ahmed had frequented a local café. There, amid the rustic wood tables, red bar stools, and smells of gourmet coffee and cinnamon rolls, Ahmed met the woman who’d become his wife. Each Tuesday and Thursday after Psychology 101, Ahmed stopped by the café for coffee and a warm, cinnamon roll. Two waitresses typically worked then, Peggy and Christine. He’d noticed that Peggy, a bleached blond with black nail polish, would steal Christine’s tips when she wasn’t looking. One afternoon, Ahmed slapped his hand over the quarters before she could snatch them up. “That isn’t for you,” he told Peggy, causing her to walk away in a huff to wipe a table. When Christine returned from the kitchen, Ahmed uncovered his tip. “This is for you,” he said, sliding the coins forward as she approached to refill his coffee cup. “Thanks,” Christine said then whispered, “She tries to steal my tips. It makes me so mad!” Ahmed nodded. “I know.” He met Christine’s hazel eyes, and she smiled. Ahmed smiled too, despite his good intentions, grinning like a Cat-in-the-Hat at the daughter of kuffirs, dressed in her low cut uniform, the rose tattoo showing plainly on her left breast. The next Tuesday, he found Christine’s phone number on folded over yellow memo paper, tucked beneath his cinnamon roll. That Christmas break they married, he a devout Muslim, and she a “Cafeteria Catholic,” as her friends would say. “She’s a Cathoholic,” he’d joke to his American Muslim friends, “Pray for her reversion to Islam.”

* * *


Ahmed entered the apartment and found his wife stashed in a chair, looking drowsy, one leg under the other, dressed in the nightshirt she always wore to bed during her monthly cycle. A recent washing had dampened her light brown hair that reached her shoulders, darkening its highlights.

“Where have you been?” she asked, readjusting the clock on the bureau to emphasize the point of his lateness. “You seeing another woman already?” she asked, her tone turning to teasing.

“We had extra customers today.” Ahmed tossed his keys onto the table beside the hi-jab and bottle of Pamprin. He looked back at Christine with a strained smile.

That night, after a light supper of buttered bread and dates, Ahmed went to bed troubled. He’d found himself unable to bring up the topic of Mohammed’s indecent proposal. How could he have the audacity? He felt too ashamed to admit such Muslims existed. Bad examples would not swing her heart to the one true faith. It was bad enough that she still sometimes fingered that futile rosary, something he could barely tolerate. He didn’t need to encourage her, furnish her with additional incentives to cling to inferior beliefs. Thus, he fell asleep, his back to his wife, confounded as to what to tell his boss the next day, feeling like a fly caught in sticky tape.

Late in the night, Ahmed’s dreaming turned nightmarish. It began pleasantly. Back in Columbus in his old apartment, he was lying on top of his wife in a moment of passion. But then he began to lose his grip like a shipwrecked sailor slipping away from some flotsam. A door opened, admitting a chill breeze. He heard Mohammed’s laughter and could picture his rat-like face, though the darkness blinded him. A hand pulled the covers off his nakedness. His wife was still beneath him when Mohammed mounted his back, and like a gay, sank into him with a painful twinge. Ahmed tried to struggle, to cry out in arrest, but his strength had left him. He scrambled to regain his wife, slipping further away the more Mohammed thrusted. He felt his life being stolen from him, Mohammed taking over his whole being like a demon seizing possession of its host. Finally, just when he thought he’d regained a good hold on his wife, he heard a pig squeal and found himself clutching a sow.

Ahmed awoke gripping the corner of his pillow in a choke-hold. He breathed in deeply, relieved to find he’d only been dreaming. He rolled over and placed his arm around Christine, liking the feel of her soft body, the herbal scent of her hair.

* * *

Ahmed peered out the window onto the street, creeping with long shadows of early morning sunlight. There he was, Mohammed passing by the fruit venders! Ahmed’s heart thud with apprehension. Then he realized his mistake. It was someone else, just another Yemeni in spotless white, seeming like the rest so much the same.


Ahmed’s shoulders crumpled. A long sigh of sour breadth fled his body till he stood, head down, like a deflated balloon. In the darkness of his mind, he felt himself catapulting forward toward some new and unexpected conception like a ship-wrecked sailor crashing upon rocks. The kuffirs were right. There was nothing behind it. All the Abrahamic religions were devised by man, stretching back millennia to Egyptian myth—Osiris, Horus, and the sons of Atum—the Jews’ Amun, the Christian’s Amen, the Muslims’ Ameen—all vestigial traces of devotion to one true god, the great Amen Ra—King of Kings and Lord of Lords, supreme eternally! All of them, the whole world, had found no better truth than the primitive Canaanite yahoos, burning babies alive in sacrifice to Yhw and the moon god, Aah! Could it be? Once more, he tilted his head toward the cloudless blue, wondering.

* * *

Later that morning, Ahmed stepped into the Pizza Hat feeling unusually crisp. He swung down to the break room for a drink of water before clocking in. He’d just tossed the paper cup in the trash when the door slid open and in walked Mohammed, his face intent, his white apron stained with tomato sauce. He reached into his pocket and removed a bag of herbs. “You know what this is?” he asked, his dark eyes glimmering like a snake charmer.

Ahmed shrugged. “Oregano?”

Mohammed laughed, drawing closer, bouncing the bag on his hand. “This is premium, Saudi Arabian hash! I thought this weekend, you and me, our wives, and some friends of mine from Oman could party. We can have an orgy. I’ve done it before, once, in Amsterdam. Your wife is an American, right?”

Ahmed shook his head with a grin, glancing down at the dirty floor. “Mohammed, sir, I’m sorry I must say this, but you just don’t understand.” He stepped closer to his boss, placing his arm around him like one of the gays at Ohio State. “You believe lies. Yes, my wife is American, but that’s of no consequence at all. She’s a good Muslim woman. These new reverts from the U.S would surprise you. They’re solid Muslims, not soggy and pathetic like you and me.”

Ahmed would never forget the look of disappointment that flooded Mohammed’s eyes.


Author Introduction:

Anna Cates lives in Ohio with her two beautiful kitties and teaches

English and Education online. Her collection of short stories, "The Frog

King," is forthcoming from Cyberwit.net, and her collection of haiku

and other poems, “The Meaning of Life,” is available on

Amazon: http://www.cyberwit.net/authors/anna-cates

http://www.cyberwit.net/authors/anna-cates

Robinhood of Chitrakoot

Ashok Patwari

Raghu suddenly felt numbness in both his legs and he decided to squat for a while after standing for a long time in the hideout – a hollow space in the trunk of a huge banyan tree. It was almost at sunset when he ventured to enter the hideout with a lot of optimism!

Waiting inside a hideout in the trunk of a tree wasn’t the best place to spend the evening in a hot and humid day but for him this was strategically the best place to operationalise his plans and wait for some vulnerable prey to appear on the lonely road connecting the outskirts of the town from the south end. It was his third fruitless day in succession and he had already spent over four hours by now! Even the last attempt, four days ago, wasn’t really a successful one. That evening he chose to try the northern side of the town connecting the bus stand and the main market. After waiting for several hours all that he got was a malnourished middle aged man with just a hundred rupee note on his person. It was almost a failed attempt he didn’t want to remember, but after waiting in vain for several hours it got on his mind to diminish his optimism.

“Please let me go…” the man had pleaded. “ I don’t have any money except for this note. I am going to buy medicine for my son… he is sick….”

“Give it to me….” roared Raghu while pressing his rampuri (knife ) against his jugulars.

“Please… I beg you…” the man dared to say in a choked voice but before he could feel any relief of pain in his neck Raghu had snatched the hundred rupee note from his hand and pushed him away. The next moment Raghu cycled away from the spot. The man kept on screaming for help but Raghu had already vanished.

That night Raghu did feel bad for a while as he was buying some roti and dal from a dhaba near his home, but the very next moment he started calculating for how many days his earning of hundred rupees can support them.

Raghu was under the impression that south connecting road would be a better location for his operation. Because of a cinema hall nearby and the connecting road to the local railway station, possibility of finding a victim was greater. But so far he only noticed groups of people walking together or driving a motor bike passing by his side. He hid his bicycle behind the banyan tree and watched the road like a submarine with his body hidden in the hollow space in the trunk of the tree. Unfortunately last three locales were worst than the north road. He was quite optimistic about this one and positioned himself in the hide out soon after sunset. But except for coughing out dust and mud produced by fast moving three wheelers and a mini bus he didn’t see a single prey he could handle successfully. His frustration overwhelmed him and he cursed his fate why he had to take up this profession.

*******

Raghu was not the brightest student in his middle school but was doing fine in his class. With hardly any stimulation from his illiterate mother and perpetually absent father he was able to get through his examination without any problem. Since most of his classmates were much younger than him, he always felt confident about himself even though he ranked in the group of students with lowest marks. But he had no complexes because, unlike several of his classmates, his mother never had to see his teachers to plead for promoting him to the next class. In fact she never came to see him in his school. It was one of his neighbours who came with him for the first time when he was admitted in the school.

But that fateful day his mother came to his school for the first time. He was in his classroom when he saw his mother through the window. She looked petrified and without a word coming from her mouth she gestured him to immediately come out of his classroom. Raghu had never seen that kind of an expression on her face and coming to his school like this definitely indicated a serious problem.

Raghu was surprised when his mother asked him to follow her towards the beehad (deep forest) away from the village. He kept on asking her where they were going while they passed through the beehad. But she didn’t answer and only pleaded him to walk faster before it is too late. The reality was obvious when they entered a camouflaged bunker deep inside the forest.

There was his father, Daku Shamsheer Singh gasping for breath and trying to stick on to his life. He was hit by three police bullets in his right leg and abdomen and a fourth bullet on his left arm was from his own gang members when they were trapped in a police encounter. The fourth bullet was meant to kill him because with those serious injuries he became a liability to the gang and leaving him behind alive was even worse. The bullet missed his heart but pierced his arm. Shamsheer Singh pretended to be dead and later managed to crawl out from the scene of encounter but was unable to seek any medical help for over a fortnight. By now his bullet wounds were infected and his right leg was gangrenous.

Raghu was so shocked to see his father in that condition that his voice failed him. He couldn’t speak a word. It didn’t take him too long to know the reality about his father and to realize that he was dying.

********

After his father’s death all that Raghu inherited was a stigma that his father was a bandit though nobody in their neighbourhood knew this fact all these years. After quietly cremating his father in the beehad, Raghu took time to review the situation and to decide about his and his mother’s future after his father was gone.

Raghu for the first time learnt from his mother that his grandfather Daler Singh was a dreaded dacoit in Chambal and had his own strong gang of bandits. He was an orphan raised by a dacoit who eventually handed over the reins of his gang to him. Daku Daler Singh, like many others in the ravines of Chambal, specifically targeted the rich and never attacked children, women, poor and the sick. It was on record that he had monetarily helped several poor farmers to marry off their daughters. Daler Singh never forgot that he was an orphan and secretly donated to couple of orphanges in Lucknow. In a way he and other dacoits in his time were like local

Robinhoods who targeted only the rich and helped the poor. By the time Daler Singh passed on the baton to Shamsheer Singh things had dramatically changed in Bunderkhand area. It had become increasingly difficult to target rich people because they were protected by their strong security system with couple of strong body guards protecting them and their households all the time. Installation of CCTVs at key vulnerable positions and increasing public awareness and self security system of majority of well to do families made their life difficult. Dacoity became a risky and less gainful profession. Some dreaded dacoits were rehabilitated by opting for politics and got busy fighting elections. With the increasing necessities in life and dwindling resources there were more vultures than the corpses. Inter-gang rivalry was at its peak and some bandits felt safer inside the jails than in the beehad.

There were only a few strong groups of bandits left who brandished AK-series assault rifles and had the privilege of making their operations more effective using Russian made binoculars. But everybody wasn’t as lucky and many dreaded dacoits surrendered themselves to inhabit the jails for rest of their life. It was an end of the era of Robinhoods. Mushrooming of individuals or smaller groups of bandits became a reality. For Shamsher Singh it was a climb down from where his illustrious father stood like a rock for years as the most dreaded dacoit of Chitrakoot district, who was also respected as a kind hearted Robinhood by the poor villagers. Shamsher Singh could not retain the glory of his father’s gang. Within years of Daler Singh’s death his gang disintegrated and the only option left for him was to join up as an ordinary member of a splinter group from Thokia gang. Despite the downhill graph as an individual bandit he was lucky to have a AK-47 which qualified him to work with the gang. But after sustaining severe injuries during the police encounter on that fateful day he became a liability for the gang with a potential risk of turning as an approver incase he was caught alive. Therefore his gang members not only tried to eliminate him but also took away his AK-47 to save his identity. His half dead body was accidentally discovered by village barber, who also served as a part time messenger for the gang, and he quietly informed Raghu’s mother about the tragedy.

Raghu was mature enough to assess the situation after his father’s death and had no doubt about what was in store for them. That fateful day when his mother came to call him was his last day in the school. Even though people living in their neighbourhood did not know about their relation with Daku Shamsher Singh, they preferred to move to another place to start their life afresh. While struggling to survive with whatever little money they were left with, Raghu tried his best to forget his lineage and move on to the main stream but his life had already taken a turn for the worse. Daku Daler Singh’s grandson was left with no option but to follow his ancestral vocation.

Raghu could not even think of becoming somebody like his grandfather because over the time things had drastically changed in whole of Bundelkhand region. More so in Banda and Chitrakoot districts which at one time virtually witnessed a parallel administration by famous dacoits like Dadua, Nirbhay Gujjar, Thokia and many others. There were hardly any bandits left now. Most of the off springs of the dreaded breed were so cash-strapped that they had to remodel themselves in to small scale thugs relying on empty roads, deep forests, lonely spots etc. There was hardly any difference between a bandit or a bootlegger , a chain snatcher or a petty thief. The only difference perhaps was that the so called dynastic dacoits always carried a

weapon usually a country made pistol or a rampuri (knife) for their operations. The second unique feature with this new generation of dynastic dacoits was that they themselves decided the victims, place and the time for the loot. Keeping the tradition of their ‘royal genes’ they would not snatch and run away with the valuables but expect the victim to surrender and handover their belongings under the nozzle of the pistol or the sharp edge of a rampuri.

Raghu had aspired to be like other people in his neighbourhood, working in a factory, as office attendant, driver or something else which he believed were respectful means of earning. His mother was very keen he attended a school and at least passed his 10th class. Though his father remained invisible most of the time, he also endorsed his mother’s decision. But the moment reality dawned upon Raghu he looked at the situation with a practical outlook and understood what was the writing on the wall for him.

********

The ganta ghar (the municipal clock), far away in the center of the town at least a mile away from Raghu’s hideout, struck twelve midnight. Raghu faced disappointment once again like the previous three nights. His effort was a waste again. He knew that due to security reasons lately the night show used to be over by half past eleven. It was already twelve and there was no trace of a lonely victim coming from the direction of cinema hall. There was no hope to prey upon a lonely train passenger coming from the railway station because it was a small railway station and except for a couple of passenger trains most of the trains passed through the station. He didn’t expect any train stopping there till next morning. Frustrated with another day of failure Raghu came out from his hideout and started moving slowly towards his bicycle when he heard the whistle of the train.

A surge of happiness rippled all over his face. He had not realized that the last train to nearby railway station which usually arrived by eight in the evening was late. In his own deep thoughts he did not register that he did not hear any whistle after hiding inside the tree. It took him no time to imagine that this must have been Chitrakoot Express which was late, may be a good omen for him. He immediately returned to his hideout and started looking out for a miracle at this late hour.

And a miracle did happen!

Raghu saw an image suddenly appearing from nowhere and gradually coming towards him. “Must be a local person arriving by this late train”, Raghu guessed. The man looked lean and thin carrying an overweight handbag which he was finding difficult to handle. Raghu’s imagination incited him and he felt happy to see the man who was not physically so strong and was carrying an unmanageable baggage, a perfect victim from his point of view. The man couldn’t overpower him even if Raghu had no rampuri and even if he dared to run away the person couldn’t run with that bag. The situation was perfect for a successful operation.

Raghu got ready for the act, made a stiff face before the real action, checked his rampuri in his pocket and readied himself to pounce upon the victim at the right moment. As the person drew nearer, Raghu started feeling a bit nervous for no good reason. The person in focus appeared to be a familiar face but Raghu got over those strange feelings and considered his

planned operation as his primary task which had to be accomplished at any cost, whether that person is known or unknown to him.

As soon as the person came very close to the banyan tree, Raghu rolled out like a tennis ball from his hiding with the speed of a panther. He was about to take out the knife from his pocket when the person in front of him got startled by his abrupt appearance.

“Raghu….. what are you doing here..?”, it was Pandit Dina Nath, his Hindi teacher who was already breathless carrying his heavy bag.

Raghu was crestfallen!

What a coincidence ? What a fate ?? For a moment Raghu thought his face was covered as he always did before conducting his operations. But waiting for five hours in the hideout in suffocating weather had really drained him off his senses. He had forgotten to take this safety precaution and was face to face in front of his Hindi teacher. He felt tongue tied and his vocal cords paralysed !

“It is midnight and you are roaming around…..” Dina Nath put his bag on the ground and in his typical style with his left hand over his hip he gestured with his right hand, “You should have been in bed at this time”.

“ Have you run away from home……?” Dina Nath gave a gentle slap on Raghu’s right cheek and said with a smile, “ got a scolding from your mother or had a fight with your elder brother……”

“No…no… Master Ji… I was a with a friend who had to take the train…. “Raghu’s vocal cords got unlocked and he muttered.

“Good boys don’t run away from home like this…. ” Dina Nath came closer to him and affectionately touched his shoulders, “Come on! I will take you with me…”

Raghu felt as if caught in a death trap. He breathed a long sigh without realizing that his Master Ji’s nose was always extra sensitive.

Dina Nath suddenly stopped walking. He placed another gentle slap on Raghu’s cheek, this time harder than the previous one, and without looking in to his eyes he muttered “Now….you have started smoking also?” Raghu looked down remorsefully.

Without looking at Raghu’ apologetic face Dina Nath looked unhappy and serious expressions appeared on his face. He bent down to pick up his bag and whispered in Raghu’s ears, “Good boys don’t smoke….”

Disappointment was evident on Dina Nath’s face. Raghu’s smoking habit had really disturbed him. He lifted his bag and started walking. But because of the heavy bag he swayed and almost lost his balance.

‘Master Ji, let me help you with this bag…” Raghu offered to help.

“No. It is Ok. I can carry it myself…”, Dina Nath was still in a bad mood. “I always told you that smoking is bad for health… you have forgotten everything I taught you…”

Raghu avoided the second part of his conversation but offered his help again, “Sorry Master Ji, but please allow me to help you. I have a bicycle with me …”

Dina Nath couldn’t cheer himself up but when he saw Raghu’s bicycle behind the tree he relented looking at his heavy bag and gave his nod.

Next moment Raghu was pedaling his bicycle towards Master Ji’s house. Master Dina Nath was still unhappy but quietly sitting on the carrier of the bicycle, tightly holding on to his heavy bag!

About the Author:

Ashok Patwari is a Pediatrician and Public Health Researcher by profession. Apart from his professional contribution as Professor of Pediatrics at Lady Hardinge Medical College, New Delhi and as Research Professor in International Health at Boston University School of Public Health, He has also served World Health Organization in India and Philippines.

He has been writing Urdu short stories for a long time. A compilation of his short stories in Urdu titled ‘Kuch lamhey kuch saayey’ was

awarded by Delhi Urdu Academy in 2005. He has also published 4 collections of Hindi short stories ‘Behta paani’ (in print), ‘Racecourse key goddey’, ‘Sitaron sey aagey’ and ‘Ghonsla’ (e-books).

He has published around 75 short stories in English, in print and online journals, during the last 20 years encompassing a wide spectrum of social issues and events which often jiggle a creative mind. He regularly contributes to ‘Muse India’, ‘Contemporary Literature Review of India’ and ‘Phenomenal Literature’.

Interview Section: Ashvamegh Issue X: November 2015: ISSN: 2454-4574

Who are the authors/poets interviewed for Issue X of Ashvamegh?

• Kevin Kiely

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Interview with Kevin Kiely by Alok Mishra

An Introduction to Kevin Kiely:

Kevin Kiely poet, novelist, literary critic, American Fulbright Scholar, PhD in modernist and postmodernist poetry – born County Down, Northern Ireland. Regular commentator on the arts in Village Magazine, the Irish Independent and other publications.

Breakfast with Sylvia awarded the Patrick Kavanagh Fellowship in Poetry, A Horse Called El Dorado Bisto Award, SOS Lusitania ‘One Book One Community’ title for the Lusitania Centenary. Francis Stuart: Artist and Outcast (Liffey Press, Dublin 2007; Dufour, PA 2008 Official Biography). His poems have appeared in anthologies, currently editing John L. Sweeney: The Patron of Poetry at Harvard.

wwwkevinkiely.net

kevinkielypoet wiki

The Interview:

Alok Mishra: You have been active in almost all the genres of literature. How do you see it?

Kevin Kiely: I don’t see any genre as clearly designated to be inclusive and exclusive but of course there are recognizable genres on the page, screen and printscape. Genre freedom is to me what is acceptable where genres can cross borders of form. In art, the artist wants freedom of form especially when it comes to any restrictions in form and definitively concerning content. Art must be free otherwise it is propaganda or some other collective consensus. In the 1960s there arose a poetry collective influenced by some publishers, some academics and various state funded arts councils all interlinked in networks that produced a synthetic poetry that represents a faux or false poetic. This sophistry of poetry I don’t want to specify by names but I hope to do so in an introduction to an anthology of poetry. Behind each specific artistically accomplished piece of writing is something far deeper than a mere label or genre. Take a poem entitled ‘A Map of Melancholy’, a novel ‘Quintesse’, and essay-reviews of Seamus Heaney or President Michael D. Higgins: they come from the one poet, novelist and critic but to affix rigid genre designation is not necessary. With regard to the action of writing in any genre there is naturally a mechanical impetus or beginning. However, what genus or genre the words are driving towards is highly occult as to how it appears finally on page, screen and printscape. I accept Mallarmé’s phrase about a poem as something given. A gift. I really wonder if the writer is totally the writing and that explains everything about it? Genre is ultimately mere classification. When I was in my twenties, I had far less post-consciousness about writing. I mean, less marveling at the fabulous fact of writing anything. I have now a greater sense of awe about writing any few words that reach their final form.


The actual process eludes me but the results astonish; naturally this is not self-admiration but the fact that the writing happens at all. In some respects what gets written is the end of a vast complex chain of creative events. There has to be a creative fire that ignites (one is stuck with a metaphor) but from where it comes and how it finds its target for instance in a finalized poem is beyond my conscious apprehension. I am not a person who wishes to have any constraints placed upon what I write. I admit that the process is not fully in my control. I think C. G. Jung is accurate by stating that it is Faust who creates Goethe, Hamlet who creates Shakespeare, the Inferno that creates Dante and not the other way around. The artist is given such a gift. Why? Of course the world needs art and the greatest possible art but to me its creation is metaphysical and supernatural. It is difficult to define the latter two terms. What I ask I cannot know the answer but I am given the writing.

Alok Mishra: Does being a critic and at the same time being a poet create any conflict while composing a new piece of art?

Kevin Kiely: Writing involves a critical faculty: that is the art of being able to forge a poem to its perfect final structure unless it arrives in a uniquely ‘finished’ state which is how some of my poems have arrived. It is also about patience and not feeling that I must ‘produce’ but accept what I am given. I never believe people who say that they are going to get a few poems written as if it is mere productivity. The critical faculty is creative, sensitive and facilitative with the lines, and must be; seeing deeply into the lines and each word in order to complete the poem. It might also be said that the critical faculty is primal but that would mean that creativity is only critically enabled primarily, whereas it must be a union of the creative and the critical faculty that brings to being a finished poem. Poetry amidst a vast eminence and presence arrives as a supreme high and elevation of the spirit. It is a visionary comprehension formed through language. I am suspicious of poets who have no solid criticism in output equaling their poetry. I don’t mean word-count for word count between one and the other, but the poets I admire are also, or were also, authors of critical work and poetical work and other genres. I do not believe that writers who claim to be poets exclusively in what they call poems alone are actually poets. Dramatists are poets in both genres for instance. The prose versus poetry discussion is a fake debate. A great test of bad poets is check out their equally bad attempts at prose. The biggest revealer of the fakes is their continual ‘explanations’ as to what their poems mean beyond the poems themselves. There is constant false implication as if poems are puzzles that ‘the poet’ will eventually explain whereas real poetry communicates to readers at a very early age which was my experience. My anthologies in primary and secondary school had selections from over 600 years of poetry and how is it that a ten year old or a twelve year old can comprehend real poetry. The answer is that language as used by poets strongly communicates like music, painting, sculpture, Nature and the Absolute.

Alok Mishra: What do you aim at while composing any piece of creative writing?

Kevin Kiely: I don’t think there is any aim. The thing happens. You write thankfully, if feverishly. Energy is required. It is a non-alcoholic, non-substance induced psyche-shifting experience but my


accuracy becomes faulty in trying to describe the mystery. I wait on the mystery in the poems given to me as the approach to the explanation. I long to know but in the poetry everything is revealed but difficult to grasp as the lines collectively cannot be comprehended as one total moment. The pre-writing stage in poetry is disturbing disabling disarming; after the poem is written down that awful state has been removed past the initial intensity. The poem then exists. I think one is working with powerful and invisible forces. I know this may sound vague but it is my effort to ‘explain’. It is a sort of schizoid breaking down situation that is overcome with the poem having been written. The only aim is to keep right on to the last word and line. If there is an aim, that is it. To get the poem written. Poetry is within the reality of the writer and the reader but it is also definitely never immersed in life like a tree, a plant, an animal, a fish or a human being. Yet poetry resembles life so perfectly in its words just like movies at their greatest moments, paintings, sculpture and all genres of music.

Alok Mishra: What is the ultimate purpose of your writing?

Kevin Kiely: My own? Oh, that is for readers to discover and I say that my best poems are true in what they say and communicate however much my life may fall below them. While all my poems approach the best ones I have written. In my own case, literature is essential and so involved with my being that I am an addict but how disparaging to compare literature and poetry to any drug. However, a poet is a sort of addict awaiting the poems and living with other poets’ poems and literature in the interim between writing. Living is the problem. Existing, trying to survive the onslaughts of the capitalist chess games. Purpose for a poet is beyond purpose, the actions, activities, waiting and receiving and making poetry is 365 24/7. It is not easy forget it, even dare I say, dramatically in sleep and dreams. One is on call, on duty, always at the ready. I used the term ‘sentinel of the shelves’ in a poem ‘Belfield Metaphysical’ a polite witticism as if the poet were an unpaid librarian always clocked in waiting between the shelves among the companionable works of literature for one’s own literature to arrive immersed in universal literature. My poems point to a present, a past and of course the future. I cannot understand poets who reject great poets from other eras. I cannot understand ‘poets’ who read nothing but their own efforts. To be a poet is to be within a vast historical frieze. There is no such thing as the isolated singular individual poet. A real poet is part of a chain of sensibility and being in the past at the present to the future.

Alok Mishra: The Modern world is complex. People are callous towards reading real creative pieces. I am pointing towards the commercialization of art. Then, how do you relate your works to the society?

Kevin Kiely: I believe that all writing and all genres relate to society and people of good will and spirit. I believe that real poetry is intact while artificial poetry can only have an arranged audience but real poetry is a precious entity like gold, water, sunshine, air: it is unmistakable, inimitable, recognizable, and enduring like the seasons, the planetary movements and the stars and beyond. I am not an atheist but it difficult to explain this also. Dante has a beautiful image about a hungry child and its mother’s milk. Would a child not know the difference between vinegar and milk. The same is true of a person and poetry. A person who is not an establishment poet knows a real poem from a fake poem. Poetry as essential entity occupies as much of the planet as Nature does and from the texts of Sacred Books to the greatest twentieth and new poetry of the twenty first century.


The commercialization of art is another aspect of reality, however entertainment that gives fun and pleasure without being evil is an art of entertainment. In this respect you can globally media-market writing like chocolate donuts and find buyers. A real artist is not averse to mass commercialization and circulation either but it is not necessarily and essentially the impulse. No one wants the hardship of poverty but many great poets wrote amidst penury. Similarly there were great poets who secured material wealth by one means or another. There is nothing necessarily moral about monetary reality. Careerist poets demand to be within a fiscal network for their ‘poetry’ and thus arrange cliques and institutions to the benefit of their production like exclusionary cults. The making of art is not essentially making a product except for those consciously making their marketed ‘art-product’. This is one of the dilemmas of our era that there is a saturation of the arts and an audience for such product in terms of entertainment but it just means that there are different sorts of art and not any one universal production called art, well that is if what is made approaches art. Especially in the visual arts, sculpture, modern conceptual painting and so forth which has had some really awful charlatans amidst the real practitioners. This is never a conflict for the real artist whose creativity arrives and the art gets made. An artist wants to work at the art above the horrible wrangles, disputes and time-wasting distractions and especially the fakes.

Alok Mishra: Being a critic, what differences you underline in the literary theory today and yesterday? I mean the contemporary age and the 18th-20th century.

Kevin Kiely: Well the poets from say Jonathan Swift onwards are all moderns and their struggle to make a valid literary theory were and are involved with how much could a writer say about society but they got it said. Real literature anyway has to have some veiled language in order to pass the vile censors and those who wish to ‘sell’ fake art to their captive audience. From Voltaire to William Blake who had become outspoken before Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer and onto say Camus there is the certainty of those writers among others of their caliber as being true to their style, technique and content. At this stage everyone knows the great poets of the twentieth century, except to sift through the living who dominate amidst their bought editors and publishers. I am not suggesting that all contemporary establishment poets are not real artists but the majority cluster together among certain groups and institutions as cartels of the fake. Literary theory is as old as Homer who wrote a lost work of satire and theory which remains in few quotations to the world. What will ratify and authenticate the twentieth and twenty-first century will be not just creative work but critical work. And in many ways the twentieth century was in a retrospective modus operandi with the dawning of the modernist movement which found its roots in nineteenth century French poetry and reached back to Homer as another beginning.

Alok Mishra: You have composed dramas, poetry and novels as well. Personally, what do you enjoy the most while composing?

Kevin Kiely: I am sustained by whatever I write and recently wrote a screenplay. I have received praise for my dialogue but not as yet scored in the bankable arts movie and tv zones where dialogue commands high prices. It is the periods between writing that scare me when reality becomes a great challenge. My life is highly problematic. Without writing I do not know how I would survive the levels of chaos that beset me.


Alok Mishra: Moreover, what do you like most while reading?

Kevin Kiely: I am thrilled by the amount of books in the world there can never be enough books but I do not mean every sort of book. There used to be a system in the public libraries when I began reading where a notice New Books would be put on a separate shelf with the newest acquisitions. That to me is another kind of joy.

Alok Mishra: I will reiterate the old debate of means versus the ends. Sir, what do you think matters the most – the way a creative piece is composed or the message that it delivers?

Kevin Kiely: Well both of course. I think it is easy to sometimes to see a method in written works which is what the university analysis-programmes and curricula respond to inordinately which fuels constant discussion, essays, seminars, lectures which at one level keeps some sort of survey of literature circulating but above this is the essential reader who actually breeds other readers. The real problem of the late twentieth century and even now is that there are too few poets who acknowledge that the real poet is coterminously the essential critical reader. If literature has a message it is a plurality unless it is propaganda which is not literature and always a conspiracy. Put it this way, the methodology is delivered within the structure of literature but who wants to be too specific about this. Certainly not me. Style in writing matters or the ultimate message matters? Style is everything inclusive of technique and construction.

Alok Mishra: What message you would like to convey to the aspirant poets?

Kevin Kiely: Poets who are about to write will write and will find their work. What you write makes you what you are and what you write precedes you in time and is anterior. It’s a possession simply in all its complexity. The poet is missing something as a human being which is the poetry; unity of being wavers between the mortal and the creative work. A writer dies but if they are a certain sort of creator of literature then their work goes on without them. I do not feel secure or safe answering these questions as I do not wish to compromise my art which is firstly poetry. My secret identity is that of being a poet. Sometimes I am negative about it all and yet it alone raises me upwards. I give praise to the creation of poetry and to poets continually.

Alok Mishra: Do you have any projects on the desk right now?

Kevin Kiely: Yes, a collection of poems, that is, I anticipate that it will come to a conclusion. I am also re-issuing a revised edition of The Welkinn Complex with an introduction as the first edition had errors and formatting errors but I cannot blame the US publisher it was due to my situation at the time unable to give due care to the pre-printing process. I have set about organizing a Free on Kindle edition of Breakfast with Sylvia with an introduction http://www.amazon.fr/Breakfast-Sylvia-Edition-Kevin-Kiely/dp/1516946545 as well as an edition of Journey East that was serialized in the Arbiter in the United States. My ‘secret project’ is Immortals―a two volume work about poetry, the arts, literature, history and society. I have completed Vol. I which looks at the twentieth century focusing directly on 1941-1981. Vol. II will be bookended within 1982-2016. The title is deliberately pedantic. I am updating the controversial Francis Stuart: Artist and Outcast official biography through Liffey Press and Dave Givens with a new introduction and I will ingest material left out of the first edition. There is my book on patronage at Harvard to be finally edited. All

http://www.amazon.fr/Breakfast-Sylvia-Edition-Kevin-Kiely/dp/1516946545

http://www.amazon.fr/Breakfast-Sylvia-Edition-Kevin-Kiely/dp/1516946545


these works are interrelated and in their midst whatever poems come dancing along in lines and words. I keep busy and like it like this.

Alok Mishra: At last, I would like to thank you earnestly for the time and your answers sir.

Book Reviews: Ashvamegh Issue X: November 2015: ISSN: 2454-4574

Which are the books reviewed for Issue X of Ashvamegh?

• Moirae by Mehreen Ahmed, reviewed by Alok Mishra

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Moirae by Mehreen Ahmed : A Book Review by Alok Mishra

I am very happy and satisfied to announce that there are ‘many writers who do not simply produce cheap entertainment, but write with a motive to depict intellectual philosophy.’ At least, after reading Moirae by Mehreen Ahmed, one can say it. I have been keeping a close watch on the recent literary (at least some say it literary) trend, and I have found the writers simply provide instant entertainment and nothing in the terms of something that remains as a strong outcome, even after reading the last page of the book. To say it bare, as soon as you close the book, every short-lived ideology weaved by the writer ends; the ephemeral thrill of girlfriends, boyfriends and extra marital affairs, all are extinct! However, with Moirae, written by Mehreen Ahmed, this is not the case! She has created something that strongly follows you (by any means) throughout the book, as well as after you finish the book.

Moirae is a dark tale; a negative fable; an adventure tale, or may be a dystopia for someone. In short, it keeps you captivated and everyone is free to name his/her perception according to what they extract from the reading. In fact, from the beginning itself, the book pictures different landscapes for every reader. Written in an experimental narrative style – stream of consciousness, this book reminds me the narrative of To The Light House by Virginia Woof. The name of the chapters are symbolic, as they depict Red Tempest, Ash Woodlands, Black Stream, Orange Soils and many more like this. Not only that, the symbolic imagery can also be witnessed in the name of the places, in fact, allegorical names – Lost Winds! As the name suggests, the place suffers a real loss – the loss of moral and ethical values. One can best understand the allegorical significance on the page 65:

“There wasn’t a single family in the Lost Winds, except for the influential, which enjoyed some peace here. Each had their own burden of woes, transpiring in their own way into classic tragedy. The graver a situation became, however, the more people hung in limbo, and the more astute they became.”

Mehreen has created a powerful ‘dream reality’ and tried to tell that what can happen in a world where there is no justice and corruption everywhere. In such a world, what can survive? The author says it very clearly on the page 95:

“What was left of this enchanting village was nothing more than a place of complete chaos, where crimes prevailed over justice and hatred over love.”

Yes, one can feel it. The world where justice and love enjoy no important place, only hatred and violence can rein supreme! Bring the Blue Moon, but the doom annunciated by two moons cannot be undone.

Yes, there is no more for the readers who wish to enjoy just a temporal respite in the letters. This book says something; this book talks to you; this book lets you ponder. People may announce it as an intellectual read. However, in the last of everything, the book is a pleasure and treasure as well. Kudos to the writer for a successful implementation of the stream of consciousness technique.

Research Papers: Ashvamegh Issue X: November 2015: ISSN: 2454-4574

Who are the scholars with selected papers for Issue X of Ashvamegh?

• Mithun Dutta • Amlanjyoti Sengupta • Dr. Dipika Bhatt • Ratheesh Tharakan

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Love, Religion and Paradox in John Donne’s Three Poems: An Approach Mithun Dutta

Abstract:

The poetry of John Donne particularly his early poetry generally portrays love and religion as its basic concerns. An attempt to juxtapose physical love with the sacredness of religion through a series of occult resemblances makes his poetry distinct and divergent from the conventional love poetry that dominated the preceding Elizabethan age. His poetry is not approved by his peers because of his deliberate departure from the traditional norms and expectations that cannot accept the possibility of a close proximity between the holy and the unholy, between the sacred and the profane, between the mundane and the spiritual. All these issues in Donne’s poetry lead to certain circumstances that may be outwardly contradictory or even paradoxical, but it is the heterogeneous juxtaposition that enriches Donne’s poetry and sometimes anticipates certain important characteristics of modern poetry. Donne’s uniqueness as a poet in handling the theme of love in most unfamiliar way is obvious in his mostly discussed three poems “The Flea”, The Good Morrow” and “The Canonization”.

Keywords: love, religion, juxtaposition, paradoxical, heterogeneous etc.


John Donne is considered as the most prominent poet of the school of metaphysical poetry that had flourished in the first half of the seventeen century England. But he is never recognised by the contemporary poets and readers as a major voice of English poetry until a vested interest is bestowed by Doctor Johnson in the eighteen century and its modern revival in the twentieth century by T.S Eliot and Herbert Grierson with their essays on Metaphysical poets. From the 1920s onward Metaphysical poetry especially the love poetry of John Donne is incessantly taken for scholarly analysis to investigate an underlying pattern that establishes the nature of various complex issues inherent in the poetic world of John Donne. In short, Donne was born and brought up amidst high Catholicism when it was prohibited, undergoing a secret love marriage without proper consent, turned towards Anglican priesthood and finally became the Dean of St. Paul Cathedral in the Church of England. It becomes quite natural that Donne’s first-hand experiences of love and several conflicts of religious faith are transformed into the pieces of poetry by a highly poetic intellectual. Thus love and religion have some autobiographical references to be employed in Donne’s poetry. But, as a true metaphysical poet, Donne treats love and religion in such way that is strangely unusual and different from its previous representations in Elizabethan poetry. While the Petrarchan sonnet with its overflowing emotions dominated the preceding age, the approach in metaphysical poetry is changed to bring a fusion between thought and intellect, between faith and reason that appears extremely contradictory. Paradoxes are the outcome of such conflicts that remain too complex to decipher but intensify the inherent meanings within such apparent contradictions. A paradoxical relationship between love and religion embodies the core issue in Donne’s poems like “The Sun Rising”, “The Good Morrow” and “The Canonization”.

One of the most important characteristics of metaphysical poetry is the use of conceits that are fully exploited by Donne in most unusual way that makes him the seminal figure of the Metaphysical school. Donne has successfully combined the most “heterogeneous ideas” with a certain force that makes his poems differ from other poets. Johnson’s notion of discordia concors that he describes as “a combination of dissimilar images or discovery of occult resemblances of things apparently alike” (Johnson: Selected Writings) is convincingly explored in the poetry of John Donne. Besides his abrupt opening with “strong lines”, his lyricism and dramaticality, his eroticism for a spiritual union, his intellectual parallelism, his priority of reason over emotion, his choice of paradox, ironies and his colloquialism are the hallmarks to understand the unification of various sensibilities that Donne’s poetry offers. The three poems mentioned above are a part of his early writings that also reflect the conflicts of traditional attitude towards love and religion that Donne has tried to homogenize but with a completely different approach. A critical reading of these poems establishes multiple viewpoints that truly suggest the relevance of Donne’s poetry and its influence since the early decades of twentieth century.

The poem “The Flea” primarily deals with the pleading of the speaker lover to his beloved for her denial in mingling the blood that implies a sexual intercourse. He complains her attitude towards his proposal of instant mingling. To validate his argument, as typical in Donne’s poetry, he gives an analogy of sucking their blood by a little worm called “the flea” in which their blood has already mixed up before their actual marriage: “It sucked me first, and now sucks thee, / And in this flea our two bloods mingled be” (“The Flea” 3-4). The male lover


thinks that if such mingling is so innocuous in which they do not share any liabilities, their physical union will maintain the same innocence that cannot be considered “A sin, a shame, nor loss of maidenhead” (The Flea 6). He thinks that the flea has mixed the blood of the two in its swelling stomach in such a manner that “alas is more than we would do” (9). The very first stanza shows the attitude of the male speaker to convince his beloved through his argument that seems apparently odd and disharmonious but quite apt for his intention. It also suggests the medieval notion of sex in which the bloods of two opposites are mingled.

As the beloved moves to kill the flea the speaker begs her to spare the flea that carries three lives now and in which they live more than married. So the killing of the flea would simply be self-destructive as the body of the flea has become a sacred place in which the bloods of the lovers are glorified: “The flea is you and I, and this/ Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is” (12-13). He can see that her parents might grudge to their romance and refuse to support a valid mingling through marriage, but they are already united and cloistered in the “living walls” of the flea. The reference of parents grudging a marriage is strictly autobiographical as Donne’s own relationship with Anne More suffered because her father didn’t give his consent for years even after their marriage. So at this moment the murder of the flea will be a sacrilege, a heinous crime that will do “three sins in killing three” (18). But as his beloved has committed “cruel and sudden” (19) by killing the flea, he now asks her “what could this flea guilty be / Except in that drop which it sucked from thee?” (21-22). Yet it is she who ultimately wins by killing the flea as a deliberate attempt on her part to discard his views on the flea. Now he begins to justify her act by turning his previous argument down. He admits that it proves her fears as mere imaginative. He then argues that any fear she might possess for the loss of her honour will be equally false. The act of physical intimacy will not cause any damage to her reputation: “Just so much honour, when thou yield'st to me / Will waste, as this flea's death took life from thee” (26-27). He thus comes to his original argument that a physical encounter with him will do no harm to her like the flea.

The poem “The Flea” seems to be apparently seductive but it is truly metaphysical in its particular treatment of love that makes the poem very unconventional. By comparing the body of a worm (the flea) to a sacred place that demands contemplation. When the killing of the flea is estimated as a sinful act - a sacrilege, it surprises the readers as it is equated with the murder of the physical union of the lovers in flea’s body before their actual marriage. Such a juxtaposition of the religious and the profane to bring the desired effect is a technique employed by Donne throughout his poetic career. Religion he uses as a resource to justify his metaphysical views of love. Some feminist scholars have found his use of phrase “when thou yield’st to me” as highly derogatory and patriarchal to women who are represented as the objects of male desires. But a close reading of the poem shows that the man is powerless until the woman gives her consent. He can merely provide some argument but she can raise her hand and kill he flea – she exercises her power by continuously rejecting his proposal of physical advancement. Until the poem ends the speaker has not been successful in his scheme to appease the beloved, but nobody knows what is going to happen next.

“The Good Morrow” is a typical Donne’s poem that opens with a question in quite a self-introspective manner: “I wonder by my troth, what thou and I /Did, till we loved?” (1-2).


The speaker asks what he and his beloved have done before they fell in love with each other. It was to him mere a waste of time “But suck'd on country pleasures, childishly? (3). He feels that before he could recognise his true love all his activities were immature and rustic done for immediate gratification. The words like ‘sucked’ and ‘country pleasures’ have certain implied overtones that are used to intensify the contrast in the next line “Or snorted in the Seven Sleeper’s den?” (4). The reference of Seven Sleepers alludes to the Catholic legend of Seven Christians who fled away to escape a persecution for their faith and took shelter in a cave where they fell asleep and woke up two centuries later. The adherence to a biblical analogy reflects Donne’s own inner conflicts of his earlier faith during a time when anti-Catholic sentiments were strongly prevalent in the early seventeen century England. But the speaker at present experiences the power of true love that not only wakes their bodies up from the previous sleep of ordinary existence with some bucolic pleasures but offers a feeling of spiritual awakening: “And now good-morrow to our waking souls” (8). He now realizes “For love all love of other sights controls /And makes one little room an everywhere” (10-11). After an experience of true love he now understands that lover’s room, however tiny it may be, is the microcosm of the macro world outside. The depiction of lover’s bed as the centre for all worldly affairs is very typical in Donne’s poetry.

The speaker is not worried about the discoveries of new worlds that will ultimately change the present map of the world by widening its horizon. Rather he is obsessed with his own world - the world of love: “Let us possess one world; each hath one, and is one” (14). Although the lover and the beloved hold two different worlds because of their individual identities but it is love that leads both of them to converge into a single one. He aspires to have such a union in which each of their worlds will be reflected in the eyes of the other. Their union will be so perfect like the two hemispheres of the globe but that will be “without sharp north, without declining west?” (18). This particular map with a sharp north and declining west refers to the heart shaped map of the earth known as a cordiform map that was very familiar at that time. It also shows the interest in sea voyages and expedition to discover new worlds to increase the boundaries of human knowledge as a typical characteristic of Renaissance England. But their union will be pure and perfect without the presence of any impurities because “Whatever dies, was not mix’d equally” (19). This line has multiple connotations. It is derived from the St. Thomas Aquinas’s scholastic philosophy that has an influence on Donne’s theological conception of the world and his mysticism reared in the neo-Platonic tradition. It also indicates the contemporary practice and belief in the process of alchemy for an elixir that can do miracles by converting every impure element into a pure and heavenly substance. According to the male speaker, only true love has such miraculous power that can bring an epiphany – the spiritual revelation to the waking souls. Only a perfect union of the two can make their love immortal: “If our two loves be one, or thou and I /Love so alike that none can slacken, none can die” (20–21). The entire poem is a process through which the earthly and sensual love is transformed into a divine and agapic love.

The poem also reads as an evolution of mind like Wordsworth who speaks about the spiritual attainment of an experienced age that comes through “the coarser pleasures of my boyish days/And their glad animal movements” (Tintern Abbey 74-75). Similarly, “The Good Morrow” is a poem of spiritual awakening from the childish coarseness as depicted in the first


stanza when the lovers “sucked in country pleasures, childishly?”(3) towards a more consummate form of love that completes the evolution through a perfect union. Although the poem has been identified as a sonnet in Donne’s Songs and Sonnets (1633), it never maintains the traditional form of a sonnet that consists fourteen lines with various structures and rhyme schemes. Rather the poem is a typical piece of Donne’s love poetry that comprises twenty one irregular lines divided into three stanzas.

“The Canonization” is more explicit in its treatment of love and religion. The title of the poem itself suggests that the theme of the poem might be somewhat theological. But as the poet tries to establish a relationship between love and religious faith and gives a central focus of how lovers are canonized as saints, the entire debate is problematized. It seems paradoxical when a sacred ritual like canonization is equated with the act of love-making. Physical love has no place in the scriptures of Christian theology that never permits to be involved in any kind of conjugal relationship. Rather sex is repressed and treated as a taboo – an act of profanity. So when the speaker of the poem, often merges with the poetic persona, invites the readers to justify his arguments that he puts forward in favour of his views of love that appear very odd and unconventional as the theme of traditional love poetry. But the speaker has emblematically established the possibility of a co-existence between love and religion that deconstructs man’s understanding of the concept of love and religion. The poem, in its unorthodox treatment, is truly a representative of metaphysical poetry and sometimes goes beyond any such classification.

It appears that the speaker addresses another person who is virtually present and perhaps do not approve his love affair: “For God’s sake, hold your tongue and let me love” (1). The poem is a kind of impassioned monologue through which the speaker defends his act of love against the outsider’s objection. The speaker asks him to keep quiet and not to interfere in the matter of his love. But the poem from its very beginning becomes provocative as the mention of “For God’s sake” refers to ironic overtones for the speaker’s intention to defend his love. He can allow him to comment in some other things that are insignificant when compared to love like his palsy, his gout, his five grey hairs and even his ruined fortune. The speaker advises him to pursue his own ambitions or improve his mind by studying arts. Instead of showing interest on other’s personal affairs, he should concentrate his own choices as the speaker suggests him “Take you a course, get you a place / Observe his honor, or his grace /Or the king's real, or his stampèd face/ Contemplate; what you will, approve” (5-8). He may choose anything he likes and the speaker doesn’t care whatever he opts. The speaker asserts that the addressee should restrict himself to his own matters and therefore let him love without further interference. Besides the poem as a form of monologue, the presence of an interlocutor, a mixture of lyricism with drama and many other features is often suggested as an earlier form of ‘dramatic monologue’ and Donne is sometimes called a Jacobean Browning.

In the next stanza he goes to defend his amorous life that doesn’t affect the outside world: “Alas, alas, who's injured by my love? (10). The irony goes deeper in the second stanza where the harmless gestures of the lover – sighs, colds, heats and so on are sarcastically pitted against a bleak, contaminated and exploitive world. The tendency to show his feeling of love in hyperboles also suggests a satirical dig towards the familiar courtly tradition of love:


What merchant's ships have my sighs drowned? Who says my tears have overflowed his ground? When did my colds a forward spring remove? When did the heats which my veins fill Add one more to the plaguy bill? Soldiers find wars, and lawyers find out still Litigious men, which quarrels move,

Though she and I do love. (11-18)

While in the stanza two the speaker intends to silence the implied listener through a series of hyperbolic clichés, he remains bold for his love in the third stanza trying to manipulate the situation with his use of certain emblematic metaphors that are very heterogeneous in nature. The speaker claims that he doesn’t bother what others think of them, even if they “Call her one, me another fly” (20). People can try to belittle him by considering him a small and insignificant like a fly, but he knows that they are also tapers who at their own cost consume themselves. They are not worried what others say or think rather they can make their own estimation as they find themselves as both “the eagle and the dove” (22). They possess the qualities of both the innocence and softness of a dove as well as the fierceness and force of an eagle. In their dedication and commitment towards love they have such mysterious power that can illuminate the legendary phoenix riddle – by their perfect union to “one neutral both sexes fit” (25). The speaker claims that as the lovers rise again after they die, they possess something miraculous, mysterious about themselves that will justify the lovers as canon of sainthood – the central argument of the poem. And through their resurrection out of the ashes of love, their amorous relationship becomes a paradox.

The fourth stanza opens with the celebration of the legacy of the love that is in no way inferior to become a legendary as the speaker feels “We can die by it, if not live by love” (28). If their love is found unfit for tombs or hearse to be commemorated, it will definitely find a place in verse. And even if there will be no historical record of their love in chronicles, the emotional impulse of their love will encourage the poets to compose sonnets where they will find “pretty rooms” (32). Here the “rooms” is used as pun that not only means a place but refers to Italian stanzas. Their love is so self-contained that it will be like the ashes of some greatest person preserved in a “well-wrought urn” (33). The urn by keeping the ashes does a justice to the memory of a dead man in the same way a tomb does spreading over half-acre land. The hymns written in the honour of their love will finally approve them as canonized for love.

This is the central idea of the poem that intends to establish the theme of love to be equated with the canonization. The poetic process completes as it proffers several arguments until the lovers are raised to the level of martyrs. In order to show that lovers are equally saintly figures with their dedications and sacrifices the poem creates paradoxical situations that are very complex and sometimes obscure. But such paradoxes are very natural to the core of the poem that obviously bears certain contradictory elements. Donne’s poetry for its paradoxes has greatly influenced the so-called New Criticism – a modern school of literary criticism. Several new critics like F. R. Leavis, Cleanth Brooks and many others took their interest in the metaphysical poets especially John Donne. Brooks in his collection of critical essays The Well-


Wrought Urn (1947) - the title taken from Donne’s poem “The Canonization” – upholds the view that paradox is the most fundamental to a great work of art or poetry. He asserts that the language of poetry should be the language of paradox which is an extension of the language, never a deterrent or limitation to it. He analyses the poem “The Canonization” from the view point of paradoxes and sometimes compares Donne’s complex symbolic imageries to that of Shakespeare, W.B. Yeats and T.S. Eliot. In his book Brooks has also generalised that it is the “heresy” that actually works underneath to give the meaning through its various tensions. In the poem of our discussion has also an inherent, subtle form of heresy that leads the poem towards its blasphemous and self-approbatory climax - “canonized for Love” (36).

The final stanza gives the denouement with such powers of love that encompass the entire world. The speaker feels that as their amorous life is canonized, all those who hear their story will invoke them because they have “made one another’s hermitage” (38). Everybody would remember them with reverence as the saints of love who by their divine power can make the whole universe contracted and converged into the eyes of their lovers. So the eyes of the lover and beloved will reflect an image of the outside world. Their world of love will sufficiently epitomize a full panorama of the macrocosm. It becomes an inspiration to the people who will follow the paths shown by the saintly figures of love. They will be the very model of the kind of love everybody aspires: “Countries, towns, courts: beg from above /A pattern of your love! (44-45). They will set an example to the people indiscriminately and the canonization of their love will be indoctrinated as a pattern that the whole world can follow.

All the three poems mentioned above have absorbed certain important features of metaphysical poetry. Although their treatment and attitude may differ, the main focus of these poems invariably remains on love and religion. While the poem “The Flea” is more sensuous and depicting a theme quite similar to carpe diem (instant enjoyment), the poem “The Good Morrow” is all about a metaphysical awakening through a perfect physical union, but the poem “The Canonization” is more complex and paradoxical in its theme as well as treatment. The poems consist of a variety of brief and elaborate conceits that are intellectually presented to enhance the forceful fusion of emotion and faith in all these poems. Reason plays an important role in metaphysical poetry as a result of Enlightenment that tries to establish a link between artistic imagination and contemporary realities. Sometimes it culminates into apparently conflicting situations that reflect the inherent paradox of man’s eternal involvement to both - love and religion. Despite all these facts, the complexity of substance is illustrated with the simplicity of expression in all dramatic situations found in Donne’s poetry. The employment of apparently contradictory ideas to love and religion is very suggestive in Donne’s mostly analysed three poems which are indispensable to understand Donne’s love poetry in general.


Works Cited: Brooks, Cleanth, The Well-Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry. Np: Mariner Books, 1956. Print. Cruttwell, Patrick. Ed. Johnson: Selected Writings. Np: Penguine Classics, 1982. Print. Eliot, T S. ed. Selected Essays: 1917-1932. London: Faber and Faber, 1950. Print. Johnson, Samuel. The Lives of the English Poets. Np: Biblio Life, 2008. Print. Norton, W W. Ed. Norton Anthology of Poetry. Np: W W Norton & Co Inc, 1975. Print. Kelley, David. “The Canonization of John Donne”. Sydney Studies 12:3 (1980): 1-41. Print. Gardner, Helen. Ed. John Donne: A Collection of Critical Essays. Np: Pentice Hall Trade, 1962. Print.


Mithun Dutta is a Research Scholar pursuing his Ph.D at the Department

of English, Banaras Hindu University and has completed M.A in English

from Banaras Hindu University. His areas of interest are Metaphysical

Poetry, Modern Poetry, Absurd Drama, Harold Pinter and literary theories

especially Poststructuralism,Postmodernism and Postcolonialism.

An Analysis of Urban Sensibility in Nissim Ezekiel’s Poetry

Abstract

Urban life, both as setting and subject matter, appeals to the modern literary artists. The rapidly

developing modern metropolis proved to be an inspiring enough environment for artists and

thinkers because of its immense variability and diversity. The city life provokes ambivalent attitudes

and feelings in many who are mere thrilled by the opportunities it affords for their self-realization

but who, sometimes hypocritically, also fear its vices and abhor the crudity of its life.

Many modern Indian English poets ventured urbanism in their poetry. Nissim Ezekiel is supreme

among all to whom city of Bombay became the epicenter of his being. Most of his poems were set

in this city. It was the city of the poet’s “birth and rebirth” having a prominent place in the poet’s

conscience. The paper is an attempt to explore urnan sensibility in Nissim Ezekiel’s poetry.

Key words: Urban, Urban sensibility, Urbanism, Metropolis

Introduction

In human life, geographical location and surroundings, through the persistence of their influences,

acquire peculiar significance. On a poet or any creative writer, this impact is deeper. The area in

which he/she lives, its people, their occupations, all find literary expressions through his/her pen.

Thomas Hardy describes Wessex with all its rural traits. R.K. Narayan’s Malgudi describes the

people of Malgudi, their simple joys and wishes, their professions, the natural surroundings with a

great perfection. The impression of North of Boston is evident in the creation of Robert Frost.

D.H. Lawrence’s novels bear an impression of his own life and surroundings in which he was

brought up. Similarly Nissim Ezekiel is not an exception for whom Bombay is the city of the poet’s

birth and rebirth. It is Bombay, the city with contradictions, where he wins and loses, for whom he

lives and dies:

“…..Bombay as the fruit

on which I’ve lived,

winning and losing

my little life.”

[Ezekiel, Mangoes]

Bombay has been an inspiring city for many poetic creations. The impact of the city’s growing and

decaying civilisation on the consciousness of the new poets has produced some of the most telling

Indo-Anglian poems. They have dealt with the oppression, inertness and decay of city life.

Bombay has become a tantalising symbol of the bitterness and decadence of urban life in India.

The poets have written about Bombay’s divergent moods and modulations. The poets have

developed an ambivalent attitude of love-hate towards the city. For Dom Moraes, the city is merely

a ‘cave’ suggesting its primitiveness and savageness. Gieve Patel is disgusted with the ‘eternal

station odour’ of Bombay which hits every nostril. The squalor and putridness of the metropolis is

reflective of the decay of human existence caused by industrialisation. The woodenness and

insensitivity that have gone into the Bombay soul is subtly expressed by Keki N. Daruwalla thus:

“I am the doctor who bangs his doors shut

On a queue of waiting patients.”

(Daruwalla, “Bombay Prayers”)

Even poets like Amit Choudhuri, Dilip Chitre and Aroop Mitra have expressed shock and disgust

at the growing dehumanisation of the city and presented several dirty faces of the city with

horrifying clarity – it’s unceasing traffic, strident noises, dubious night life and many more. Aroop

Mitra’s poem “Cityscapes”, particularly, focuses on the littleness that lurks behind the facade of

greatness and splendour exhibited by the city inhabited by people.

“........ breathing little

Air, drinking little water,

Earning little, spending

Little, wasting little,

And make a little love

And spice a little music.”

More than any other poet, Nissim Ezekiel made substantial contribution to Indo-English poetry by

depicting Indian life, more particularly city life, vividly and realistically. The metropolitan city of

Bombay figures most prominently in his poetry. According to Linda Hess “He is a poet of the

city, Bombay.” On being asked, ―Has living in the city like Bombay affected your poetry? Ezekiel

answers as follows:

I feel I am Bombay city poet, can‘t imagine living long anywhere else. I lived in London for 3 ½

years. 1948-51, but never thought of myself as a Londoner except that the Movement was alive

then and I had a live contract with it. I am oppressed and sustained by Bombay. (Chindhade 157)

Ezekiel‘s response to Bombay is his response to his homeland, for it is through Bombay that he

reflects on India. Never does he own Bombay with a nativist’s enthusiasm; nor does he reject

Bombay as an alien outsider. As ‘a good native’ he seeks adjustment with Bombay –a strategy of

survival, compatible with persona‘s ideology of human balance, thus

“It is home

which I recognize at last

as a kind of hell

to be made tolerable.”

(Ezekiel, After Reading a Prediction)

Urban Sensibility in Ezekiel’s Poetry Ezekiel feels alienated from his homeland right from the very beginning of his childhood. Ezekiel

belongs to Bene Israel community which migrated to India generations ago. He is acutely

conscious of his alienation which is further accentuated by the fact that he spent most part of his

life in metropolitan city Bombay with Marathi as his lost mother tongue and English, being the

language of the home, his second mother tongue. The poet is conscious that he can not find his

root in Bombay as he said:

“We cannot find our roots here,

don’t know where to go, Sir,

don’t know what to do, Sir,

need a Guru, need a God.

All of us sick, Sir.”

(Ezekiel “Family”)

He is a detached involver of the Indian life as Philip Larkin was of the British life. His attitude

towards the land of his adoption is that of a critical insider. His existence in Indian scenario is

brilliantly depicted in very Ezekelian style in ‘Background, Casually’

“I went to Roman Catholic school,

A mugging Jew among the wolves.

They told me I had killed the Christ,

That year I won the scripture prize.

A Muslim sportsman boxed my ears.

I grew in terror of strong

But undernourished Hindu

Their prepositions always wrong,

Repelled me by passivity.

One noisy day I used a knife”.

The play of rejection and acceptance is one of powerful forces in Ezekiel’s poetry particularly his

poems exclusively about India and Indian life. Ezekiel is basically a poet of city life, to say in Bruce

King’s words, ‘a representative voice of urbanised, western educated India’. He would while

cherishing the cosmopolitanism and the secular ethos of Bombay, bewails the gross commercial

and existential character of the city. His passion is inevitably that of an urban bombayite, but it is a

condition from which he frequently seeks release. The urge for the melodious song and the sight

of growing scrapers and slums continually create a drama of conflict in Ezekiel‘s poetry. In one

breath he would declare Bombay as an island of ―slums and skyscrapers ―unsuitable for song as

well as sense; in the next breath realizing the futility of his resentment he would announce the

acceptance of reality:

“Unsuitable for song as well as sense

the island flowers into slums

and skyscrapers, reflecting

precisely the growth of my mind.

I am here to find my way in it.

Sometimes I cry for help

But mostly keep my own counsel.

I hear distorted echoes

Of my own ambigious voice

and of dragons claiming to be human”.

(Ezekiel, “Island”).

As a “good native” he is ready to reconcile with the “ways of the island” and declares:

“I cannot leave the island, I was born here and belong”.

(Ezekiel, “Island”)

However, the poem has ominous undertones of frustration and sadness expressed through

contrasting images like “slums and skyscrapers”, “dragons claiming to be human”, “echoes and

voice”, “past and future” and “calm and clamour”. In Citysong there is a reluctant acceptance of

the ways of the city. From the terrace of a friend, the poet watches the city that lies below. A

sudden urge overtakes him to return to the city just as a repentent debauchee returns to his

seductress at her sight.

“I want to return

As soon as I can

To be of this city

To feel its hot breath

I have to belong”.

(Ezekiel, “Citysong”)

There is a profound sense of compassion, understanding, acceptance and sympathy for the city.

The poet has seen and known this city in all its aspects:

“Barbaric city sick-with slums,

Deprived of seasons, blessed with rains,

Its hawkers, beggars, iron-lunged,

Processions led by frantic drums,

A million purgational lanes,

And child-like masses, many tongued,

Whose wages are in words and crumbs”.

(Ezekiel, “Morning Walk”)

In the poem entitled ‘In India’ Ezekiel has enumerated the city sights, focusing our attention up on

the poverty of the people as represented by the beggars, hawkers, pavement sleepers and the

dwellers in slums. Here, he also draws our attention to the burning of woman who did not bring

enough dowries, and to the virgin who are frightened of being molested by rogues and ruffians

“bunt –out mothers”, frightened virgins”.

“Here among the beggars,

Hawkers, pavement sleepers,

Hutment dwellers, slums,

Dead souls of men and gods,

Burnt-out mothers, frightened

Virgins, wasted child,

And tortured animal,

All in noisy silence

Suffering the place and time,

I ride my elephant of thought”.

(Ezekiel, “In India”)

In The Double Horror, irony is combined with the urban theme and the distortions of a mass

culture are mercilessly exposed. The city has dehumanized human beings. Ezekiel thinks that

highly commercialized human cilivization is like a ‘jungle growth’ which ‘sucks life from life’:

“Posters selling health and happiness in bottles,

Large returns for small investments in football pools,

Or self-control, six easy lessons for a pound

Holidays in Rome for writing praise of toothpastes,

The jungle growth of what so obviously intends

To suck life from life, leaving you and me corrupted.”

(Ezekiel, “The Double Horror”)

In an urban scene love often degenerates into lust and Ezekiel deals with this aspect in his poem

‘An Affair’. Many of his poems like ‘Entertainment’, ‘Road Repairs’, At the Hotel’, ‘On Bellasis

Road’, ‘At the Party’, ‘Hangover’ etc. have scenes and characters from the city life. In the poem

‘Hangover’ he describes Bombay with perfect juxtapositions:

“Half the day hazy with the previous night.

The non-drinker drinking, non-smoker smoking.

Two or three men, two or three girls.

The red coated waiters of Harbour Bar.

The redlight district dancer at the Apollo Room.

The foreigners and the foreign-returned.

The expensive menu and the shadow of Marx.

The Biryani Hyderabadi and the sighs for Bangla Desh.

The see- through dress and the show nothing sari.

The fog in the head and the sense of success.

The music Indian and the language English.

The Sindhi Sales Manager and the Parsi Fashion Model.

One good joke from a neighbouring table.

Five-children local family staring at one child American family”.

(Ezekiel, “Hangover”)

The satirical tone is continued with the contradictory statements: “No Indian whisky Sir all imported this is Taj.

Yes Sir soda is Indian Sir.

Midnight.

Taxi - strike. George Fernandes.

Long walk to Churchgate between pavement sleepers.

Last train to Borivli, stopping at all stations.

Two blind beggars, husband and wife, in the first class

compartment.

Half the day hazy with the previous night.”

Various places, which Ezekiel refers to, such as Harbour Bar, Apollo Room, Taj (Hotel Taj),

Churchgate, Borivli etc. show that he is deeply attached to his city and completely familier to every

nook of it. The poet is extremely aware of the fact that in the subarbs of Bombay, many lead a

wretched life and this finds an expression here:

‘Do you know where he lives?

Ghatkoper, twenty miles away.

Half an hour in queue,

Fifteen minutes in a bus,

Forty minutes in a train,

A long walk from the station to a slum.

Poor fellow, what a life!

He ought to be a smuggler

but doesn’t have the guts.

I tell you, we should have left

this country twenty years ago.

Now it’s too late. There’s no future for us.’

(Ezekiel “Occasion”)

Ezekiel portrays the problem of human communication in the urbanized society and in this repect,

in the poem “On Meeting a Pedant” the poet mocks at pedantry that characterizes the urban

scene:

“Forgive me, stranger, grant me but a strip

Of silence for the taking off.........

But spare me words as cold as print, insidious

Words, dressed in evening clothes for drawing rooms.”

(Ezekiel “On Meeting a Pedant”)

‘Words, dressed in evening clothes’ connotes the fashionable city style. “Goodbye Party for Miss

Pushpa T. S.” is a satire on the English language of the urban Indians, particularly English of the

people of Bombay. Written in the form of a farewell speech, the poem revels in a mood of good

humoured parody. The occasion is Miss Pushpa “is departing for foreign.” “The rambling style

typical of such speeches is tellingly employed; all logic is taken leave of, and typical Indian thought

processes are expressed” (Chindhade 41). To quote from the poem:

“Miss Pushpa is coming

from very high family.

Her father was renowned advocate

in Bulsar or Surat,

I am not remembering now which place.

Surat? Ah. Yes,”

(Ezekiel, “Goodbye Party for Miss Pushpa T. S.”)

“Urban”, in ‘The Unfinished Man’ is a remarkable and unforgettable poem. It tells us of the city

man, who is caught up in the phantasmagoria of sex and power and for whom there is no

redemption. The poem explores the divergence between the Bombay man’s search for the

nourished dream of a free, oppressionless existence and his perennial inability to achieve even a

partial realisation of it. He never sees the skies; he never welcomes the sun or the rain; his morning

walks are dreams floating on a wave of sand.

“The hills are always far away.

He knows the broken roads and moves

In circles tracked within his head”.

………………………………….

..………………………………..

He welcomes neither sun nor rain.

His landscape has no depth or height.”

(Ezekiel, “Urban”)

The dichotomy between man’s hopes and achievements in the distressed city is suggested by the

metaphor “broken roads” and “circles”. But towards the fag end of his career Ezekiel has come to

realise,

“I cannot save Bombay

You cannot save it

They don’t even

want to save it”

(Ezekiel, “The Edinburgh Interlude”)

In spite of his disgust with the futilities of the sprawling city, Ezekiel, early in life, made a

commitment to choose Bombay as his place of residence:

“I have made my commitments now

This is one: to stay where I am,

As others choose to give themselves

In some remote and backward place.

My backward place is where I am”.

(Ezekiel, “Background, Casually”)

His desire to escape from the tantaliser city of his birth is never realised because one cannot escape

from oneself. The city has become his addiction.

“To save myself

From what the city had made of me, I returned

As intended, to the city I had known”.

(Ezekiel, “A Time to Change”)

To Conclude

Nissim Ezekiel is a critic and a censor of the city life as he sees it. Ezekiel presented ‘Bombay’ as it

is without concealing anything or singing unnecessary praise of the city. It is understood, that,

though there is the apparent darkness, engulfing the city, which is not permanent, and is not

unredeemable. In poem after poem, he has exposed to ridicule the ugly spots of the city and the

failing, shortcoming, and deficiencies of city life. He finds the city of Bombay to be a sick and

ailing city, inhabited by people who are sick too. The sickness is not just physical and

environmental but also mental, requiring the attention of a psychiatrist. He calls it “a barbaric

city”, full of slums, deprived of seasons, cursed with a million purgatorial lanes; it means dirty,

abhorrent, repellent, narrow streets. He refers to its hawkers, its beggars asking for charity in loud

voices, and it’s many tongued laborers who get their wages not in cash but in words and in crumbs.

He takes notice not only of the pleasant aspects of the city but even more so, of the unpleasant

aspects of it. His portrayal of urban life is all-encompassing. He always tries to build up a very vivid

city scene, referring to the newspapers, cinemas, speeches demanding peace by men and grim,

warlike faces, posters selling health and happines in bottles, and promises of large returns to small

investments in football pods. We always experience miscellaneous imagery covering the good and

the bad features of city life in Ezekiel’s poetry.

Ezekiel’s own relationship with the city may be described as a love-hate relationship. He hates the

many unpleasant and disgusting aspects of city life in India and yet he feels attracted by the city life

because of his feeling that by making the people aware of the miserable condition in which they

live he may be able to bring about some improvement. And his desire to improve the condition of

life shows his true commitment to this country.

Work Cited:

Chindhade, Shirish (2011). Five Indian English Poets. New Delhi: Atlantic.

Ezekiel, Nissim (2006). Collected Poems 2nd ed. New Delhi: Oxford U P.

Hess, Linda, (Spring 1966), Post- Independence Indian Poetry in English, Quest, 49, pp. 28-38.

King, Bruce (1987). Modern Indian Poetry in English, Delhi: OUP


Amlanjyoti Sengupta is an assistant professor at the Department of English,

Assam University (Diphu Campus), Diphu, Assam. He is the author and co-

author of several books on Business Communication and communication

skills in English. He presented papers on several topics at many international

conferences in India and abroad.

Hybridity of race and Culture in Amitav Ghosh’s The Glass Palace Dr. Dipika Bhatt

Abstract

This paper intends to study the hybridity of race and culture in the modern world through

Amitav Ghosh’s novel The Glass Palace. The Glass Palace is a book about geographical

entities, space, distance and time. Many stories have been woven together. This novel of Amitav

Ghosh is the story of an Indian orphan Rajkumar who is transported to Burma by accident.

Through his character the writer emphasis on orphan children’s development, ideal Indian

perception about women where animality is more or less left to men and women save the grace

of human existence. In The Glass Palace gender relations are clear through man-woman

relationship of Rajkumar-Dolly, Beni Prasad-Uma, Dinu-Alison etc. relationships. This is the

true picture of Indian marriages. The couple lives together for decades without really knowing

each other, without actually sharing innermost thoughts and without genuinely loving each other.

Marriage becomes a matter of habit, a taken for granted ritual of life. Through these characters

we find the true picture of modern relations which are not based on true love. The impact of

English language and culture on education and people are clear in the novel through Beni Prasad

and Arjun’s character. The racial hybridity is clear through the relationship between queen

Supayalat’s (a Burmese Queen) daughter and Marathi coachman Sawant and through their

marriage. Saya John’s character also reveals this type of racial hybridity. Through Uma and

Dolly’s conversation Ghosh also comments on the Indian caste-system. Dolly said to Uma that

all Indians are same; all obsessed with their caste and arrange marriages. She frankly tells her

that in Burma when a woman likes a man, she is free to do what she wants. The double names

given to Rajkumar’s children reflect the hybridity of two nations and two cultures. Languages

are deployed in several ways in this novel. All of the major characters are bi-lingual or multi-

lingual with strong cultural ties to more than one country. Indians born in Burma have both

Indian and Burmese names and use words from both languages and even the Burmese

princesses, in exile, learn Indian languages.

Key words: Gender relation, racial hybridity, English language.


Research Paper

The Glass Palace is a book about geographical entities, space, distance and time. Many stories

have been woven together. There are many characters. It is a saga of many families, their lives

and their connection with each other. From the post-colonial cultural perspective, as observed by

Homi Bhabha, the modern nation “Fills the void left in the uprooting of communities and kin,

and turns that loss into the language of metaphor” (Mishra and Kumar 27). Bhabha emphasizes

the point that nations are born of anti-imperialistic struggles and their identities are necessarily

ambivalent. In the Indian context, the dispersal and scattering of people is the process of making

of the nation. Rakhee Moral rightly comments, “The idea of the nation as metaphor of loss, and

as being more symbolic of a Unitarians than the physical entity which is society, finds elaborate

figuration in the turbulence of cultural cross-overs and conflicting histories that makes up the

central concern of Ghosh” (Mishra and Kumar 27). Ghosh believes in Ashis Nandy who points

out that colonialism “Represents a certain cultural baggage” (Mishra and Kumar 27). For Ghosh,

the novel is an instrument of perception more like a lens than a mirror for the objective

representation of reality. He is more interested in a sort of active moral engagement with human

experience.

This novel of Amitav Ghosh is the story of an Indian orphan Rajkumar who is

transported to Burma by accident. As a child, Rajkumar is remarkable for his exploring spirit,

keen perception and his ability to take calculated risks. Rajkumar works in a tea stall of a

matronly lady Ma Cho. He loves exaggerating his age just of feel like an adult. A well-travelled

orphan, Rajkumar is worldly-wise. Rajkumar an orphan boy is established as bold, and

remarkable. Once Rajkumar lands in Mandalay, his life-long search for places and people begins.

He is taken in by the city, “Long straight roads radiated outwards from the walls, forming a neat

geometrical grid. So intriguing was the ordered pattern of these streets that Rajkumar wandered

far afield exploring” (Tiwari 89). This exploring boy is a complete destitute in an alien city with

absolutely no acquaintances. Finally he goes to Ma Cho for job and he receives a thorough

rebuke and scolding at the very outset. But his keen perception helps him to know, “That this

outburst was not aimed directly at him: that it had more to do with the dust, the splattering oil

and the price of vegetables than with his own presence or with anything he had said” (Tiwari 90).

Soon the boy Rajkumar develops his sense of belonging at the new place. Barriers are

challenging to him, cause progress. If there would be no hurdles, a person would not think of


ascending and getting beyond. As he views the fort of Mandalay the crystal shining glass palace,

he instinctively knows that orphans like him cannot go there and yet “No matter what Ma Cho

said, he decided, he would cross the moat-before he left Mandalay, he would find a way in”

(Tiwari 90). It is this spark that sets Rajkumar apart for a life of success, adventure and

prosperity. His lessons of worldly wisdom come soon. With no one to guide or look after him, he

goes where his fancy takes him. Through the creaks in the wooden walls, he starts viewing Ma

Cho at nights. He gets to know about female anatomy and sex in this way. He even gets his first

physical sensations through Ma Cho, though fortunately she does not go beyond limits and

resists herself well in time. It is pathetic to watch the condition of an orphan growing boy whose

only tutor is life. He is just a toy and Ma Cho could have made him whatever she wanted. But

“Abruptly, she pushed him away, with a yelp of disgust. What am I doing with this boy, this

child, this half-wit kalaa? Elbowing him aside, she clambered up her ladder and vanished into

her room” (Tiwari 90). Here Ghosh focuses on ideal Indian perception about women where

animality is more or less left to men and women save the grace of human existence.

Life teaches him its own lessons. At his heart, he is always certain about his success in

life. When the British throw down the king of Burma, Rajkumar is told that the British wish to

control Burmese territory for wood. And from this point starts his shaping of his future plans. He

senses wealth in teak. When the city is rampaged by the British, it is the Indian soldiers who

come on orders of their colonial masters. Suddenly Indians become the target of mob frenzy.

Rajkumar is also attacked; he is saved by Saya John. That day, Saya perceives something unique

in Rajkumar.

There was something unusual about the boy - a kind of watchful determination.

No excess of gratitude here, no gifts or offering, no talk of honour, with murder in

the heart. There was no simplicity in his face, no innocence: his eyes were filled

with worldliness, curiosity, and hunger. That was as it should be. (Tiwari 91)

Through Saya John a teak businessman Rajkumar gets his first job. When the palace of

King Thebaw is evacuated, everyone rushes into it to loot as much as they can. Rajkumar also

goes in, not for an item of loot but for his future wife Dolly. Dolly like Rajkumar is an orphan.

He falls in love with Dolly at first sight at the tender age of twelve. He learns from experiences.

He is receptive, he is learning to see the world not only through his own eyes but also as others

see it. Saya is his tutor for all practical purposes. When Saya is rebuked by an English boss,


Rajkumar flares up. It is Saya that passes his wisdom to Rajkumar, literally teaches him to see

the other side of a picture. Through these poignant phases, Rajkumar grows. When Saya

earnestly tells Rajkumar how to live, how to deal with people and situations, once his

orphanhood strikes him right at heart, “Rajkumar could tell that Saya John was thinking not of

him…but of Matthew, his absent son and the realization brought a sudden and startling pang of

grief. But the pain lasted only an instant and when it had faded Rajkumar felt himself to be very

much the stronger, better prepared” (Tiwari 92). His being an orphan gives him a unique

sensibility. He is able to watch every scene with detachment. His only concern which is pure and

simple is to defend himself and provide for himself. He is a growing boy, without strings. It is a

disadvantage but sometimes it proves an advantage also. All the incidents of his life make him

practical.

He reserved his trust and affection for those who earned it by concrete example

and proven goodwill. Once earned, his loyalty was given wholeheartedly, with

none of those unspoken provisions with which people usually guard against

betrayal. In this too he was not unlike a creature that had returned to the wild. But

that there should exist a universe of loyalties that was unrelated to himself and his

own immediate needs - this was very nearly incomprehensible. (The Glass Palace

47)

This attitude of Rajkumar leaves out all loyalties related to place, nationhood etc. He is

free; he uses this free will in building his business. His professional rise is impressive. When he

decides to take a loan from Saya and establish his separate timber yard, Saya is full of doubts.

Then Rajkumar gives a few tips to Saya;

Saya: The big English companies could destroy you; make you a laughing stock

in Rangoon. You could be driven out of business.

Rajkumar: Saya, this is no better than a roadside teashop - I might as well be

working for Ma Cho. If I’m ever going to make this business grow, I’ll have to

take a few risks.

Saya: You’re just starting out. You have no idea of how these deals are struck in

Rangoon. All the big people here know each other. They go to the same clubs, eat

at the same restaurants, and put money on each other’s horses.


Rajkumar: It’s not just the big people who always know everything, if I could find

out exactly how much the other companies are going to quote, then I might be

able to put in a winning bid. (The Glass Palace 130)

With these risks he grows and grows very well. After his establishment Rajkumar is ripe

to go to India to search Dolly, he is already a successful and respected businessman. He thinks

that tracing Dolly is not difficult because she has been with the deposed King and Queen of

Burma.

Here Ghosh through the character of Rajkumar focuses on miserable condition of orphans

who are depends on their fate, family and society. Rajkumar-Dolly in The Glass Palace, Alu in

The Circle of Reason, Paulette in Sea of Poppies, are some of examples of orphans. In The Glass

Palace Rajkumar established himself but Dolly was a doll of queen Supayalat’s hand. She has no

choice and will to live her life freely. She was wholly depends upon king’s family. An orphan

girl in our society is also a big problem because she is not safe in the cruel hands of society.

Through the novel Ghosh suggest that it is also a big duty to our society to give these children

good education and life so that they understand the value of their life and leads a happy life.

Dolly is loyal to the king’s family. She remains with them in the most critical

circumstances. One by one all the maids and servants leave the royal family and go back to

Burma but Dolly does not do so. This is the reason that she has nowhere to go to. She was loyal

to king’s family so the sincerity of her nature cannot be denied. She becomes an attractive young

girl in her childhood. Her body and mind expand. She has nothing to look forward to. She cannot

dream for herself. Her life is an appendage, a depending extension of the royal family. Sex

comes as a handy rescue for this young girl to maintain her sanity. The novelist chooses to go in

detail regarding Dolly’s first exposure to the life of the body. Sawant is the local servant of the

king. He is the chief servant. He is the natural choice for Dolly and she for him. But soon they

are caught by the first Princess who herself is growing into a woman and is also in need of

engagement of some sort. To cut a long tale short, the first princess snatches Sawant and her

pregnancy is dramatically announced. By this time Collector Dey and his wife have arrived on

the scene. The Collector is responsible for the well being of the royal family. The Collector at

one point of the novel is intrigued when he comes to know of the pregnancy of Supayalat’s first

daughter. He is disgusted. He is at a loss. His sense of class and decency is deeply violated, “Was

this love then: this coupling in the darkness, a princess of Burma and a Marathi coachman; this


heedless mingling of sweat?” (Tiwari 103). This saga of human weaknesses gives birth to the

concept of hybridity. No race is pure; nor is any caste pure. There is no pure royal blood or

anything like that. Life is mixing - DNA combinations and permutations. Saya John is a fine

example of this breed of hybridity. His clothes are Western. He speaks English, Hindustani and

Burmese. His face looks like that of Chinese. Saya himself makes fun of his amalgamated

identity;

...They (Indian soldiers) asked me this very question: how is it that you who look

Chinese and carry a Christian name, can speak our language? When I told them

how this had come about, they would laugh and say, you are a Dhobi Ka Kutta - a

washerman’s dog - Na Ghar Ka Na Ghat Ka - you don’t belong anywhere, either

by the water or on land, and I’d say, yes that is exactly what I am. He laughed,

with an infectious hilarity and Rajkumar joined in. (Tiwari 104)

This is laughter of mutual sharing. Rajkumar is as much a washerman’s dog as Saya

John. There is no humiliation between the two. This is simple acceptance of fact. “Apart from

characters, at the level of pure ideas also, this novel is very rich. There are relevant ideas on the

process of civilization, wars and their futility, the concept of boundaries, colonization, journey,

hybridity, rootlessness, childhood and the process of growing ” (Tiwari 103). When Rajkumar

comes to take Dolly she is in an emotional chaos. She is not interested in Rajkumar, she forgets

him. She is disturbed by some psychological transference which she identifies with the first

princess and says to Rajkumar that she is awaiting the baby’s arrival. She feels the baby of

princess to be her own. Uma knows her better she said; “The birth of this child will drive you out

of your mind…” (Tiwari 97). When Uma coaxes her to marry Rajkumar and says that he loves

her, Dolly’s reply is remarkably correct, “He’s in love with what he remembers. That isn’t me”

(Tiwari 97). According to Rajkumar, Dolly appeared to be beautiful beyond belief, beyond

comprehension. “She was like the palace itself, a thing of glass, inside which you could see

everything your imagination was capable” (The Glass Palace 144). The Collector’s wife Uma,

when she saw Dolly for the first time felt that “Miss Sein was perhaps the loveliest woman she’d

ever set her eyes on” (The Glass Palace 108). A coolie woman with whom Rajkumar had an

illicit relationship saw the photograph of Dolly and said to Rajkumar, “She’s so beautiful, like a

princess - what do you want to do with a woman like me?” (The Glass Palace 236). Dolly goes

on to tell Rajkumar about her past relationship with Sawant. He accepts everything, Rajkumar


and Dolly are married. They get two sons Neel and Dinu. He celebrates to compensate for all the

missed celebrations of his own life. But his life cannot be called perfect as he falls prey to the

turbulent times in his old age and his world is torn apart. Dinu moves away from him, Neel dies

and Dolly goes to a monastery. Although the end can be blamed at fate, one flaw is very much

Rajkumar’s own. Dinu as a child develops slight polio in one leg. Dolly consumes herself day

and night in Dinu’s care. She becomes more and more introvert. She cuts herself off from the

world, including her elder son, Neel and husband. Dinu and his well-being remain the focal point

of her existence for months or even a year or so. It is as though the mother and the son have

reentered the prenatal period of oneness. The child is safely in mother’s protective presence, her

womb and all his needs are fulfilled without asking. During this period Rajkumar goes into

physical relationship with one of the workers forcibly and Ilongo, his illegitimate son is the result

of this extramarital mating. The picture of racial hybridity is clear in these lines. Here Indian

belief on fate can be seen through Rajkumar’s story.

Here our civilized and often hypocritical rules of morality will not work because this

novel like other good novels is a true depiction of life. Howsoever absurd such an act may look

to the cold, distant gaze; it is perhaps the most natural thing to happen in the mess of life. Dolly

has withdrawn and Rajkumar succumbs to his physical needs because of lack of the power of

their reasoning. He remains, despite his achievements, an uneducated orphan. Here Ghosh

emphasis on educational value which enables man perfect to take a right decision. Uma develops

a close friendship with Dolly. Their friendship lasts a whole lifetime. But for all her

sophistication, liveliness and charm, there are problems in Uma’s life that she has not been able

to sort out. The bond between her and her husband is weak. The collector has been educated

abroad. He does not fit into Indian scheme of things. The author makes an indirect comment on

the state of Indian marriages when he says “The wifely virtues she could offer him he had no use

for: Cambridge had taught him to want more, to make sure that nothing was held in abeyance, to

bargain for a woman’s soul with the coin of kindness and patience. The thought of this terrified

her. This was subjection beyond decency, beyond her imagining. She could not bring herself to

think of it. Anything would be better than to submit” (Tiwari 98).

This is the clear picture of Indian marriages. The couple lives together for decades

without really knowing each other, without actually sharing innermost thoughts and without

genuinely loving each other. Marriage becomes a matter of habit, a taken for granted ritual of


life. The Collector wants mental connection with Uma. Her resources prove to be inadequate on

this account. She does not love her husband. She does not trust him. She may be having wife

virtues namely timely supply of needs, patience, passivity etc. but a bond with the husband is

something she dreads. On the other hand the Collector is a different type of a man, intellectually

emancipated. He selected Uma after seeing her at a puja when she was sixteen. He wanted a

flexible girl who is not too settled in her ideas and behavior. His family opposed Uma. “But he

persisted, insisting that he didn’t want a conventional marriage. He’d been working with

Europeans: it wouldn’t do to have a conservative, housebound wife. He needed a girl who would

be willing to step out into society; someone young, who wouldn’t be resistant to learning modern

ways” (Tiwari 98).

Disappointment is the word that settles too soon in their relationship. Uma is leading a

mechanical, lonely life playing the part of elegant hostess in all the social gathering of the

Collector. Her friend Dolly releases Uma form this chain of boredom and dull schedule. She

connects well with Dolly. Her husband does not occupy her psychological space. Things are

bound to fall apart. Once Dolly leaves, the Collector is perceptive enough to say to Uma when

she approaches him. “You have come to tell me that you want to go home” (Tiwari 99). After

this incident Uma has decided to leave the Collector. She has decided that she cannot go on like

that. The dialogue that follows is touching and tragic. There can be nothing much sad in this

world than talk of broken dreams. The Collector does exactly the same, he said to Uma;

I used to dream about the kind of marriage I wanted...To live with a woman as an

equal, in spirit and intellect: this seemed to me the most wonderful thing life

could offer. To discover together the world of literature, art: what could be richer,

more fulfilling? But what I dreamt is not yet possible, not here, in India, not for

us. (Tiwari 99)

Uma leaves and the Collector go to row out into the sea, never to return. He feels that

there is no need to turn back home as no one would be waiting for him and he would find it hard

to sleep. And thus goes a precious life, a talented, sensitive human life. The Collector commits

suicide. He proves to be even more vulnerable than Uma. It is unbelievable that Uma has no

feeling of sorrow to her husband after his tragic death. Instead of it the novel distastefully ends in

when Rajkumar’s granddaughter Jaya said; “But that morning when I ran into Uma’s room, I

found, to my surprise, that Rajkumar was in her bed. They were fast asleep, their bodies covered


by a thin, cotton sheet. They looked peaceful and very tired, as though they were resting after

some great exertion” (Tiwari 99-100). The lines tell that Uma’s image as woman of icy self-

containment, a widow who had mourned her dead husband, for more than half a century was

false. Once when Uma discloses Rajkumar’s relationship with an indentured woman Rajkumar

also blames on Uma, “Have you ever built anything? Given a single person a job? Improved

anyone’s life in any way? No. All you ever do is stand back, as though you were above all of us,

and you criticize and criticize. Your husband was as fine a man as any I’ve ever met, and you

hounded him to his death with your self-righteousness” (The Glass Palace 248).

Traditionally, men control and inhabit the power structures and they understand

the dynamics of economics. Men make and take decisions on property and lay

down the rules of morality. They have categorized women into good and bad and

have indoctrinated both women and men to such an extent that by and large they

have come to accept these categories. Men have thus evolved the dual strategy of

control and exclusion. (Chakravarty 134)

For a very long time it has been ingrained in the mind of an Indian woman that marriage

is the ultimate goal of her life and her husband’s home is her only abode. However, the modern

educated Indian woman finds that marriage allows only an outward semblance of freedom.

Indian society is still very conventional in its approach to marriage and despite numerous

contradictions; husband and wife strive to maintain an outward show of balance and harmony. In

the career-graph of man and woman (husband and wife), it is always the woman who must curb

her individuality so that her husband’s career remains open to a meteoric rise. In The Glass

Palace the next generation children of Rajkumar and Dolly, Saya John’s grandchildren and

Uma’s nephew and nieces are no less interesting than their parents and aunts. Dolly’s younger

son Dinu is the most substantial figure in this group. He possesses a unique keenness, he is sharp.

Dinu is instinctively thoughtful not an extrovert even not very social. His profession is

photography. When Dinu is an adolescent, Dolly encourages his interest in photography

“Because she felt that she ought to encourage any activity that would draw him out of himself”

(Tiwari 100-101). Here Ghosh emphasis on the importance of relationships which are really so

huge in life. Without these relationships life would be meaningless. Uma alone is a detached

observer of the scene. She feels that in the faces of these adolescents “She could see inscribed the

history of her friendships and the lives of her friends - the stories and trajectories that had


brought Elsa’s life into conjunction with Matthew’s, Dolly’s with Rajkumar’s, Malacca with

New York, Burma with India” The author also delineates the psychology behind arranged

marriages in India “...It was a way of shaping the future to the past, of cementing one’s ties to

one’s memories and to one’s friends” (Tiwari 101).

Dinu is attracted by Alison in the first sight. Once Uma’s nephew Arjun comes to meet

with Dinu in Alison’s house, he is serving in Indian army and the equilibrium between Dinu and

Alison is lost. The liveliness of Alison matches with Arjun’s power and for a short span of time

Dinu loses Alison to Arjun. He is jealous of Arjun and his loud impressive ways. He tries to

come to terms with the situation. He knows that Alison cannot be trusted with Arjun. But he just

cannot do anything about it. He has only his inner resources. He decides not to fall a prey to self-

pity. On the other hand Alison was comes to the conclusion that between Dinu and Arjun there

hardly exists any comparison. Her analysis provides a beautiful picture of these two men.

Arjun - you’re not in charge of what you do; you’re a toy, a manufactured thing, a

weapon in someone else’s hands. Your mind doesn’t inhabit your body...She saw

that despite the largeness and authority of his presence, he was a man without

resources, a man whose awareness of himself was very slight and very fragile;

She saw that Dinu was much stronger and more resourceful.... (Tiwari 102)

Here we find the true picture of modern relations which are not based on true love. Dinu

and Alison are soon parted forever because of the war. The relationship that might have bloomed

and lasted a lifetime is ruptured by the tumult of war. Alison dies and Dinu starts a new life. He

is old and mellow. He has been living a quiet married life with a well-known Burmese writer.

Cultural hierarchies overlap in entwining of the high and low classes in spite of race, religion and

class, in order to create new societies. The feminine consciousness in the novel recognizes the

difference between a woman’s vision and man’s vision through Rajkumar-Dolly and Beni Prasad

Dey and Uma relationships. Beni Prasad Dey’s relations with Uma were just like the oppressor

and the oppressed. For emotional relief, he needs consolation from Uma and not the wifely

virtues. It was Uma’s subjection beyond decency, beyond her imagining. She could do nothing

but to submit her. Rajkumar marries Dolly and has two sons, Neel, Dinu and Ilongo is Dinu’s

half-brother. He inhabits in the post-colonial space as a foreigner in Mandalay and is subjected to

colonization. Neel marries Uma’s niece, Manju in Calcutta and Dinu who loves Saya John’s

grand-daughter, Alison, marries a Burmese research scholar who wrote her dissertation on the


Glass Palace Chronicles. According to Rakhee Moral Dinu and Alison’s love affair is;

“Symbolic of exiles coming together, as it were, of families meeting out of a shared compulsion

across disputed and dispossessed territories” (Mishra and Kumar 28). Saya John’s son Matthew

marries an American girl Elsa and Alison is their daughter. These family ties come to full circle

and the cultural differences are forgotten and the artificial borders are no more. Ania Loomba in

Colonialism and Post-colonialism concludes:

If a post-colonial studies is to survive in any meaningful way, it needs to absorb

itself far more deeply with the contemporary world, and with the local

circumstances within which colonial institutions and ideas are being moulded into

the disparate cultural and socio-economic practices which define our

contemporary globality. (Mishra and Kumar 30)

Languages are deployed in several ways in this novel. All of the major characters are bi-

lingual or multi-lingual with strong cultural ties to more than one country. Indians born in Burma

have both Indian and Burmese names and use words from both languages and even the Burmese

princesses, in exile, learn Indian languages. Especially for Rajkumar retaining the old dialect is a

way of maintaining old ties despite the official dominance of English. Also there are terms

peculiar to work situations for example, from the teak camps and rubber plantations, reflecting

the high percentage of minorities working in such places. Language is overtly used as a weapon

as well as to bind people together. For example the Burmese queen in exile speaks Hindustani

fluently and uses that to embarrass and intimidates Indian officials who are Parsi or Bengali.

Politically, Dinu declares the need to communicate in secret languages in Myanmar under

military dictatorship. Ghosh describes the aspirations, defeats and disappointments of dislocated

people in India, Burma, China, Malaysia and America such as King Thebaw, Queen Supayalat,

Saya John, Rajkumar, Dolly, Uma, Alison, Dinu, Neel, Arjun, Hardayal, Kishan Singh, Jaya and

Ilongo.

For Rajkumar and Jaya, there is the impulse towards family, biologically and culturally,

to find a sense of belonging. It is their lack of family that both generate this desire to create a

new traditional constraint of the institution. On one occasion, Rajkumar tells his loved-one,

Dolly: “I have no family, no parents, no brothers, no sisters, and no fabric of small memories

from which to cut a large cloth. People think this sad and so it is. But it means also that I have no

option but to choose my own attachments” (Hariprasanna and Gayathri 16-17). He reads this


lack of attachment as a freedom of a kind that allows him to remake family not according to

racial, caste, or national dictates. Both his sons Neel and Dinu affirm the forming of a new

family populated by racially and culturally mixed subjects. Finally the novel shows the positive

effect of crumbling family structures that allows for the making of new communities based on

common social understanding.

Amitav Ghosh through the novel shows the cultural ways of Bengali women i.e. safe

guarding a precious ornament in the folds of the sari and a mother’s last blessings to her son -

beche thako. He uses a number of words ek gaz, do gaz, teen gaz referring to land measure and

gaaris, horis, basti, langot etc. for material goods. Through the protagonist Dolly Ghosh also

comments on the Indian caste system. Dolly said to Uma: “Oh, you Indians, you’re all the same,

all obsessed with your castes and your arranged marriages. In Burma when a woman likes a man,

she is free to do what she wants” (The Glass Palace 117-118). The impact of Western education

and civilization is clear in the novel. The thoughts of Indian people mixed with Western

civilization are clearly seen through Arjun’s remark to his friend: “Just look at us, Hardy - just

look at us. What are we? We’ve learnt to dance the tango and we know how to eat roast beef

with a knife and fork. The truth is that except for the color of our skin, most people in India

wouldn’t even recognize us as Indians” (The Glass Palace 439). Another example of Arjun’s

pride is following:

Europeans were comments on Indians that look at Punjabis, Marathas, Bengalis,

Sikhs, Hindus, and Muslims. Where else in India would you come across a group

such as ours - where region and religion don’t matter - where we can all drink

together and eat beef and pork and think nothing of it? Arjun said, every meal at

an officers’ mess was an adventure, a glorious infringement of taboos. They ate

foods that none of them had ever touched at home: bacon, ham and sausages at

breakfast; roast beef and pork chops for dinner. They drank whisky, beer and

wine, smoked cigars, cigarettes and cigarillos…After taking some whisky Arjun

said that we’re the first modern Indians; the first Indians to be truly free. We eat

what we like, we drink what we like, and we’re the first Indians who’re not

weighed down by the past. (The Glass Palace 278-279)

Amitav Ghosh like Salman Rushdie is an insider not outsider who talks about cultural

displacement through cracked lenses. He makes us think about the relation of culture to


economic and political structures in the present days of globalization. As a writer of the Indian

diaspora, Ghosh wants to record its historical depth and its meaning in the world. Ahdaf Soueif

writes, “Ghosh is one of the most sympathetic post-colonial voices to be heard today. He looks at

love and loyalty, and examines questions of Empire and responsibility, of tradition and

modernity” (Mishra and Kumar 28).

Thus we can say that through his novel and its characters Ghosh emphasis on the global

issue of hybridity of race and culture. We find in this novel issue like gender relation, man-

woman relationship, effect of English language and culture on Indian people, Indian concept of

caste system and arrange marriage.


Works Cited Chakravarty, Joya. Indian Writing in English Perspectives. New Delhi: Atlantic, 2003. Print.

Ghosh, Amitav. The Glass Palace. India: Harper Collins, 2000. Print.

Hariprasanna, A. and T.Gayathri. “The Glass Palace-An Augmented Narrative.” International

Journal of English Literature, Language and Skills 1.3(2012):14-18.

<www.ijells.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/ijells-oct.2012-fin.pdf>

Mishra, Binod and Sanjay Kumar. Indian Writings in English. New Delhi: Atlantic, 2006. Print.

Tiwari, Shubha. Amitav Ghosh: A Critical Study. 2003. New Delhi: Atlantic, 2008. Print.

Author Introdction:

Dr. Dipika Bhatt is working as a Lecturer, in Mahila Mahavidyalaya P.G.

College, Haridwar. Ph.D holder in English Literature from Gurukul Kangri

Vishwavidyalaya, Haridwar. She has completed her MA in English Literature

from the same institution in 2011. Moreover, she had also taught in the same

institute as a research scholar for sometimes. Her papers have found their way

too many respectable journals nationally and internationally. She has published

nine international papers till date. She has also attended many conferences and seminars organized

by different universities.

Untouchability in Arundhati Roy’s God of Small Things Ratheesh Tharakan

INTRODUCTION

Arundhati Roy came in to the realm of literature in the year 1997 when her debut novel, “The God of Small Things” begged the coveted booker prize for literature. Though she was born in Shilong, where her father was employed as a tea planter, her early childhood was spent at village, Ayemenam, a few kilometers from the Kottayam town in central Kerala. The theme of the novel revolves round this village. Just after a few years of her birth, her father the tea planter divorced his wife, there for the little child Arundhati had to come back to Ayemenam with her beloved mother. Her mother marry Roy brok the tradition by marrying a Bengali and then divorcing him. He also made the history by fighting the provision of the Christian succession act and in this connection; she even went to the Supreme Court. The favorable ruling allowed Christian women an equal share with their male siblings in their father’s property.

Roy was the thus product of a broken home. She had to face several cares and anxieties, fret and fever during her child-hood. The Ayemenam house was dominated by the traditional patriarchal clutches. The men in and around the house were conversation in their outlook. This phenomenon can be beautifully seen in the novel where Ammu who represent her mother, marry Roy, has to undergo so many up & downs. Arundhati spent her most time in her grandmothers pickle factory. She became a formidable pickle label sticker and curry powder packer. But in spite of all these odds and hazards she was essentially an extra ordinary genius who used to devote to the studies heart and soul. Lalith Kumar Christopher Roy, the brother of Arundhati Roy, who has been portrayed as Estha in the novel is also opinion that Arundhati was a very good student, an athlete and an orator. At the age of eighteen she left for New Delhi for her higher education. She joined in the Delhi school of architecture. But their too she had to spent her life in the utter penury. In the second year, she was requested her family not to return home to Kerala. This exerts a great shock in to her young, gentle mind. She took a room which was tin-shaded at Feroz Sha Kotla. She had to make a living by flogging empty beer bottles. The other period of her life that is very important is when she was in the Delhi school of architecture. She was never given a hostel. Next to the school of architecture, there was a refugee colony. Where the mess manager of the canteen had a shack, which the rented to Roy and her boyfriend. In course of time, she topped the class in her thesis and took her degree, but she didn’t practice. In other words from the age of about 17-25 she had absolutely no anchor. She had been even asked to leave home by her family. After getting the degree of architecture, Arundhati worked as a research assistant at the national institute of urban affairs. She devoted herself to it in much a manner that she won a scholarship for going to Florence to study the restoration of monuments and historical urban centers Arundhati Roy also a great screen play writer. She writes the screen play for “The Banyan Tree”, a television serial. The serial consist of 26 episodes and very beautifully deals with a story set in Utter Pradesh in the years between 1921 & 1952. It shows the last tumultuous decades of the British Raj. But this famous TV serial was abandoned halfway through the shoot as the production company ran in to financial trouble. Subsequently their store rooms were broken in to, and all the costumes and property stolen and sold. Actually speaking, the breaking of the serial in the middle was a very traumatic and painful thing to Roy.

Untouchability is a direct product of the cast system. It is not merely the inability to touch a human being of a certain cast or sub cast. It is an attitude on the part of a whole group of people that relates to a deeper philological process of thought and belief, invisible to the naked eye, translated in to various physical acts and behaviors, norms and practices. Untouchability is prompted by the spirit of social


aggression and the belief in the parity and pollution that characterizes Casteism. It is generally taken for granted that dalits are considered polluted people at the lowest end of the cast order. The jobs considered polluting and impure are reserved for dalits, and in many cases dalits are prevented from engaging in any other works. These jobs including removing human waste, dragging away and skinning animal carcasses, tanning leather, making and fixing shoes and washing clothes. They are supposed to reside outside the village. So that their physical presence does not pollute the “real” village. Not only they restricted terms of space, but their houses are also supposed to be inferior in quality and devoid of the any facilities like water and electricity. At the village level dalits are barred using wells used by non-Dalits forbidden from going barbershop and entering temples while the level of job recruitment ant employments. Dalits are systematically paid less ordered to do the most menial work, and rarely prompted even at school. Dalit children may be asked to clean toilet and eat separately.

As an instrument of Cartesian untouchability also serves to instill caste status to dalit children from the moment they are born. Kachro (fifth), Melo(dirty), Dhudiyo(dusty), Gandi(mad), Ghelo(stupid), Punjo(waste) are the some of the names given for Dalit boys in Gujarath. Dalit girls had the similar names in there. This shows the debilitating effect of untouchability, as it becomes a consitious act of cooperation between two individuals of distinct caste or sub caste.

Arundhati Roy one of the legendary Indian English writers picturise the term untouchability in her book “The God of Small Things” she gave the real picture to the untouchable, lower caste people in this work.

Thus this project report is an attempt to understand the problems of untouchability in “The God Of Small Things” by Arundhati Roy.


CHAPTER I

Untouchability – An Overview

Untouchability is a cancer that has been eating our society from ancient time towards this has been handed down from generation to generation. Cast system was at first a kind of division of labour. Then it became a tool in the hands of the upper cast people to exploit and marginalize the lower castes. Millions of Indians are still untouchables in the sacred land of Gandhi, Buddha and Ambedkar. They live the parallel universe of isolation. All Indians are violating the basic rights and the human rights of other Indians.

Dalit is a designation for a group of people traditionally regarded as untouchable. Dalit are a mixed population, consisting of numerous social group from all over Indian; they speak a varity of languages and practice a multitude of religion. There are many different names proposed for defining this group of people including Panchamas and Asprushya.

In 2001, the proposition of dalit population was 16.2 percent of India’s total population. The dalit population is broadly distributed across Indian states and districts. In 2001 the state of Punjab had the highest proposition of its population is Dalit, at about 29 percent, and the state of Mizoram had the lowest at nearly Zero. The government of India recognizes and protects them as the scheduled castes. The term Dalit has been interchangebly used term scheduled castes and these terms include all historically discriminated communities of India out castes and untouchable. While discrimination based on castes has been prohibited and untouchability abolished under the constitution of India, discrimination and prejudice against

Dalits in South Asia remains. Since independence in 1947, India has implemented an affirmative policy of reservation, this scope of which was further expended in 1974 to set aside and provide jobs and education opportunities to Dalit by 1995, of all jobs in India, 17.2 percent of jobs were held by Dalits greater than their proposition in Indian population in Indian population. In 1997 India democratically elected K.R. Narayanan, a Dalit, as the nation’s president. Many social organizations to have proactively promoted better conditions for Dalits through improved education, health and employment.

Dalits and similar groups are found in India, Nepal, Pakistan, Srilanka, and Bangladesh further wherever immigrants from these countries have left, caste has gone with them. As a result Dalits can also be found in the U.S, U.K, Singapore, Malaysia, Canada and the Caribbean. In addition, the Burakumin in Japan cagots and Roma in Europe, Al-Akhdam in Yemen, Baekjeong in Kolea and Midgam in Somalia are or were excluded from the surrounding community in much the same manner as the Dalit. In fact, a 2012 paper argued that the European Romas DNA matches the dalit in india

The caste system in kerala differed from that found in the rest of india. While the Indian caste system generally modeled the four fold divisions of society. In to Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaisyas and shudras in Kerala the Namboodiri Brahmins formed the priestly class and only rarely recognized anyone else as being other than Shudra or untouchables outside the caste system entirely. Thus the Kerala caste system was ritualized but it was not the varna model found elsewhere. One theory that explains the origins of the caste system in the Kerala region – which prior to the Independence of India complied the three areas known as Malabar


district Travancore and Cochin is based on the action of Alyan jains introducing such distinctions prior to the 8th century AD. This argues that the jain needed protection when they arrived in the area and reclaimed sympathetic local people to provide it. These people were then distinguished from others in the local population by their occupation as protectors, with the others all being classed as out caste. Cyriac pullapilly a professor of history, describes that this meat they were given Kshatriya function but only Shudra status.

A theory presented by pullapilly and also by Rene Barendse who as of 2012 is a fellow of the international for Asian studies, claim that the caste system established by Namboodiries Brahmins of Kerala was in accordance with the will of Parasurama, an avatar of Vishnu. The Namboodiries had control of 64 villages and asserted that they have powers given to them by the gods, so much, so that they considered even other Brahmin group to be outside the caste hierarchy. Both writers consider this to traditional Namboodiri myths of origin. The Namboodiri Brahmins were at the top of the ritual caste hierarchy, outranking even the kings. Anyone who was not a Namboodiri was treated by them as an untouchable.

The Namboodiries had varying regarding the degrees of virtual pollution. While interacting with people of different caste. In return, most castes practiced the principle of untouchability in their relationship between other regional castes. Untouchability in Kerala is not restricted to Hindus, and George Mathew say that, technically the Christians were outsides the caste hierarchy, but in practice a system of inclusion and exclusion was developed among Christians, the established Syrian Christians also practiced the rules of untouchability. In the colonial period, many lower castes were converted to Christians by the European Missionaries,but the new converts were not allowed to join the Syrian Christian community and they continued to be considered as untouchabile even by the Syrian Christians. The rules of untouchability were serve to begin with and they were very strictly enforced by the time of the arrival of the Dutch East India company, in the 17th century. Robin Jeffery, who is a professor specializing in the modern history and politics of India, quotes the wife of a Christian missionary who wrote in 1860 that a Nair can approach but not touch a Namboodiri Brahmin,: a Chovan (Ezhava) must remain thirty six paces off, and a Pulayan slave ninety six steps distant. A chovan must remain twelve steps away from a Nair, and a pulayan sixty – six step off and a parayan some distance further still. A Syrian Christian may touch a Nair but the latter may not eat with each other. Pulayan and pulayans are lowest of all, can approach but not touch, much less May they eat with each other.

Nonetheless, higher ranked communities did have social responsibility for those perceived to be their inferiors: for example they could demand forced labor but had to provide food for such laborers, and they had a responsibilities in times of femine to provide their tenants both with food and with the seeds of grow it. There were also responsibilities to protect such peoples from the dangers from attack and other threats their livelihood, and so it has been described by Barendse as “an intricate dialectic of rights and duties”.

Mahatma Gandhi condemned the idea of untouchability. He called it a crime, an evil, a blot on the name of Hinduism. He sincerely beloved that the curse of oppressive British rule was a just


punishment for the sin of untouchability that the high caste Hindus had shamelessly practiced for many centuries. He wrote long and passionately against it: “has not a just nemesis (British rule) over taken us for the crime of untouchability? Have we not reaped as we have sown? We have segregated the parian and we are in turn segregated in British colonials and colonies. We deney him the use of public wells; we throw the leavings of our plates at him. Indeed there is no charge that the pariah can not filing in our faces and which we do not filing in the face of English men. It is necessary for us Hindus to repent of the wrong we have done alter our behavior towards those whom we have “suppressed” by a system as devilish as we belive that system of the (British) government of India to be……….. it is a reform not to follow Swaraj (self rule freedom) but to precede it.

Gandhiji set a bold example for Hindus to follow. At age 12, the argued against untouchability in his own home. As a young lawyer in South Africa, he cleaned his own latrine to emphasize the dignity of menial labor. Later, in India, he adopted an untouchable girl as his daughter and insisted that his political followers, many of them wealthy Brahmins do their own sweeping, toilet cleaning and rubbish disposal. He was not afraid to suspend the freedom movement against the British to preside Indians that the destructions on untouchability were his first priority. He fasted, played, agitated, and eventually brought large number of Hindus to believe that untouchability had no place in their society.

The Origin of Untouchability

Untouchability originated in India around AD 400 and it arose out of the struggle for supremecy between Buddism and Bhrahminism and it was molded the history of India.

Untouchability is the word used by Ambedkar himself for those lowest castes in the Hindu scale of pollution. During the pre- Independence era the term depressed classes was used to denote the untouchables. This was replaced by scheduled classes in 1935 when the castes were placed on a scheduled a qualifying for special right. Gandhiji’s name for the untouychables, “ Harijan”dates from his 1933-34 campaign against untouchability and is in general usage except among Ambedkar’s followers. The origin of untouchability is an enigma, but it is generally held that it is a prevented outcome of the caste system. The vedic Aryans no caste system, as time went on, the Aryans divided themselves for different occupations of labor and capacity of the individual. Those who took to learning were Brahmanas, those who undertook governance were classified as kshetriyas, those who resorted to trade were termed vaishyas, and those who were known as sudras. Brahmins continued to be regarded as some one next to god where as a man from the lowest caste, as a shudra. The result was original four division became watertight compartments and degenerated later in to the present caste system. In this way the four varna came to stay as four caste hence forth different professions, barriers of provinces varying way of led to the creation of various sub – castes. The untouchable were from the lowest strata of the Hindu society and were condemned as untouchables by the caste Hindus down the century.

Problems of Untouchability in India

When the constitution of India outlawed untouchability in 1950 many national leaders believed that a centuries old practice had been brought to an end. But now nearly 60 years later there is no total success of the statutory measure. Millions of Dalits the country across, who account for roughly 1/5th of the population continue to suffer birth based discrimination and humiliation. In state like Tamilnadu which boasts a long history of reformist movement is no exception. In fact untouchability has not only survived


the constitutional ban but taken new avatars in many part of the states. Caste based discrimination has often led to violence, leaving hundreds of disadvantaged people in distress particularly in the 1990s. The segregation of dalit is seen almost everywhere in Tamilnadu’s villages. But nothing can perhaps beat the high wall 500 meters long that has been built at Uthapuram in Madhurai, districts a barrier between Dalit and caste Hindus. While untouchability is still rampant and is taking new forms particularly in villages, the constitutional ban and compulsions of modernity and development have to some extent blunted its rigor. Rail transport has been unifying forces in society. Yet the railways have been among the worst offenders in respect of the law against manual scavenging. Dalits constitutes a significant position of its work force of manual scavengers along railway lines. Although all state governments claim that they have abolished manual scavenging reports reveal that this practice is very much alive in many places. Postmen have also been found to practice untouchability. A study conducted Tamilnadu noted that in two villages in Madurai district postmen did not deliver postal articles to Dalit addresses. Dalit were required to collect the articles at the post office. There are also road transport reated violations of the law against untouchability. Among them is the unwritten rule that gives caste Hinduism priority over Dalits in boarding buses in many areas, buses not stopping in Dalits areas transport employees picking quarrels with Dalit passengers without provocation and Dalits not being allowed to use bus shelters. State government still follows a traditional procedure of making announcements in villages by beating a drum and for that they deploy Dalits. Worse still are the roles of schools and teachers perpetuating untouchability and sowing the seeds of castes- related discriminations in young mind. The Dalit children are often discouraged by teachers and fellow students belonging to caste Hindu social groups. In many schools Dalit pupils were not allowed to share water with caste – Hindus. To punish an erring or naughty dalit boys teachers scold him by calling him by caste name. if the teachers decides that the boy needed a beating as punishment the task was assigned to another Dalit boy. There is also a systematic refusal of admission to dalits in certain schools particularly at the plus two levels. In some villages during the temple festivals Dalits are supposed to stay hidden from Hindu castes. The two tumbler system under which dalits are served tea in different vessels is still prevalent in some teashops. In some eateries they are compelled to sit on the floor.

Untouchability Today

Untouchbility today outlines the context in which untouchability is practiced in the current scenario. India emerges as the world’s largest democracy and fastest growing economy yet the practice of untouchability remains in stark contrast to the image of progress that the Indian government seeks to promote to the international community. The issues of untouchability is one of the most divisive issues in the country’s history and lived experience of all people in India, including the Dalits who number over 164 millions and non-Dalit perpetrators and witness. Despite growing domestic and international concern, constitutional prohibition and a legal enforcement regime as well as international human light protection the daily life of many Dalits still remain unchanged till data.

Untouchability is an ancient form of discrimination based up on caste which is complex and pervasive problem in India although its practice is not limited to India alone. For millennia, the practice of untouchability has marginalized, terrorized, and relegated a sector of Indian society to a life marked by violence, humiliation and indignity. The discrimination so pervasive that many Dalits come to believe that they are responsible for their own suffering and exclusion. Thus believing it to be there faith and in turn perpetuate the practice of untouchability. Like a shameful secret a “hidden apartheid”.


Untouchability remains an extremely sensitive issue in India. Its practice is never fully defined, never fully explorated and, thus never fully understood.

CHAPTER II

Untouchability in God of small Things

Arundhati Roy booker prize winning novel deals with the ravages of caste system in south Indian state, Kerala. Roy presents both the miserable plight of untouchables and also the struggle of a women trying to have fulfillment in life in a patriarchal society. Velutha, the god of small things, transgress the established norms of society by having a affair with a women of high caste. The ultimate outcome of this love is tragic death of an “untouchable” by “touchable boots” of state police, an event that makes a travesty of the idea of God. God is no more in control of “small things” rather the small things have an ultimate power over God turning him to “The God of loss”(265). The idea of untouchability is explored at two levels in the novel. Firstly we have socially untouchables, or Parvan, who are never allowed basic human rights. Secondly, we have metaphoric untouchables in high castes. Here discrimination expresses itself in marginalizing the women in their personal and public life.

A complete appreciation of The God Of Small Things requires an awareness of three things.

The role of:

The Syrian Christian community

Communism

The caste system in Kerala

Kerala stretches 360 miles along a Malabar Coast of India. Although it is just 15000 square miles in area, its population makes up 3.71 percent of India’s. kerala is remarkable for having the highest literacy rate (81.29%) in the whole of India. The state experience heavy monsoons during June - September and September – December. Most of its rivers are fed by the monsoons, and it is during the season that sophie mode downs.

The community represented in “The God of Small Things” is Syrian Christian. The Christians of Kerala are divided in to five characteristics:

Roman catholic

Orthodox syrian

Nestorian

Marthoma

Anglican


Syrian Christians claim the apostle Tomas as their founder. The term “Syrian” refers to the west Asian origins of the group’s ancestors and to their use of Syriac as a liturgical language. For centuries, their language has been Malayalam. Syrian Christians have a history that predates European rule. While the Jesuit made only limited alteration to community life in 1830s and 1840s the 19th century the British colonial state played a significant role in undermining Syrian Christian – Hindu connections. The Old Catholic – Jacobite division gave way to as many as fourteen competing Episcopal allegiances. One of the most significant split took place in 1888 when the Travancore high court ruled in favor of the Jacobites. The losers formed a separate ecclesiastical body, the Marthoma Syrian church (Bayly 241-320).

In the novel religious differences appear In the disagreements between Mulligan (who belongs to the Roman catholic church) and reveled Ipe (who belongs to the mathoma church) as well as in Baby Kochamma’s conversation to Catholicism and her consequent lack of suitors. The socio – political changes brought about by colonial rule led to upper caste Hindus shinning the Syrian Christians. Between 1888 – 1892 every one of Syrian Christian denomination founded so called evangelical societies that rough out law caste converts and built school and chapels and publicized mass baptisms (Bayly 314 – 320). The God of Small Things thus refers to the school for “Untouchable” built by the great – grandfather of the twins, Estha and Rahel. However, as Roy points out, even though a number of paravas and member of other low castes converted to Christianity, they were made to have separate churches and thus continued to be treated as “Untouchabiles”. After the Independence, they were denied government benefits created for “Untouchable” because officially, on paper, they were Christians and there for casteless.

The paravas, who speak Malayalam and use the Malayalam script settled in the Neyyattinkara taluk of the Trivandrum district and also In Quilon, Kottayam and Ernakulum districts. According to the 1981census their population Kerala is 42884 (Singh 1062 – 64). The word caste is divided from the Portuguese casta, which means bleed, race, or kind. Castes are ranked, named endogamous group, and membership in a particular caste comes through birth. According to the Hindu sacred texts of the Rigveda, there were main four castes and each caste performed a function in sustaining social life. Bhrahmins were the priests; kshetriyas, were various and rules; Vaisyas were land owners and merchants and sudras were artisans and servants (Federal Research division 267). According to the code of Manu a marriage between a Brahmin women and sudra men would result in a “Candala”, who is described as “the lowest of men” and shares many of the attributes of the contemporary “Untouchable” (Moffit 34) Michael Moffit writes that ancient textual source from the south suggest the existence of similarity ranked human relation and stresses that many attribute of contemporary south Indian “Untouchable” were apparently present 1500 years ago in the sangam period (37), “untouchables are generally associated with profession such as leather workers butchers, launderers and latrine cleaners.

Since 1935 untouchable have been called “scheduled castes”. They are also called Mahathma Gandhi’s name for them “Harijan”(The children of God)More recently these group refers to themselves as dalits, a Hindi world which means opposed or downtrodden. Despite some improvements in certain aspects of dalits life, 90% of them still live in rural areas, and more than 50% are landless labors. In many part of India, land is still held by the upper castes who use the ideology of the caste system to economically exploit low – ranking landless labors.


In 1957, under EMS Namboodiripad, Kerala became the first Indian state to elect a communist government. Despite a damaging split in the party in 1964, there have been communist led governments in Kerala more often than not. Roy writers that the reason behind the communist party’s success in Kerala was that it “never overtly questioned the traditional values of a caste – ridden”, extremely traditional community. The Marxists worked from within the communal divides, never challenging them, never appearing not to”. This double standard is emphasized when comlade Pillai incites the workers of paradise pickle and preserves to stickers against their Chacko, but refers to the letter in theoretical terms. He never referred to him by name, but always as ‘the management’. As through Chacko was many people apart from it being tactically the right thing to do, this disjunction the men and his job helped comrade Pillai to keep his conscience clear about his own private business dealing with Chacko. His contract for printing the paradise pickle label gave him an income that he badly needed. He told himself the Chacko - The client and Chacko – the management were two different people. Quite separate of course from Chacko the comrade.

Pillai’s double standards are also seen when despite his slogans of “caste is class”, he delebratly distance himself from velutha in order to maintain the support of Chacko’s other workers who dislike working with a Paravan. Chacko himself appears to be an arm chair communist with no real understanding of politics that surround him. Roy’s representation of the communist party has met with much criticism from the party. The late EMS Namboothiripad criticized “The God of Small Things” for promoting sexual anarchy and bourgeois value whiles the Marxist chief minister of Kerala. M R. EK Nayanar , said that Roy had painted a “factually incorrect” picture of social condition of Kerala during the period 1950 – 70 and of the role played by communists during that period. It is with in this social, political and religious context that we read the tragedy of kochammans. Shunned by the upper class Hindus, they are 0ver conscious of their family’s prestige. Roy deals with the classical material of tragedy in the modern context. The members of the family are introverts. Baby Kochamma, Ammu, Chacko and Pappachi are unable to come to terms with their complexes. They struggle against the outer world, and the defeats render the confused and frustrated. The sense of failure expresses itself in dehumanizing others round them.

The kochamma family has a history of poor relations between male and female members. Ammu’s mother mammachi, for example, is severely beaten and abused by her husband and she becomes the victim of his anger and frustration whenever he faces a failure in the outside world. He leaves a little room for Ammu to grow as an independent and confident individual. Her only objective is in life is to find a “reasonable husband”, depending up on him for his rest of her life. Her attitude also corresponds to the idea of a “good daughter” shared both by Hindus and Muslims. Chacko, the elder brother saves mammachi, from his father’s abusive attitude. In “The God of Small Things” the conflit exists at individual and societal levels. The novel graphically shows that how people are helpless to resolve these levels of friction. Velutha, the outcaste, can never co – exist peaceful with the “touchable” communities for so long as the stigma of untouchability attached to him and countless others like him. Velutha is “highly intelligent”, an excellent carpenter with an engineer’s mind, but he is also “The God Loss”. In contlast to Velutha Chacko get away with his debauchery or his “men’s needs” as his mother term it – because he is a “touchable”. Roy has justly put the issues when she says, “change is one thing, acceptness is another”. The society presented in the novel is patriarchal. On the one hand we have a group of characters, Mammachi, Baby Kochamma, and Kochu Maria, the cook, perpetuate the division


of caste, race and gender on the other hand, Ammu and the twins , Rachel and Estha, consciously and unconsciously resist these hierarchies. Ammu the biggest victim of the system, is an archetypal image of a daughter marginalized in patriarchal society. Perhaps Ammu, Eshta, Rachel were the worst transgressors they are brakes all rules. They are closed in to forbidden territory. They all tampered with law that laydown who should be loved and how. And how much. Ammu the central character of the novel has only a marginal existence of the family structure. A traditional patriadle society place little importance of womens education. Ammus father Pappachi, does not like the spending of money on his daughter, and she is never encouraged to find her place in life. Marriage is the only justification of her life.

Ammu finished the schooling in the same here that her father retired from the job in Delhi and moved in Ayemenam. Pappachi insisted that a college education was unnecessary expense for a girl, so Ammu have no choice leave Delhi and move with him. There was little for a young girl to do in Ayemenam other than to wait a marriage proposal. Ammu accept the very first proposal after five days of court ship. In fact, Ammu had no choice other than accepting what so ever life offers her. Unfortunately, her husband turned out to be drunkard unable to support the family. He tries to force Ammu to “please the boss” but she refuses and the marriage and in divorce. As a divorce she has to face ostracism by her society and family. Her female relative sympathize with her in a way, making her conscious of the gravity of her crime. She was committed to live separate from her husband. Within first few months of returns to her parents’ home: Ammu quickly learned to recognize and despise the ugly face of sympathy. Old female relation with their incipient beards and several wobbing chins made overnight trips to Ayemenam to commiserate her about her divorce. She fought off the large to slap them. A divorce has no rights to pursuer for happiness in life. The only course open to her is to spend a static life, waiting for death. Any attempts on her parts to see life independently threatens the existing order. She is at logger heads with the society at large because she married outside their community and a divorce too. It is visible at Sophie moles funeral: “Hough Ammu, Estha and Rahel were allowed to attend the funeral, they were made to stand separately, not with in the rest of the family. Nobody would look at them”. Estha’s conflict within himself turn in to a silent creature. But in his inside “there is a easy octopus that lived – and squirted its Inky tranquilizer on his past.

It is interesting to note that Roys portrayal of the plight of the untouchable is very near to that of Mulk Raj Anand. Velutha is the very close to Bekha in both his vision and vesture. He too like Bekha as fight for his existence in society. He has to struggle hard to achieve a sense of identity. Once Bekha inadvertently touches a caste Hindu in a market. The caste man begins to hurt at him abuse and rebuke. Bekha apologizes and entreats, but in vain. It is a Muslim tongawallah who comes to his rescues. What an Irony!. A Hindu humiliating a Hindu but a Muslim consoling a Hindu!. The basic difference between Bekha and Velutha is that the former is mole active and aggressive then the later. Velutha never believes in a frontal attack. He is a man of sober nature and middle behavior. But Bekha on the other hand, always strives to raise hail and fire (though he doesn’t do it) on the high class people.

But there was a smoldering rang in this soul. His feelings would raise like a spurt of smoke with a half smothered fire in fitful jerks when the recollection of abuse or rebuke he had suffered kindled a spark in the ashes in the remoles inside him, why was all this? He asked himself in the soundless speech of cells receiving and transmitting emotions which was his usual way of communicating with himself. Why was he so humble? I could have struck him.


Such emotions full of range and anger do not find any place in the character of velutha. He never behaves like a fuming and roaring tiger: never tries to hammer the age old norms of society, never behave like a rough and savage man – a man who has nothing to do with etiquette and manner, decolum and decency. He is a man of innocence and simplicity, The God of Small Things, the God of Loss. A man who knows how to make intricate toys, tiny windmills, ratites, minute jewel boxes out of tapioca stems a man who could carve perfect boats. Topioca stems and figurines on cashew nuts. When Mammachi decides to enclose the back varandhah, it is Velutha who designs and builds the strong folding doors. According to the author, “He knows more about the machines in the factory than anyone else. Mammachi often said that if only he had not been a parvan, he might have become an engineer.

Yes, even a dalit or untouchable can become an engineer, a doctor, a lawyer, or a professor. If he is given proper education and proper facilities. God never makes any difference between a touchable and untouchable; between the poor and the rich; between the rough and subline. The mind of all men is almost equal. The thing, which is needed is to appreciate the discarded and the abandoned and to dive deep in to the bosom of their lives to dig out pearls and gems, which are always hidden. So, the obsure living cannot be condemned. They are the significant competent of the nation in the sense that they work honestly in the fields, the economy of the country cannot remain in its key without the cooperation of the down – trodden. They thus cannot consign to oblivion. Thomas Gray in his famous poem, “Elegy written in country church yard” right competent of the nation in the sense that they work honestly in the fields., the economy of the country cannot remain in its key without the cooperation of the down – trodden. They thus cannot consign to oblivion. Thomas Gray in his famous poem, Elegy written in country church yard rightly observes:

“Full many a gem of purest ray serene,

The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear,

Full many a flower in born to blush unseen,

And lost its fragrance in the desert air”

In spite of all these great virtues in Velutha, he does not get proper respect and congenial treatment in society. Vallya pappen, the father of Velutha, is strongly dead against any type of education. Or a advance knowledge in a Parvan. He thinks that in a Parvan they could (would and indeed should?) be constructed as insolence. He always grudges the craft man ship and natural skills of Velutha . Further, Vallya quickly degenerates in to nagging and bickering and consequently there is sense of unpleasantness between father and son. In course of time, Velutha begins to avoid going home. He works late, catches fish in the river and cooks it in an open fire. He also spends the night outdoors. All of a sudden, he disappears for at least five months. He doesn’t say anybody about his excite. When he becomes to Ayemenam, mammachi again rehires him as the factory carpenter and the general maintenance of the whole factory is in given charge to him. But this act of help causes a great stir in the factory workers.

Why? Because the touchable workers of the factory are also wild with castes in that they think that Parvans are not meant to be carpenters. So, in order to keep the workers happy, Mammachi pays Velutha less than he would give to touchable worker.


Thus The God of Small Things shows a very fine picture of the dalit and deserted. The characterization of some of the untouchable characters of the novel is very close to that untouchable may Mulk Raj Anand. The Author seems to fling Irony on the upper caste rich people of society who insult and persecute the untouchable without any meaning just only to show their superiority.

CONCLUSION

Untouchability is one of the greatest evil of our country has been facing from the times immemorial. In the manusmiriti, the Hindu’s law book of social code and domestic life, we see the pathetic picture of untouchable who are deprived of gaining knowledge particularly the Vedic knowledge. An untouchable, according to this book, has no right to go to the temples no liberty to listen to the incantations of the Vedas and other recapture. They are also deprived of the of reading studying the languages ,Sanskrit ,which is supposed to be the richest language of the world this resulted in the deterioration of this frat language, which has come to be almost a standstill these have come to be almost a standstill these days. So one of the causes of the world. This resulted in the deterioration of the great language, which has come to be almost a standstill these days. So one of the causes of the degeneration of Sanskrit language is untouchability and perhaps this is why Mahatma Gandhi and Ambedkar, Ravhindra Nada Tagore and swami Vivekananda, Maharishi Dayanana and Balagopala tilak all have given a scathing attack on the cattiest mentality of India. Mulk Raj Anand presents a truthful portrayal of untouchability in his famous novel, untouchable Bakha, the protagonist of the novel, has to suffer insult and abuse with novel has to suffer insult and abuse without any rhyme or reason. he suffers only because he is an untouchable .

Arundhati Roy picturise the untouchables and low caste people in this novel . The character’s velutha Baby kochamma, Mammachi are untouchable in theis story. Veutha who is a great carpenter but mammachi pays velutha less then she should pay a touchable carpenter. In spite of his talent, Mammachi doesn’t allow him to enter the house unless she needs him can do some work which no one else can do. Here the caste discrimination is dearly seen; “To keep the others happy and since she knew that nobody would hire him as a carpenter, mamachi paid velutha less than she would a touchable carpenter but more than she would a paravan. mammachi didn’t encourage him to renter the house expect when she needed something mended or in-stalled she thought that he ought to be grateful that he was allowed on the factory premises at all, and allowed to touch thing that touchable touched. She said that it was a big step for a paravan. Mammachi’s attitude towards velutha is such as one would have towards an animal. Roy has criticized the casteism of Hindu society. In this novel, the story move not in a straight forward way but in a zig-zag way. The first chapter of the book is so beautiful structured that the seed of all the further events can be sought.

The novel contains so many characters and these characters are untouchable. In this novel the author tries to give a picture of ruling untochability in the south Indian state, Kerala. The characterisation of the novel is very important one and she done it properly. The untouchability or the caste or class system is reflected in this novel and Arundhati Roy’s characters almost are untouchables, dalits she give a proper idea of their problems in society .They suffer a lot from the ruling members and


crowns. They haven’t their own voice for their own right to do a work for them the empowers order is the final line for the dalits .they done the work for their master but they get bruited pains for their wages.

THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS is a novel and it is an instruction to the higher class or ruling class for the dalits voice .In our country all people are equal and all the people have same right to live in this country Roy wrote for the former people who lived in the past years. She says about the living and ruling in that time mostly that time is ruled by high class people and the Brahmins in that time the castes was played a vital role. So in that time a untouchability also brought up Roy write this novel in that time and she knows the real problems in that time. Through this novel, “The God of Small Things” she conveys untouchability.


Retheesh Tharakan is a 21-year-old aspiring writer from Palakkad, Kerala, India, with a zealous passion for essays and other literature. Maya Angelou and Emily Dickson are among his favorite poets, and the works of Arundhathi Roy and Amish are loved by him. He began writing at the age of 11, and ever since, has harbored the dream to be a published writer someday. He has completed B.A in English Language & Literature from University of Calicut, Kerala. And doing his Masters in Anna University Chennai.

november 2015 - ashvamegh indian journal of english literature · ashvamegh: issue x: november...

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