Introduction of the Poem:
‘A River’ was published in ‘The Striders’ in 1966. It is a poem on the Vaikai, which flows through Madurai. This river is appropriately described as a ‘city of temples and poets’, approximately 450 km. south of Chennai. For about 2000 years, this city has been the seat of Tamil culture.
Through this poem, the poet seeks to bring out the relevant attitudes of the old as well as the new Tamil poets, to human suffering and sorrow, as a result of floods. He levels a scathing criticism against those poets who emphasize only on the outer beauty of nature, ignoring its deeper significance. The poet of this poem is concerned with the human aspect of a situation and highlights the bitter truth in all its shocking harshness.
The poem depicts a regular occurrence in many parts of India during monsoons when the rivers are in spate and tend to wash away entire villages at a stretch. Every aspect of the flood (unlike other poets who take this opportunity to turn out all kinds of fancy literary offerings) is minutely taken into consideration studied, written about and thoroughly exploited for purely selfish reasons. The world is informed about the exact levels of the flood. In form, the poem is a modern lyric, written in blank verse.
Summary of the Poem:
‘A River’ is a remarkable poem about a river and poets in the city of Madurai. In this city, there are poets who make cities and temples the subject matter of their poems; they have composed song and poem in praise of this city and the temples. There is a river in the city, the Vaikai. It gets dried up in the summer season and becomes a narrow stream. Its sandy bottom is exposed. Its water - gates are choked with straw, hair and garbage. It remains dry except during the rainy season when it becomes flooded.
The poets living in the city are immune to this sad condition and, actually wait for the monsoons when the floods get over, so that they can make that a more exciting theme for poems. They write their poems inspired by the over flowing river. They do not write about the other aspect of the river, i.e., the destruction caused by it. The modern poet have been just copying the theme and style of the old poets in this respect.
Once, the poet was in Madurai when the flood hit the river. In the face of crisis , the common people insensitively indulged in ridiculous exaggeration of discussing the number of cobbled steps submerged and other details like three village houses, one pregnant woman and a couple of cows called. Gopi and Brinda were swept away by the floods in the first half hour. Regarding these floods, new poets have been quoting the old poets. It seemed as if these incidents had become mere commonplace and mundane events to them, rather than a tragedy.
None of those poets wrote about the pregnant woman, being drowned, probably carrying twins in her womb and these twins may be struggling against the blank walls of the womb even cab before their birth.
According to the poet, who had been in the city, river had enough water to attract poets and to invoke poetic praise only for a short time, once a year. The world is informed about the exact levels of the flood; every stone that has been washed away; the villages that were carried away along with a pregnant woman and a couple of cows whose names are also provided for the pleasure of the reading public. After the emergency is over and the river is back to normal, no one gives it another thought until the next time it bursts upon the attention of those who have ignored it all these hot dry months.
Critical Appreciation of the poem:
The poem ‘A River’ is built round an ironic commentary on the similarity in attitude of the old and the new poets. And at the same time, the poet focuses on the difference of attitude of that category of poet (old and new) and the true poets towards life and suffering of humanity. While the former category praised the ideal and the beneficent aspects of life and nature, the true poet should have described the stark realities of life and nature without exaggerating them like the excited commoners.
Instead of traditional song of praise for the full river, as those stereo - typed poets, old as well as new, used to do, the poet gives the actual position in his description as the villager's real experience. Those poets feel the river can be written about only when it is flooded because at that time, it causes great havoc and devastation. But Ramanujan talks of the specific destruction. He also draws our attention to the river in summer when it is a mere trickle, every summer a river dries to a trickle. Rust ridden watergates under the bridges jammed with all kinds of human waste can be visualized with ‘...… Straw and women's hair, clogging the watergates at the rusty bars’. The poet vividly describes the common sight like poorly maintained bridges by … with patches of repair all over them.
The poet is concerned with the human aspect of a situation and highlights the bitter truth in all its shocking harshness. In the latter half of the poem, he focuses the reader's attention on the destructive aspect of the river by outlining all that it has swept away in the first half hour of its fury. However, unlike the other poets, his emphasis is on the sadder aspect of the loss of lives. The poet ends the poem with details about the twins which the woman would have borne, bringing the experience down to its simple and painful humanity. At this point also, he ridicules the human tendency to exaggerate, through the humorous phrases like the ‘precise number of cobbled steps run over by the water’, ‘three village houses’, ‘couple of cows named Gopi and Brinda’, ‘one pregnant woman / expecting identical twins, with no moles on their bodies, with different coloured diapers, to tell them apart / carried away by the river in the first half hour’.
To speak of the very ordinary occurrences, the poet has used a narrative descriptive style and managed to convey his message at the end of the poem. For this purpose, he has used basically simple language. The lively comparisons and the pictorial details about the river stand out sharply as they occur in his simple lists of things, e.g., ‘the wet stones glistening like sleepy crocodiles’ ‘shaven water buffaloes lounging in the sun’ add an atmosphere of drowsy peace of summer to the picture. To highlight the realistic features of the river in the dry season, the double imagery of crocodiles and water - buffaloes is used. The poet uses free verse which is convenient in its flexibility, allowing him enough freedom to use long sentences without interruption. Each stanza of this poem is a single sentence. To enhance the satirical tone of the poem, the poet has made the use of repetition. The following description is repeated thrice in the poem:
‘...… it carried of three village houses / one pregnant woman / and a couple of cows / named Gopi and Brinda’. Thus, this poem rises above the ordinary and becomes sublime.
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