Introduction of the Poem:
The Striders, taken from Ramanujan's first volume of poetry The Striders (1966), is a short poem of fifteen lines. Most of the lines consist of just one or two words in this poem.
Critical Summary:
The poem describes the behaviour of a certain kind of water bug. It shows Ramanujan's observant nature and his interest in the animal world. As in the poem about Snakes, the imagery here is concrete and vivid. To compare a small insect to a prophet shows the poet's sense of humour:
No, not only prophets
walk on water. This bug sits
on a landslide of lights
and drowns eye—
deep
into its tiny strip
of sky.
If Moses could walk upon water, this strider treats the surface of water as its natural element, and perches on it lightly, and without any sense of danger, says the poet.
According to Satyanarain Singh, Ramanujan's poetry carries within itself the precise figure of the object with a vivid sense of its distinctive quality. The opening lines of the poem,
And search
for certain thin—
stemmed, bubble - eyed water bugs …
are more sculpturous than imitative. By his chiselled workmanship in words and rhythms. Ramanujan bodies forth the insect alive before us. The scene of the bubble - eyed water bugs perching “weightless” on the surface of a stream depicts the supreme facility with which the striders balanced themselves on flowing waters on “a landslide of lights and drowns eye - deep into its tiny strip of sky.” Thus the water bug, like an amphibian, sits on land with the same perfect ease with which it perches on the surface of water. Ramanujan has here united the insect with the human and the divine world in his profound observation.
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