A.K.Ramanujan-Obituar

 A.K.Ramanujan-Obituar 

ADDITIONAL ENGLISH NOTES

UNIT-3 POETRY

A.K.Ramanujan-Obituar ( a notice of a death in the newspaper )

Introduction

Attipate Krishnaswami Ramanujan (16 March 1929 – 13 July 1993) was an Indian poet, scholar, professor, philologist, folklorist (fok/lorist), translator, and playwright. of Indian literature who wrote in both English and Kannada. His academic research ranged across five languages: English, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, and Sanskrit.

 

Born                                    16 March 1929 Mysore, Princely State of Mysore, British India

Died                                     13 July 1993 (aged 64) Chicago, Illinois, United States

Language                           English, Kannada, Tamil and Sanskrit

Nationality                         Indian

Education                           Doctorate in English Literature

Alma mater                        University of Mysore, Deccan College, Indiana University

Works                                 The Striders; Second Sight

Awards                                MacArthur Fellowship, Sahitya Akademi Award and Padma Shree

 

A.K.Ramanujan-Obituar Theme

'Obituary' by A.K. Ramanujan explores the universal toll a parent's passing can have on a child and all the ways that their memory remains even after their death. This well-known A.k. Ramanujan poem depicts a son's reaction to his father's death. The poet engages with themes of loss and father/son relationships. The speaker addresses his father's death in different ways throughout the.

 

 A.K.Ramanujan-Obituar Poem

Father, when he passed on,
left dust
on a table of papers,
left debts and daughters, (debts - a sum of money that is owed or due.)
a bedwetting grandson
named by the toss
of a coin after him,

a house that leaned
slowly through our growing

years on a bent coconut
tree in the yard.

Being the burning type,
he burned properly
at the cremation

 

 

as before, easily
and at both ends,
left his eye coins
in the ashes that didn't

look one bit different,
several spinal discs, rough,
some burned to coal, for sons

to pick gingerly
and throw as the priest
said, facing east
where three rivers met
near the railway station;
no longstanding headstone
with his full name and two dates

to holdin their parentheses
everything he didn't quite
manage to do himself,
like his caesarian birth
in a brahmin ghetto
and his death by heart-
failure in the fruit market.

But someone told me
he got two lines
in an inside column
of a Madras newspaper
sold by the kilo
exactly four weeks later

 

to streethawkers
who sell it in turn
to the small groceries
where I buy salt,
coriander,
and jaggery
in newspaper cones
that I usually read

 

for fun, and lately
in the hope of finding
these obituary lines.
And he left us
a changed mother
and more than
one annual ritual.

 

 A.K.Ramanujan-Obituar Summary

Stanza 1

The poet says that when his father died he left nothing for the family but problems like dust on a table of papers, debts, unmarried daughters & a bedwetting grandson whose name is a little bit similar to his father’s name.

The lines show the poet’s dissatisfaction with his father. He does not seem to be sorrowful because of death. The poet is more concerned about the duties (of his family) which he has to perform.

 

He has to pay the debts of his father, he has to marry off his sister and also has to take care of a young child who urinates in the bed.These lines also show the culture of a typical Indian family which is patriarchal in nature. Neither the mother of the poet nor his sisters are earning. As the poet is now the eldest male in the family, all the duties are bestowed on him.

 

Stanza 2

The poet continues that his father has left a house that leaned slowly through our growing years on a bent coconut tree in the yard. The line means that they have inherited a house from his father which is leaning on a coconut tree and thus in bad condition.

The poet calls his father as the burning type. indicating that he was a bad-tempered man and would never have behaved properly with him or the other family members. Being hot-tempered he burned properly at the cremation. The phrase gives the message of tit for tat.

 

Stanza 3

 

The line continues from the previous one (enjambment). He is burnt very easily from both the sides. except his eye coins (coin either signifies his anger or his greed for money) which didn’t look one bit different even after burning and also several spinal discs though some of them burnt to coal.

 

Stanza 4

This stanza continues from the previous one. According to the poet, the remains of his father’s pyre are left for sons to pick as the priest said, facing east where three rivers met near the railway station. 

The lines show that the priest forces the sons to perform the Hindu Rituals. The poet is in no way ready to do it. His father has no grave (as his ashes and remains are thrown in the river) with his full name.

 

 

 

Stanza 5

In addition, there also no two dates (his birth and death dates) to show throw light on his life. The poet calls him incapable as he didn’t do anything on his own. His birth was Caesarian in a brahmin ghetto and his death by heart failure in the fruit market. The lines, in my views and as quoted in this article question the genius of Brahman. In Hinduism, the Brahmans or the Upper Casts are worshipped as Avatars of Gods.

 

However, the poet shows that his father took birth as a Brahman yet his birth was ordinary and even his death could not be controlled by him. In spite of being educated, he died in the market of heart failure and he couldn’t save himself.

These lines, in other sense, mark that he has achieved nothing in this world. His birth was ordinary, his death was ordinary and what he did in life showed his incapability.

 

Stanza 6

However, the poet comes to know that two lines were written for him in an inside column of a Madras newspaper which is sold by the kilo (as junk) after four weeks of his death to street hawkers.

 

Stanza 7

These street hawkers sell it in turn to the small groceries. From these groceries, the poet buys salt, coriander, and jaggery in newspaper cones which he reads for fun.

 

Stanza 8

The poet says that he began to buy more of these things in the hope of finding these obituary lines which were written for his father. In the end, he says that his father left with them with a changed mother (she remains sorrowful) and more than one annual ritual.

 

The poet is showing his dislike for the ritual which is celebrated in the memory of his father for his peace.

Thus the poet says that his father achieved nothing in this world except those two lines (obituary) which were written in the newspaper he could never find out. On the other hand, he left an unbearable burden on the poet. The poem is hence a critique of the poet’s father and his incapabilities.

 

 A.K.Ramanujan-Obituar Summary

The speaker in this poem (who may be the poet himself or some imaginary person) gives us an account of certain happenings connected with the death of his father. When the father died, he left behind him a dusty table full of papers and some debts to be paid. He also left behind him a number of daughters and an infant grandson who had been named after him by the toss of a coin (and not as the result of an agreed decision by the family). Furthermore, he left behind him a house which leaned on a coconut tree growing in the compound, while the coconut tree itself was a leaning one and not growing straight upwards.

 

When the father was cremated, the fire easily burnt his body. In the ashes his sons found several round bits of metal which they picked up carefully in order to throw them into the water at the meeting point of three rivers near the railway station, as directed by the priest performing the various ceremonies. However, the sons did not erect any permanent memorial to the dead man who had made his appearance in this world through a Caesarean operation in a congested Brahmin locality and who had died of heart failure in the local fruit market.

 

The speaker goes on to say that he had come to know that his father had got a brief obituary notice published in a Madras newspaper through someone to inform people about the death. The speaker expected to come across these lines in the newspapers four weeks later when the newspaper would be sold along with other junk to some street-hawker who would then sell it to small grocery shops from where the speaker bought salt, coriander, and jaggery which were wrapped up by the shopkeeper in newspaper-sheets or put into small bags made of old newspapers.

 

Finally, the speaker says that his father’s death had produced a profound effect upon his mother who was now a completely changed woman, and that, furthermore, the death of his father had also now made it necessary for the survivors to perform several rituals in the course of every year.

 A.K.Ramanujan-Obituar Explanation

As the very title shows, the poem Obituary relates to a death and is written in a tone of grief, and yet there is more of humour and wit in this poem than of grief (sorrow). The title prepares us for a mournful and saddening poem; but the theme is treated in a light-hearted manner.

 

In fact, the treatment of the father’s death is more comic and ironical (ವ್ಯಂಗ್ಯದ) than pathetic (ಕರುಣಾಜನಕ) and poignant   (sad, painful, poy/nynt). For instance, when the speaker says that his father left behind a table full of papers and also some debts and daughters and a bed-wetting grandson, we feel amused because the legacy is more of a liability for the bereaved family than an asset.

 

 

Then the naming of the bed-wetting grandson by the toss of a coin is also very amusing. The house leaning on a coconut tree which is itself leaning is again something comic. But the comedy does not end here.

 

 The dead father was the “burning type”, and so he burned properly and easily at the cremation, leaving in the ashes several spinal discs which the sons were to throw into the meeting-point of three rivers under the instructions of the priest.

 

The birth of the father by a Caesarean operation in a congested Brahmin locality and his death by heart-failure in the fruit-market are amusing too, and our amusement is enhanced by the speaker’s saying that the father himself had not been able to arrange for his birth (through a Caesarean operation) and his death (by heart failure). And so the poem goes on with only a suggestion of tragedy in the one line “a changed mother”.

 

The whole poem shows Ramanujan’s comic gift. Here and there we have an alliterative phrase: “debts and daughters”; “a bed-wetting grandson” (here it is the “g” sound which is repeated); “being the burning type”; “several spinal discs”. In form, this poem is most irregular, much of Indo-Anglican poetry. The lines vary in length; and rhyme has not been used at all. If one line consists of seven words, there are others consisting of two words and even one word. Then the use of capital letters at the beginning of the lines has also been avoided.

 

A critic, namely Rama Nair opines that this poem works on the principle of a paradox. The paradox is that, though the influence of the father is so devastating it nevertheless becomes the nucleus for the son’s creative tension. There are two obituaries in the poem-one in the form of a newspaper (which is impersonal) where the father “got two lines/in an inside column” and the other in the form of the poet’s own creative response to the “tragic” event.

The son’s response is in part responsible for the son’s own mental growth.

 

One obituary becomes a part of history (as is yesterday’s newspaper which may be sold by the kilo and used for wrapping jaggery and coriander by shop keepers!), and the other becomes an integral part of the speaker’s personal growth. Both are juxtaposed to generate a creative tension. The physical description of the house leaning on a bent coconut tree in the yard suggests a general condition of decay. The growing consciousness of the speaker (namely the son) is retarded by his dissociation from his own culture. The outer landscape of decline reflects the inward sterility of the speaker’s own mind.

 

The father leaves the sons with poverty and with “a changed mother” and “more than one annual ritual”. The irony is that mere cataloguing of the events in the poem gives way at the end to an intensity of painful personal involvement with the reference to “a changed mother”. The human element has intruded, and the speaker is, perhaps unwillingly, caught in a reverie punctuated by agonizing reminiscences.

 

Conclusion

'Obituary' by A.K. Ramanujan describes the aftermath of a father's death and all the things he left behind, physical and emotional. The poem begins with the speaker telling the reader that his father died. When he died, he left behind a lot. There are unless and meaningless things, like dust and old papers.