River Yamuna in Himachal Pradesh. Courtesy- Himdhara.org

A.K. Ramanujan’s ‘A River’ and Abhay K’s ‘Yamuna’: River as a Symbol of Endless Flow of Meanings

The river as a symbol of human life is a cliché and doesn’t go down well with the modern-day poets who do not accept the romantic and sentimentalized notion of rivers. The landscape of Indian English poetry is populated with images of rivers. The perspectival array that the entire corpus of Indian English poetry offers is persistent and persuasive; it can unlock an exploration of the instances where the image of rivers embody and unravel unique relationship that the poets have with rivers. In this paper, I attempt to study two poems on rivers by two Indian English poets, Attipat Krishnaswamy (A K) Ramanujan (1929-1993) and Abhay K (b. 1980). Ramanujan is critical of the older poets who only sang of the vitality of the rivers, thereby overlooking its complexities. He mourns the absence of imagination in the poets of the past and the present who fail to see beyond the normative view of life and things. He anticipated a fresh look at iconic rivers like Vaigai. Abhay K is a poet who complements Ramanujan’s poetic vision and prefers to eschew the sublime in favor of the grotesque.

A K Ramanujan’s ‘A River’ is one of his finest poems that appeared in The Striders in 1966. Ramanujan depicts the river Vaigai as a symbol to contrast the attitudes of the old and the new poets towards human suffering. Probably his Indian-American self allowed him to objectively view his own culture. Although, he is rooted in the Indian ethos, he is at the same time able to successfully integrate the rational stance of the West vis-a-vis the spiritual legacy of the East. Ramanujan’s anti-sentimental, detached and objective stance towards Indian culture stems from reciprocity between his Indian and American experience.

Abhay K is an Indian Foreign Service Officer and a winner of the SAARC Literary Award, 2013. He has written two memoirs and seven poetry books. His poem, ‘Yamuna’ appeared in his fifth collection, The Seduction of Delhi (TSD) published in 2015. The anthology celebrates and explores the unusual historicity of Delhi. The anthology has a unique structure and narrative style. The poet, in this 82-page book, pays homage to Delhi by writing poems on its famous monuments, landmarks, historical personalities, inhabitants and unique items that colour the fabric of present-day India’s capital and a world-famous metropolis. Abhay K’s book is divided into three parts—‘Institutions’, ‘Portraits’ and ‘Reflection’. The poem ‘Yamuna’ appears in the third section. Both Ramanujan and Abhay lament the deterioration of the sacred rivers of culturally important cities of the south and north India, respectively. The former which is used to be a depository of faith has metamorphosed into a depository of garbage, scrap, waste, and trash. Rivers have lost their divine connotations and have become symbolic of modern-day environmental and moral degradation. The inhabitants of cities are blind to the condition of the rivers. Whereas Ramanujan’s tone is sarcastic Abhay is passive in his poetic approach towards his subject matter. The neglect, ignorance and apathy shown towards the river, thereby not recognizing its importance, are the focus of the poems. The ‘Yamuna’ is a poetic reflection on the state of the river. To diplomat-author Abhay, Yamuna has become no less than a sewer of the city. We find the Yamuna in interior monologue. Instead of reflecting on his poetic subjects in the first person, Abhay allows his subjects to narrate their stories themselves.

Both Ramanujan and Abhay refuse to embrace clichés and beg for a novel approach. Both write tightly constructed and suggestive poetry where each and every word is well measured and weighed. They talk about misery: the misery caused by the river and misery caused to the river. The historic city of Madurai stands on banks of the river Vaigai and has been mentioned by many poets of the past and the present in their poems. Similarly, the seven walled city of Delhi stands on the banks of the river Yamuna. Ramanujan question the values and attitudes of modern-day artists and their commitment to art, society, religion and ecology. According to R Parthasarathy, the opening lines of his poem emphasize the “relative attitudes of the old and new Tamil poets, both of whom are exposed for their callousness to suffering, … (95). Madurai was the seat of ancient Tamil culture and Sangam literature. Ramnujam refers to a lack of imagination in the old poets who “only sang of the floods” and anticipates a new perspective. In a way, Abhay offers such an alternate poetic view.

The symbolic value of rivers has deep cultural roots.¹ It is to be noted that many writers have made use of the images of rivers². The landscape of Indian English poetry is populated with images of rivers. The perspectival array that the entire corpus of Indian English Poetry offers is persistent and persuasive³ that can unlock an exploration of the instances where the image of rivers embodies as well as unravels unique relationship the poets have with rivers. Rivers are also associated with civilizations. Wayne Franklin in the foreword to The Meaning of Rivers: Flow and Reflection in American Literature says,

If rivers are to mean something, it will not be because we can forget actual flows of water, with the debris they carry and the work they do. It is because we remember their material reality that we will earn the right to ask the deeper questions it wants us to consider … The vector of a particular imaginative approach to so common a feature of the earth—so common and so essential—tells us a good deal about how we regard rivers. But it also tells us a good deal about how we view life in general. We fight the power of the river (and the world), or we give ourselves to it; we contemplate the prospect of the water’s beauty and energy without quite committing ourselves to the fray; we abide by the side of the river, fixing ourselves even as it refuses to be fixed.  (p. ix)

Art is a product of a specific culture. Literature can be used as a vehicle to voice attitudes and concerns. The difficulty of capturing the complexities of rivers like Vaigai and Yamuna in all its vagaries lead to poetic output that contains within itself binaries: the old and the new; the past and the present; the divine and the grotesque; the impoverishment during summer and the damage during the flood; the dryness during summers and the swollenness during floods. According to MK Naik, “In poetic technique, of all his contemporaries, Ramanujan appears to have the surest touch, for he never lapses into romantic cliché”. (201). Whereas the river during summers goes unnoticed by the poets, the river in spate during floods induces the poets to be poetic. He notices that the poets of the past and the present only versify on the river during the floods. Unexpectedly what follows is a description of the river during summer.  In “Madurai” which is a “city of temples and poets” who “sang of cities and temples” every summer “a river dries to a trickle” and yet the“poets only sang of the floods”. The visitor or the poet himself was “there for a day when they had the floods” and found that the “new poets still quoted the old poets, but no one spoke” in verse “of the pregnant woman drowned”. At last, he says that “the river has water enough” to be “poetic about only once a year”. Ramanujan’s scoffs at the poets of the past and the present who sang only of the floods and of “cities and temples”. He derides them for not speaking about the woman who drowned, pregnant with perhaps twins in her, kicking at blank walls. Ramanujan laments the apathy of the poet’s to human suffering. Ramanujan amends in light of the past poet who focuses on the event and not the effect of the flood. According to K Sumana “The poet narrates the poem through the mouth of a visitor to make it objective. The greatness of the poem lies in the fact that the traditional praise for the river has been contrasted with what is actually experienced by the people in the floods. Apart from presenting the grim realities of a river in spate, Ramanujan hints at the sterility of new Tamil poets who still quoted the old poets”. (p. 41). According to R. K. Gupta in ‘A River’ Ramanujan “throws light on the reality of the present and the past. In the past, the poets were the appreciators of the cities, temples, rivers streams and are indifferent to the miseries of the human beings and animals … Flood is the symbol of destruction to person and property. The poets of today still quoted the old poets sans the relevancy of life. (quoted in MK Bhatnagar, p. 9). Ramanujan derides the old and the new poets who only saw the bounty of the river when in flood. The insidious damage becomes noticeable only after the flood has abated and the water had receded. Madurai is a center of Tamil culture and learning and a holy city full of temples. The religious and the literary connotations of the place are laid threadbare. Both of these aspects are in a state of neglect. It is a scathing comment on Madurai as a seat of Tamilian culture.

The rivers like Vaigai and Yamuna were revered by the people and poets of the past.  Modern poets are not concerned with the transcendental quality of religious symbols but the level to which they have been degraded by modernization. Philosophical moorings are eschewed in order to dare the modern-day readers to come face to face with forthrightness. The insidious reference to ecological and the literary decadence of both the poems is hard to miss. The degeneration of human values and the dehumanization of society calls for attention.

Abhay K’s ‘Yamuna’ amends the wrongdoings of the city’s sin. Abhay makes his river itself a vehicle of expiation of human suffering and sins. By avoiding stock poetic images his writings have the caliber to arouse considerable interest among the scholars for its maturity, anti-sentimentality and poetic technique. The focus on the grandeur of the river is eschewed. He endows the river with human feelings and thoughts. As an author of the Earth Anthem⁴, he is aware of the inseparable link between man and nature. Both Abhay and Ramanujan come across as ironist realists who are not afraid to raise questions regarding the artist’s commitment to art and society. In ‘Yamuna’ the self-consciousness of the river is very much evident as it bemoans its abandonment. The ugliness and dirtiness itself are symbolic of its neglect and abuse. This abuse is intrinsically linked to the decadence of the city. Author/politician Pavan K Varma says in his preface to the book that The Seduction of Delhi “is written with the eye of a poetic observer but the passion of a participant. Abhay is transparently in love with the city, but his emotions never allow him to lose the objectivity of a poet for whom empathy is a means as much to pay tribute as to make the sharp, scalpel-like critique”. Similarly, Vinita Dawra Nangial says,

Delhi, in her myriad forms and shapes and smells, a city that seduces with her heaving sensuality and mystique. And through it, all the poet-diplomat walks recording his response to the milieu, coloured by his sense of history. The thoughts and history are lightly offered, without falling prey to heavy polemics or historical discourses. The poems with their staccato rhythm and stream of consciousness reflect the poet's thoughts as he meanders through history and the city, much like the River Yamuna that flows past, observing, recording, moving on.

Abhay’s Yamuna is “Withdrawn and sulky” that flows past Delhi like “dark silver caressing the city shores,” draining “darkness from Delhi's soul.” The river is a mute witness to all that happens in the city. The city is unmindful to the havoc caused to the river. What T S McMillin says about Delaware applies to the Yamuna as well, “… pollution is only one way (albeit the most obvious and most immediately destructive way) in which we have forgotten, disregarded, or ignored the nature of flowing river and the meanings of rivers”. (p. 3)

The Yamuna is vital for Delhi’s survival. The city depends upon the river for both its line of supply and its waste disposal.  Presently, it is ravaged by indiscriminate pollutants. J E Cirlot says in A Dictionary of Symbols that, the river is an “an ambivalent symbol since it corresponds to the creative power both of nature and of time. On the one hand, it signifies fertility and the progressive irrigation of the soil; and on the other hand, it stands for the irreversible passage of time and, in consequence, for a sense of loss and oblivion”. (p. 274) The rivers are intrinsically associated with the life and culture of a place, be it Yamuna or Vaigai. The river also functions as a symbol of a personal view. Like two different sides of the same coin, rivers present a dual view that is marked by a lack of and abundance of water. The poet visits Madurai and sees Vaigai when it is so uncharacteristic of itself. The paradox of a dry river makes the poet ponder over it. The Vaigai metamorphoses into a dry trickle, uncovering “sand ribs that stay hidden beneath the waters”, also visible is straw and women’s hair that clogs the rusty bars under the bridges that are “plastered over with patches of repair”. According to Laxminarayana,

The river exposes its interior; it is empty; the very stirrings of life have gone dry and barren revealing the inner sand and stones. The sleepy crocodiles and shaven buffaloes create a sense of the grotesque. They are the ugly and hideous obstructions to the fluid imagination of the river. (p. 129)

Both the poets bewail the degradation of the former religious symbols and personify the rivers and talk about misery. Whereas the river in Ramanujan’s poem is the forceful, violent stream, in Abhay’s poem, she is a reluctant sulking scavenger. Abhay’s poem is crisp, taut and superbly structured. For Ramanujan, the river has almost a wrathful bestial force that devours up houses, cattle and people. He endows his lines with equipoise. Bare simplicity of diction is hard to miss. Whereas Ramanujan focusses on the cruelty of the river floods in Madurai city, the apathy and the indifference of the Delhiites towards the Yamuna is what torments Abhay. Ramanujan debunks the traditional romantic view of the river Vaigai in Madurai by the ancient poets and simultaneously satirizes new poets who out of lack of imagination, blindly imitate their predecessors. The indifference of the poets of the past and present to the havoc caused by the river in flood and the pain and suffering caused to humans becomes the prime focus of the poem. They ignored the fact that the flood took its toll on human life. The human concern was missing even from the poetry of the past. In this sense, the poetry of the past and the present are doing the same thing. Unless the poets talk about human anguish and the sorrows of human beings, that poetry cannot mean much. In the sense that Abhay does not romanticize the river, he fulfills the expectations of Ramanujan but in his inability to capture human suffering he fails yet again. The tussle between the poets of the past and the present with respect to the rivers continues. Such is the beauty of the river as a subject matter. In its ever-flowing and inconstant form, it eludes pinning to meaning.

 

Endnotes:

¹See Prudence J. Jones. The book looks at how rivers function as poetic devices in Roman literature. She looks at the symbolic roles of rivers and their link to cosmology, ritual, and ethnography. Even though she focuses only on Virgil’s Aeneid and the book is of interest to anyone interested in a scholarly exploration of river motifs in literature.

²Some instances of the use of rivers in English literature are as follows:

• T.S. Eliot’s ‘The Dry Salvages’ (1941):
  I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river
  Is a strong brown god—sullen, untamed and intractable,
• Langston Hughes’ ‘The Negro Speaks of Rivers’ (1921):
  I’ve known rivers:
  I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
  flow of human blood in human veins.
  My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
• ‘A Week on’ the Concord’ and ‘Merrimack Rivers’ relates the two-week boating and hiking trip that Henry David Thoreau and his brother John took through Massachusetts and New Hampshire in 1839.
• Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899) revolves around the river Congo.
• Charles Dickens made use of river images in Little Dorrit (1855-1857) and Our Mutual Friend (1864-1865).
• Edgar Allen Poe’s ‘To the River’ (1845) compares the river to a girl.
• Caroline Anne Bowle’s ‘The River’ speaks of the different stages of rivers and tells us how the human mind and river are connected with each other.

³See Bidhan Mondal pp. 32. He lists major river poems of Indian English writers. Ezekiel’s ‘Love Sonnet, ‘O My Very Own Cadaver’ by Gieve Patel, Jayanta Mahapatra’s ‘Evening Landscape by the River’ and ‘Again, One Day, Walking by the River’, K B Rai’s ‘The Sacred Ganges’, and K N Daruwalla’s ‘Boat-ride Along the Ganga’, ‘Nightscape’, ‘Vignettes I, II & III’, ‘The River-Silt’, ‘Crossing of Rivers’ and ‘Harang’.

⁴Abhay K wrote the Earth Anthem in 2008. He was inspired by the Upanishads. So far it has been translated into 30 languages.

Works Cited:

Bhatnagar, M K (ed). The Poetry of A.K. Ramanujan. Delhi: Atlantic Publishers and Distributors. 2002. p. 9. Print.

Cirlot, J E. A Dictionary of Symbol. Second Edition London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd 1962, Second edition 1971. p. 274.

K, Abhay. The Seduction of Delhi. Bloomsbury. India. 2014. Print

Laxminarayana, P. "Cultural Cross- Currents and Crisis in Sensibility: A Note on A. K Ramanujan’s " A River", Rama Nair ed. Trends and Techniques in Contemporary Indian English Poetry, New Delhi: Prestige, 2001. Print

McMillin, T S. The Meaning of Rivers: Flow and Reflection in American Literature. University of Iowa Press, Iowa, 2011. Print.

Mondal, P Bidhan. “Painting Riverscapes with the Colour of Poetry: The Unvarnished Reality in K N Daruwalla’s River Poems.” Bhatter College Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies, (ISSN 2249-3301), Vol. IV, 2014.  pp. 32-40. http://bcjms.bhattercollege.ac.in/V4/05_K_N_Daruwalla_River_Poems.pdf

Naik, MK. History of Indian English Literature. New Delhi. Sahitya Akademi. 1982. p. 201. Print.

Nangial, Vinita Dawra. Book Review: The Seduction of Delhi. The Times of India. August 6, 2015. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/books/book-launches/Book-review-The-Seduction-of-Delhi/articleshow/48343598.cms  (Accessed 14 March 2019)

Parthasarathy, R. (ed) Ten Twentieth- Century Indian Poets. New Delhi. OUP 1976. Print.

Jones, Prudence J. Reading Rivers in Roman Literature and Culture, Lexington Books, UK. 2005. Print.

Ramanujan, A K. The Striders. London: OUP, 1966. Print

Sumana K. “A Realistic Look at Ramanujan’s A River,” Indian Writing Today, ed. C.R. Viswesswara Rao (Delhi: IAES, 1996) p. 41. Print.