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Summary of A River by Ramanujan: Explanation of The Poem
Summary of A River by Ramanujan: Explanation of The Poem
Madurai is the city of temples and poets. According to the poet, the sole concern of the earlier poets was
to sing of the beauty of the city, its temples and its river. In every summer the river dries up making the
sand visible. As the water level of the river decreases the sand looks like ribs of human. In addition to the
sand, there are straws and woman hair under the bridges with rusty bars and patches of repair all over
them.
There are also shining wet stones that look like sleeping crocodiles, and those that are dry tend to be
water-buffaloes with no hair relaxing in the sun. No poet, however, sings of this. They just sing of the
rainy season, without mentioning the sufferings of the common people caused by the monsoon river.
The poet claims he observed the flood of the river during the monsoon. People everywhere spoke about
the rising water level of the river and the number of cobbled steps in the bathing place that it had
submerged. It also took three village homes, a pregnant woman and a couple of cows by the humorous
name of Gopi and Brinda.
However, the new poets who are Ramanujan’s contemporary still quote the old poets without paying
attention to the present circumstances. They never talked about the pregnant woman drowned with the
twins in her womb. The poet imagines that the twines were kicking to escape while their mother was
drowning but they could not and ultimately drown to death with their mother. The poets never presented
this heart rendering incident in their poems.
The poet refers to himself using the third person ‘he’. According to the poet, the river becomes poetic
only once a year to satisfy the romantic and aesthetic feeling of the poets. Then in a sudden turn, the poet
tells that in just half an hour, the river takes away three houses, a couple of cows and a pregnant woman
who was expecting twins and was also thinking of having diapers of different colours to distinguish
between them. Here the poet compares and contrasts the poetry of the other poets of his age with that of
his own. On one hand, all other poets are very much interested in praising the beauty of the river on the
other hand; our poet makes a balance between the beauty and the sufferings inflicted on the people by it.
Most obviously, there is a refrain that is used in the second and fourth stanzas and is only slightly altered.
The speaker explains what occurred during this specific flood and then repeats the same thing. This
works in two respects, first of all, to highlight the loss. But at the same time, the reader is also
desensitising. One comes to expect disaster, as those who live in the region do, and see it as another
aspect of the flood/drought.