Rites of Sense

By

Meena Alexander

Intro to the Poet:

Meena Alexander (1951 – 2018) was born in Allahabad and brought up in Kerala and
Sudan. She is well read and has travelled widely. She feels nostalgic about the places where she
has spent her days. She says “All my writings is haunted by place, the loss of it, the constantly
shifting ‘I’ that tries to find a place in which to be”. According to Maxine Hong Kingston, “Her
voices guides us far away and back home”. Meena Alexander believes in the power of memory
to mend wounds, to “recreate ancestry.” She sees writing an act of translation, bearing what is
unspoken and even unspeakable into language, and reawakening a piece of the past as a fresh
experience.

Stanza 1:

Meena Alexander has come to visit her sick mother. The time is twilight. The mother is
very sick and she is lying on a mat. She is tired and Meena Alexander massages the feet of the
mother with jasmine oil. As she massages, she is able to feel the callouses on her feet. The
mother had been working throughout the day taking care of her sick husband, cleaning him and
his room, washing all the dirty soiled clothes and hanging them out to dry. The creeper in the
garden which had been tended by her had given forth its passion fruit but the mother is not in a
situation to enjoy the fruits as she is exhausted with tiredness and work. The poetess’ father is
sick and has to depend on his wife for everything. He has the comfort of the rosewood bed but
the mother lies on the mat on the ground.

Stanza 2:

The mother is gasping for breath and the poetess compares her to a fish that has been
washed ashore. Her belly muscles have become loosened and slack with age and hunger. The
underside (soles) of her feet has lines that run deep and appears as though they are crossed. Her
sari is both damp and faded indicating the mother has no time to care for herself. The poetess,
out of respect, love and care for her mother, kneels down beside her. It is almost night and the
poetess is also confused and afraid of her mother’s condition. We come to know that the poetess
is the eldest child to the mother and has come to visit her during the summer. The summer her
als refers to the age of the poetess. She is in her prime. The mother is delirious in state. She is
vaguely aware of what s happening around her. This can be seen in her question “Why is light
so hot?” when it is actually dark. The mother’s love for the daughter can be seen when she in
spite of her delirious state is able to recognize her daughter and call her by name.

Stanza 3:

On searching for the source of light, the poetess finds a candle glistening at a distance.
She understands the state of her mother and it creates a sort fear in her. She realizes that her
mother is I the threshold of death. The poetess is very much afraid even to utter the word death
as she fears that saying the word aloud will bring death. She could not even cry out aloud for the
fear of attracting the attention of death. She compares herself to a child who is hiding from her
kidnapper or abuser. She covers her mother from letting out a cry of anguish and in the process
hurts her lips leaving it torn and bleeding. As result of suppressing her tears and cry, she
breathes in a staggering manner and the silence prevailing there is increasing her fear. The
silence is unbearable for her.

Stanza 4:

The poetess did not even sleep a wink throughout the night for the fear of losing her
mother and she is flooded with so many thoughts of her mother. She appears to be in a dream-
like state where she is not able to differentiate between the past and the present. She speaks to
herself in a dream-like state, a mingled series of emotions relating to the past and the present, are
flooding and bottled up inside her. She could not express her fear, sorrows or worries to anyone.
The only outlet is her eyes that let out tears and in the end her eyes burn because of continuous
crying. She feels helpless and frustrated. These feelings make her whole body feverish and
experience a sort of burning sensation. Unable to tolerate that feel she calls out to her mother
and says that she is burning. She hopes that her mother would help her out by taking care of her
just like the way she had taken care of the poetess in her womb. The poetess believes that the
mother who had loved, protected, nourished and kept her safely shut within her womb when she
was “just snitches of blood, loopholes of sweat and a sack of flesh” would shower the same care
and love on her even now. The feelings and powerful emotions are deep inside the poetess and
she doesn’t find the right words to express themselves and even if she voices them now the
mother will not be able to listen to and understand her now as she is in a delirious state. So, the
poetess feels that she is like a voice cut away from the sound; there is nobody to hear her out.

Stanza 5 (2 lines):

The term “unlit place” refers to the mother’s womb. Though it is dark, it is the safe and
the most peaceful and well-cared place on the whole earth. The poetess would love to go there
again and experience her mother’s love and care. But, she knows that she cannot and says
whatever words she might use and whatever prayers she might perform cannot help her to go
back to that place. The poetess had to experience a lot of things to come to ths realization. The
word “sense” refers to the awareness she had got and she had to undergo a lot of things, referred
to as “rites”, in order to get that awareness.

Stanza 6:

The poetess knowing that she cannot go back into her mother’s womb starts to imagine or
dream herself into her mother’s womb. She feels that if that can happen that will be the end of
all the problems and the sufferings. The poetess will be safe and sound inside her mother’s
body; she will be well-cared for by the mother and also she will not be in a position to face all
the risks and challenges in life all alone. In addition, the mother will be in her prime and she will
be hale and healthy as she was during her youthful days. The poetess will not only have the
mother’s love and care but also she need not fear about her mother’s death. The mother in her
pain tosses on her bed and the pillow stained white with her sweat heaves up and down like the
waves on the southern sea shores. This stanza is nostalgic in tone and there a note of
autobiographical element as it refers to the days she has spent in Kerala.

Stanza 7 (2 lines):

In this stanza, the poet speaks to her mother in her mind. She wants to know whther the
mother will lay her cheek against the cheek of he poetess and hold her close. This is an
indication that the poetess wants to be held by her mother safely and closely and thinks that this
will remove all her fears and apprehensions. Also she wants the mother to bless her and the
mother always wishes and prays for the goodness and welfare of her children. The mother’s love
is always pure and true that the poetess wants to experience them one more time as she fears that
her mother may die and leave to face the world all alone. This also expresses the poetess’ love
for her mother.

Stanza 8:

In this stanza, the poetess recalls all the things the mother had done for her. The mother
taken complete care of the poetess by bathing her, feeding and nourishing her with good and
healthy food, showing her where she had spent her life happily as a child, teaching her to wake
up at dawn and keeping the house and the threshold clean by sweeping away the fallen leaves.
She had also taught the poetess how to maintain and grow plants in the garden. This stanza is
not only nostalgic in nature but also shows how much care the mother has shown by teaching her
everything she knows and also preparing her face life as a grownup woman.

Stanza 9:

This stanz is a continuation of what the mother has taught the poetess. She had taught her
to cook, wash and take care of her clothes and even to stitch. These work are supposed to be the
duties of women and every woman is expected to learn and perform that without fail. The
poetess has included a metaphor in the form of the needle. The mother had also taught the
daughter to keep her thoughts, opinions and feelings to herself and not to voice them out freely.
The “rusty needle” here refers to the idea that this instruction to women had been passed on to
them from the past generations for years and years together. The women have taught and trained
to keep all their emotions and feelings under restraint.

Additional comments:

The poetess is different from her mother in terms of age, knowledge, education and
opinions. The mother is traditional whereas the poetess is modern in her outlook. But still the
poetess is able to find a sort of commonality between them. The mother has always been quiet
and silent tolerating all her pains and sufferings. The poetess finds herself unable to voice out
her intense feelings, emotions and worries on seeing her mother’s ill health. She realizes that
silence which is expected to be maintained by women has become a part of her as well. the
poem reveals the strong bonding between the mother and the daughter. The poem is nostalgic in
nature. The poetess finds herself belong to the both the past and the modern culture and
traditions. In other words, she is cross-cultural.