Comment on the emotional differences expressed by the son toward the father in "Obituary" by A.K. Ramanujan.

A.K.
Ramanujan, an Indian poet, muses about a fathers death in the poem Obituary.  Writing in , the
narrator tells the story of a son and fathers relationship after the death of the father.  Each
stanza provides a different view of the father from the sons perspective.

The
narrator feels disgruntled by the problems his father left him. His legacy is evaluated by what
he has left undone. The son finds nothing but unhappiness.  Probably the speaker is the oldest
son because he is the one who is  usually left to take care of the fathers estate in Indian
culture.

His heritage basically provides a set of inconveniences: unpaid
bills, unmarried daughters, and a house with its own set of problems.  A grandson, who wets the
bed and was named after the speakers father, is a hindrance as well.

In a
typical Indian funeral ceremony, the father is placed on a funeral pyre and cremated. The father
had a hot temper since the poet states that he was the burning type. Apparently, the fathers
body burned well.

He burned properly at the
cremation

As before, easily

And at both ends€¦

 Afterwards, the eye coins, used to keep the eyes shut during the
burning, were intact.  Little was left unburned except for a few bones. The sons pick them up
and throw them into the river as the priest told them.  

There will be no
headstone with his full name and the date of his birth and death.  The narrator refers to
parentheses which symbolically hold the man's life between them.The fathers life was off kilter:
his birth was caesarean; life in a ghetto; death in a street market.

With a different set of emotions, at this point in the poem, the narrator
seems to long for some remembrance of his father.

But someone told me

He got two
lines

in an inside column

Of a Madras
newspaper...

In the hope of finding these obituary lines€¦

The narrator discovers that his father had a two line obituary in a
local paper a month after he died.  The paper is sold by street vendors.  The son often gets
sugar cane in one of the papers rolled in a cone and then reads it later.  The son wishes that
he could find a copy of the obituary. 

Sadly, the father left his family,
particularly the narrator's grieving mother.  Now, the family rituals will be without him and up
to the son. The son wants some meaning for his fathers existence; this has become the sons
quest.