"A
River" by A.K. Ramanujan describes the river in Madurai, which...
...is among the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the Indian
peninsula.
This city is a place of patterns, where the
river dries up and then transforms to a swelling monster that carries away homes, animals and
people. However, the pattern has been going on (it seems) for so long that the people, indeed
even the poets, have little concern for these events. However, the author seems to say, just
because the river swells once a year and people treat it like a "bad habit," does
not mean that the effects of such a catastrophe
are insignificant.
The beginning of the poem describes the dried up river,
and scenes that people take note of casuallyenough that the writer describes stones as animalsa
charming observation:
...the wet stones glistening like
sleepy
crocodiles, the dry ones
shaven water-buffaloes
lounging in the sun€¦
However, there isin the next line,
which will lead to images that are anything but charming.
The poets only sang of the floods.
When the flooding begins, everyone pays attention, though much the way they do when the
river dries up; there is littleif anyalarm, and their notice of the amount
of water seems conversational in nature. The water rises; it is measured. Three village homes
are carried off, and two cows that seem to get swept away as regularly as the flooding occurs.
However, one small note is made, almost offhandedly, tucked away between floating houses and
cowsto demonstrate how unconcerned the townspeople are:
...and the way it carried off three village houses,
one pregnant
woman
and a couple of cows
named Gopi and Brinda as
usual.
One wonders how the people can be so
unaffected€¦and then the writer notes that the poetseven the
new (young) ones, react in much the same way:
The new poets still quoted
the old poets, but no one spoke
in verse
of the pregnant woman
drowned€¦
Thisbuilds in the writer (and the
reader) like the flooding waters. We want to ask, "What do you mean, nobody spoke about the
pregnant woman who drowned?!" This poet cannot remain quiet, and he is
not unaffected. He makes the loss real and meaningful to the readershe is
drowned "with perhaps twins in her."
"Oh, no," we think,
and having absorbed what we thought was the most
horrible imagethe drowned pregnant womanwe discover that it can, and
is, more horrible.
"Twins." The loss is greater: not just of mother and childbut of mother, and
two babies swimming within their mother as she (and
they) drowns in the river€¦and the people and the poets make no note of it.
Our sense of loss increases: we read about the babies within, "kicking at blank
walls / even before birth." The poet reminds the reader once again of the man:
"he," who says "the river has water enough to be poetic about only once a
year€¦" and again indifferently lists the "fatalities" like items on a shopping
listthe houses, the pregnant woman, and the cows. Our poet wants his readers to be painfully
aware of the loss of the woman: even the readers who never knew herand we
should be, as should the people of Madurai. If her neighbors choose not to
notice or remember it, we can pay tribute by remembering her and
markingeven in the expanse of the wide worldher loss. The poet makes sure of this:
...one pregnant woman
expecting identical
twins
with no moles on their bodies,
with different
coloured diapers
to tell them apart.
