2.5 Father Returning Home

POEMS FOR HSC

2.5 Father Returning Home

About the poet:

       Dilip Purushottam Chitre (1938-2008) was a notable Indian poet, critic, painter and filmmaker of the modern era. His father used to publish an important periodical Abhiruchi, and perhaps it had a great influence upon his career.  He was one of the most important figures behind the “little magazine movement” of the sixties in Marathi. His Ekun Kavita or Collected Poems were published in the nineteen nineties in three volumes. He also edited An Anthology of Marathi Poetry (1945–1965).

   THEME  : 

                      It is an autobiographical poem. The poet  has shown the loneliness of an old man in our modern society in a beautiful way by depicting a picture of his own father returning home from work.The poem expresses the generational separation between a “father” and “children”.

                     It is now an account of any old man who does the hard work for his family but leads a tiresome and dull life.

No one is there to take care of him, to converse with him or to understand and share his feelings.

Special features of the poem:

                    The poem consists of two stanzas of 12 lines each. It is written in free verse with no particular meter or rhyme scheme followed. The language is easy and simple but full of symbolic expressions and poetic devices like simile. It is a narrative  poem where the poet-speaker narrates his father's life.Poet has used imagery and various descriptive words.

Poetic devices and language:

              

                  The lack of rhythm is symbolic of the poet's father's uncared-for life. The language is easy and simple but full of symbolic expressions and poetic devices like simile.The poet uses imagery and descriptive words (evening train,yellow light,enseeing eyes,eyes dimmed by age,gray platform).

 Paraphrase:

           In the beginning the poet describes his father's journey towards home. The father is travelling in a late evening train after finishing his work for the day. ‘Late evening train’ may indicate he has no personal method of transportation and hour of his journey is late.

         Father stands among commuters in yellow light of a local compartment. Silent commuters means no will,energy to carry conversations.  Yellow light indicates tiredness of father.

 Father is not interested to watch  the views outside the train again and again.(unseeing eyes).

          The poet tells about the pathetic condition of his father ,as he travels during rainy season.His clothes become damp and dirty.His black raincoat becomes stained with mud and eyesight has become poor.The bag he was carrying was stuffed with books and he was struggling to handle it.

          The poet’s father gets down from the train. Here Dilip Chitre has used  simile in comparing his father to a  word in a long sentence.He says that his father gets down just "like a word dropped from a long sentence".

          The father crosses the railway line and runs towards his house,through muddy lanes.His chappals become sticky with mud.

             In the 2nd stanza the poet depicts the isolation of his father in his own home.

The poet tells us that his father drinks 'weak tea' and eats 'stale chapati' .This creates an unpleasant atmosphere.Nobody cares for him even at home.

           He goes into the toilet to think deeply and to seperate himself from man-made world.Toilet is a symbol of his small world.He is terribly shaken when he comes out of the toilet and trembles (shakes) while washing his hands at the basin. Shaking and trembling of his body indicates his old age and his over thinking about his loneliness. Grey hairs stand for the old age. His children do not interact with him. They do not share their happiness and sorrows with him.

         Father listens to the radio.Then he goes to sleep.In his sleep,he dreams about his ancestores (  grandparents ,great grandparents & so on )and grandchildren. He thinks about nomads( tribes)entering a subcontinent through a narrow pass. This indicates how society has changed since the ancient times.

My Opinion about the poem:

It is an autobiographical poem where the poet shows the loneliness and world-weariness of an old man in the modern society by depicting a picture of his own father returning home from work. The poem is a true account of the poet's father Purushottam Chitre's life in 1957 when they moved from Baroda to Mumbai.

APPRECIATION OF THE POEM: