FROM EXILE SUMMARY 541 WORDS

R. Parthasarathy is an Indian poet, translator, critic, and editor. Rajagopal Parthasarathy was born in 1934 at Tirupparaiturai near Tiruchchirappalli. He was educated at Don Bosco High School and Siddharth College, Mumbai and specialized in English Studies at Leeds University, UK, where he was a British Council Scholar in 1963–64. He was a Lecturer in English Literature in Mumbai for ten years before joining Oxford University Press in 1971 as the Regional Editor in Chennai. He moved to New Delhi in 1978. He is an Associate Professor of English and Asian Studies at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York, USA.

His poems have appeared in Indian and foreign anthologies. His works include “Poetry from Leeds” in 1968, “Rough Passage” brought out by Oxford University Press in 1977, a long poem (Preface "a book where all poems form part of a single poem, as it were" – R. Parthasarathy) and edited “Ten Twentieth-Century Indian Poets” published by Oxford University Press in 1976 which went into Sixteenth Impression only in 2002. He was awarded the Ulka Poetry Prize of Poetry India in 1966. He was a member of the University of Iowa Writing Program during 1978–79. He was member of the Advisory Board for English of the Sahitya Akademi – the National Academy of Letters, New Delhi, India.

“Exile” is a hard – hitting poem from the volume “Rough Passage”. The poet deplores the present day world – filled by mechanization and degradation of nature. He feels unhappy with the city life which is completely polluted in all ways. The city is engulfed by smoke from vehicles and industries. The weak and bad condition of the city is made worse by the destruction of layers of atmosphere instigated by the ever – growing traffic.

The sun burns everything underneath it with its fierce heat waves. The heat and humidity are at an abnormal level for all living things. The poet describes the clouds as nature that is itself affected by pollution and birds find it very difficult to fly in the thick and motionless air with their fragile feathers and wings. The suburbs, which are like ghettos, are no better than the mainland city. All the places have been affected by pollution and people are stuffed in buildings like sandwiches. Their language becomes noise and their streets aren’t well – planned either. The streets ‘unwind like cobras from a basket’ in which the cow searches for food between the traffic that has to divide itself to avoid it, like a comb parting the hair.

In the evening time, the clouds unfurl themselves and decorate the sky. The poet moves towards the sea to relish the pleasant change in the sky and sea. The evening sun graces the poet with its warmth and turns the sand into gold plated particles. The boats sail in an irregular fashion because of lack of breeze. The poet feels that the masts can ‘sniff at the wind’. It refreshes its sails with the thin layer of breeze from the sea. At last, the polluted smell of the land has been wiped out.  

The poet sketches powerful images in the poem which reflect the filth and pollution of an overcrowded Indian city.  The poem is a call to return to spotless nature.