Home Coming - R. Parthasarathy

 Home Coming

[alert-success] Home Coming - R. Parthasarathy

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            "Homecoming" is last part of the Rajagopal Parthasarathy’s autobiographical poem collection "Rough Passage". As the title of this poem implies the return to the native place, here the speaker returns to his home after some times and he feels discontent towards the present condition of his native language and literature. Fundamentally, this poem is the poet’s dissatisfaction towards the present state of his mother tongue literature.

                I am no longer myself as I watch

                the evening blur the traffic

                to a pair of obese headlights

            These lines indicate that the speaker cannot feel himself inclusive to his native place. Here he just has returned on an evening time, as the evening’s darkness is vanishing against the headlights. This evening time implies the solemn of the speaker about the actual state of his native language as usually people tend to lose all their energy after a hard labour during the day time.

                 I return home, tried,

                my face pressed against the window

                of expectation.

             As it is twilight time, the speaker returns to home with the tiredness and it also suggests the speaker’s attitude towards pathetic state of his native language’s poetry. Even though the speaker is not content with it’s present state, he has some hope within him and in the reflection of this he is gazing through his window but it is all vain, as the speaker “only to trip over the mat/ outside the door. His hope for his poetry can not make it out, so the speaker is in the state of fear to open his flat’s door, as the key is sleeping in his palm.

                I fear I have bungled again.

                that last refinement of speech

                terrifies me. The balloon.

                Of poetry has grown red in the face

                with repeated blowing.

             Until this line the speaker only indirectly indicates his sorrow for his language, but from this he directly manifests his fear, as he feels grave about the latest refinement of his mother tongue. Here he compares poetry with the balloon which  has gone red because of many reputations. The speaker feels contempt towards the poem which has copied by the poets, as they lack originality, and this reputation angers the speaker and makes the poem a worse one. And he gives some suggestions for good poetry without any repeated blowing, that the humble newspaper which is worthy as it holds some scriptures according to the speaker. Then he find some of his prayers for his native language have answered occasionally, so he wants to go on in the path of poetry’s improvement but he is not sure about its progress.

             All his days are melting into the night, which again indicates the depletion of his hope for his mother’s tongue. And he to his heart that he had turned inside out, which suggests the changes in his native language that he witnesses after his return. Ultimately he ends this poem with the note that he has to be content with the small change of the uncertainties.