“Voyage Within” and “Voyage Without”: Expatriate Sensibility in A. K. Ramanujan’s Poetry

Rabindranath Tagore says: To study a banyan tree, you not only must know its main stem in its own social soil, but also must trace the growth of its greatness in the further soil, for then you can know the true nature of its vitality. The civilization of India, like the banyan tree, has shed its beneficial shade away from its own birthplace....India can live and grow by spreading abroad - not the political India, but the ideal India.

The phenomena of human migration is normally termed as expatriate or diaspora. Etymologically the term ‘expatriate’ is derived from Latin. ‘ex’-cut off and ‘patria’ homeland. Literally it means to go out off. After their evolution as communities human beings have been experiencing temporary, seasonal or permanent migration from their original habitat. In human migration two significant factors need to be recognized: migration does not mean mere physical settlement of people, but they carry with them a socio-cultural baggage that includes: (a) predefined social identity, (b) norms of religious faith and practices, (c) a frame work of values to organize family and (d) language.

The most prominent point here is, these migrants are not wholly cut off from their homeland, but they always have the mental contact with it, often characterized by what is called “the myth of return.” It is not an exception for writers who settle down in a foreign land and derive strength to write only from returning to their roots.

Trying to find the ways to describe A. K. Ramanujan and the many disciplines he mastered, one wonders if he knew any magic to weave his kind of poetry: In fact in his early childhood days Ramanujan wanted to become a professional magician. With the help of a tailor friend he got a coat stitched with many secret pockets, he added elastic bands and a top hat to his attire and appeared before his class, plucking rabbits, flowers, and hand kerchiefs out of thin air. Years later, reading his poetry, we feel the same enigmatic quality of it and are mesmerized by the great Indian magic show.

Magician, folklorist, and a great poet, A. K. Ramanujan was born in Mysore in 1929. He grew up in a multilingual environment in which Tamil, Kannada, and English were spoken. He was educated in Mysore and Poona. In 1958 he went to the United States to do a Ph.D. in Linguistics at Indiana University, and in 1962 was appointed at the University of Chicago, where he remained for the next thirty years. He died in 1993 under anesthesia during a botched operation.

A. K. Ramanujan wrote poetry in three languages - English, Tamil and Kannada. He was very fond of the tradition of Tamil and Kannada poetry and tried his best to translate it into modem English. He even collected the folk tales from different Indian regional languages. He published four volumes of poetry:

1) The Strides (1966), 2) Relations (1977), 3) Second Sight (1986) and 4) Selected Poems (1995)

In poem after poem, he travels to his childhood memories and experiences of his life in India. The themes in his poetry are the collections of his personal emotions showing a sense of loss, an unbearable rift between one’s origin and dwelling.

Ramanujan tries to combine the native tradition into English language. His Hindu heritage has immensely influenced his poetry to a great extent. One can even affirm that his poetry is steeped in his Hindu heritage from which he could not escape. He had certainly been influenced by western life and culture. But the traditions of Hinduism and cultural values of Hinduism have always clung to him. He always felt tensed up between the modernity of western culture and the orthodoxy of ancient Hindu culture. And this tension finds its way into his poetry.

For many writers the expatriate experience invariably results in a sense of loss, because it involves an unbearable rift between one’s origin and domicile. Hence, the expatriate writers suffer from a loss of identity. It is easy to take a man out of this country but it is not possible to take away the country from his mind. Like Eliot who says in The Waste Land “I can connect nothing with nothing.” Ramanujan too does the same thing in a limited way. In his poem, “Connect,” he says;

Connect Connect Cries my disconnecting
madness, resembling phrases,
See the cycle.
Father whispers in my ear, black holes
and white noise, elections with four year
shadows, red eclipses
and the statistics of rape, Connect
Connect, beasts with monks, slaves economies
and the golden bough

Hindu consciousness is prominent in Ramanujan’s thinking. It is this consciousness that binds him to his tradition though he lived in a foreign country. The poem entitled “Second Sight” brings this out very clearly. “You are a Hindu, aren’t you?/You must have second sight.”

Normally Indian English poets have a problem in creating an Indian English idiom, which haunts them constantly, As R. Parthasarathy says,

That language is a tree
loses color
under another sky

But Ramanujan tries to find substantial Indian themes, which give his poetry a distinct identity. His use of great image, combined with fine craftsmanship help him to create very pure and special Indian English Poetry.

Ramanujan’s effort on translation of Indian classics into English had shaped up his writing of English poetry. What he was learning as a translator found its way into poems. When Ramanujan says of the Tamil poems that often they unify their rich and diverse associations by using a single, long, marvelously managed sentence, he applies the same technique in writing original English poems. It is this connection that makes Ramanujan a truly expatriate writer.

Ramanujan’s poetry springs from his hope to come to terms with himself against the ground of expatriation and alienation from his native land. Yet his poetry blends together the message and medium in a harmonious whole.