Father Returning Home by Dilip Chitre- Essay

 

Father Returning Home

-         Dilip Chitre

Dilip Purushottam Chitre was an important Indian writer, critic, painter and a filmmaker. He won the Sahitya Akademi Award in1994 for his Marathi book of poems Ekun Kavita. His poem “Father Returning Home” was first published in his collection  Traveling in a Cage (1980). This autobiographical poem talks about the poet’s father in a city where his own sons and daughters treat him as an alien. This poem deals with many themes like alienation in the twilight years, indifference of children, rootlessness, generation gap, and the future of the individuals in the city.

The first stanza of the poem describes the train journey of the poet’s father while returning home one evening. The father stands among ‘silent commuters’ in the yellow light of a local compartment. He does not see the suburbs that pass by since they are too familiar to him. As he travels during the rainy season, his clothes become damp and dirty. His black raincoat is stained with mud. His bag crumbles with the heavy load of the books. Due to old age, his eyesight has become poor.

The poet conveys the pathetic condition of his father in the society and family through the following lines:

“Now I can see him getting off the train

Like a word dropped from a long sentence”

The poet says that he can see his father getting down the train ‘like a word dropped from a long sentence.’ The sentence provides an image of an old man who gets down from the train as if he is no longer relevant to it like a deleted word from a sentence.

The poet then sees his father hurrying through the long, grey platform. He seems to be as old as the platform. He crosses the railway tracks and hurries home through muddy lanes on a rainy day. This is indicated by his chappals which are sticky with mud. This stanza portrays the monotonousness of the old man.

The alienation of the poet’s father in his own house is explained further. The ole man drinks a weak tea and eats a stale chapatti when he comes back home. This shows that the even his basic requirements are not properly carried out by his family. A sense of pity for the poet’s father arises in when the poet says:

“His sullen children have often refused to share

Jokes and secrets with him.”

Next, the father goes into a contemplative mood after reading a book. He goes to the toilet and contemplates “Man's estrangement from a man-made world”. This conveys that the old man is visibly upset. When he comes out of the toilet, he trembles. It seems that he trembles not only by the cold water but also due to the thoughts that came into his mind.

The father finds himself all alone in his room. The children do not interact with their father. They do not share their joys or sorrows with him. To compensate their company, he listens to the radio. Then he goes to sleep. In his sleep, he dreams about his ancestors and grandchildren. It seems that he is trying to communicate with his ancestors who had entered the subcontinent through the Khyber Pass in the Himalayas. It is a kind of relief to him from his mundane life devoid of any human contact. Thus the poem portrays the alienation of the poet’s father who is completely ignored by his kith and kin.