Still Another View of Grace by A.K. Ramanujan- An Analysis

 

Still Another View of Grace

                                                          -A.K. Ramanujan

About the Author
            A. K. Ramanujan (1929–1993) was an Indian poet, translator, folklorist, and scholar. He wrote both in English and Kannada. He is celebrated for his ability to bridge Indian traditions with modern sensibilities. His poem often explore memory, culture, sexuality, morality, and identity. He was deeply interested in the tensions between tradition and individual desire.

About the Poem
       The poem “Still Another View of Grace” appeared in Ramanujan’s first collection The Striders (1966). This volume established his reputation as a major Indian English poet. The poem’s central idea is the conflict between moral upbringing and bodily desire. It also shows how desire can overpower inherited notions of purity, sin, and social order. Further, the poem deals with the themes of sexuality, transgression, rebellion, and cultural guilt.

Analysis
          At the beginning of the poem, the speaker confesses an inner struggle: “I burned and burned.” This metaphor of “burning” suggests suppressed desire or passion. The thought he catches is personified as a woman with “screams of her hair.” This imagery conveys both attraction and danger. The speaker warns against “gentleman’s morals” and advises her to marry within social approval—a priest or even “any beast in the wind.” It highlights his own conflict between societal respectability and basic instinct.

Next, the speaker’s Brahmin background is described. He has been raised among “singers of shivering hymns.” In his household, desire is policed and suppressed. He is trained to fear “hungers that roam the street.” However, his desire/lust breaks through. The turning point arrives when the woman “stood upon that dusty road on a night lit April mind” and looks at him. Her presence dismantles all commandments. Here, the speaker recalls his father’s moral failures. Desire is embodied in her “tumbled hair.” Her hair feels as “silk” in his hand. So he “took her behind the laws of my land.” Here, the poet admits that he yielded to his lust against his religious and social prohibitions.

Conclusion

Thus, the poem “Still Another View of Grace” portrays the triumph of physical desire over inherited morality. Grace here is not divine, but the grace of yielding to passion, a human and forbidden grace. Further, this poem talks about the sexual freedom in a constrained world in the name of family tradition.

Indian Women by Shiv K Kumar- An Analysis

 

Indian Women

                                                       -Shiv K Kumar

Introduction

            Shiv K Kumar is one of the prolific Indian writers. He was a poet, playwright, novelist, and critic. He was awarded Sahitya Akademi award in 1987 and Padma Bhushan in 2001. The poem “Indian Women” is taken from the collection Cobwebs in the Sun (1974). This poem describes the plight of Indian women in the villages. It deals with the themes of women’s oppression in the patriarchal Indian society, their character, cultural practices, and daily activities.

Analysis        

The poem describes India as a triple-baked continent. By triple-baked, the poet means that Indian women are under three unfavourable conditions of the country- sun, gender, and poverty. Indian women suffer in a hot country, its patriarchal society, and the poverty. In such a place a woman does not ‘etch angry eyebrows On the mud walls', because she is not allowed to do so. The head of the family is a male and he is the only person allowed to show anger. The woman is mostly voiceless in the family and society.

Indian women are known for their patience; ‘Patiently they sit’. In rural villages, women cook with mud pots and live in mud houses. They tend to keep those pots and vessels clean, neat, and not damaged for years together. This shows their patience level. The men are the head of the family, and they only take decisions. Women are expected to take care of their respective families when the men go out for working. There is water scarcity and so the women wait to fetch water with patience near the village common well.

            ‘Indian women normally have long hair. The poet compares it to the Mississippi River. The hope is for the water. They look deep inside the well in search of water with tears overwhelmed in their eyes. The poet says this action is, ‘looking deep into the water’s mirror for the moisture in their eyes’. Further, men are compared to water and women are compared to pitcher. A pitcher is meaningless without water. Similarly, the poet conveys that in Indian society  a woman has no space without men.

            Indian women are known for their coyness. Out of shyness, they tend to make doodles in the sand. This is a cultural way of showing positive affection towards the partner. ‘They guard their tattooed thighs’. In Indian culture, women have their husbands’ names tattooed on their thighs. It indicates the woman belongs only to that man and she is considered as a property. She has to be careful not to get indulged with any other man because that would bring shame to her husband.

            Women wait for their respective men to come back home safe till the night comes. Because, the men go to work beyond the hills for the family as there is poverty. This is the daily routine of culturally bound Indian women.

Conclusion

            Thus, in this poem, Shiv K Kumar portrays the pathetic conditions of Indian women who are culturally marginalized.