Daaruwala Keki
Daaruwala Keki
Daaruwala Keki
● Lit experimentation, the key note is to make it new - ezra pound. Mod writing in
general, soc, or Eliot in wasteland, It has elimination alienation - coincide with the
industrial world, an experience or the feeling of mod, by some forces- science,
capitalism, something that carries us away from tradition.It alienation, cand creates
frustration and angst among people.
● Fragmentation and disintegration of the society during and after ww1 , the bottom of
the vessel has fallen out due to the progress in science and technology.
● For India,There is a delay in our experience of modernism - it mostly came with the
trauma and horrors of partition. Giving scope for the creation of indegenous High
modernist- writing.
3.11.20
● Curfew in a riot on city puts up a discourse of the body that necessarily does not
celeb the beauty but ugliness
● Daaruwalla uses animal metaphors in his poems, he thinks about animals.He seems
to wonder the city with animal consciousness
● gloom and decay are the predominant mood of his poems .Depiction of a dark and
dismal world infected with death- disease- a pessimistic reasons of india(bcz he is
writing in the post independence period) Pestilence, epileptic, blackain, Disease,
suffering, crime and corruption.
● The khaki- writing his own exp as a police officer.This service implies an ironic
detachment, he doesn't glorify it, we get a sense of ironic detachment- forced to
observe routine and follow code of conduct.He shows the conflict in the role of a
police officer.His job as a policeman is a compulsion to follow rules while the work of
a poet is completely different.
● Someone who feels guilty in following the orders.- compunction
● In his poems,there is a distinct commitment to social causes,a middle class sense of
responsibility because during the decolonization process, it was mainly people from
the middle class who emerged and in them there prevailed a sense of social justice.
We see a confluence of indian culture in his writing- it was too middle class to think
that unity is diversity- he sometimes celebrated it and sometimes criticized it. Eg
Kanthapura- there is a distinct sense of collectiveness
Apparition in april-
Routine- 1971
● It is like a Second coming. the centre can not hold the chaos.-colonial and post
partition history as a nightmare- historical trauma
● the poet is aware of the reflection that is Irony and critical .There is irony, cynicism, in
daruwalla's poems.
● There is often a sense of detachment from religion and fanaticism.There is a tone of
secularism.
● In indian poem and novel writers there is Gap in term of worldview of class, there is
an eletism that is the economic, educational, class difference between the gap
between the writer and the subject
● Dark india-they are diagnosing indian hills -Jeet thayil.
● Routine is a dread of political violence- “CARVAK “ IS A SIMILAR POEM,
● Comment on how the poetry is a poetry of observation and not
commentary ?
❖ Since the last 2 decades of mypic militany movement in the name of Partition,
Daaruwalla and his contemporaries were left with a sense of degeneration and
physical disintegration. Like some of the poest of British literary cannon eliot and
yeats, Daaruwalla was invested mostly in realistic description of the city feuds.
❖ The poem routine is a social comment where daruwallas is communicating and
criticising various aspects related to the of the failure of the hopes of a en emerging
nation.He is pointing towards the chaotic nature of the modern india that persisted
even after year of partition. His career as a law keeper, put him tet a tet with first
hand experience. BUT SOMEHOW HIS POETIC SELF WOULD JUST work
complains about the society yet barely pulls himself out of the gloom. The admittedly
pessimistic Daruwalla has a middle class sense of responsibility because duting the
decolonization process, it was mainky the people of teh middle xlass who energed
and within them prevailed a sense of justice. The sense of commitment of the middle
class towards the betterment of the nation and putting together the imagined
community, made him put together verses that woluld be observations of the reality,
sans judgements.
their sense of commitment towards the middle class towards nation making and
betterment.Putting together the “imagined community “- the sense of responsibility towards
shaping the nation- he ranges across class and deal with theme as diverse as death and life
and sex and vilages.
● MK Naik- failed to create a total impression of Daruwalla and his poems. there is a
sense of fragmentedness in his poems- there are shifting pov and images.
He mentions his friend Karan Singh -in his poem.
- The last two decades there has been a miopic militant movement - partition (?)
- There is a sense of disenchantment and degradation, it foregrounds its corruption,
decadence and disease- there is an implicit ideal that he is suggestion- baudelaire-
yeats- eliot- particularly when describing the city, it expresses a yearning of a
prelapsarian state of ----? Like wrote joseph conrad- dream ,madness,
The asphalt gives way beneath our boots and sticks. - Asphalt - mixture of pitch with
sand and gravel. It's a critic in the paradigm of progress. There is no point in going forward.(
the failure of modernity in india, how in various levels the promises are melting beneath the
feet- infirmity of the emerging country - booths and sticks.Iambic tetrameter of the line , it
allegorises the movement of marching, but the content is saying the futility of violence.
The edges of the crowd give way; - edges of the crowd, suggest how large the
crowd is ..
Also the banality of evil. There is a young population, something we are not
comfortable with. The author is highlighting the police that are marching against the
crowd, it is such a pity that they have to lead violence on the young. The police are
empathizing or even regretting it DH LAWRENCE “ SNAKE” - where Lawrence
empathized the killing of a snake.
Hannah arrent- the ( banality ) analogy of Evil - the natzi killing of the jew- the
trials of the Natzi officers happening - they are not evil- but just human beings
following orders- the atrocities in history caused by following order
Disciplined normalizing of the violence- the ubiquity of the meaningless violence- its
own sense of being trapped in the-- being
IN WHAT WAY IS DARUWALLA A MODERNIST WRITER?
Wilfred Owen tHE Promises of modernity-science etc etc- exacerbate the human
suffering- the terrible things that we have done in “Doulchare Decorometh “- he is
exposing the truth behind the meaningless loss of life- he is daru is
“Unconvinced”- of the moral probity of the act .. but the rioteers are unconvinced too
The khaki is an inheritance of the brit heritage… khaki and brown skin.
Monotony - recursive nature of violence, that violence leads to violence,
Routine can mean two things- “Routine” 1. Noun: a sequence of actions regularly followed.
2. Adjective: performed as part of a regular procedure rather than for a special reason.
The poet is trying to articulate the everyday violence, it includes the venality of violence, the
everydayness and the ordinaryness.
It also suggests a discipline, it indicates how members of the enforcers of the law are trapped
behind the role they take.
● The banality of evil- stanford prison experiment - effects of perceived power . group
of volunteers are divided into two, when people are in position of power they act as if
they are under some compulsion
● “while acts of evil can mushroom into monumental tragedies, the individual human
perpetrators of those acts are often marked not with the grandiosity of the demonic
but with absolute mundanity” (Maria Popova, “The Banality of Evil”)
or almost dying;
his eyes were glazed, the breast still throbbed.
We tucked him pulsing as he was in our
rucksack. - first mention of the female companion of the poem, just like the
monal and his partner, the phallic image - scene of love making later. Animal
sex and death.
The female rose in terror crying!
With bird-blood(line between human and animal world) but the two world are
the same , it becomes clear that these realms are intricate.blood that u can not
wash off , like macbeth. on our hands we walked and as the skies broke into
rags of mist, why did our footsteps drag?
Seeped in romantic sublime, this delay is enacted by a mimatic stanza break,
the breaking of the stanza
Why do they take the male away?
They can not flee the scene without guilt, the bird is a metaphor
Residue of violence in the ghostly return of the bruise to mark the violence.
Out of tiredness something flared up.
Specializing of the female body, a description of the female body in terms of
spaces ,urban spaces...her body is a site for movement. Act of vaginal sex.
Cesura ...a halt… a sense of separation...we and met by apprehensive.. the
fearful circumstances in which they are in.guilt?
Vigian dentartar -
And the wolves, with the mist, went over the cliff—
but for the wind we both would have dreamt the very same dream of
quiescence and love; but the wind was a thorn in the flesh of the night and
moaned aloud like a witch in the flue
I broke my gun in two across the back
of an ash-grey dawn. A brown bird left the crags
flying strongly, and as its shadow crossed us
it shrieked with fear and turned to stone,
dropping at our feet.
‘It’s the queen-monal! We are accursed!’ she said.
‘Just watch its eyes! For though the bird was near dead its eyes flared terror
like bits of dripping meat!
The recursive nature of violence.
The dramatis personae - lover and the poet and the birds ., love making that is
haunted by the guilt that has carried over by the earlier act of killing a bird.
There is an analogy between the bird and the narrator.
“You will find no rest for the long years of Eternity. For you killed a bird in love “
Romanticism as a main crux of the poem- the rhyme of the ancient mariner - similar incident of killing
a bird .
“To thee, thou Wedding-Guest!
He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.
He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.”rhyme of the ancient mariner.
Romanticism was invested in examining the relationship between man and nature.
The violence and transgression leads to haunting . we are reminded of valmiki.
Violence to mediate guilt.
Curse of kindama in pandu.- He places a curse on Pandu that you will die making love.
Violence is dehumanizing. It's gandhian in a sense that it encourages ahimsa.
Violence and the subsequent guilt is individuating and aelianting.
● Oeuvre of daaruwalla - there is a recurrent trope of death , sex and animal
imagery .
● Realism
● There is an imbrication of animal and human lanes.
● Closeness to nature.
● “Collective conscious”- man and his symbols, humans share a collective
repository of animal and history, animals like god and wolves have a recurring
● Human effects of the acts of violence. Dh lawrence “Snake”- how paultry how
vulgar what a mean act
● Connection between wind and animality.- daruwalla sees animal and natural
world as cloely interlinked.
15-12-2020
In what way is death of a brd a romantic poem- its a poem about nature- a
poem saying the consequences of the violence against nature. Recounts
having stealing a boat.
It's solipsistic like keats poems- it senses a regret to transcend the trap of the
self. A pathologically self reflective- narcissism in romantic poetry.
Precludes- wordsworth
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● The narrator wants a purgatory effect by calling the it a “bird” love and
“bird blood “ thus creating a hierarchical distinction between the
human world and animal world, as if the nuances of violence against
the animal world is less sinful.
● “The sky broke into a rag of mist” as if trying to conceal the heinous act
of violence under cover of the mist.But rag also signifies the tattered
frail and poor nature of existence, something beneath human
existence, perhaps the animal world.
● Missing eac time - there is a reversal of hierarchy- saying that the
animal world is at an advantageous position over the speck of
civilization that intruded in their territory .
● Feeling of guilt, threatened by larger animals, just the way they
dominated over weaker animals, now the speaker and his beloved is
threatened by stronger animals where they are the weaker one. There
is again a reversal of hierarchy.
● The larger predatory animals can also be a projection of his guilty
unconscious which has now come back to the conscious.
● Channelising the guilt through sexual interaction, maybe a way of
distraction, or another way of asserting dominance over his partner- it
portrays a tendency to dominate , first over the natural world, its failure,
and then over the private world of lovers. The culmination of
dominance in a
● Th act on making love is a scary night is odd, so in such an intense
environment , love making can be seen as a means to channelise the
anxiety and the gu
● = the unfamiliar description of the familiar nature, give the poem a
super-natural fervour.
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● Daruwalla’s poem, Death of a bird talks about the chilly and ominous
experience of the narrator and his partner in a very secluded natural
surrounding. In the poem, Romanticism is explored to examine the
relationship between man and nature. The minutely detailed
description of the natural surroundings are seeped in romantic sublime
which reminds us of romantic poets like Coleridge and Keats. Like
Coleridge's rime of the ancient mariner, the poet journeys trying to
exorcise the guilt of shooting a male monal, while he was engaged in
the act of procreation.” My barrel spoke one word of lead: the bird
came down, the king was dead, ” .With the killing of the bird, the
natural order of the poem was disrupted. With the seream of the
pony that “ “swivelled and went down the flank” ,the guilty
conscience comes back to accompany the poet and his beloved
throughout their journey . The following synesthetic experience
like the wolves, with the mist, went over the cliff- , “monal’s
wings and the prowling bears” make a shadowy projection of his
guilty conscience. Like some romantic poems, there is a passive
lingering of superstitious thoughts that find its voice in the end
when the Queen monal “shrieked with fear and turned to stone,”
and the beloved says , “We are accursed!”
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●
● Writing in the mid 20th century, The poems of Daruwalla are far
away from the sensibility of his predecessors like Toru Dutt ,
Sarojini Naidu .Through his poem he poem routine, daaruwalla gives us a
glimpse of the horror and terrors of partition that acted as an echoing
influance in the creation of a high modernist writing.
● Daruwalla are marked with a sense of realism. He sees and paints life with
all its wit and ugliness.Like a modernist, He speaks of a dismal and diseased
ridden cityscape that is disintegrating. The key feature of modernism as
propounded by Ezra Pound is “to make it new”. Therefore the routine
captures the unfamiliarity of the changing times like the industrial world,
science, capitalism, and the alienation, frustration and angst that people faced
due to a shift from their traditions. Like Eliot's “Preludes” the city captured in
the routine is dull, dark and dismal infected with death, disease Pestilence,
epileptic, blackain, Disease, suffering, crime and corruption.
● .With the recursive nature of the violence, there is a sense of
monoty that is also seen in the post war british and american
literature. The absence of religious forces are felt in the poem where
neither the police officer nor the narrator has any religious assurance that
would redeem them from their guilt.Thus, like like a moden poem, it is
secular. The secular world of the poem
● The poem is not only modern in its content, but also in the form .It is written in
blank verse with no fixed meter, which echoes the disrupted times in which
daruwalla lived
●
● Added to this was the The trauma and horrors of partition this
delayed experience of the With respect to world literary trends,
Modernism For India,There is a delay in our experience of modernism - it
mostly came with the trauma and horrors of partition. Giving scope for the
creation of indegenous High modernist- writing.
●
● Secular - the world Daaruwalla uses animal metaphors in his poems, he
thinks about animals.He seems to wonder the city with animal consciousness
● gloom and decay are the predominant mood of his poems .Depiction of a
● With the recursive nature of the violence, there is a monotony that
is also seen in the post war british and american literature.
● As far as the features of the poems are concerned they -there is a
hint of irony when we are moving forward- it is a disillusionment.
● Realism
● Humanitarian and democratic ideas.
● The form is modern with no fixed meter.
● Representation of nature in a very un-familiar way. - like
modernist writers , nature is not praised, but
●