Small-Scale Reflections on a Great House
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A. K. Ramanujan : “Small-Scale Reflections on a Great House”
It has been rightly said that A.K .Ramanujan is not obvious as a poet ; the poet in him has to be gradually discovered. His poems may not impress the readers on the first reading , but a closer reading of his poems will definitely reveal their myriad hidden beauties!
Ramanujan has his own personal views on the poetic process . I think we should be on our guard while making comments on his poetry in the light of the poets own views on what poetry should be like . A poets own views on poetry are often the will-o -the-wisps which mislead the unwary critics . If Wordsworth found it necessary to append a preface to the Lyrical Ballads , it only shows the poets lack of confidence . T.S.Eliot, on the contrary, set a fine example in this respect . He did not find it necessary to add any preface to his landmark poem The Waste Land In making this short commentary on Ramanujans poem “Small-Scale Reflections on a Great House” I have tried my best not to be influenced by the poets own critical theories .
On the surface , the poem is a quaint catalogue of things that come into the Great House but do not go out and and also an equally bizarre list of things that go out but soon come back . Even on the first reading, the reader may feel a bit uneasy and he may find the poem a deeply disturbing one in an inexplicable manner . A closer reading of the poem will convince the reader that the poem is a fine piece of social criticism. The poem will assume a universal significance when the reader ponders on this enigmatic poem .He will then recognize that the poem is an elegy on the death of human dignity and identity .
It is interesting to compare “Small-Scale Reflections” with V.S Naipauls masterpiece “A House for Mr Biswas” The hero of Naipauls romance detests what Ramanujan euphemistically calls a Great House. Actually the Great House is an over-crowded house like the Hanuman House in Naipauls novel . Both the houses are graveyards of human dignity and identity . Mrs Tulsi does not allow her sons- in law to leave the house .In Ramanujans Great House sons- in law share the same fate :
“Sons- in law who quite forget
their mothers but stay to check
Accounts or teach arithmetic to nieces ”
Great House is different from Hanuman House in one way . Here there is no Mr Biswas to start a rebellion . .We are , however, informed that sons and nephews “ran away ” to join the army , but , unlike Biswas, they do not stay and fight like rebels . In the Great House things and humans are all clubbed together. :
They come in every day