SMALL SCALE REFLECTIONS ON A GREAT HOUSE

                                    A.K.Ramanujan

            A.K.Ramanujan is a well known Indian poet writing in English.  He has a rare capacity to bring to life even the smallest details of his subject.  This is obviously revealed in his poem Small Scale Reflections on a Great House. The poem is nostalgic in tone about a great house in which the poet spent his childhood

            The poet begins the poem humorously by stating that things that entered his grand parents’ house never went out.  Lame cows that entered the house were provided with shelter and gifted with a name.  Library books once borrowed from libraries never found their way back.  They remained only to serve as breeding homes for insects and worms. Dishes that belonged to the neighbours for distributing sweets were never returned.  Servants once employed, never left the house. Gramophones continued to remain there. On a distressing note, the poet says that diseases like epilepsy that once entered the blood continued to haunt the generations to come. Sons-in law who came to the house were asked to stay back to check accounts or to teach arithmetic to the nieces of the family. Women who came as wives of some male members never left the house.

            The poet then goes on to say that something that went out of the house did find their way back.  Bales of cotton carried to some textile mills returned processed as packets of cloth to be worn on special occasions by the members of the family. Letters posted by the members of the family found their way back as the postmen failed to locate the precise address. Ideas that originated in the house conveyed to outsiders returned to the house as gossip. The daughters who got married returned back home as widows. Sons of the house who had run away returned as fathers as their wives had given birth to boys.

            The poet ends the poem by saying that one thing that left the house never returned back. i.e. life.  A member of the family who ran away from the house never came back alive. A nephew who had left the house to join army had been killed in the border and only his corpse was brought home.

            Thus A.K.Ramanujan describes the people, things and events associated with the great house.