SELF-PORTRAIT

                                                                                                                        A.K.Ramanujan

            A.K.Ramanujan is an Indian poet who wrote both in English and in Kannada.  He was born and educated in Mysore.  Since 1962, he had been at the University of Chicago serving there as the Professor of Dravidian Studies and Linguistics.  His Indian experiences repeatedly feature in his verses.

            A.K.Ramanujan’s poem Self-Portrait is basically about identity crisis.  In the first line itself the poet feels that he resembles everyone in this world.  He resembles the ones he knows, the ones he does not know, the ones he wants to be compared with as well as the ones he does not want himself to be compared.  He sees only others in himself.

            The poet lacks his own individuality.  This is clear from the line,

                        I resemble everyone, but myself

His own identity seems to be faded or lost somewhere.  He is afraid of creating his own identity in this world.  It seems as if his self becomes irrelevant to him.

            Generally, one sees one’s own reflection in a mirror.  This is the law of optics.  The poet walks past various shop windows.  But instead of seeing his own reflection, he rather sees a portrait of a stranger.  The stranger neither looks like him or his father or any of his ancestors.

            The poem clearly shows that A.K.Ramanujan is suffering from an identity crisis.  Having settled in an alien land, the poet has lost his own identity.  He has absorbed the identity of others.  As a result, he has become faceless.