Father Returning Home
Was a celebrated bilingual poet and translator with a remarkable work in marathi and English his versatile creativity extends to painting film-making and his notable contribution as a magazine columnist he received the prestigious sahitya akademi award both for poetry as well as for his well known translation work says tuka popular abhangas spiritual poems by sant tukaram he had started. translation of literary work of saints in marathi at the age of 16 Exile alination self disintegration and death are observed to be the major themas of his work
This poem is taken from traveling in a cage it draws a portrait of a suburban commuter it depicts his dull monotonous exhausting and equally pitiable daily routine it describe a forced alination at home which is reflected through the stale food and lacks of sharing his children refuse to share their joys and sorrows with the hardworking father who as a result is forced to retire into solitude This very painful lone lines is a symbol of man's isolation from the materialistic man make world
Father Returning Home
My father travels on the late evening train standing among silent commuters in the yellow light ๐ฏ️
Suburbs slide past his unseeing eyes His shirt and pants are soggy and his black raincoat
Stained with mud and his bag stuffed with books is falling apart His eyes dimmed by age
Fade homeward through the humid monsoon night Now i can see him getting off the train
Like a word dropped from a long sentence he hurries accross the length of the grey platform
Crosses the railway line enters the lane His chappals are sticky with mud but he hurries onward
Home again. I see him drinking weak tea eating a state chapati reading a book
He goes into the toilet to contemplate man' s estrangement from a man made world
Coming out the trembles at the sink the cold water running over his brown hands
A few droplets cling to the greying hair on his wrists his sullen children have often refused to share
Jokes and secrets with him he will now go to sleep
Listening to the static on the radio ๐ป dreaming of his ancestors and grandchildren thinking
Of nomads entering a sub-continent through a narrow pass
-Dilip Chitre
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