Themes in the Poetry of K.N. Daruwalla

Themes in the Poetry of K.N. Daruwalla
Themes in the Poetry of K.N. Daruwalla


The Poems based on a Wide Range of Subjects:

Daruwalla possesses a very broad outlook. His experience as a police officer has certainly helped him in this respect. He has responded to almost everything that he has witnessed by writing a poem about it. He portrays vividly and minutely the contemporary Indian socio-political world with touches of irony and sarcasm. He exposes the evils of communal tensions, riots, exploitation, greed, criminalisation of politics, dowry etc. He brings alive the world of riot curfew, sirens, warrants, men nabbled at night, lathi blows on cowering bodies, soda bottles and acid bulbs waiting on the roof bags and press releases. Daruwalla has put his experience of active life to good use in poems like Curfew, In a Riot-Torn City; Poems from the Tari; Routine; Curfew 2 and Walking to the Centre. In Migrations, he deals with the theme of the disintegration of village community. The poet's deep anguish at the institutionalized corruption in free India finds expression in Hunger-74, Monologue in the Chambal Valley, Hawk and Food and Words. 

Theme of Disease and Death: 

A few poems of the volume entitled Under Orion deal with disease and death. A gloomy atmosphere pervades these poems. An actual description of curfew clamped in a riot-torn city is given in the very first poem of this volume, and the poet views situation objectively: 

"The starch on your khaki back 
turns soggy, the feel of things is queer 
you wish to forget it all 
the riot, the town, the people 
—that mass of liquefied flesh 
seething in fear."    (Curfew-in a Riot-torn City) 

In Pestilence, padded feet carry cholera victims to burning ghats and in "The Epileptic" an epileptic has been administered on belladonna and paraldehyde, and recovered, "bleached white/and utterly raped".

Theme of Crime: 

Like death and disease, crime also attracts the poet and he makes use of it as a theme in Monologue in the Chambal Valley. The Bandit Chief upbraids the informer in the Chambal valley. The Bandit Chief reminds the Informer of his first trade in selling women and proudly asserts: 

"And where did we not sell them? 
In holy fairs, in cattle-markets 
to old men-girls younger than their daughters 
to the young-one eyed and lame who could not 
get a wife 
you remember the one from Kulu—thin and catty”
a night I lay with her, and next day 
When the buyer came, the shindy she kicked! 
Clinging to me with her nails and her teeth 
as if we were married for our twenty years !" 

Contempt of womanhood and greed for money, make the Bandit inhuman. On the other hand the fear of being caught and killed brings the Bandit and the informer together. The poet very rightly says: 

"The desire to kill and the fear to being killed 
are aspects of the same passion.” 

The Informer in the process turns out to be a greater criminal and the Bandit aptly points out: 

"You too have done well I notice 
the mud in your house has changed to sand-stone 
the window thatched with khas 
and camels work your persian wheel. 
They pay you your percentage, I am told 
Cattle thieves and brothel-owners 
and rice-smugglers, lest you have them-caught 
Yes we both have made our way-up. 
I as bandit you as Informer."

Theme of Love and Sex: 

Love and sex occupy predominant place in Daruwalla's poetry. He describes, what he calls, his first experience of sex in a poem called "You were the First". 

"You were the first 
it was from you I learnt 
that the stroke went parallel to the body 
not vertical 
like a cross 
hammered down 
on a grave." 

In order to accept art, we have to affirm sensuality. Sex breaks into Daruwalla's vision and like the great artist, W. B. Yeats, he believes that through sex one can reach the ultimate truth. Thus he says: 

"You were used to body fluids 
exploding in little white lights we calls sex." 

Virginity is signified only when it is consummated. The poem ends with a personal note: 

"What would I have done 
without you?"

—"the tone of gratitude for having been helped to get over one's virginity so-permeates the poem that within its limits it raises a paean of adoration very much akin to religious feelings."

In The Hero, the poet wails for the man who “had withdrawn/from a faithless girl/half through an intercourse/-just to show his control", and also for him, "King of a hundred wives/lord of two hundred thighs". The poet ironically remarks: 

"He won every battle 
except the last-against syphilis." 

Daruwalla has recollected his early marital experiences in The Unrest of Desires, which appeared in The Keeper of the Dead. When husband and wife get time and privacy they enjoy sexual union which is graphically described in the following lines: 

"As if in reply 
she presses me harder to herself 
I enter her 
the way a boat starved of fresh water 
enters a harbour.”

Sexual desires change with seasons. In July morning the lover is fascinated by the queer newness and freshness of the beloved who "is a coriander leaf, newly plucked, rain washed." He cannot resist the temptation of enjoying her sexually. 

The Poet's Concern with the Evil of Corruption: 

In the poem entitled Graft, the poet has written a biting satire on the prevalence of bribe giving and bribe-taking, and the widespread malpractices in business. Oils are adulterated, medicinal tablets made of chalk are manufactured. Infected meat and stale fish are openly on sale. Sawdust is mixed with jute in order to add to the profits of the manufactures. In the poem, the poet has relied on facts. He is perfectly right when he says that in order to become corrupt in the monetary sense a man does not have to be a drunkard, or a debauche, or a gambler. It is when we think, as most people do, that a man seeks bribes because he needs money for liquor or to hire a woman for a night's pleasure, or to go to horse-races or a casino. Nor is a bribe-taker an unpleasant- looking or ill-tempered man. He may actually be a handsome and over- polite man. Similarly, the examples of dishonesty given by Daruwalla are also true to fact. 

The Poet's Social Sympathy: 

In Vignette, the poet's social sympathy appears. On the banks of the river Ganga beggars frankly exhibit their physical deformities in order to elicit the sympathy of pilgrims so that they may dole them out more and more money in charity. The beggars show their deformities in the same way as the boatmen raise the sails of their boats when they intend sailing away from the river bank. 

The Evil of Beggary, a Socially Emotive Theme: 

In the poem entitled The Beggar, the poet's social concern is clearly seen. The poet does not preach a sermon. He merely describes the misery of the beggar who generally sits at the same place, day after day, and so he looks like a fixture. People, who pass by him daily, regard him as a permanent feature of the place. And, as he hardly seems to have any life in him, he has appropriately been called a grey stone. Then his hair, never having been washed, is again appropriately described as hog-bristles because every strand of his hair is stiff. Besides he may be suffering from chronic wounds, and may therefore become a centre of attraction for the flies. We are undoubtedly made to pity the grey stone; and pity goes on accumulating but only through suggestion and implication: "he is a wound trailing fibers"; "moving from one plane/of destiny to another"; "He just sits there"; "He sits there, with the same tired light in his eyes".

Ironic Treatment of the Theme of the Behaviour of the Common People: 

The poem entitled The People is one of Daruwalla's most satirical poems. The poet depicts his view of the people in general as being fickle- minded and having no principles by which to judge their leaders. On a certain occasion, when the people had been addressed at length by one of their leaders, and had been loudly applauded, the poet had come to the conclusion that there was no difference between the people's raillery and their applause. Either way, the eyes of an audience on such occasions are lit up with scorn or worship, says the poet. The people can never discriminate between a leader who is a true hero and one who is a villain. Nor can the people really understand what a leader has been saying to them in the course of his oration.

Theme of Unity against Dacoits and Smugglers: 

In the poem entitled Death by Burial, Daruwalla first depicts the population of a village as being united in their attitude of opposition and hostility towards smugglers and dacoits whom they have been able to capture and who had been inflicting many atrocities on the villagers. The Muslims in the village population would like to bury the captured dacoits alive, while the Hindus of the village would like to kill them by setting fire to them. This basic division between the Hindus and the Muslims is a serious impediment in the way of the unity of the country and in the way of the progress which the country could otherwise have made. 

Theme of the Revolt: 

The poem entitled The Revolt of the Salt Slaves has a most unusual theme. The revolt referred to here is a matter of the remote past because there are no longer any slaves in the literal sense in any part of the world. But the poem has not lost its validity even now because the exploitation and the persecution of certain categories of people by the land owning and property-owning rich people is still going on in many countries; and revolts by the exploited and persecuted people are also a matter of frequent occurrence.

Theme of Malpractices and Social Evils in Country: 

In the poem entitled College 1, the poet speaks ironically about the continuing malpractices and social evils in our country. Daruwalla here mocks at the claims of our leaders that they have abolished "Zamindari' (that is, landlordism), drinking, and the English language, and that, furthermore, they have driven away the prostitutes from the areas in which they used to ply their trades. What the poet really means to say here is that the propertied classes have become even richer and more powerful than ever before, and that the poor have become poorer, relatively speaking. The abolition of drinking is more of a joke and a force than any solid achievement because smuggling of liquor and the manufacture of spurious liquor have grown by leaps and bounds. 




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