LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 10 : 1 January 2010
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         K. Karunakaran, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.

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Reading 'god' Backwards

Sreena K.


Jejuri

Jejuri is Kolatkar's famous sequence of poems which was published in 1976. The collection won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize the following year. It mainly comprises of thirty six short lyric utterances which are the observations of the narrator who arrives in the town, Jejuri. The poems describe the poet's visit to the town of Jejuri and the hill temple of Khandoba, a temple for Lord Shiva as the incarnation, also known as Malhari Markand.

A Secularized Visit to the Temple

The visit is completed in a half revolution of the sun starting in the early morning and ending in the late evening. The entire experience is secularized and trivialized. The writer is starkly non-involved and frankly impervious to a sense of devotion. This visit lacks a spirit of worship which ordinarily and normally prompts thousands to visit Jejuri.

It is striking and intriguing to note that the experience is so familiar and yet so foreign to the protagonist who is an Indian.

Both devotion and commercialism populate the town, and the man we follow does not search for enlightenment; he is there for sight-seeing. His straightforward voice colours most of the poems through its realistic portrayal of the mind of the priest and the god in several places in the poems.

The Structure and Content of the Compilation

The thirty-six sections of Jejuri consist of perceptions and attitudes of someone on a journey. Here it is apparently a skeptical tourist, like that of Philip Larkin's "Church Going," who arrives in the ancient place of pilgrimage. At the end, he is waiting with irritation for a train, so he can depart. Larkin's distant, skeptical, bicycle-dipped visitor 'surprises' in himself a 'teenager to be more serious' inside the church.

Kolatkar's peripatetic poems characterize the teenagers to be more curious.

Perception and Alienation

The opening poem in Jejuri, "The Bus" establishes themes of perception and alienation:

Yours own divided face in a pair of glasses
on an old man's nose
is all the countryside you get to see. …………………..
at the end of the bumpy side
with yours own face on either side
when you get off the bus
you don't step inside the old man's head
(quoted.in Modren Indian Poetry in English, 90).

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.


Linguistic Purism and Language Planning in a Multilingual Context | The Problems of Teaching/Learning Tenses | Language and Literature: An Exposition - Papers Presented in Karunya University International Seminar | Similes in Meghduta - The Absolute Craftsmanship in Language | Culture of the Tamil Society as Portrayed in Ponniyin Selvan | Deconstructing Human Society: An Appreciation of Amitav Ghosh's Sea Of Poppies | Enabling Students to Interpret Literary Texts Independently by Enhancing their Vocabulary | Coping with the Problems of Mixed Ability Students | Displaced Diasporic Identities - A Case Study of Mordecai Richler's The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz | English Language Teaching in Developing Countries Error Analysis and Remedial Teaching Methods - An Overview | Diaspora Literature - A Hybrid or a Hybridized Product? | Anita Desai's Journey To Ithaca - A Manifestation of Vedantic Knowledge | A Study on the Physiological, Psychological and Spiritual Perspectives of Different Selves in a Self with Special Reference to Yann Martel's SELF | Conveniences and Complexities of Computer-Aided Language Learning | The Danger Lurking Within: The African American Woman in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye | Practices and Paradigms of Using Multimedia and Language Laboratory for Teaching Communication Skills to Technical Students | English: A Blessing in Disguise - A Study of Chinua Achebe's Technique of Hybridization | Language Teaching - The Present Day Challenges | Is Literature a Viable Medium for ESL Acquisition? | The Lord of The Rings : Galadriel, The Light Of Middle-Earth | Teaching Reading - A Challenge in Itself | The Silent Way | Translator as Reader: Phenomenology and Text Reception - An Investigation of Indulekha | The Dysfunctional Women in Mary Gordon'sThe Other Side | Utopia and Dystopia, Conflict Between Two Extremes - An Appraisal of Anita Desai's Cry, The Peacock | Reading 'god' Backwards | The Comic Vision in the Stories and Sketches of R.K.Narayan | My Responses to The English Teacher | 'Fall from Grace into Grief': Putting into Perspective the Outrages of Terrorism in Salman Rushdie's Shalimar the Clown | Style and Language in M. G. Vassanji's The Assassin's Song | Affirmation of Life in Lloyd C. Douglas' Magnificent Obsession | Effectiveness of Group Investigation Model and Simulation Model in Teaching English | A Mathematical Treatment of Feministic Literature for the Prediction of Social Trends | Multiple Intelligences and Second Language Learning | Amitav Ghosh's The Circle Of Reason - A Study of Diaspora | The Role of Multimedia in Teaching Writing in English | A PRINT VERSION OF ALL THE PAPERS OF JANUARY 2010 ISSUE IN BOOK FORMAT | HOME PAGE of January 2010 Issue | HOME PAGE | CONTACT EDITOR


Sreena K.
Department of English
Amrita School of Engineering
Ettimadai
Coimbatore
Tamilnadu, India sreena2me@hotmail.com

 
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