INDEX

1. Our Casuarina Tree. – Toru Dutta.

2. Song 1 & 103 from “Gitanjali”.- Ravindra Nath Tagore.
3. Sarojni Naidu: ‘The Ectasy’, ‘The Lotus’.-Done
4. Gauri Deshpandey, “The Female of the Species”.-Done
5. Dr. S. Radhakrishnan: The Call of the Suffering.-Done
6. Vijary Tedulkar: Silence! The court is in session.-Done
7. R.K Narayan: The Guide. -Done

Our Casuarina Tree

Our Casuarina Tree is a poem written by poetess Toru Dutt. This poem has personal association with the
poetess’ life. Poet had a unforgettable young life associated with a big Casuarina Tree situated in a big
garden house at Rambagan, where she spend her childhood with her dearest ones.

The poem Our Casuarina Tree shows the strong attachment of the poetess to the big tree of her early days
with beloved companions. Though now she is living in another countries still the murmur of the tree boughs
travel across the distance lands and echos in poetess’ ears.

This poem is romantic in tone and contain autobiographical reminiscences. The fist two stanzas scrutinize
the tree objectively.

Stanza I

LIKE a huge Python, winding round and round

The rugged trunk, indented deep with scars,
Up to its very summit near the stars,
A creeper climbs, in whose embraces bound
No other tree could live. But gallantly
The giant wears the scarf, and flowers are hung
In crimson clusters all the boughs among,
Whereon all day are gathered bird and bee;
And oft at nights the garden overflows
With one sweet song that seems to have no close,
Sung darkling from our tree, while men repose.

The tree is compared “Like a Huge Python” conveys the massiveness of the tree. Its grandeur is in its height
and age. “The rugged trunk, indented deep with scars, Up to its very summit near the stars” The tree is a
source of life and “wears the scarf” of creeper with casuarina flowers. Birds and bees gather here and the
song of bird at night is endless and sweet.

Stanza II

When first my casement is wide open thrown

At dawn, my eyes delighted on it rest;
Sometimes, and most in winter,—on its crest
A gray baboon sits statue-like alone
Watching the sunrise; while on lower boughs
His puny offspring leap about and play;
And far and near kokilas hail the day;
And to their pastures wend our sleepy cows;
And in the shadow, on the broad tank cast
By that hoar tree, so beautiful and vast,
The water-lilies spring, like snow enmassed. When first my casement is wide open thrown
At dawn, my eyes delighted on it rest;
Sometimes, and most in winter,—on its crest
A gray baboon sits statue-like alone
Watching the sunrise; while on lower boughs
His puny offspring leap about and play;
And far and near kokilas hail the day;
And to their pastures wend our sleepy cows;
And in the shadow, on the broad tank cast
By that hoar tree, so beautiful and vast,
The water-lilies spring, like snow enmassed. .

This stanza moves from the objective description of the tree to the impact it has on the poem narrator
whose “eyes delighted on it zest”. The power of observation and the selection of the detail instill the poem
with interest. There is a gray baboon sits alone like a statue while it’s “puny offspring leap about and
play”, the kokilas ( nightingales ) hailing the day near and far. The “sleepy Cows” are walking under the
tree trough the meadow. And on the big tank in the garden, the massive tree is reflected. The Blooming
snow-white water-lilies make the scene more charming.

Stanza III

But not because of its magnificence

Dear is the Casuarina to my soul:
Beneath it we have played; though years may roll,
O sweet companions, loved with love intense,
For your sakes, shall the tree be ever dear.
Blent with your images, it shall arise
In memory, till the hot tears blind mine eyes!
What is that dirge-like murmur that I hear
Like the sea breaking on a shingle-beach?
It is the tree’s lament, an eerie speech,
That haply to the unknown land may reach.

The poetess affirms the tree is so dear to her not because of it’s magnificence, but for the memories of her
childhood beneath the boughs of that tree with her beloved companions. It has been many years now, still
she gets energy from her sweet childhood memories beneath the tree, the tree is ever dear to her and capable
to fill her eyes with tear. Many years passed, still she hear the murmur like sound from the boughs of the the
tree like a sea breaks on pebbles in the bank. Yeah ! it’s the sad murmur from raised by its branches that
may reach far-off lands.

Stanza IV

Unknown, yet well-known to the eye of faith!

Ah, I have heard that wail far, far away
In distant lands, by many a sheltered bay,
When slumbered in his cave the water-wraith
And the waves gently kissed the classic shore
Of France or Italy, beneath the moon,
When earth lay trancèd in a dreamless swoon:
And every time the music rose,—before
Mine inner vision rose a form sublime,
Thy form, O Tree, as in my happy prime
I saw thee, in my own loved native clime

The memories of the tree is deeply touched the poet’s heart. In her girlhood she knows that tree very much.
Now she has left the land but still she gets the high pitched grief from the tree in to the distant lands. Those
beautiful memories of that massive tree stir her heart even when she is in foreign countries like Italy or
France.

Stanza V

Therefore I fain would consecrate a lay

Unto thy honor, Tree, beloved of those
Who now in blessed sleep for aye repose,—
Dearer than life to me, alas, were they!
Mayst thou be numbered when my days are done
With deathless trees—like those in Borrowdale,
Under whose awful branches lingered pale
“Fear, trembling Hope, and Death, the skeleton,
And Time the shadow;” and though weak the verse
That would thy beauty fain, oh, fain rehearse,
May Love defend thee from Oblivion’s curse.

Poetess wishes to dedicate this poem in the honor of her beloved tree and her companions associated with it.
She affirms the Casuarina tree will remain even after her death along with other trees as it’s now. Also she
affirms that this poem written in praise of this beloved Casuarina will always memorize the world about ‘her
beloved Casuarina tree’.

Poetess wishes the immortality of her verse and ends with a delightful line – “May Love defend thee from
Oblivion’s curse”

Conclusion
The sonnet has been considered as “beautiful poetic pieces, the outburst of poetic genius”. It’s a memorable
poem by Toru Dutt. It’s an admirable blend of local touches, and literary reminiscences of objective
descriptions of the actual tree and the charm of association with Toru’s child hood. To the poet’s fancy, the
tree in sympathy sounds a dirge like murmur like ‘the sea breaking on a shingle-beach’. It is the ‘eerie
speech’ or ‘lament’ of the tree that, she hopes, may perhaps reach ‘the unknown land’. Such a way always it
strikes a cold of memory in her even when she was travelling in France or Italy, it had always send her
thought to the past bringing the memory of the Casuarina tree.

This poem is written in 1 lines stanza form. Rhyming ABBA CDDC EEE. It was a new and successful
experiment.

In the words of Dr.Iyengar ” in the organization of the as a whole and in the finish of the individual stanzas,
in the mastering of phrase and rhythm, in its music of sound and ideas, ‘Our Casuarina Tree’ is a superb
piece of writing, and gives us a taste of what Toru might have done and not the race of her life been so
quickly run”

SAROJINI NAIDU IN PRAISE OF MAHATMA GANDHI

Sarojini Naidu’s association with Mahatma Gandhi was a saga of sacrificial companionship without a parallel
in recent Indian history. She was his companion and nurse, the licensed jester of his little court, and the oracle
and high-priestess of his holy fane. She brought him the priceless gift of laughter to act as balm on the
unreasonable wounds inflicted on the great man by time and circumstance as well as his own private losses
and anxieties. Whenever there was tension, she was there to relieve it by her humour, parody, mimicry, or
innocent naughtiness. She alone, among Gandhi's circle, could see her hero in a mock-heroic light. In the
course of conversation, she would draw affectionate effigies and verbal cartoons of the Mahatma. The
cultured irreverance was aimed only at restoring his poise and bringing him back to his spiritual bearings. The
beauty of her poetic sensibility was always matched by the beauty bf her sacrificial community of purpose,
joined with his role as a national redeemer.

Yet in her poem on Mahatma Gandhi, entitled “The Lotus,” she goes behind the veil of personality to
describe the character as well as capture the symbolic essence of his innate nobility and spiritual grandeur.
The lotus, a motif which recurs throughout Indian sacred and secular literature, is the symbol of origins as
well as of spiritual epiphanies. Brahma, Budaha, Vishnu and Lakshmi are all associated with the Mystic Lotus
which represents a whole hierarchy of religious and mythological values and functions in Indian culture.
The Mahaa-Purusha is presented in art and literature in the Padmaasana posture (the Lotus-posture) signifying
that he has risen above the dualistic rhythm of the world-process (determined by the interplay of pairs and
opposites, or dvandvas) and attained a stage in the cosmic curve where the regenerate man takes over from
the natural man. At the turning-point in his spiritual age, the great man has overcome casual fatality as well
as psychic ambivalence, and he attained oneness and union with the cosmic being.
As Ananda Coomaraswami observes:

....there is the much smaller number of great men–heroes, saviours, saints and Avatars–who have
definitely passed the period of greatest stress and have attained peace, or at least have attained to occasional
and unmistakable vision of life as a whole. These are the “Prolific” of Blake, the “Masters” of Nietzsche, the
true Brahmans in their own right, and partake of the nature of the superman and the Bodhisattva. Their action
is determined by their love and wisdom, and by rules. In the world, but not of it, they are the flower of
humanity, our leaders and teachers.

The Lotus is the flower of humanity that has reached the commanding height of divinity on the slender
but firm stem of action and contemplation; although its seed-bed is in the flux of time. Sarojini’sapproach to
the Mahatma is not to portray the natural man in him but the total man (Poorna-Purusha) who is “coeval with
the Lords of Life and Death”, the Creative Man in apotheosis set up as an Avataar of Vishnu, or Krishna in
his Cosmic Presence (Visvaroopa).

O Mystic Lotus, sacred and sublime,

In myriad-petalled grace inviolate,
Supreme o’er transient storms of tragic Fate,
Deep-rooted in the waters of all Time,
What legions loosed from many far-off clime
Of wild-bee hordes with lips insatiate,
And hungry winds with wings of hope or hate,
Have thronged and pressed round thy miraculous prime
To devastate thy loveliness, to drain
The midmost rapture of thy glorious heart...
But who could win thy secret, who attain
Thine ageless beauty born of Brahma’s breath,
Or pluck thine immortality, who art
Coeval, ,with the Lords of Life and Death?

The sonnet is a concentrated allegory in which the purity, radiance, and transfiguring power of the mystic
lotus are derived from the ecological facts of the natural flower. Taking its rise in the waters of all Time, the
lotus stands high and aloof over the agitated surface of the pool, detached, serene and splendorous. Even in its
severe aloofness from the swift-changing currents, the flower occupies a vulnerable position in the air. It is
the target of attack by every passing wind, and is a prey to the predatory wild-bee hordes. But the lotus, by its
innate nature, derived from the life-force, remains inviolate and resists the ravages of mutability and time’s
gross appetite. Like Sri Aurobindo’s “Rose of God”, Sarojini’s “Mystic Lotus” has an ageless beauty born of
Brahma’s breath. The natural flower is transfigured into the sempiternal symbol of Immortality, and of the
soul’s mystic ascent. A figure from Nature is translated into a spirit working in the world. The propitious
semblance of the lotus, opening its utmost power to the sun; upholds the poet’s vision of the great man’s
spiritual ascendancy, while taking cognizance of the anterior struggle of the individual to remain as the moral
man in an immoral world. Gandhi came to be viewed as the father of the renascent Indian nation. As it only
became the tender, father, he appeared like “the elder clad like the folk in glory”. The lotus-universe, in its
naturalistic aspect, offers an allegorical correspondence worth the state of the Indian nation. Even as the beauty
of the flower attracts the wild-bee hordes, so the fabled opulence of India tempted countless legions of alien
powers “loosed from many a far-off clime” to drain its vitality and glory through imperialistic exploitation.
As a culture-hero, Gandhiji was subjected to hardship, discrimination and humiliation, first in South
Africa and later in India. But this was but part of his ritual purification and preparation for his final sacrificial
role in the nation’s service. The secret source of his greatness lay in the ageless beauty of his soul, born of the
Brahma’s breath. He rose like the mystic lotus, out-spreading his spiritual confidence to become the very
image of divinity in man. “The Lotus” is a poem of religious adoration and a prayer invoking divine grace. It
is a meditation in which the poet as individual seeks the evidence and confirmation of human significance in
a symbolic man cast in a pan-human, messianic role. The allegorical content as well as the sacred imagery of
the poem is unmistakably inspired by the folk-consciousness of India, which viewed Gandhi as the “supreme
example of embodied miracle in our midst.”

The Female of the species -Gauri Deshpande

Sometimes you want to talk

about love and despair

and the ungratefulness of children

A man is no use whatever then .

You want then your mother

or your sister

or the girl with whom you went to through the school,

and your first love ,and her -

first child -a girl-

and your second.

You sit with them and talk .

She sews and you sit and sip

and speak of the rate of rice

and the price of tea

and the scarcity of cheese.

You know both that you 've spoken

of love, despair and ungratefulness of children.