Goorkha

K. G. Sankara Pillai

🔍 Critical Analysis of “Goorkha” by K. G. Sankara Pillai

K. G. Sankara Pillai’s “Goorkha” is a layered and ironic monologue that explores the
conflict between professional duty and personal conscience through the metaphor of a night
watchman—the Goorkha. On the surface, it appears to be about guarding against thieves, but
beneath it, the poem builds a powerful metaphor equating “dreams” with thieves, and in
doing so, critiques how society polices imagination, dissent, and even survival.

🥷🏽 Dreams = Thieves: A Metaphorical Device

The central metaphor runs throughout:

“My job is / to suspect and strangle / the dreams that roam around / at odd hours.”

Here, “dreams” are not airy fantasies—they are suspicious presences, intruders, which
arrive in the dark, much like thieves. Each stanza introduces a different type of thief, and by
extension, a different kind of “dream”:

 Those that hide in plain sight, like “silence clothed in sound” or “colours in colours”
— deceptive, camouflaged.
 Those that “do not become my vision” — too abstract or radical to be fully
understood by the tools of policing: “Dogs and owls / do not see them.”
 Some that arrive like Godse—shocking, violent, and politically charged:

“Some dreams go undetected / till they crawl up to you / and flash their hoods
/ like Godse in a crowd.”

This Godse reference hits hard—it positions violence or extremism as a dream that grows
unseen, then strikes. The Goorkha is powerless in hindsight:

“They can be caught / and killed / but what is the use, / when everything is over?”

😔 Moral and Emotional Conflict

There’s a sharp inner conflict between the Goorkha’s two selves:

1. The uniformed man – cold, mechanical, equipped with “the stick, the knife and the
torch.”
 2. The human being – emotional, reflective, and ultimately sympathetic to those very
dreams he is supposed to destroy.

“Oh dream, / the desperate other of my / uniformed self,”

This line is pivotal. It shows he sees the “dream”—perhaps representing rebellion, innocence,
freedom—as the alter ego of his deeper self. He’s being forced to kill what he might have
once loved or believed in.

🍂 Thieves of Hunger and Despair

The poem does not demonise all dreams/thieves. It draws attention to the social conditions
that create them:

“The dreams of wrath that move on / empty stomach will not die / however you may try / to
lynch them.”

This is a direct commentary on poverty-driven crime. Hunger breeds survival-based

rebellion that no amount of policing can truly eliminate. The image of:

“A drop of rain / the smell of fresh soil / a grain of darkness / a touch of star-starch – / it will
be back on foot.”

…is hauntingly beautiful. These are the smallest triggers that can bring hope or defiance
back to life. It shows that these “thieves” are really just beaten-down souls waiting for a
spark.

🌘 The Ending: Lyrical and Lamenting

The final lines are tragic and introspective:

“Oh dream, / where shall I bury your remains? / your sweetness: on which / sad note of the
stick striking the lamp post?”

It asks: how do you bury beauty, idealism, or freedom? Where can something so abstract be
hidden, forgotten?

The final image:

“In whose forgetfulness?”

…is piercing. It questions whether society will choose to remember or conveniently forget
these fallen dreams. It is also the Goorkha's personal lament: he too is losing a part of
himself every night he kills a dream.
📌 Conclusion

“Goorkha” is a brilliant, metaphor-rich poem that uses the figure of the night guard to reflect
on systems of control, socio-political decay, and personal moral crises. It is not just about
guarding houses, but about the violence of order, the cost of duty, and the indestructibility
of the human spirit—even when it comes in the shape of a thief.

Q: Does the poem "Goorkha" revolve around a moral and emotional conflict inside
the protagonist's mind? Substantiate your argument.
(Answer in 400 words)

A: Yes, the poem “Goorkha” by K. G. Sankara Pillai powerfully revolves around the moral
and emotional conflict within the protagonist—the night watchman. Through his
introspective monologue, the poet explores the deep internal struggle between the duties
imposed by his profession and the empathy, dreams, and conscience that define his
humanity.

Right from the opening lines, the Goorkha reveals a divide between his inner world and his
external role:

“My dear dream / it is time for us to part / I have to report for duty.”
This indicates that his job demands him to suppress not only others' dreams but also his own.
The “dream” becomes a metaphor for idealism, freedom, beauty, and even personal hope—
all of which he must now abandon to perform his duty as a guard.

The core of the poem rests on the irony that the Goorkha is hired to chase down “dreams,”
which symbolically represent not only thieves or suspicious individuals but also the spirit
of rebellion, innocence, or desperation. He is equipped with tools of surveillance—“the
stick, the knife and the torch”—yet these are useless against the subtler, intangible forms of
dreams that dogs and owls cannot detect. This shows his increasing awareness of the limits
of authority, and his discomfort with what his job reduces him to.

The emotional conflict becomes sharper when he reflects on the dreams of those driven by
hunger and injustice:

“The dreams of wrath that move on / empty stomach will not die / however you may try / to
lynch them.”
Here, he seems to sympathize with the so-called intruders. His acknowledgment that a drop
of rain or a grain of darkness can revive such dreams points to his empathy toward the
human condition, even while he must suppress it.

In the final stanzas, the poem reaches a deeply emotional and philosophical tone. He refers to
the dream as “the desperate other of my / uniformed self”, highlighting the split within him—
his identity as a man vs. his identity as a uniformed enforcer. He does not merely kill the
dream; he mourns it. The final questions—
“Where shall I bury your remains?”
—express his anguish over destroying something that represents beauty, freedom, and
sweetness.

In conclusion, the poem is a vivid portrayal of inner conflict, where duty demands emotional
detachment, but the protagonist cannot help but feel the weight of his actions. The
Goorkha’s struggle is not just with external threats, but with the ghost of his own
compassion and conscience.

Q: Comment on the attitude of compassion that informs the entire poem "Goorkha".

A: An unmistakable attitude of compassion and empathy runs beneath the surface of K. G.

Sankara Pillai’s “Goorkha”. Though the protagonist is a night watchman tasked with hunting
down “dreams” (a metaphor for thieves, dissenters, or even radical ideas), he does not
embody blind authority. Instead, he emerges as a deeply self-aware and morally conflicted
figure, torn between his duty to suppress and his instinct to understand.

This compassionate stance is evident right from the opening:

“My dear dream / it is time for us to part / I have to report for duty.”
Here, the Goorkha speaks not with scorn or detachment but with regret, treating the dream as
a dear companion. This gentle tone immediately humanizes him and sets the stage for the
emotional divide between the man and his role.

Throughout the poem, the Goorkha encounters different forms of “dreams”—some deceptive,
some violent, some desperate—but his observations are never entirely condemning. For
instance, when he mentions the dream “that staggers on drugs / sinks into the gutter and rots
there”, he chooses not to chase it. This is not laziness—it is resignation mixed with pity, an
understanding that some are already too broken to be hunted.

His deepest compassion is reserved for the dreams born of hunger and poverty:

“The dreams of wrath that move on / empty stomach will not die / however you may try / to
lynch them.”
These lines reflect the speaker’s respect for the resilience of those who fight back because
they must. His recognition that even the smallest signs of hope—a raindrop, a scent, a grain
of darkness—can revive a broken spirit shows a profound empathy for human suffering.

Even in duty, he mourns the cost of his role. Referring to the dream as the “desperate other
of my uniformed self” suggests that what he suppresses is not alien, but a part of himself. He
grieves the destruction of beauty, sweetness, and freedom—qualities that cannot be caged by
rules or fences.

Thus, the poem is not a celebration of control but a quiet lament. The compassion that flows
through the Goorkha’s voice is what ultimately transforms him from a symbol of authority
into a tragic, reflective figure—one who understands, even if he cannot always act
differently.