Father Returning Home by Dilip Chitre

Father Returning Home by Dilip Chitre

My father travels on the late evening train

Standing among silent commuters in the yellow light

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 across 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 stale chapati, reading a book.

He goes into the toilet to contemplate

Man’s estrangement from a man-made world.

Coming out he trembles at the sink,

The cold water running over his brown hands,

A few droplets cling to the greying hairs 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, dreaming

Of his ancestors and grandchildren, thinking

Of nomads entering a subcontinent through a narrow pass.

Poem Analysis:

This poem represents a life of an old man in a multinational city, leading a very lonely life, being ignored even by his children. The short, appealing poem themed after “Loneliness”, has 2 stanzas with 12 lines each, contains no rhymes.

Stanza one is dedicated to the train ride back home. It is proved that he is not surprised or interested in any of the scenery passing by him since they are way too familiar, when the poet says “Suburbs slide past his unseeing eyes”. The poet’s father’s state is then described by phrases like “stained with mud”, “bag stuffed with books is falling apart” and it also shows that the old man doesn’t seem to have any problem with his state, or that he doesn’t seem to care. An effective use of simile and imagery in the line “like a word dropped from a long sentence” shows that nothing about the train changed when the man got off. It made no change if he was there or not, he was practically invisible. “His chappals are sticky with mud, but he hurries onwards” gives another example of his condition, it also shows that he is in hurry to get home. It is possible that he no longer wants to be a part of this surrounding and feels uncomfortable.

Stanza number 2 continues the poems by describing the scenes inside the house. Words such as “weak tea”, “stale chapatti”, gives strong meaning to the life the man is leading. It shows that he is not treated as to what is expected but he doesn’t seem to care in any ways or another. The action of him trembling at the sink, shows that he is disturbed by what he was thinking in the toilet. With his children ignoring him, he has nothing to do but sleep, listening to his only company, the radio. 

Research Content: 

Dilip Purushottam Chitre, born on September 17 1938 in Baroda, was one of the foremost writers and critics to emerge the post-Independence India. While being a writer of both English and Marathi, he was also a painter as well as a film-maker. He was often described as “legendary”, “all-rounder”, etc. His early poems have been described at stylish, erotic, but later on, he themed his poems to being able to related with major themes of life and death. Since he wrote poems in both English and Marathi, he was an accomplished translator. He had won the Sahitya Academy Award, which is known as India’s highest literacy award, in 1994. 

On 1951, the family moved to Mumbai, where Chitre was enrolled in an English- medium school, but after 3 years transferred to Marathi-medium. During school years he become fluent in Gujarati, Hindi, English as well as Marathi. Later on he learned Urdu & Bengali. Even from the age of 16, Dilip was seriously into writing poems, which was then published in the Marathi magazine, Satyakatha. He graduated in English honors and continued by working as a journalist & a college tutor. In 1954 he started his own magazine along with Ramesh Samarth and Arjun Kolatkar, named Shabda, which was dedicated exclusively to poetry. 1959, Dilip issued is first poetry book entitled, Kavita. On 1960, he agreed on teaching English in government schools in Ethiopia for 3 long years, this was how he learned yet another language, Amharic. After returning to Mumbai at the age of 25, Dilip was hired as Creative Executive in the Indian Express.

On 1969, Mr.Chitre started his film career with documentaries and short films. His only movie, ‘Godan’ had released in Hindi on 1984 and won several awards.

He was invited to join the University of Lowa for their International Writing program, as a Fellow in 1977. When he returned to India at the end of 1977, he had already conducted creativity writing workshops for kids at Cedar Rapids, back at US.

Throughout his later years Dilip had directed and give many speeches, readings, along with participating in seminars. While all of this, he also conducted many workshops in both India and abroad.

At the age of 22 years, he married Viju. In the sad event of the Bhopal Gas tragedy, his only son was held victim. Dilip Chitre also passed away, while suffering of cancer for 5 years and after a lengthy illness, he breathe his last on December 10^th, 2009.