Obituary by A.K. Ramanujan: Analysis and Text

Obituary is a beautiful poem by A. K. Ramanujan, a great poet in the world of Indian English literature. It is a very popular poem by him. It is the product of the poet’s memory. Here the poet remembers his father after his death. Here irony plays the pivotal role.

In Obituary Ramanujan beautifully expresses the after effect of his father’s death. He tells that his father left only problems for his family behind him. The poet presents the list of those problems like dust on a table of papers, debts, daughters and a bedwetting grandson. It seems that the poet is not happy with his father’s attitude and life style.

The poet continues that his ill-tempered father left a dilapidated house for his family to live in. Then the poet presents the picture of his cremation. The remains of his father’s pyre are left for sons to pick. They have to perform the Hindu rituals. Then the poet mentions the meaninglessness of his father’s life. He achieved nothing in this world. He was helpless.

The poet ironically says that someone told him that after his father’s death only two lines were published in an inside column of a cheap Madras newspaper. The poet tries a lot to get those lines of obituary.

In short, the poet is of the view that his father’s life was meaningless. He got nothing but an obituary of two lines.

Obituary by A.K. Ramanujan

Father, when he passed on,

left dust

on a table of papers,

left debts and daughters,

a bedwetting grandson

named by the toss

of a coin after him,

a house that leaned

slowly through our growing

years on a bent coconut

tree in the yard.

Being the burning type,

he burned properly

at the cremation

as before, easily

and at both ends,

left his eye coins

in the ashes that didn't

look one bit different,

several spinal discs, rough,

some burned to coal, for sons

to pick gingerly

and throw as the priest

said, facing east

where three rivers met

near the railway station;

no longstanding headstone

with his full name and two dates

to hold in their parentheses

everything he didn't quite

manage to do himself,

like his caesarian birth

in a brahmin ghetto

and his death by heart-

failure in the fruit market.

But someone told me

he got two lines

in an inside column

of a Madras newspaper

sold by the kilo

exactly four weeks later

to street hawkers

who sell it in turn

to the small groceries

where I buy salt,

coriander,

and jaggery

in newspaper cones

that I usually read

for fun, and lately

in the hope of finding

these obituary lines.

And he left us

a changed mother

and more than

one annual ritual.

Sandal S Anshu, Satna