2.5 Father Returning Home
Poet: Dilip Chitre
Dilip Purushottam Chitre was one of the foremost Indian poets and critics to emerge in the post-Independence India. Apart from being a very important bilingual writer, writing in Marathi and English, he was also a teacher, a painter and filmmaker and a magazine columnist.
He received the prestigious Sahitya Akademi Award, both for poetry as well as for his well- known translation work ‘Says Tuka’, popular abhang (अभंग) (spiritual poems) by Sant Tukaram. He had started translating the literary work of saints in Marathi at the age of 16. Exile, alienation, self-disintegration and death are observed to be the major themes of his works.
About poem
‘Father Returning Home’ this poem is taken from ‘Travelling in a Cage’. It draws a portrait of a suburban commuter. Poet here depicts his father’s dull, monotonous, exhausting and equally pitiable daily routine. It describes a forced alienation at home. His children refuse to share their joys and sorrows with the hardworking father who as a result is forced to live into solitude. This very painful loneliness is a symbol of man’s isolation from the materialistic man-made world.
ICE BREAKERS
1) List the difficulties that you face while commuting to and from the college by public transport.
Answer:
a) Do not get a place to sit many times.
b) Have to face an unhygienic area due to extra crowd.
c) Bad and dirty smell.
d) Broken seats and noisy atmosphere.
e) Shouting of sellers.
f) Garbage.
2) Suggest solutions to give relief to the commuters on the way to their workplace.
Answer:
a) to give them our place to sit.
b) to help them to enter and go out from public transport.
c) to support them to buy tickets.
d) to talk to them to feel comfortable and happy.
e) to share rides.
f) to offer lift.
3) Complete the following table.
New words:
Commuters : those who travel regularly from one place to another typically to work
Soggy : wet or heavy with water
Stained : soiled or discoloured spot
Falling apart : breaking into pieces
Fade : to lose freshness
Humid : damp
Grey platform : ‘grey’ suggests old age, dullness, sordidness of a father’s life.
Contemplate : think deeply
Estrangement : alienation, loneliness
Stale : not fresh Contemplate
Tremble : to shake involuntarily
Cling : to adhere, to remain
Sullen : bad tempered
Static : not changing or developing (Here tedious voice of the radio)
Ancestors : a person in one’s family who lived a long time before.
Subcontinent : a large landmass that forms part a continent
Nomads : migrants, gypsy
Narrow pass : the Khyber Pass , Aryans, the people who entered the Indian subcontinent through the Khyber Pass in ancient times.
Brainstorming:
A1.
(i) Give the difficulties faced by the father in the poem.
Answer: The difficulties faced by the father are-
a) The father is returning late in the day.
b) His eyesight is dimmed due to old age.
c) The father has to stand in the train during journey.
d) He struggles to handle the bag of books.
e) He is in wet clothes for a long time when he is travelling.
(ii) Write the character sketch of the father with the help of the given points. (His pathetic condition, the treatment he receives at home, his solitude, the way he tries to overcome it)
Answer:
a) The father has to stand in the train when he is returning home late.
b) He drinks weak tea and eats stale chapati at home.
c) There is no one to communicate or share views with him at home.
d) He tries to overcome it by dreaming of his golden past and expectations from the future.
A2.
(i) Given below are the ideas conveyed through the poem. Match the pairs and draw out the hidden meaning from those expressions.
Answer:
(ii) Find the lines to prove the following facts from the poem.
a) Father is deprived of good food.
Answer:-
Home again, I see him drinking weak tea, Eating a stale chapati, reading a book.
b) Children did not have a healthy relation with the father.
Answer:-
His sullen children have often refused to share
Jokes and secrets with him.
.
Chapter 2.5: Father Returning Home
Discuss with your partner the difficulties that you face while commuting to and from the college by public transport.
(a) ____________________
(b) ____________________
(c) ____________________
(d) ____________________
SOLUTION:
(a) Extremely crowded train/buses
(b) Risk of running late due to delays/traffic jams
(c) Long queues to buy train tickets
(d) Chances of unexpected cancellations of trains/buses
The similar problems are faced by the other commuters on the way to their workplace. Imagine their plight and suggest three solutions.
SOLUTION:
Giving them your place to sit
Following the queue
Helping the elderly to board/alight
Not disturbing the fellow travellers with loud noise
Complete the following table.
SOLUTION:
Write your duties towards the following:
SOLUTION:
Family:
1. Duties towards Parents
Be respectful
Share their work
Be responsible
2. Duties towards Siblings
Be protective of them
Be friendly
Have spirit of sharing
3. Duties towards Grandparents
Update them of technological progress that could help them
Care for them
Spare time to be with them
School/Colleges
1. Teachers
Be respectful
Be obedient
Be courteous
2. Classmates
Be harmonious
Be helpful
Be friendly
Discuss with your friend the difficulties faced by the father in the poem.
(a) ______________________
(b) _____________________
(c) ______________________
(d) _____________________
SOLUTION:
(a) He has a rough commute as he stands throughout his journey in the crowded train
(b) Due to the monsoon season, his troubles get worse, as his clothes get wet, while his raincoat and chappals get muddy.
(c) When he reaches home, he is not given nutritious food.
(d) His children do not interact with him.
(e) He doesn’t even have any source of entertainment as the radio emits only static.
Discuss the character sketch of the father with the help of the given points.
(His pathetic condition, the treatment he receives at home, his solitude, the way he tries to overcome it)
SOLUTION:
The father is returning home on a crowded train on a dull monsoon evening. His clothes are wet due to the rain and his raincoat is stained with mud, while his bag full of books is falling apart. Nothing about the father’s present situation is in good condition. Even his state of mind is weary as he does not look at the sights that pass by or talk to any of his co-passengers. Though surrounded by a crowd, he is all alone on the inside. When he alights from the train, it is as though an insignificant word has been dropped from a long sentence. Its absence is neither going to be noticed nor is it going to make any difference to the sentence. Upon reaching home, his plight is no different. He drinks weak tea and eats stale chapatti, because his existence, even in his own house, doesn’t matter. His children ignore him, thus intensifying his sense of alienation from the world. The father doesn’t seem to mind though. He goes to the toilet and thinks about his isolation, that is, man’s isolation from the world that he himself built. While washing his hands at the sink, he trembles, not just because of the cold water, but also because of the gravity of the thoughts he had been contemplating inside. He has developed a routine for himself, maybe to overcome this sense of estrangement, where he listens to the static on the radio and goes to sleep dreaming about his past and the future as that seems to be the only solace he can find away from his distasteful present.
Given below are the ideas conveyed through the poem. Match the pairs and draw out the hidden meaning from those expressions.
SOLUTION:
Find the line to prove the following fact from the poem.
Father is deprived of good food.
SOLUTION:
Line 14: Eating a stale chapati, reading a book
Children did not have a healthy relation with the father.
SOLUTION:
Line 20: His sullen children have often refused to share
The poet deals with the theme of man’s estrangement from a manmade world. Analyze it with the help of the poem.
SOLUTION:
The poem deals with the theme of the poet’s father’s estrangement from a man-made world. The remark implies that the man finds himself as a no-one in the midst of many people around him, who do not care for him at all. He is just one among the countless and finds himself alienated by not just the outsiders, but also his own family members. The man-made world refers to the social system in which this man carries on with his routine life.
The father contemplates about his past and peeps into his future. Give reasons.
SOLUTION:
The father is disheartened with his present, as he does not find anything exciting in it. He carries on with his present life amidst the indifference of the people around him, including that of his own children. So, he thinks about his past and future as a respite from his sordid present.
Complete the following using suitable describing word as appeared in the poem with the help of the words given in the option:
Father’s attire
weak
dim
muddy
soggy
stale
Father’s tea
weak
dim
muddy
soggy
stale
Father’s footwear
weak
dim
muddy
soggy
stale
Father’s food
weak
dim
muddy
soggy
stale
Father’s eyesight
weak
dim
muddy
soggy
stale
‘Fade homeward through the humid monsoon night’.
In the above line, the weather is humid, not the night. The epithet or adjective is transferred from the weather to the night. This figure of speech is Transferred Epithet. Find out another such expression from the poem.
SOLUTION:
‘Fade homeward through the humid monsoon night’.
Alliteration - The sound of ‘h’ is repeated in the line for poetic effect.
Identify and write the lines from the poem which express the following figures of speech.
SOLUTION:
I see him drinking weak tea, Eating a stale chapati.
Here ‘stale chapati’ stands for stale food/non-nourishing food or diet, where the part symbolizes the whole, i.e. food. Guess the name of the figure of speech.
SOLUTION:
I see him drinking weak tea, Eating a stale chapati.
Synecdoche (Part for Whole) - Here, ‘chapati (part)’ represents ‘food (whole)’.
Write a counterview on the following topic.
“Every day is a mother’s/ father’s day.”
If you love them, you don’t need to wait for such days.
Celebrating days is just a formality.
Celebrations of the days condition your expression of emotions.
It is a kind of pretext to neglect your everyday responsibilities.
SOLUTION:
Counterview on “Every day is a
mother’s/ father’s day”
We should consider it a self-taught value to celebrate our parents every single day. However, to have a day specially dedicated only to them would be a nice thing to do. Celebrating such specific days does not mean that on other days we don’t love our parents or don’t think that they are important. Such days hold cultural significance in present times because our busy schedules leave us little to no time for our families. Therefore, having a day where we completely focus on our parents is not such a bad thing. Our feelings towards our parents can never be conditioned. It is not possible for one to be overly expressive at all times. Such days, then give us an opportunity to convey our love for and regards towards our parents. In fact, by celebrating these special days, we grow closer to them. This does not mean that we shrug our everyday responsibilities towards them. It only means that we would like to set aside a couple of days in the year when we can go all out to show them what they mean to us. Thus, celebrating Mother’s Day/Father’s Day is not an excuse to ignore one’s parents on other days of the year, so much as it is an excuse to celebrate them as the most influential and wonderful part of our lives.
Conduct a group discussion on the role of children towards their ‘Parents and Senior Citizens’.
SOLUTION:
Write an appreciation of the poem ‘Father Returning Home’.
SOLUTION:
Appreciation of the poem
‘Father Returning Home’
‘Father Returning Home’ by Dilip Chitre is a biographical sketch of the poet’s father. It is a monologue that deals with the plight of man, where he alienated from the very society that he built. He, thus, goes through the mundane motions of life, having no connections with either the outside world or even his family and suppresses his emotions as there is no one with whom he can share them. The poem deals with the themes of alienation or estrangement, isolation, and the dissolution of the self in the man-made world. This two-stanza poem, which has been written in the form of a dramatic monologue, does not follow any rhyme scheme as it is written in free-verse. The lines in the poem clearly depict the miserable state of man in this busy and crowded world. The poet uses numerous figures of speech such as Alliteration, Consonance, Metaphor, Onomatopoeia, Paradox, Personification, Repetition, Simile and Transferred Epithet.
An example of Paradox from the poem is “unseeing eyes”, as the phrase is self-contradictory. The language used by the poet is very simple and straight-forward. It paints a vivid picture of the tiring routine of the poet’s father and communicates his pathetic condition through the use of various descriptive words. The use of enjambment, where one line of the poem continues into the next, indicates the succession of the worsening state of the father’s condition, whether it’s his isolation from the outside world in the first stanza or his alienation in his own house in the second stanza. The use of imagery is clearly evident in the poem. Whether the poet is sketching the image of his father as an old man with words like “eyes dimmed by age”, “fade homeward”, “grey platform”, or describing his father’s appearance “soggy shirt and pants”, “black raincoat stained with mud”, “chappals sticky with mud”, or comparing the disembarking of his father from the crowded train as “a word dropped from a long sentence”, the strong use of imagery makes the poem thoroughly appealing.
The message that the poem conveys is that of the seclusion of man from the modern world. In today’s fast-paced and humdrum life, the only solace that man can find is in his dreams of the past or the future. The poem also communicates the apathy of the society towards the elderly, who are trying to cope with estrangement in a metropolis. Overall, I find the poem highly relevant to today’s world. The aspect that I like the most about the poem is the simplicity with which it conveys a strong message to the readers.
Compose a short poem in about 4-6 lines on your father.
SOLUTION:
As you board your daily bus in the busy evening hours,
As you return home from work, not well before the stars,
As you struggle through the day to make ends meet,
As you smile your way through life’s bitter treat,
As you alight the jam-packed bus at your stop,
I wait eagerly for you and wave from the top,
You wave back at me with a smile that’s so true,
I am the luckiest in the world to have a dad like you!
Write a character sketch of your family member.
SOLUTION:
Character sketch of a family
member – ‘My Father’
Born and brought up in Delhi, my father had a typical middle-class upbringing. The youngest of two siblings, he was the most pampered and mischievous of the lot. A fairly average student, he went on to complete his graduation in Physics. Not a big fan of academics, but cricket and bikes were always his passion. He never missed a chance to cheer for Team India and when it came to bikes, he was always on top of the latest launches. Buying his first bike with his own salary remains one of his most cherished memories. Being a government servant for the past twenty years, he has done everything right by the book. Ensuring that his family gets the best of everything seems to be the motto of his life. He has taught me patience, simplicity and compassion and I look up to him for advising and guiding me through life. My father means the world to me!
Dilip Chitre has translated Sant Tukaram’s ‘Abhang’ (devotional poem) for which he received Sahitya Akademi Award. Browse the internet to collect more information about it.
SOLUTION:
Do it yourself.
List various occupations related to services which can be rendered to senior citizens.
To counsel patients of Alzheimer’s disease.
_______________________
_______________________
SOLUTION:
To counsel patients of Alzheimer’s disease
Render service at old age homes
Offer Geriatric medicine speciality in hospitals for old age care.
