A River is a poem written by Indian author, A.K Ramanujan. The poem was originally published in 1966. The story of poem revolves around an incident which happens around the river. The poem is divided into four stanzas and it contains uneven set of lines in all stanzas.
A River By A.K Ramanujan
Summary of A River By AK Ramanujan
The story of poem set in an Indian town named Madurai, a place where a river passes through. Madurai is a beautiful city of temples and poets. The poet of Madurai used to write poem about it and its beautiful temples. Every summer river dries up so much that you can see the sand on the surface of it.
The poet says as the river dries up, people can able to see things on river surface like sand ribs and straw. The bars on the river has become very rusty and the bridges that have been built on it and needs repairing. The wet stones on river surface looking like a crocodile who is sleeping and doing no moments. On the other side, the dry stones looking like a buffalo who is resting in sunlight.
The poet says both type of stone are looking like a two different types of animal which depends upon whether it is dry or wet. The speaker says you have lots of things to tell about this river but poets only tells about the floods.
The poet was there for a day when flood came in town, people everywhere talked about the rising waves. The people were only talking about flood and its rising flow. The water level was so high that it was touching a places where people used to take a bath from river. On the way, flood carried three houses of village, one pregnant woman and two cows named Gopi and Brinda into the water.
The author says new poets only tells us about what the old poets said but no one talks about the pregnant woman drowned in flood. No one talks about the pregnant woman who had twins in her womb.
The poet says that river has only that much water which can be poetic only once a year. The author has noticed that poets gets attracted to village when flood came into the river.
They only talks about Flood and its rising flow. This poem not just talk about the river but it also tells us about the poetic generation who does not learns poetic properly and does not bring out the truth in right way.
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