1. Keki. N.
Daruwallah is a retired IPS officer and a renowned Indian poet.
2. Daruwallah's
writing captures the essence of the multifaceted texture of the Indian society,
giving it a forthrightness that shocks the readers.
3. ''The
people" is from his first book UNDER ORION.
4. Daruwallah is considered a significant poet of
contemporary times.
5. The poem "The people" highlights
the manner in which the crowd reacts to the words of the speaker on the stage.
6. They consider him a hero without understanding
or interpreting his words or message.
7. The Poem ironically portrays the manner in
which the naive crowd is manipulated or led by the nose by scheming politicians
and unscrupulous people.
8. One of
the highlights of the poems is the realistic portrayal of the crowd.
Between
their raillery and applause
I found no difference. Either way
their eyes lit up with scorn or worship
and forefingers marked the hero out,
Or the
person whom to spit on!
After the ovation when their vulture-talons
had failed
to take home half his limbs as trophies
they swarmed out like a nervous disorder
with his words in their mouths,
misquoting,
mispronouncing, misinterpreting
confounding
dialectic with myth,
till you wondered
whether all this
hero-worship
gone awry
was
well-meant and genuine
or oblique bitchiness!
When they
ignored him off the stage,
Scratching
their hairy bellies
Whispering
snide gossip
While his
words fell on the floor unheard
Amongst
shelled ground nut,
They didn’t
know that this was lynch-law
And that
they who only yesterday
Turned some
pie dog into Prometheus
Had just
strung a half-wit
Half-dreamer
up a tree!
They who
trampled on the works today
Were taken
in by the same words tonight
By cadaverous
clichés pressing at their throats
Never
knowing what was strangling them
accepting burdens
“For their own good.”
Accepting
their sin-load
and the
atonement in silver
which the priests
prescribed
accepting
decrees and destiny
hail-harvests
and draught
and a
couplet from soordas
with the
same apathy!
Somewhere the
echo of a half-lilt
Souring in
their bellies
As they
starve dreamlessly
Wrapped up
in their intestines!
Between my pity
and contempt
I find no
difference.
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