Prufrock is the poet persona
in T S Eliot’s ‘The
Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock’.
Like most characters created by Eliot, Prufrock is a fragmented psyche. He lives in a world where authentic personal
commitments don’t seem quite possible. The “one-night cheap hotels” give you “restless
nights”. In more serious places you’ll
meet women coming and going talking of Michelangelo. There are lonely men in
shirt-sleeves leaning out of windows, not particularly curious about the
meaning of the smoke that rises from their pipes. Prufrock has his own mask in
place, ready to meet other masks.
Prufrock
wants to commit himself to something deeper than the restless nights, smoking pipes,
and discussions that sound intellectual. But he is helpless. “Do I dare?” He
asks himself many times. He doesn’t. He can’t. He is helpless.
Imagine
Prufrock in contemporary India’s half-deserted streets where dreams die by the
second. There is the pandemic. And there is a
government. Is there really? Prufrock wonders.
He can see
the yellow fog that rubs its back upon the phantasmagorical walls of the
Central Vista where the Prime Minister’s residence alone will have 10
four-storey buildings. He can see the evening dying slowly like an enfeebled
patient upon a surgical table, beyond the Central Vista. That dying man had
dared to question the government. A casual remark on a social media, may be. A
cartoon in a periodical. A slogan in an andolan, perhaps.
Those who
dared are dying. Do I dare? Prufrock’s fundamental question dies within himself.
He turns back. He has no way ahead. The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle
against the earth movers around India Gate licks its tongue into the corners of
Prufrock’s twilight.
Prufrock
wants to dare. But he cannot. His soul has been killed. Lynched on the roadside
by voices that don’t sound human but claim to be nationalist.
PS. Written for Indispire Edition 377: We all have grown up reading
many poems. which is your favourite poem? and why? #favouritepoem
Loved this!
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DeleteGood read.
ReplyDeleteHari OM
ReplyDeleteA wonderfully drawn analogy! Having only yesterday read about the bulldozing of government buildings and the strange lack of opposition to such, I feel the dilemma and understand the conundrum... YAM xx
I was in Delhi for about 15 years. That Delhi is no more. Even the India I knew is no more.
DeleteAmazing write-up!
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