Rialroad Reveries - 4043 Words

K N DAruwalla (1929-1993) Introduction: He was born in Lahore , now in Pakistan. HE attended the Government College in Ludhiana (in the Punjab) for his higher education. After obtaining a Master degree in English literature, he joined the police department from which he must have by now retired. He is believed to have settled down in New Delhi. The strangest and the most interesting fact of his life is that while serving his country as a policeman, he has been English writing poetry, in which he has made a name. Functioning as a police officer and writing poetry do not go well together. But we must take our hats off (as the phrase goes) to Daruwalla for his having accomplished his self-chosen task of writing poetry admirably. He has†¦show more content†¦The violence would be caused by mutual hatred which prevails between two different groups of the people. The poet goes about looking for the places where this violence might break out. Violence would lead to killings; and the poet looks for the possible places wher e death might raise its head. Dead Bodies Kept in the Mortuary: The poet then speaks about the mortuary where the persons killed in violence would be taken and kept for post-mortem or for identification by the relatives who would naturally like to take away those dead bodies in order to bury them or cremate them, as the case may be. If kept in a mortuary even for a few days, a dead body begins to stink because of the decomposition which takes place. Not even the sweet-smelling substances like rose-water and flowers can drown that foul smell. There is, in the mortuary, the dead body of a woman whose husband had cut-off her nose on a suspicion of her having adulterous relations with another man. After having cut off her nose he had even stabbed her in breast, thus puncturing her lungs. The Human Capacity for Adjustment: Man, says the poet, can adjust himself to different conditions. For example, a dead man, if buried in the earth, remains there firmly. If the same man were to be cremated, he would allow the fire to consume him quickly. If the dead body were thrown to the birds (like the vultures and the kites), he would let his flesh be eaten up without