Small Scale Reflection

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A.K.Ramanujan's "Small-Scale Reflections on a Great House" The poem reflects the speaker's reflections on an ancestral house. The poet mentions that some things that entered the house never went out. They lost themselves amongst other things that had similarly a history of being lost. Cows that entered were provided with shelter and gifted with a name. Their mating with bulls was carefully 'shielded from the young girls of the house .Nevertheless these girls managed to witness the cat through holes in the window. This points to the sheer hypocrisy in Indian society about hushing up topics that are in reality not taboo anymore. Libary books once borrowed from libraries never found their way back. They remained only to serve as breeding homes for insects, and worms like the silverfish that multiplied in the office-room of the head of the family. Dishes that belonged to the neighbours were never returned. They came to the house to distribute sweets to celebrate the wedding anniversary of some god. Here the poet makes fun of the frivolity of tradition, and plurality of religion. Servants once employed, never left the house. Gramaphones continued to remain there. On a distressing note, the poet mentions that diseases like epilepsy that once entered the blood continued to haunt the generations…show more content…
Or it happened that these idiots had turned them out of the house. Sons of the house who had run away returned in the shape of their sons, because their wives had given birth to boys. These little sons obliged the elders in the house by reciting Sanskrit verses to them or by bringing betel-nuts for visitors with anecdotes to tell. The sons also brought with them water from the Ganges that could be sprinkled on someone about to die in the

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