Treatment of Tradition in Ak Ramanujam Poems

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Treatment of Tradition in AK Ramanujam Poems In Looking for a Cousin on a Swing, the poet has a memory of a girl-cousin with whom he shared a ride on the swing. The girl-cousin, having gone to live in the city, is nostalgic about it, and longs for the swing in the city and the innocent paradisal joys it stands for. But she is bound to fail in her futile search. Family, then, becomes a metaphor for past, tradition and history in Ramanujan’s poetry. It acquires universality in some odd ways and forms. On the one hand, it shows the poet’s roots in his cultural and familial past; on the other hand, it shows the poet’s belief in the inextricable links between past and present. Ramaujan has competently rendered several of his poems memorable and fascinating by faithfully, depicting his family and relations. A reader can reconstruct the history of his family and its widespread network of relatives through these poems. They also offer us a glimpse of out living Indian tradition and culture. The poet Parthasarathy rightly thinks that they are “a microcosm of the Hindu family which has … ensured the continuity of a rich traditional culture.”9 The joint Hindu family system comes alive in them. It is to the credit of the poet that he largely concentrates on his family and kith and kin for his artistic creations and utterances, thus keeping well within his experience and knowledge. Family and social concerns have been at the center of our culture. In several of his poems, Ramanujan deals with the joint and nuclear families, and familial relationships, love and marriage. Small-Scale Reflections on a Great House, on one level, offers a realistic view of the joint family in India, and the typical trait of Indian culture of assimilation of all odds and ends. In some poems, Ramanujan has recollected memories of his father, mother, grandmother, and other relations. In all

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