Summary of Still Another view of the Grace by A.K. Ramanujan

     Ramanujan's poems mostly deal with the conflict between modern, liberal, Western Outlooks, and Conservative Indian thoughts and beliefs rooted in age-old customs practices, and prejudices. His poetry projects the psychological dilemma that the progressive liberal Indian mind goes through which finds it hard to disregard and shun the traditions beliefs customs and culture altogether. Still Another View of Grace is a poem from the collection The Striders published in 1966.

    The subject revolves around the conflict between the speaker's burning physical desires for sex on one hand and his deep-rooted conservatism and cultural prejudices. An outcome of his Brahminical family heritage on the other. The poem opens with a striking boldness as the speaker frankly admits of burn with sexual passion. As he hesitates at the thought of consummating his love. His carnal desires from within ask him to throw away man's morals about obtaining physical love making.The speaker remark

But one day I turned

and caught that thought

by the screams of her hair and said: Beware,

Do not follow a gentleman’s morals

With that absurd determined air.

In these lines, sexual desire is personified as a woman and the speaker catching her by screams of her hair is a forceful attempt to suppress his burning desires within, But desires do not get so easily suppressed gentlemen's morals refer to the traditional Indian values and morals which private the speaker from indulging in immediate sexual fulfillment.

    The speaker's conservative and orthodox self lectures on the necessity of a religiously sanctified marriage and the need to marry only for the purpose of producing legitimate offspring. The speaker says to find a priest to find any beast in the wind for a husband. He will give her a house full of legitimate sons. The speaker's Brahminical family background and traditional Indian ethics consider having sex outside religion and society-certified marriage a sin. He declares that sexual passion tempts him to commit this sin through any kind of treason or conspiracy. The very thought of lust mixing shudders to the bone at hunger that roams the street. Obviously, hunger here suggests sexual longings inside the speaker which craves immediate fulfillment but gets restrained by his gentlemen's morals. Their reference to the constables' beat suggests the silent, darkness of the April night, which can be linked to the speaker's dark desires and his bodily hunger roaming in the dark alleys of his mind.

    The end of the point however declares the triumph of carnal passions over conventional Indian morals and ethos. As the speaker's woman appears before him at night. The conservative values and ethics of the older generations of his forefathers lose their hold on the speaker's mind. Commandments crumbled in my fathers past the woman presumably a prostitute looking for customers on the April night comes close and looks at the speaker. The speaker feels sexually attracted to her as her tumbled hair feels like silk in his hand. The speaker's remarks at the end shook a little and took her behind the laws of my land he trembles not only out of sexual excitement but out of a nervous fear as he attempts to throw away the moral preaching of his forefathers and the cultural values and ethos of his country. This ignoring the established traditional ethics and morals the speaker finally succumbs to his sexual desire and engages in physical lovemaking with the woman.

    A Short poem of 17 lines Still Another view of the Grace strikes us with A.K. Ramanujan's typical metaphoric diction and his play with words. Economy, Precision, and brevity are Ramanujan's characteristics and his apparently simple and prosaic language is fraught with underlying suggestions in every word and phrase. There is a dramatic element in the poem. In its colloquial conversational style in the depiction of an ongoing mental conflict and moral dilemma and in the anticipation of the final climatic moment towards the end. Playing upon suggestive and evocative wars and employing metaphoric language the point captivates the reader with its modernistic approach toward a culturally sensitive issue.