MAN WITH FAUNA AND FLORA IN VIKRAM SETH’S BEASTLY TALES FROM HERE AND THERE
Mrs.A.D.SASIKALA, M.A., M.Phil.,
ASSISTANT
PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH
J.K.K.NATARAJA
COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCE
KOMARAPALAYAM.
Literature
serves aesthetic and didactic purpose; the combination of which is the major
factor determining the greatness of the particular genre, providing the reader
with sense of pleasure and directing him to the path of humanistic values, like
kindness, pity, tolerance, generosity, forgiveness, selflessness, unity.
Transformation and refinement of life into meaningful one can be achieved only
by strictly practicing these humanistic values. Seth is an Indian poet,
novelist, travel writer, children’s writer, biographer and memoirs. His
outstanding achievement as a versatile and prolific poet remains largely and
unfairly neglected.
As
a poet, Seth adds very interesting qualities to the body of Indian English
poetry which has traditionally dealt with rather serious and ponderous themes.
He has contributed some excellent light and humorous verse to the body of
Indian English poetry. He has been called a neo-formalist and has been hailed
as the writer of polished poetry. Along with such ‘traditional’ forms of older
poetry, he employs contemporary idiom and a modern speaking self.
The
interpretation of beastly behavior in Beastly
Tales from Here And There constitutes representation of the complex network
of the behavior of man and beast, bird and insect in quasi-human terms. The
poem highlights the plight of those gullible people whose simplicity and
credulous nature makes them complete misfits in the world of manipulation.
The
fable is a short, narrative, each animal and bird is endowed with the speech
and action of human beings, and the fable is followed by a moral lesson.
Brevity is an important characteristic of a good fable and it leaves much
ground for our imagination. Thus Seth has used moral maxims so that it will
reach all the modern age people.
Seth
in his poetry and fiction puts continuous emphasis on love and relationship and
explores their many dimensions in a shifting, changing and corroding background.
At the same time he incorporates together the complementary segments of life as
available in the modern world into a meaningful form. The beasts in Beastly Tales from Here and Thereare not
humanized, they become by themselves, human beings, with all their involvements
in the daily process of living. The first tale, entitled “The Crocodile and the
Monkey”, is the well- known story of the crocodile and the monkey, their
initial friendship, and subsequent estrangement because of the crocodile’s
betrayal and bad motive. The implied moral is also the traditional moralistic
attitude of the ancient tale, that is, not to trust those who are not
trustworthy.
In the first phase the crocodile’s
cruel nature towards monkey is revealed. In the second phase the friendly
relationship between the crocodile and the monkey is revealed. The friendship
changed to deceitfulness on the part of the crocodile is clear in the third
phase. But in the fourth phase the matters turned to be topsy-turvy. The monkey
became deceitful, the crocodile stupid and the end became a hilarious
anti-climax, again, in a criss-cross of human behavior, gullibility and
readiness to acting situations:
….and
as for you,
Here
is my parting gift’- He threw
Mangoes
–squishy, rotten, dead,
Down upon the reptiles head,
Who, with a regretful smile,
Sat and eyed him for a while. (285)
The tale “The Hare and the Tortoise”
has social implications and convey pungent irony, integrated in the situations,
against the prevailing modern dispensation. The hare is like a gay, young lady,
restless, and given to pleasures, and the tortoise is circumspect and extremely
calculative. The poet describes that the hare’s manners is like a modern young
woman’s manner:
Pouting
out her scarlet lips,
Swiftly
wiggling head and hips,
Making
wolves feel weak inside,
Languidly
Mrs. Hare replied. (307)
The hare though defeated gets
maximum attention and publicity. The pungent irony at the system of modern
society is that pampers the unworthy, against the people of real worth, through
publicity stunts.It is a satire on the way animals are losing their environment
to concrete jungles. Animals in Bingle valley turn up against humans but the
coming maneuvers of humans prove out to be too much for their native and simple
minds. Seth describes the real nature of man, especially the loving and brutal
quality. He draws a pertinent corollary between this fable and the mankind,
characterized by the weak as well as the strong characters.
The inhabitants of Bingle valley are
facing danger of extinction due to the recent news that inorder to solve the
problem of water crisis, the streams of the jungle will be converted into a
lake. The creatures of the Bingle valley unite together in the form of a rally
to meet the Bigshot. The Bigshot like a typical minister shows his helplessness
for issues like vote-bank and since the animals cannot vote like human beings
in his favour, he would not contemplate over any change in the decision and
then suddenly Bigshot’s son seeing the true face of his cruel father reacts in
very moving words as he reflects on the beauty of Flora and Fauna.
When the minister’s son sides with
the Tragopan and Elephant, there is a real pandemonium and the Tragopan die as
true martyrs and great honour is bestowed upon him. The Smallfry and the
Elephant were silenced.
Unlike
other tales of the Beastly tales it is not just humanized, in character, spirit
and motivation, it is by itself a human drama- the type of situation we often
see around, particularly in India, between an autocratic, self motivated
administration and the people’s resistance to that a typical case in the
underdeveloped and developing countries where politically powerful try to rule
the roost indifference to general will or woe. A pertinent case comparable to
the Bingle Valley situation, it may be recalled, was the Silent valley case in
Kerala some years ago, which was almost going to be devastated and was finally
saved by stiff publics resistance. In “The Elephant and the Tropagon” the writer
has offered no resolution to the problem. He has only highlighted, the in-evitable destruction of environment in
the name of so-called “development”, and has suggested how best that can be
averted.From the following lines we can get a beautiful picture of nature which
is filled with great calm, peace and happiness:
In
Bingle valley, broad and green,
Where
neither hut nor field is seen,
Where
bamboo, like a distant lawn,
Gold
at dusk and flushed at dawn,
Where
a cold river, filmed with ice
Sustains
a minor paradise…. (337)
The Elephant’s address is a crucial
pointer in the poem that reflectively points to man’s true nature and character
and his propensity to destroy everything for his selfish ends. Thus the
Elephant speaks about man’s enormous greed and his enormous capacity to destroy
environment:
For
nowhere lies beyond man’s reach
To
mar and burn and flood and leach
A
distant valley is indeed
No
sanctuary from his greed. (344)
The
source of man’s unhappiness is his ignorance of Nature. We have to listen to
the voice of Fauna and Flora, for it holds treasures for us. We need to
understand ourselves as biological creatures at one with the diversity of all
life.
References:
Seth,
Vikram. Beastly Tales from Here and There.New
Delhi:Penguin books,2014.
Gupta,
Nopali. Vikram Seth’s Art: An Appraisal.
New Delhi: Atlantic, 2005. Print.
Mohanty,
Seemity. A critical Analysis of Vikram Seth’s Poetry and Fiction. New Delhi: Atlantic, 2007. Print.
Prasad,GJV.
Vikram Seth An Anthology of Recent Criticism.New
Delhi: Pencraft international, 2011.Print.
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