“Father Returning Home” by Dilip Chitre Essay

Dilip Purushottam Chitre was one of the foremost Indian writers and critics of the post Independence India. aside from a being a writer, he was also a painter and a filmmaker. Father Returning Home is a short and appeal poem about an old gentlemans gentleman in a general city where his own sons and daughters treat him as an alien. He himself is estranged from the unreal world. Through this poem, Chitre has denounced the urban rootlessness and alienation.The first stanza of Father Returning Home describes the checker journey of his come while returning home one evening. The father stands among commuters in the yellow light of a local com go againstment. The poet describes his fathers reaction against the sights of the suburbs that pass by. His father remains un incited by the sights because they be too familiar to him. That is quite normal, isnt it? We hardly pay anxiety to those places where we travel every day, unless the place has something interesting to offer. Same was w ith the poets father. The poet whence describes his fathers pathetic condition, as he travels during the rainy season. His clothe become damp and dirty.The black raincoat that he wears becomes stained with mud. His notecase crumbles with the heavy load of the books. Due to old age, the poets fathers eyesight has become poor and therefore he finds difficulty to move about in the dark. The poet says that he can see his father get down the train like a word dropped from a bulky sentence. The sentence is highly unique and it provides an evocative image of an old man who gets down from the train as if he is no longer applicable to it. The poet then sees his father hurrying through the long, grey platform.The man seems to be as old as the platform, who has been using it as a part of his routine. He crosses the railway tracks and hurries home through muddy lanes on a rainy day. This is indicated by his chappals which are sticky with mud. This stanza portrays the monotonousness of the old man, who sustains the vagaries of weather as well as the estrangement from the man-made.The second stanza, the poet represents the alienation of his father that he experiences in his own dwelling.