Rain-at-Night – Sugatha Kumari (1934-2020)

 

Sugatha Kumari (1934-2020), an illustrious poet and social activist, won numerous awards and recognitions including Kerala Sahitya Academy award, Sahitya Academy Award and Padma Shri. She was the founder secretary of Prakrithi Samarakshana Samithi, an organization for the protection of nature and of Abhaya, a centre for destitute women. In Rain-at-Night (Rathrimazha) Sugatha Kumari not only addresses the rain as a comforting acquaintance but also identifies herself with the rain. It is a romantic poem juxtaposing a sudden downpour with the confinement of the poet in a sanatorium bed.

The poem begins with the weeping laughing and whimpering of the rain-at-night, who is referred to as the pensive daughter of the dusky dark. She is gliding slowly like a long wail into the hospital, where the narrator is admitted. She extends her cold fingers through the window and touches the narrator, who is in her sick bed, when the poet puts her hand to her ears, on her hearing the anguished cry of a mother. The rain at night comforts her. As the narrator has a diseased heart it can’t be cut and removed as other parts of her body. It should only be healed like this.

Rain-at-night, thus witnesses the narrator’s love and grief and lulls her to sleep. So, it becomes an auspicious night to the narrator, who is thrilled with joy. Actually, before the arrival of the rain-at-night the narrator had sleepless hours and was about to freeze into a stone. It gave more joy than the bright moonlight did.

Then the narrator says that she knows the kind and sad music of the night rain, her pity and suppressed rage, her coming in the night, her sobbing and weeping when all alone. And when it is dawn, she wipes her face and forces a smile. Then she hurries to do her routine work as the narrator does. As the narrator is also like the night rain, she knows all of these of the night rain. Thus, the narrator identifies herself with the rain-at-night. The different emotional status of the night rain are similar to the shifting moods of the narrator. That’s why she says at the end, ‘My friend, I too am like you’.

As the emotions of the narrator are expressed effectively in an imaginative and beautiful way and as it reflects a lament for the suffering sick, this poem is considered a fine lyrical elegy.

----Thulasidharan V