Father Returning Home: Summary and Analysis: 2022

About the Poet:

Dilip Purushottam Chitre was one of the foremost Indian writers and critics of post-Independence India. Apart from being a writer, he was also a painter and a filmmaker. He graduated from the University of Bombay in 1959. He won the Sahitya Akademi Award (1994) for his Marathi book of poems Ekun KavitaFather Returning Home is a short and appealing poem about an old man in a cosmopolitan city where his own sons and daughters treat him as an alien. He himself is estranged from the man-made world. Through this poem, Chitre has denounced urban rootlessness and alienation.

Father Returning Home: Summary

Stanza 1: The first stanza of Father Returning Home describes the train journey of his father while returning home one evening. The father stands among commuters in the yellow light of a local compartment. The poet describes his father’s reaction to the sights of the suburbs that pass by. His father remains unmoved by the sights because they are too familiar to him. That is quite normal, isn’t it? We hardly pay attention to those places where we travel every day unless the place has something interesting to offer. The same was with the poet’s father.
The poet then describes his father’s pathetic condition as he travels during the rainy season. His clothes become damp and dirty. The black raincoat that he wears becomes stained with mud. His bag crumbles with the heavy load of the books. Due to old age, the poet’s father’s eyesight has become poor, and therefore he finds it difficult to move about in the dark.
The poet says that he can see his father getting down the train ‘as a word dropped from a long 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 relevant 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.
Stanza 2: In the second stanza, the poet represents the alienation of his father that he experiences in his own dwelling. The poet tells us that his father drinks a weak tea and eats a stale chapatti when he comes back home. This shows that his family does not properly carry out even his basic requirements. A sense of pity for the poet’s father arises in us. What do you think?
The father is then seen going into a contemplative mood after reading some kind of a philosophical book. He goes to the toilet and contemplates man’s alienation from the man-made world. This exhibits that the man is visibly upset with his predicament. He is terribly shaken when he comes out of the toilet and trembles while he washes his hands at the washbasin. It seems that he trembled not only because of the cold water but also due to the thoughts that came into his mind while he was thinking in the toilet.
The father finds himself all alone in his room as his children write him off.
The children do not interact with their father; they do not share their joys or sorrows with him. To compensate for their company, the father listens to the radio. Then he goes to sleep. In his sleep, he dreams about his ancestors and grandchildren.
It seems that he is trying to communicate with his ancestors who had entered the subcontinent through the Khyber Pass in the Himalayas in the past. The dream mirrors that the old man is either thinking about his past (his ancestors) or his future (his grandchildren). It is a kind of a relief to him from his mundane routine, devoid of any human contact.
Have you ever felt so alienated like this old man in Father Returning Home?

Father Returning Home: Analysis

Style of Father Returning Home by Dilip Chitre: Dilip Chitre’s poetry follows the tradition of dramatic monologue. In the poem Father Returning Home, the poet talks about his father’s loneliness and alienation from the man-made world. He has brought out his father’s emotions; he is isolated from his family and from the outside world. He has painted his father’s mundane and fatiguing routine to highlight the darkness and misery lurking inside his father’s soul.
The imagery in Father Returning Home by Dilip Chitre: The poet uses some fine imagery to describe the lurking loneliness in the man’s soul as he travels in the local train. To convey the ‘twilight atmosphere,’ the poet has used a number of descriptive words in the poem, like evening train, yellow light, unseeing eyes, his eyes dimmed by age, fade homeward, and grey platform.
An example of imagery is found in the following lines describing the father’s routine of traveling by a local train-
“My father travels on the late evening train
Standing among silent commuters in the yellow light
Suburbs slide past his unseeing eyes
His shirt and pants are soggy, and his black raincoat
Stained with mud and his bag stuffed with books
Is falling apart.”
In the above-mentioned lines, the pathos of an old father returning to his mundane home late in the evening is highlighted. A wonderful image is used to describe the poet’s father getting down the train. The poet says that he can see his father getting down the train ‘as a word dropped from a long 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 relevant to it. This imagery is used to depict the monotonousness and meaninglessness in the father’s life.
The imagery of dream has been used to show the connection the poet’s father has with his past and his future. He dreams about his ancestors and his grandchildren. Thus, it signifies his feelings that he has suppressed in himself and cannot express openly.
Therefore, we can conclude that the poem Father Returning Home is autobiographical in nature. The poem draws a picture of the poet’s father. He speaks about the loneliness that his father goes through in his everyday life. Don’t be a silent reader; a thought or two would be appreciated.

Father Returning Home: Theme

Father Returning Home’s poem focuses on the theme of alienation or estrangement experienced by the aged in their twilight years. Dilip Chitre talks about his own father, and through the poem, we get to know the alienation, isolation, and misery experienced by elderly people, especially in cities.

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0 comments

  1. Thanks!It was of great help. Another point I would like to put in is that the father finds it difficult to connect with the present fast and individualist ways of life such as those of his children who refuse to share their world with him.That is why he goes to sleep dreaming of his ancestors(past) and his grandchildren(future) and hopes to connect with them, as he hears the radio where an invisible and only voice speaks to him.

    1. Great Help! And another point. The poverty of the family is depicted from the father eating Stale chappati and drinking weak tea…
      Hope it Helps.

      1. it does not show the poverty of the family but it shows that father is not taken care of (as he is the only bread earner of the family) and thenalso he us not give any care by the family members. The stale word means not fresh.

  2. Could it be possible that the father is ignored by his children because of his lack to adapt to the 21st century world?

  3. father being the part of past generation thinks to be ignored by children but it is not so. there is generation gap between the two hence psychological differences,

  4. Thanks a lot! Another point: The poem says,”A few droplets cling to the greying hairs on his wrists.” Since water is a symbol of life and ‘greying hairs’ is a symbol of old age, we can interpret that his life is barely hanging on to his old age. Hope It Helped!:D

  5. Thanks a lotz. Whoever made this site. I m extremely thankful to them becoz I was in delama of how to complete my poem but u made me complete all of them….. tnks once again

    1. Plz can u give me explanation of poem cheerfulness taught by reason the same way ?it’s really urgent.

  6. Thanks a lot! Here’s another point: The repetition of the word ‘hurries’ as he is going home emphasises the fact that he is rushing there. He goes into the toilet to contemplate… After the struggle of getting home, is the toilet his only refuge??

  7. Can you please explain me elaborately the phrase ‘..getting off the train Like a word dropped from a long sentence ‘ ?

    1. It again shows the alienation of the father and as we remove a word ( a word which is not important) from the sentence it is not going to effectthe meaning of the scentence in the same way father is shown that he is not important for the crowd.

  8. It’s a great help to my students as it is quite simple and communicative n effective too

  9. The poem will help students a lot and they can easily comprehend the meanings and the central idea of this poem that touches the heart of old parents and grandparents.

  10. The structure of the stanzas does not look like attractive. It looks just too simple and also there are no charming rhymes in the poem. Structure of the poem is similiar with the life of father.

  11. Hi everyone . i went through a few of ur interpretations and they of great help .
    I have an interpretation to the part where he speaks about the aryans . I feel , maybe he means that he is not accepted in the society even though he is an insider but the aryans being outsiders could find a place for themselves( as in accepted by society ) wen they entered the sub continent , maybe

  12. Hi! In the notes above it is mentioned that this is a dramatic monologue. What makes you say this? I feel it is a rather detatched and objective account of his father’s routine when coming home. The reader may infer the persona’s feeling through the choice if words, but the way he actually feels is never openly stated.
    I would also like to point out that the fact that the poem does not follow a rhyming patters and even has some run-on-lines makes this account even more real – as if he were describing it to someone else. Do you agree? I suppose this is what makes it a monologue, but why dramatic?

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