Songs Sung by the Folk or Written about Them:
One of the interesting aspects of Sarojini's poetry is the folk theme delicately treated by her. She characterized many poems as folk-songs herself. In theme she steps down from the latticed balconies into the streets and the market-place, the road and the village and seizes the lilt and the swing of popular rhymes and rhythms of beggar's songs and milkmaid's tunes. She has made this theme peculiarly her own, the one in which she appears to be least imitative. Many of the poems that fall under this group are included in her first two volumes The Golden Threshold and The Bird of Time. They are called "Folk Songs" and "Indian Folk Songs". All the pieces grouped herein are not all songs sung-or supposed to be sung-by the folk; there are also among them songs about the folk. Both these kinds of songs are what forms the folk-theme.
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| Sarojini Naidu's Poetry—Folk Theme |
The Pop music of the folk-songs:
The pop music is a characteristic of the folk-song particularly and it imparts pep to them. The wandering singers say:
“The voice of the wind is the voice of our fate”.
Men and women raise their voice in praise of Surya, Varuna, Prithvi and Brahma in the Harvest Hymn:
"Some bangles are flushed like the buds that dream.
On the tranquil brow of a woodland stream."
Radha, the milkmaid at Mathura Fair, invites the laughter of others by calling upon Govinda. Indian Weavers weave garments like plumes of a peacock. Coromandel fishers believe: "He who holds the storm by the hair will hide in his breast our lives." The village maiden is fully aware of the fact that the bridal songs and cradle songs have cadences of sorrow. Suttee contains in itself the tremendous truth about man and wife:
“Shall the flesh survive when the soul is gone”.
The poems referred to here are based on folk songs and superstitions. It goes to the credit of Mrs. Naidu that she has deftly and dexterously manipulated folk tunes to the rhythms of her visions, as Coleridge and Rossetti did in English poetry. The folk songs recapture the heart-beats of rural India.
The Palanquin-Bearers is a fair specimen of a true folk-song:
The Palanquin-Bearers is a fair specimen of the folk-song in so far as it recalls a common experience in the India of half a century ago. The song of the palanquin-bearers expresses in its movement the muffled mumblings that direct the rhythm of their march through the streets.
Other successful folk-songs:
The more successful among her folk- songs are Com-Grinders, Village Song and Song of Radha the Milkmaid. Poems falling within the larger class of folk-songs:
There are four poems viz, Indian Weavers, Street Cries, In the Bazaar of Hyderabad, and Bangle-Sellers, which are a class by themselves. They have a meaning in them that is generally absent from the genuine folk-song. They do not possess the simple charm of the songs which the folks are supposed to sing, but they focus poetic attention on common men and women at their common daily tasks. They also describe the round of their daily activities and vocations as they change with the sharp turns of human life. Indian Weavers is an allegory, where the poet purports to mean more than meets the eye. The cries of various street vendors are appropriately linked with different human moods and needs:
When down's first cymbals beat upon the sky,
Rousing the world to labour's various cry,
then "Buy bread, buy fruit, rings down the eager street”:
When the earth fallers and the waters swoon
with the implacable radiance of noon,
then "Buy fruit, buy fruit, steals down the panting street". And:
“When twilight twinkling o'er the gay bazaars,
Unfurls a sudden canopy of stars,
When lutes are strung and fragrant torches lit
On White roof-terraces where lovers sit
Drinking together of life's poignant sweet.
Buy flowers, buy flowers, floats down the singing street."
The changing phases of life are not so much in evidence in In the Bazaars of Hyderabad. It opens with the description of the many-splendoured things of life:
“What do you sell, O ye merchants?
Richly your wares are displayed.
Turbans of crimson and silver,
Tunics of purple brocade
Mirrors with panels of amber,
Daggers with handles of jade”.
The vendors, maidens, peddlers, goldsmiths, fruit men, musicians and magicians similarly answer when questioned, and exhibit their wares, which range from "saffron and lentil and rice" to "spells for the acons to come". In the fifth stanza on coming to the flower girls we are made to realize that the web of our life is of a mingled yarn, grave and gay together and we return, as it were, to the allegory of Indian Weavers:
“What do you weave, O ye flower-girls?
With tassels of azure and red?
Crowns for the brow of a bride-groom
Chaplets to garland his bed,
Sheets of white blossoms new-gathered
To perfume the sleep of the dead”.
Bangle-Sellers brings within its ambit the different stages in a woman's life, relating each to the bangles appropriate to it. For the "rain-tinted circles of light" carried by the bangle-sellers to the temple fair are
“Lustrous tokens of radiant lives,
For happy daughters and happy wives”.
The focus is drawn only on the radiance, the desolation is not at all brought out. Still the different kinds of radiance have their particular kinds of lusters:
Some are meant for a maiden's wrist,
Silver and blue as a mountain mist,
… … …. ….. ….. … ….
Some are like fields of sun-lit corn,
Meet for a bride on her bridal mom;
... … …. …. …. …. …..
Some are purple and gold-flecked grey,
For her who has journeyed through life a half-way.
Mrs. Naidu's poems on folk Themes contain the simplicity, melody and rhythmic beauty of Indian folk-songs.