Chemmanam Chacko | Translated by K. Ayyappa Paniker | XII English
“Rice” contrasts a young man’s expectations of his native village with the changes he discovers on returning home. Through humour and irony, the poet criticises the replacement of food crops with cash crops and the resulting dependence on outside supplies.
Part I — The Homecoming He Imagines
Stanza 1: A Longing for Rice
The speaker returns home after four years of research in North India. He has earned a doctorate and praise for his work on making toys from rice husk. Tired of eating chapatis, he longs for a meal of athikira rice, a native variety.
Rice represents his attachment to home, family and familiar traditions. His research on husk also prepares us for the irony at the end of the poem.
Stanza 2: His Father in the Fields
The speaker imagines reaching home during the planting season. He expects to see his father working in the paddy fields, wearing a handloom dhoti stained with yellow mud. The canal water and the sounds of ploughing create a lively picture of farming.
These details express his affectionate memories of village life and agricultural work.
Stanza 3: A Quiet Welcome
He imagines the oxen stopping as he approaches with his suitcase. His father will hide his growing smile and casually ask when he began his journey.
The father’s imagined response suggests deep affection expressed through simple words rather than an openly emotional greeting.
Stanza 4: His Brother’s Excitement
The speaker imagines his younger brother carrying rice seedlings for planting. On seeing him, the boy will run towards the house and announce his arrival to their mother.
This scene conveys family affection and shows how farming was part of the household’s everyday life.
Stanza 5: The Meal He Dreams Of
He imagines walking carefully along the dyke without disturbing the baskets of seed. He hopes to reach home just as his mother finishes cooking rice. Impatiently, he asks the train to move faster.
The imagined meal brings together his longing for home, his mother’s care and native food. His excitement makes the disappointment in Part II more powerful.
Part II — The Reality He Finds
Stanza 1: A Changed Landscape
On arriving, the speaker notices that the distant palm-thatched houses he remembers are no longer visible. Trees now dominate the view.
His surprise introduces the contrast between the village preserved in his memory and the place before him.
Stanza 2: Rubber Replaces Paddy
Tall rubber plants grow where modan and vellaran, traditional varieties of paddy, were once cultivated. Their unfamiliar arrangement confuses his path home.
The scene reveals the shift from food crops to cash crops. His difficulty finding the way also suggests a loss of familiarity and belonging.
Stanza 3: The Missing Sounds of Farming
The speaker hears none of the activity he expected. There are no workers’ voices or shouts of ploughing. Arecanut palms cover the former paddy field, while dealwood trees stand beside the canal.
The silence contrasts sharply with the lively farming scenes imagined in Part I. Paddy cultivation has disappeared from the familiar landscape.
Stanza 4: His Father’s New Interest
Instead of working in a muddy field, his father watches a machine being installed for making rubber sheets. He looks happy and satisfied.
The father’s pleasure contrasts with the speaker’s disappointment. What the son experiences as a loss, the father sees as economic progress.
Stanza 5: Profit Becomes the Priority
The father proudly explains that rice farming was troublesome and brought little profit. He considers cash crops a better source of income and says that the government supplies rice to people without paddy fields.
His words reveal the economic reasons behind the change. The poet exposes the irony of giving up food production while depending on the government for food. The criticism also concerns a system that makes rice farming unrewarding.
Stanza 6: Wheat Instead of Rice
The younger brother arrives carrying the household’s ration supplies. He trips and scatters wheat across the yard.
This overturns the speaker’s earlier dream: his brother carries wheat instead of rice seedlings. Although he returned hoping to escape chapatis and eat native rice, his family now depends on wheat.
Stanza 7: The Chief Minister’s Journey
An aircraft carrying the Chief Minister flies overhead towards the Centre to request more grain. Its noise drowns out the younger brother’s cries.
The “ship of the sky” refers to the aircraft. The situation is deeply ironic: cash crops flourish below while the state seeks food from elsewhere. The poet criticises the failure to encourage local rice cultivation.
Stanza 8: The Final Ironic Question
The speaker wonders whether the Centre can supply rice husk too, so that he can continue making toys.
Husk is a by-product of rice production. If rice cultivation disappears, even this material may need to come from outside. The ending connects his research with the village’s transformation and sharply exposes the loss of agricultural self-reliance.
Central Message
The poem questions a system in which profit takes priority over food production. It shows how the decline of paddy cultivation affects the landscape, family life, cultural identity and food security.]
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[Prepared by Sindhu P,HSST English,GGHSS Kallai]