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The poet sees a beggar asleep on a street in Bombay. He notices how totally indifferent the passersby
are to this man's plight. Even he is indifferent. Indeed, he photographs the man and afterwards admires
how good a composition it was. Only later does his conscience stir in revulsion at his own action.
NOTE ON THE POET
Zulfikar Ghose was born in 1935 of Muslim parents at Sialkot, in what is today Pakistan but what was then
British India. Although he is claimed as the greatest of Pakistani poets, the fact that he has never actually
lived in Pakistan belies this belief.
Indeed, Ghose's writings cannot be confined to such a small box. He represents greater India, not just
a part of it. He is the natural inheritor of India's golden age before colonialism divided this great people
into unnatural factions.
When he was just seven years of age, Ghose's family left Sialkot for Bombay. Although now exiled from
his natural environment, the impressionable mind of the young poet would be forever imbued with pictures
of Punjabi society.
The poet was educated in a Catholic environment in Bombay, and started writing his poetry during these
years. At the age of 17, however, the family left the subcontinent to take up residence in London where
the teenager attended a Grammar School before finally graduating from Keele University.
Thereafter, although now a teacher, he continued to mix with British poets, and his poetic outpourings
were published in several British newspapers and journals. While in London, he met and married a
Brazilian artist, Helena de la Fontaine.
In 1969 Ghose and his wife again uprooted, this time to take up permanent residence in the United States
where he became a Professor of English at the University of Austin, Texas -- a position he holds to this
day.
Have you looked at the questions
in the right column?
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TEST YOURSELF!
Read the left column and then answer
the following questions:
"I have a picture I took in Bombay
of a beggar asleep on the pavement:
grey-haired, wearing shorts and a dirty shirt,
his shadow thrown aside like a blanket."
- Where is Bombay? What is its name today? (2)
[Need help?]
The city of Bombay -- now known as Mumbai -- is on the eastern coast of India. Have a look on the map
opposite.
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- What figure of speech or language device is found in the phrase "his shadow thrown aside like a
blanket"? (1)
[Need help?]
It is a simile, of course. The beggar's shadow is being compared to a blanket which has been tossed
aside.
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- Explain how this language device works, i.e. what is being compared to what -- and what is the effect
of this comparison? (4)
[Need help?]
The beggar's shadow is being compared to a blanket which has been tossed aside.
Consider the following: if a shadow is tossed aside, what happens? A shadow is very important to a
person. Everybody has a shadow until death. In other words, a shadow is part and parcel of the person's
essence or being.
If the shadow is tossed aside like a blanket, it means that the beggar no longer even has an essence or
being. He is nothing!
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- How would you describe the style of the poet's writing? (4)
[Need help?]
Would you not agree that the poet employs a very simple, narrative style of writing? His verses would
almost pass as prose. His sentence structure is chatty and uncomplicated, and therefore easy to
understand.
As a result, the poet manages to achieve a most graphic description of the beggar and the society around
him -- and of the poet's own feelings towards this event -- in an easy-to-understand fashion.
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"His arms and legs could be cracks in the stone
routes for the ants' journeys, the flies' descents.
Brain-washed by the sun into exhaustion,
he lies veined into stone, a fossil man."
- Why does the poet compare the beggar's arms and legs to "cracks in the stone" and as being
"veined into stone"? (4)
[Need help?]
The poet is referring here to the extreme thinness of the beggar's body, arms and legs. They are so thin
that they could be mistaken for cracks in the stone pavement, or veins in the stone. Indeed, the man
himself looks as if he is made of stone, a fossil.
Bear in mind that the poet is looking at the photograph he has taken. Back in the 1940s and even 1960s,
black-and-white photography was in vogue. The man, his clothes, the stone pavement, would all have
been pictured in shades of grey. The man would therefore have toned in with the stone pavement, being
merely a darker hue of grey -- looking therefore like a darker vein on the grey stone, or a dark crack in
the greyness of the pavement.
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- What is meant literally by "a fossil man"? (2)
[Need help?]
A fossil is something that has turned to stone. A tree becomes a fossil when its organic molecules are
slowly replaced by molecules of sand, so that it still has the appearance of a tree but is now made of
stone.
In this black and white photograph, the beggar appears grey which is the same colour as the stone. He
therefore could have looked like a stone. He is metaphorically a "fossil man". Of course, fossil also
means "very old". He is therefore a very old man.
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- What is "brain-washed"? (2)
[Need help?]
"Brain-washed" means that a person has slowly been worked on so that he or she believes totally
the ideas of others. He or she no longer has any ideas of his or her own.
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- What has caused the beggar to be brain-washed? (2)
[Need help?]
In this case, the beggar has been exposed to the sun for so long that he has become exhausted and has
ceased even to think.
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"Behind him, there is a crowd passingly
bemused by a pavement trickster and quite
indifferent to this very common sight
of an old man asleep on the pavement."
- What is a "pavement trickster"? (2)
[Need help?]
On the pavements of many 3rd World countries are the tricksters, people who attempt to fleece the
bystanders through cunning, through sleight-of-hand tricks where the onlookers have to guess under
which cup or mug a coin is hidden but where the cunning movement of the trickster's hands fools them
in mistaking the object and so losing their money.
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- Why should the pavement trickster be more interesting than the beggar sleeping
nearby? (4)
[Need help?]
The fact that the pavement trickster is more interesting than the nearby beggar is a sign of how society
has become numbed by the constant sight of poverty all around. The beggar is just one of many. Nothing
can be done to help him. The trickster, on the other hand, is of interest because it would appear that his
tricks can be seen through and that money can therefore be won from him.
Notice the implication that the bystanders are more ready to part with their money to the trickster than to
the beggar. And part with their money they will!
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"I thought it then a good composition
and glibly called it The Man in the Street,
remarking how typical it was of
India that the man in the street lived there."
- What is the meaning of "a good composition"? (4)
[Need help?]
Photographers and portrait painters refer to the object as a "composition", as in "This will make
a good composition". The beggar sleeping on the pavement is therefore a "composition".
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- Why does the poet call his picture "The Man in the Street"? (4)
[Need help?]
The poet thinks that his photograph of the beggar is so typical of all beggars in India. He personifies all
beggars. And so he calls it "The Man in the Street" because it represents all men like this who lie
in the street begging.
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"His head in the posture of one weeping
into a pillow chides me now for my
presumption at attempting to compose
art out of his hunger and solitude."
- What is it about the sleeping man's posture that "chides" the poet now? (4)
[Need help?]
The photographer had initially believed himself as having made a deeply philosophical statement, having
produced a work of art. Now, looking again at the photograph, the poet sees that the beggar's posture
is that of one weeping into a pillow. The poet is struck by the pain that haunts the beggar, a pain which
he missed at the time of taking the photograph.
The poet raises the all-important question: is it possible for there to be art in pain and suffering. Art by
its very nature is a glorification of the artist. The artist is always greater than the art. In this sense, then,
the artist is being glorified to the detriment of the beggar. The beggar, on the other hand, has been
exploited so that the artist may be glorified.
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Why does the poet call this poem "Decomposition"? (6)
[Need help?]
There is a paradox here, is there not?
"Decomposition" means a state of decay, of rotting and disintegration. The poem, however, dwells
upon a "composition", i.e. the creation of a work of art.
The picture is a "composition", a work of art. But the subject is the very opposite: a beggar whose
life is ebbing away, decaying. If the art is therefore a "composition", is not the subject a
"decomposition"?
But, of course, it is more than this. The whole tragedy is a depiction of society itself, is it not? The fact
that society can accept such poverty, such decay -- while idly standing by and being more absorbed by
the antics of a street trickster -- is surely an indication that society itself is in a state of decomposition and
decay?
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