Rajagopal Parthasarathy is an Indian poet, writer, translator, critic, and editor. He is best known for his poetry “Rough Passage”. Born in Tirupparaiturai, Tamil Nadu, India, on August 20, 1934, he completed his Masters in English from the University of Mumbai in 1959. He also studied at Leeds University, United Kingdom, where he was British Council Scholar in 1963–1964.
He was lecturer in English literature in Mumbai for ten years at various colleges, including Ismail Yusuf College, Mithibai College, Presidency College, before joining Oxford University Press in 1971 as Regional Editor in Chennai. He moved to New Delhi in 1978. Parthasarathy was then a Associate Professor of English and Asian Studies at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York, United States .
Parthasarathy’s works include “Poetry from Leeds” in 1968, “Rough Passage” brought out by Oxford University Press in 1977.
He translated poetry and literature from Tamil to English. His best known translation into modern English verse is that of the 5th-century Tamil epic “The Tale of the Anklet: An Epic of South India”. He won Ulka poetry prize in 1966.
His magnum opus was the Rough Passage, that took him 15 years to complete. It is divided into three parts viz Exile ( that talks of the conflicting culture of India to the Europe, as an immigrant, and examines the consequences of British rule on an Indian, and especially an Indian’s loss his identity and therefore his need to go back to his roots.),Trial ( celebrates love as a reality) and Homecoming, the third and final part explores the phenomenon of returning of one’s home.
In England, when he missed the link with his roots, and felt a little alienated in a foreign land he wrote
“You learn roots are deep;
That language is a tree, looses colour
Under another sky.”
Again when he misses talking in his mother tongue Tamil he encapsulates his feeling in a classic poem “Tamil”
“My tongue in English chains
I return after a generation, to you
I am at the end.”
Click on the titles below to read his poems.
Homecoming Tamil Twilight in Delhi