A basic PPT to assist in the teaching of Dilip Chitre's poem for IGCSE Literature.

1. Father Returning Home
Dilip Chitre

2. Video Impression
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3rzut2c
44M

3. Dilip Chitre (17 Sept 1938 – 10 Dec 2009)
• One of the foremost Indian writers and
critics to emerge in post-Independence
India.
• Wrote in Marathi & English
• Also a painter & filmmaker
• Born in Baroda
• Family moved to Mumbai in 1951
• Published his first collection of poems in
1960

4. What is this poem about?
• Alienation of the elderly in a modern world
• Isolation of old age
• Estrangement from family
• Loneliness in modern cities
• Modernisation
• Loss of historical and cultural identity
Setting: Mumbai, India

5. Father Returning Home
My father travels on the late evening train
Standing among silent commuters in the yellow light
Suburbs slide past his unseeing eyes

6. His shirt and pants are soggy and his black
raincoat
Stained with mud and his bag stuffed with books
Is falling apart. His eyes dimmed by age
fade homeward through the humid monsoon
night.

7. Now I can see him getting off the train
Like a word dropped from a long sentence.
He hurries across the length of the grey platform,
Crosses the railway line, enters the lane,
His chappals are sticky with mud, but he hurries
onward.

8. Home again, I see him drinking weak tea,
Eating a stale chapati, reading a book.

9. He goes into the toilet to contemplate
Man's estrangement from a man-made world.

10. Coming out he trembles at the sink,
The cold water running over his brown hands,
A few droplets cling to the greying hairs on his
wrists.

11. His sullen children have often refused to share
Jokes and secrets with him. He will now go to
sleep
Listening to the static on the radio, dreaming

12. Of his ancestors and grandchildren, thinking
Of nomads entering a subcontinent through a
narrow pass.

13. Khyber Pass
• The Khyber Pass is the best natural land route to India
through the Hindu Kush mountain range. It is one of the most
famous mountain passes in the world, with a long and often
violent history. It has been not only a major trade route for
centuries, but also an entry point for conquering armies
carrying on their invasions. A very interesting curiosity is that
"Khyber" seems to be a Hebrew name: its meaning is related
to the Hebrew root chet-bet-resh, the verb "to connect", "to
couple", "to join", implying also partnership, junction,
intimate union. Even though this term may not be Hebrew, no
other possible etymology has yet been found. How did a
Hebrew name be applied to such an important place in the
gates of India?

15. • The Aryans are a group of people who migrated to India through the
Khyber pass around 1500 BC. There is a lot of debate about whether
the Aryans actually did arrive in India. Dr. Dinesh Agrawal's paper
Demise of the Aryan Invasion Theory states that the Aryans could not
have been in India because they moved from East to West. He supports
this by saying that this is how Europeans languages are so similar to
the Sanskrit language. Agrawal also says that there is no mention of
invasions in any Vedic writings. An article from thinkquest.org declares
that the Aryans did influence India. They believe that horses, an animal
not native to India, were brought with the Aryans. The Aryans also
brought a set of deities with them. The gods that they brought weren't
Indian so it can be reasoned that they were brought by a different
group of people.

16. Your personal response to this poem?

17. Homework
• Annotation page & 1 essay question
Choose 1 essay:
• To what extent does Dilip Chitre make you feel
compassion for his father in his poem ‘Father
Returning Home’?
OR:
• Examine the ways in which Dilip Chitre creates a stark
impression of the isolation of old age in this poem.