This document provides an overview and comparison of three South Asian poets: Kamala Das, Nissim Ezekiel, and Aurangzeb Alamgir Hashmi. It summarizes some of their major themes and stylistic features. For Kamala Das, it discusses her poems "Summer in Calcutta" and "A Losing Battle" which address women's struggles against oppression and male domination. For Nissim Ezekiel, it analyzes his poems "Poet, Lover, Birdwatcher" and "Minority Poem" which highlight poetic creation and sensibility. For Alamgir Hashmi, it examines his poem "Testing Ground" which technically denounces authority that sends soldiers to dangerous areas. Overall

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Sheikh Saifullah Ahmed
Student Id-MA-191402
English Discipline
Khulna University
South Asian English Writings-Eng 5109
24 November, 2018
Thematic and Stylistic Features of the Three South Asian Poets:
A Comparative Study
Kamala Das (1933-2009), Nissim Ezekiel (1924-2004) and Aurangzeb Alamgir
Hashmi (1951-) are the three prominent South Asian English poets. They have experimented
on diverse socio-cultural issues in their poetry, such as women’s struggle against sexual, and
domestic oppression, male domination, war, religion, poetic sensibility and poetic creation.
However, in this paper (assignment), I have tried to compare the thematic and stylistic
features of the poets analyzing Kamala Das’s “Summer in Calcutta” and “A Losing Battle”,
Nissim Ezekiel’s “Poet, Lover, Birdwatcher” and “Minority Poem” and Alamgir Hashmi’s
“Testing Ground”.
Kamala Das is a celebrated South Asian poet. Her writings echo her personal
experiences. As a woman, she experiences women’s struggle against sexual subjugation and
domestic oppression. Her confessional practice of writing is comparable to Sylvia Plath
(1932-1963) and W. B. Yeats (1865-1939).

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Nissim Ezekiel is often considered as the father of post-independent modern Indian
English poetry. Ezekiel has enriched and established Indian English language poetry through
his modernist innovations and techniques. His delicate, restrained and well-crafted diction,
dealing with common and ordinary themes and realistic sensibility have influenced other
succeeding poets. His poems “Poet, Lover, Birdwatcher” and “Minority Poem” highlight the
poetic creation and poetic sensibility of the poet.
Alamgir Hashmi is a Pakistani poet who also writes in English, is known as a
transnational humanist. He argues for a “comparative” aesthetic to substitute humane cultural
norms. He demonstrates and advocates new tracks of reading the classical and modern texts
and emphasizes the sublime nature, position and pleasures of language arts to be shared,
rejecting their reduction to social or professional utilities.
The subject matter of their poems is not confined within the India-Pakistan context,
rather they spread their universality throughout the world. Therefore, Das’s talking about the
issues of Indian women echoes the issues of women all over the world. She takes Indian
women as a medium to talk about women all over the world. She illustrates the fact that
women are being subjugated both physically and mentally due to marriage commitments and
customs. Women are being bound to live with the persons whom they do not love. They are
compelled to take part in the scene of love-making (sex).
Love, sex, denial and male domination are the thematic aspects of Das’s poems. Das
confesses her state and shares factual real-life experiences through her poems. She confesses
sexual dissatisfaction in her life, desires for a satisfactory physical intimacy and riots against
patriarchy through the poem “Summer in Calcutta”. Das’s “Summer in Calcutta” is
influenced by John Keats' (1795-1821) “Ode on Indolence”. These two poems are
comparable in a stylistic point of view. Here, “The April Sun” symbolizes masculinity,

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sexuality and male domination. Das compares “April sun” with “an orange”, “My glass”
metaphorically suggests the “body” and “noble venom” is the oxymoron. Here, Biological
drive is compared with “venom”.
Das confesses that she is not happy with her husband and desires to mingle with the
imagined lover. she cannot bear the heat of “April sun”. Her mental attachment is with the
person whom she loves and physical attachment is with her husband whom she does not love.
Yet, she has to live with her husband, as she is bound by marriage customs. Adrienne Rich’s
“Aunt Jennifer's Tigers” illustrates how Aunt Jennifer traps into a marriage ring like the
speaker of the poem.
In “A Losing Battle”, she illustrates men’s deception in love-making. According to
Das, for a man, love is not the whole thing rather it is just a part. In contrast, for a woman,
love is the whole thing. A parallel idea has been shared by Joseph Pearce. He claims that a
woman shares everything of her life when she loves, but a man only shares a tiny part of his
life when he loves. Therefore, depending on real-life experiences, Das is suggesting women
not to fall in the trap of men’s love.
Nissim Ezekiel uses excessively present participle in his writings. He uses three
metaphorically synonymous words “Poet”, “Lover” and “Birdwatcher” to elucidate
Wordsworth’s philosophy that tranquillity, perseverance, emotion and desire are equally
required in composing poems, making love and watching beautiful birds. He defines the
concepts of poet and poem. He compares the poet with male and poetry with female. An
aphoristic statement “the best poet waits for words” shapes Ezekiel's philosophy. “Timid
wing” indicates the wing of the Muse, Goddess of poetry or Keats’s nightingale that
metaphorically suggests the poetic creation and “to watch rare birds” refers to the creation of

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individual art or poetry. The phrase “heart dark floor” refers to the poet’s heart’s mysterious
corner from where the individual art is created.
In “Minority poem”, Ezekiel also experiments with poetic creation. The poem can be
interpreted both from the religious and poetic perspective. Each poet has his own
individuality. Some poets remain minor because they choose the paths which are less
travelled. In the poem, “invisible guests” refers to the poetic conscience and “alien
techniques” refers to the unconventional or individual way of creating art. According to
Ezekiel, only traditional influence is not sufficient to become a good poet. A poet must be
recognized for his individual and unique technique.
Alamgir Hashmi is recognized as a transnational global humanist. His poetry is
layered with cultural and historical inscriptions. He denounces the people who support the
war in his poem “Testing Ground”. Hashmi offers his thoughts technically in his poem, as he
is dealing with a controversial topic like war. He comments on the situation of the soldiers
who are sent to Siachen garrison to guard the border area and to save the country from the
enemies’ probable attack. The soldiers struggle there to survive against the harsh weather.
They fight against nature, not against the enemies and they die for nothing. Hashmi
technically denounces the authority who has sent the soldiers at the garrison. The authority
does not care if the soldiers are dead or alive, rather mother nature feels pity for the soldiers
who die in vain. For establishing his thoughts, he uses oxymoron and irony, such as “Nature's
heart melts” and “It sheds a tear” which are ironical towards the authority who sends the
soldiers to Siachen garrison to guard the border area and forgets about their safety. Even, for
their sufferings, the mother nature cries, but the authority does not care for them.
To sum up, it can be claimed that Kamala Das, Nissim Ezekiel and Alamgir Hashmi
have not used a similar pattern in their poems. They differ from each other and they have

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chosen the ways which are less explored and that has made all the differences among them.
Therefore, all three poets are unique by their own rights. They have their individualities to
create their own individual art in the world of South Asian poetry. Though they are
individuals, their thematic aspects are universal.

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Works Cited
Das, Kamala. “A Losing Battle.” Poem Hunter. 28 Mar. 2012. Web. 09 Sep. 2018.
---, “Summer in Calcutta.” Poem Hunter. 28 Mar. 2012. Web. 13 Sep. 2018.
Ezekiel. Nissim. “Minority Poem.” Poem Hunter. 28 Mar. 2012. Web. 16 Sep. 2018.
---, “Poet, Lover, Birdwatcher.” Poem Hunter. 28 Mar. 2012. Web. 20 Sep. 2018.
Hashmi, Alamgir. “Testing Ground.” Poem Hunter. 28 Mar. 2012. Web. 05 Oct. 2018.
Kant, Rajni. “A Quest for the Unknown: Kamala Das as a Poet of Body and Sexual
Aspirations.” Journal of Indian Research 1.4 (2013): 145-148: PDF.
Khanna, Meeta Ajay. “Critical Tenets of Nissim Ezekiel’s Poetry: A Perspective.” EIEELLH
III. VII (2015): 592-598. PDF.
Reza, Amra. “The Subcontinent Palimpsest in Alamgir Hashmi’s Poetry.” South Asian
Studies 29.1 (2014): 137-148. PDF.