Explicating figures of speech to students who love to hate poetry is always an experience that you sometimes feel you would not like to assign to your worst enemy. The youth(fool) language today is as bald as the bed of a river in the scorching summer months. The social media, often their place to be and never not to be, is excellent, if at all, at banality. The Wapp University has many departments for sure. Even the world wide gurudom there refuses to touch poetry with a barge pole! What to expect then of the dedicated disciples?
Yet simile can somehow be simplified. Robert Burns'"My love is like a red, red rose", the eternally best example, is indeed a gem of a poem. You can not only extend it to add examples of the 'metaphor' easily, you can moreover let it bloom into a symbol. Whether or not the days and the week dedicated to 'love mania' are in the full bloom, they instantly get the colour (yellow, pink, red) symbolism.
Images are tough to trace indeed. Perception, the human activity involved, is a bother to begin with. Explaining the five senses can drive you senseless. My panacea to overcome this dis-ease is the song "ek ladki ko dekha". It is a brilliant series of lovely images. Let me look at an example or two, and leave you to explore the rest. " sandal ki raat", for instance, captures the beloved's dusky beauty, her uniqueness, her fragrant and rare presence, while "mandir me ho ek jalata diya" captures her illuminated persona, her soft, pure gentleness. As the first example appeals to the eyes and nose, you can thus readily and easily explain the visual and the olfactory images. The second example I have referred to explains the spatial and the kinetic imagery as well. And the explication can go on, without any boredom setting in. In fact, often, they join in the process, too. Whosoever said, Bollywood buries brains of its addicts? At times, Bollywood blooms the best!
Pratima@Aai-Papa's generation, a little wary of R.D's rhythm/felt, in this song, music he could fathom!
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