Lucy Garrett · 5 August 2003

when i first read this poem this morning i thought “against the wind as it should be” referred to the fact that he did not have a companion to walk with him against the wind, as he should have. however, i think the comma at the end of the first line is in the wrong place for that. next i thought that perhaps he is saying that it is right that he should be walking against the wind (fighting against fate rather than merely submitting to it) but again the comma at the end of the second line seems to separate out the ideas of “walking” and “as it should be.” i suppose the other interpretation is that the wind is as it should be which might be an extremely compressed way of referring to the rightness and simplicity of nature as opposed to the troubled confusion of man (the “i” of the poem seems to be battling at something). or all three, of course. the nice thing about english lit is that you don’t have to choose.

Virani Salima · 6 August 2003

Hey,

I read this poem and something about it didn’t seem right. Somehow it felt incomplete. I went through my copy of ‘All you who sleep tonight’ and found (rather smugly) that there is indeed more to this poem.

The complete version should read as follows:

The Wind

The bay is thick with flecks of white.
The freezing air is honed and thined.
The gulls sleep on the stones tonight,
Winds locked against the prising wind.
With no companion to my mood,
Against the wind as it should be,
I walk, but in my solitude
Bow to the wind that buffets me.

- Vikram Seth

Cheers,
Salima

[ed: poem at the time was just this fragment: | With no companion to my mood,
| Against the wind as it should be,
| I walk, but in my solitude
| Bow to the wind that buffets me.
Thanks, Salima!]

Nakul Krishna · 6 August 2003

I too looked up my volume of All You Who Sleep Tonight to check for a missing comma, but I find I’ve been beaten to the task of posting the full version, but the version posted above contains a couple of minor typos. And the comma’s still missing. Allow me:

The bay is thick with flecks of white.
The freezing air is honed and thinned.
The gulls sleep on the stones tonight,
Wings locked against the prising wind.
With no companion to my mood,
Against the wind, as it should be,
I walk, but in my solitude
Bow to the wind that buffets me.

I’d say it reads a lot better this way. Compare the stillness of the images of first four lines – flecks of white, thin, freezing air, sleeping gulls – with the image that follows, that of the poet walking alone against the wind. Consider the contrasts: thick/thin, sleep/walk, lock/prise. The image is evocative enough for me to resist any attempt to seek further meaning.

‘Against the wind, as it should be,’ – note the comma before the phrase ‘as it should be’. I think the meaning is clear enough: that the poet should have to walk against the freezing wind is the only way things should be. Read into the symbolism of the wind as you please.

From the Penguin website:

…Vikram Seth’s sensational new book, Two Lives … is a remarkable memoir about Seth’s great-uncle Shanti and his German wife Henny. … Henny and Shanti were both born in 1908; Henny died in 1989, and Shanti in
1998. Many of the great currents and movements of the century are reflected through the events of their lives and those of their friends and family. On the one hand, there are the days of the Raj, the Indian freedom movement and post-independence India. On the other hand there is the rise of the Third Reich, the Second World War; the situation in post-War Germany, including the division of Berlin and the blockade and airlift; the emigration of Jews from Germany in the 1930s, … the Holocaust; the formation of Israel and Palestine, and British politics, economics and society from the late 1930s until the present day.
…
Scheduled to be completed in mid-2004, Two Lives will be … published … in early 2005. The advance for the book is … over a million rupees.

Nakul.

Ian Baillieu · 8 August 2003

I was about to post that it should be ‘Wings’ at the start of the fourth line, then noticed that this typo had already been picked up by Nakul, whose comments about images and punctuation I agree with.

To enjoy this short, nicely polished poem it doesn’t seem necessary to strive for any deep interpretation of it. A snapshot observation of a scene of turbulence, and of the contrasting responses. The ‘freezing … prising’ … buffeting wind may symbolise any external force that arises to stress us. The flocked wild gulls are content to hunker down, albeit on cold stones, and wait for it to pass. The poet, without any companion, feels an obligation to take steps against the wind, but to do so must lean forward with lowered head, thus bowing to it. Save for this hint that trying to beat stress by fighting it on your own is bound to be frustrated, the poem avoids passing any judgment on the different approaches described.