Political Prufrocks

Though T S Eliot’s long poem “The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock” was criticized as “senseless rambling of a confused mind,” it epitomizes modern people in general and Nepali politicians in particular. This poem is an exemplary piece of literature that justifies its relevance even now. Prufrock somehow represents Nepali politicians.

Prufrock repeats, “And indeed there will be time,” as if he has thousands of years to live but this sufficiency of time is not for doing something worthwhile but for delaying. The reflection of this delay syndrome is very common in our political context. We are eyewitnesses of the demise of the first Constituent Assembly (CA) after much dillydallying and several postponements. The finalized schedule for constitution drafting was amended 12 times, reflecting our leaders’ inefficiency. 

Similar to Prufrock, our leaders too have indecisive psychology, not knowing whether they dare or not accomplish the main task they have been assigned to. Pretending as if they dare, they gather at Baneshwar as Prufrock goes to “hotels” and “sawdust restaurants”. But our leaders have not been able to convince the public that they are capable of carrying out the deeds assigned to them. Everyone seems, like Prufrock, to be asking to themselves the questions like, “Do we dare?”, “And how should we begin?” Their speeches delivered at different places and occasions can’t convince the public that they would accomplish the task.

Daily activities of our political leaders reflect that they don’t want to “disturb the universe” or don’t want to rock the boat. Risks are not their concerns. Despite being so ineffective in his role, Prufrock insists that everything could change “in a minute” like our leaders’ ostentatious confidence. Their recurrent reiteration of drafting constitution within a year without settling the disputes in major concerns like federal structure, number of the states and the like is nothing but a big joke. 

Rather than concentrating on issues of grave concerns, they have been putting them on hold. They have not decided the presidents for different committees of the CA and have not nominated the remaining 26 members yet. More tragically, at the time of passing the major bills, majority of the top leaders were found absent in the CA Hall which echoes their procrastination tendency in carrying out the assignment. 

Prufrock tries to convince us that he is a wise man with lots of experiences and accomplishments: He has drunk a lot of coffee; he has lived through a lot of mornings and afternoons and so on. Moreover, he falsely thinks that he has impressed others but in fact he is damning himself before our eyes. The speeches of our leaders too echo the same. What they utter sounds impressive but their activities till date have raised questions about their commitments since they have yielded nothing substantive.

Moreover, Prufrock’s pretention of being an assertive, confident guy by making a bunch of comically minor decisions are analogous to our leaders’ frequent visits to different places for inaugural programs, meetings with their cadres and engagement in insignificant matters, showing their disinclination to visit the CA Hall.

Prufrock, in the poem, compares himself not with Hamlet, though he is expert in delaying the things, but with the old fool Polonious, a character in Hamlet who is expert in using fancy words and proverbs like our leaders, who too seem to have mastered decorum but are loaded with zero confidence.

Postponement of the major concerns and not being worried about it, not making decisions or making very comical decisions, pretention of being confident but not materializing it in practical life, interested in small pleasures of food and fashion are Prufrockian syndromes. All these syndromes are explicitly visible in our political leaders. Like Prufrock’s failure of not being able to sing a love song to a woman he liked, there is the lurking fear amongst the public of our leaders’ failure in completing the prescribed task—drafting the constitution on time. Leaders need better understanding on issues of national import and they should not defer things any longer.