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Highway Stripper by A.K. Ramanujan
Highway Stripper by A.K. Ramanujan
by A. K. Ramanujan
a straw
hat,
a white shoe fit
to be a fetish,
then another,
a heavy pleated skirt
and a fluttery
slip, faded pink,
frayed lace- edge
and all
(I even heard it swish),
a leg-of-mutton blouse
Just as fluttery.
And as I stepped
on the gas
and my car lunged
into the fifty feet
between me
and them,
a rather ordinary,
used, and off-white bra
for smallish
breasts whirled off
the window
and struck
a farmer’s barbed wire
with yellow-green wheat grass
beyond
and spread-eagled on it,
pinned
by the blowing wind.
In that absolute
second,
that glimpse and after-
image in this hell
of voyeurs, I saw
only one at the wheel:
a man,
about forty.
A spectacled profile
looking only
at the road
beyond the nose of his Mustang,
with a football
radio on.
had he stripped
not only hat
and blouse, shoes
and panties
and bra,
had he shed maybe
even the woman
he was wearing,
or was it me
moulting, shedding
vestiges,
old investments,
rushing forever
towards a perfect
coupling
with naked nothing
in a world
without places.
Stanza 1
What is significant in these lines is the fact that the hand that has
come out of the side of the car is described as a woman’s hand but at
the same time we are told that it has a wrist watch on it. Normally one
would expect a woman’s hand to have a bangle or a bracelet on it. The
hand wearing a wrist watch becomes significant only in retrospect
when we reach the end of the poem. For the moment we brush aside
this question that has come up and move on to read what happens
next. The words ‘whirling’ and ‘hurtling’ aptly describe the speed at
which the cars are travelling.
Stanza 2-4
The next three stanzas provide the details about the clothing items
that come hurtling out of the car. A straw hat, a white shoe, a heavy
pleated skirt and a fluttery slip (which is faded pink), a leg- of- a
-mutton blouse follow one after another. The speaker increases his
speed to minimize the distance between his car and the one in front.
Then follows an ordinary, used and off white bra which whirls off the
window and gets stuck on the barbed wire around a farmer’s
Stanza 5 – 8
The poem even at this stage is more about the speaker than about the
highway stripper. Excited and desperate with curiosity he longs to see
what is going on inside the car. His imagination runs wild. He thinks
that the stripper by now is probably naked with her lover or more than
one lover in the car. Just thinking about the possibilities of what might
be happening inside the moving Mustang arouse all erotic desires in
the speaker and we as readers stand along side him – all keyed up and
curious as well.
Frustrated by the dusty rear window of the Mustang the speaker steps
on the gas and finally overtakes the car to take a peep inside. With
this peep however, the mystery about the highway stripper only
deepens further.
The Anti-climax
The stanza describing what’s happening inside the moving Mustang
comes as an anti- climax to the whole erotic build-up. There is no sign
of a woman or any other occupant in the car — just a lonely, fortyish
man, staring at the road ahead, listening to a football match on the
radio.
Along with the speaker we too are confused! What could possibly have
happened? Where has the stripper vanished? What about the clothes
that had been flung out of the same car only a few moments back? Is
the driver of the Mustang having some kind of an identity crisis? Is he
a case of the ‘third sex’ a trans-sexual? Is that the reason why he had
dressed up as a woman? Has he thrown away his women’s clothing
because he is driving towards a city and would soon be leaving the
anonymity and the loneliness of the highway behind him? A number of
such questions come to our mind as we read. The ‘hand with a wrist
watch on it’ now makes sense. All along it has been the hand of a man
and not of a woman. The speaker has to steady his pace ‘against the
circling trees.’ He is almost reeling with shock at not finding what he
had expected to find. His repeated looks in the rear view mirror only
confirm what he has already seen. There is no stripper in the Mustang
– only a middle-aged, lonely man. We are still trying to grapple with
this sudden shift in development when another one occurs in the next
stanza giving an entirely different perspective to the situation.
Stanza 9
Seeing only a man and no woman inside the Mustang the speaker
questions: had he stripped
had he stripped
not only hat
and blouse, shoes and panties and bra
had he shed maybe
even the woman
he was wearing,
The items of clothing that have been flung out of the car have all been
those of a woman. Yet all along it has been a man who has been
throwing those clothes from the car. The poet’s question is whether in
shedding the women’s clothing that man has even shed the ‘woman he
was wearing?’ Is there some kind of an identity crisis going on here?
Has that man come to terms
Stanza 10
‘Or was it me,’ asks the poet, ‘moulting, shedding vestiges, old
investments, rushing forever towards a perfect coupling with naked
nothing in a world without places?’
Power entails the seeking of more power; power and privilege need
defences. Men have to overcome the temptation of this kind of
seeking. They have to throw away their defences.
Power, privilege, pride, in fact maleness itself are all obstacles in the
path of a true spiritual experience. To attain oneness with god one has
to overcome all these obstacles, throw away all defences and
privileges to be ready for a true inwardness, a true experience of god.
The desire for Androgyny that has surfaced in the poem can thus be
contextualized in the Bhakti tradition and understood as being a step
towards a true experience of God which can happen only in a world
without boundaries. The poet mentions a ‘world without places’ where
such a union can occur. This signifies the fact that once you are ready
for a oneness with god physical ‘place’ becomes irrelevant. Once one is
able to transcend all physical boundaries that one has set for oneself
the entire world becomes one, ‘a world without places.’ In the
metaphorical sense the highway thus assumes an added significance.
It becomes a part of that ‘world without places.’
Conclusion