In the heart-touching poem ‘Father Returning Home’, the poet shows a very subjective inner world of man through the depiction of his own father in his old age. The father in the poem comes home from work on a “late evening train standing among the silent commuters in the yellow light”. No one pays attention to him. His getting off the train is as unimportant as a word dropped from a long sentence. He hurries towards home without waiting for a moment. Seemingly there is no one even in the platform who may show interest in the man.

Making the matter worse, the situation does not change in his own home. Returning home after the whole day’s work, he only gets a weak tea and stale chapati, suggesting the lack of care he receives at home. His children or other family members don’t like to talk to him. That is why he reads a book or finds solace inside the toilet to contemplate over his isolation at home. He listens to the noisy radio while going to sleep. He thinks of his ancestors and grandchildren to escape from the horrible present and reminds of nomads entering the subcontinent through a narrow pass to probably think of how the world has changed since then.

The father is thus living a life estranged from his surrounding people. What is more, he himself is aware of his isolation. The poet has vividly conveyed the sense of an intensely subjective inner world of the man who knows of his loneliness, contemplates on the same and tries to escape from this situation.