‘To the Foot from its Child’ narrates the journey of a child’s foot until it becomes an adult foot and beyond until it dies. In the first stanza there are only two lines which express the innocence of the child and its wishes. The child wants to be a butterfly or an apple, but society is harsh and forces the child to become a responsible adult doing responsible adult things.
In the next stanza, the child’s foot walks in the real world and experiences the harsh realities of life. The words, ‘StOneS, bits of glass, streets, ladders, paths in the rough surface of the earth’ symbolize the forces in society. When the child’s foot encounters them in a battle, it learns that its role is that of a foot only and it cannot become a butterfly or an apple. The foot is now imprisoned in a shoe, where it grows into an adult. It gets exposed to reality as filtered through the shoe. It suffers loneliness and gradually learns the realities of life groping in the dark like a blind man.
During this life inside the shoe, it loses all the beauty of a child’s foot. Its soft, nice, petal-like toes lose their beauty become hard, callused and look like eyeless reptiles. The ‘foot’, now having grown into an adult foot, keeps on walking, works without respite in fields, markets, mines and ministries. It toils hard giving up all its worldly pleasures and finally dies. It is then buried. But, as it descends into the ground, it loses its human awareness and does not know that it is not even a foot. So, in its spirit it is like the child’s foot and dreams of becoming a butterfly or an apple.
Thus, the poet depicts his view of life in the metaphor of a foot, with clear progression from infancy, to maturity, to adulthood, old age and finally death.
