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Mapping memories
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Poet Keki Daruwala, winner of the Sahitya Akademi and Commonwealth Poetry Awards, shared his thoughts on poetry when he was in the city recently.
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POEM SPEAK: Keki Daruwalla
THEY ARE all there in Keki Daruwalla's poetry, "Soldier's field and Mila's statue, west of Volgograd" (Green Shoots at Volgograd), Mohenjo Daro (Of Mohenjo Daro at Oxford) and "the rock-temples of Rimkhim" (Crossing Chorhoti). His verse is strewn with variegated imagery inspired from nature, sometimes re-contextualised - Keki makes his subjects - the Buddha, Draupadi, the Pandavas, and the Map makers of Majorca - susceptible to new meanings. Recently in town for a poetry reading session, Keki Daruwalla enthralled all at the British Council Library. The programme was jointly organised by Akshara and the British Library.
The Little Theatre read out select verses, and prose, from his The Map Maker and A House in Ranikhet. The sufficiently large gathering impressed Keki, who said, "If I mention that 12 people read my poems, people will not believe it in Delhi!"
RAPT ATTENTION: The Interested audience.
Keki's travels, his encounters with people - both mythical and historical - commoners and prophets, all are entrenched in poems (and prose) written over decades - both in service, as a Police Official and thereafter, as a full time writer-poet. He loves the people of Hyderabad - "in Delhi you never know when people will rub you the wrong way, but here people are so much gentler." This poet-winner of both the Sahitya Akademi and Commonwealth Poetry awards - spent some time sharing his thoughts on his poetry, among other things.
Your poetry seems to have influences of the Eastern traditions - both Sanskritic and non-Sanskritic? "Yes, indeed. In the poem on the Fire Sermon - Agni Sutta (in The Map-maker) - I was giving a lecture at an international seminar on Buddhism and its influence on German thought. Buddha of course can't fail to impress you. Even in school I was very affected by Buddhism, and I have written poems on Charavaka, and one on the Parijatha tree (the huge one in Barabanki). People say the Pandavas stayed under it. All these legends do come in. It does not just remain a legend, you kind of philosophise. The Agni Sutta came in very handy, because the Fire Sermon is terrible - Buddha is saying, `everything is on fire'. I went through a very bad phase in the last three years and a sense of loss. That comes through in the last stanza ("but you missed the fire of absence, lord... that burns a hole in the soul, the heart, drills a hole in the sky.") Maya, of course, followed. Immediately after I wrote Agni Sutta I couldn't help writing on Maya, which ends with death "and birth was born so that death could come into existence." Otherwise this book (The Map maker) is devoid of any sorrow; apart from one or two poems; I wrote it just around the millennium, I wanted it to be joyous - the poem Miracle is all about jubilation. Different thoughts occur to you at different moments and moods and you put all of them in whatever you are writing."
Your work has a lot of movement, travel, the sea - the Mediterranean impresses you so much and civilisational contexts. "There is a book on the Millennium by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto - he has written a thousand-page book, one page for each year of the millennium from 1000 to 2000. I came across this incident, since I was writing about maps - the map makers from Majorca, it seems, were better than all others. There is the Mediterranean in that. I'm commenting on many things, especially the small town man, the small island man. Civilisational context is definitely there. How map making came across. I was also writing of Vasco da Gama in prose. I have been to Israel and Egypt and I know a little of that area. I travelled around Italy in a car."
What about the divide between the East and the West, the assumed divide between the two in terms of thought and perception that you have touched on quite a lot in your work - why does that fascinate you? "I have not done it sort of deliberately, not like the novelists do, who have to bring in the west to sell; to get published abroad. If there isn't an American or a British or a French character in their novel, the publisher may not be interested. I wish this to be made note of. I suppose this comes naturally if you are talking of Map Making; because map making came from there. I studied the days of Vasco da Gama, the voyages of Bartholomew. In A House in Ranikhet there are four stories on Portuguese missionaries. They go to an island and they give them a clock. People are asking them can it time the life hereafter; there is total incredulity as far as concepts are concerned - how one people think and the others do; it is such a huge clock. (He reads out) "the wretched laughed at Vasco da Gama at his face. Four of us carried this gift. Does this clock also record the time in after life? Does the same time hold good for spirits; have you heard of eternity, they asked us. Will it record half an eternity or a quarter. does time laze when we laze, does it weaken? Does it turn frenetic? Can it record the time taken for a soul to migrate from one body to another? These are differing perceptions of very different people."
When did poetry come to you? "Very early and through Walter Scott and others of the time." What has been the context of your poetry? "I reflect what we are seeing, interiorise what is happening externally. You have to put it through the sieve of your conscience, your mind, you values. I can't define the context. The reader will find it."
Is poetry as a genre disappearing? "Yes it is. Poetry reflects contemporary reality and your internal response to contemporary reality, more intensely than any other genre. Possibly drama can sometimes do it, but novels certainly can't. For fiction is narrative and a narrative can never be sudden, while in a poem you can say in one page what in fiction you can in thirty, sometimes. I feel surprised that people don't take to poetry and one of the reasons is that possibly students are forced to read poetry. Poetry should always be optional and a pleasure.Poems that touch a chord in the heart should be prescribed. But many do write poetry. But the interest dies out, both in writing and reading. That shouldn't happen."
Do you think publishers are willing to publish poetry? "I blame both publishers and book sellers. Book sellers should display your books with the broad front outside, so that people see the title. It is not that people are totally disinterested. I went to a bookshop looking for a poetry book, and the lady at the shop said `we never keep poetry' and she was quite happy in saying that! What have been your childhood experiences? "I moved from school to school and town to townfrom one medium to the other - from Urdu to English to Gujarati and back to Urdu - I had a very bad time. My father was an eminent professor-N.C. Daruwalla, who taught in Government College Lahore. He played cricket and billiards. We left Punjab before Partition, my elder brother stayed back. We went to Junagadh, then to Rampur. I went to the Government College Ludhiana. That changed my life. I wrote short stories in school; liked drama, but I totally left drama, to concentrate on poetry. In college I played cricket. I missed my Ranji trophy I don't know how! I got into the Police at the age of 20; I took to poetry even further, as a sort of compensatory mechanism."
Of the characters from real life in his work, he says, "yes, there is a story in House in Ranikhet called A Monologue in Harsinghpurgola (a real place name) - it starts with a woman accusing everybody - that is from real life, rest of it is imaginary. It happens once in a blue moon. Otherwise every case in the police can become a short story. I tended to avoid that. I was posted in Ranikhet for two and half years. The first story came just like that; then I decided there should be a cluster of stories; it is like a novel. After a hundred pages the characters grow on you. Ranikhet was a very nice place; my first daughter was born there. We had a lovely house. We bought our first car - a blue Standard Herald! I married in 1965; in 1966 I moved from Joshimath to Ranikhet. Joshimath and Badrinath figure in my earlier poems."
What do you want to say to people about poetry? "One shouldn't move away from poetry - for much of our aesthetics come from poetry; religion started with poetry, thought started with poetry; the epics - Ramayana Mahabharata, Iliad. If you believe in the occult, when the Devi descends, she descends on the shaman (who) has also been reciting slokas. I have written essays on science and poetry and religion and poetry. There must have been a time when science or knowledge was all combined in one man or one lady. Poetry is literally god given. It can't be put aside because people have taken to the TV or computer or magazines."
At the session, your satire on the change of History syllabus was read out (from A House in Ranikhet). How important is the comment on contemporary happenings? "Social comment is absolutely necessary. Otherwise you write in your own prostate world. Comments shouldn't be left only to editors in editorials, and journalists and filmmakers."
R. UMA MAHESHWARI
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