A poet for whom the elegies won't dry up...

Keki N Daruwalla's career as a police officer informs his work, so much of which is peppered with references to the places he travelled to and the people he met.

You might know how this feels. Someone you read and admire is suddenly within reach. Someone you look up to spends some time advising you on how you can do better. I have always maintained that one must gaze upon their favourites from a distance, at a remove, as a way of self-preservation.

However, if you’re lucky, you have an opportunity to interact with your favourites and create a connection that you look upon fondly. Such is the case with my (email) association with poet Keki N Daruwalla. His career as a police officer informs his work, so much of which is peppered with references to the places he travelled to and the people he met. Daruwalla was also a short story writer and a novelist.

When I read about his demise in late September, I went to the poetry section of my library and read more of his work. I then made my way to the internet and read some more. As always, I found myself savouring the raw lyricism in his writing. For instance, in ‘Map-maker’, he ends with these lines, “This too is important – what is yours and mine, /The silk of these shared moments. But having stuck/to love and poetry, heeding the voice of reason;/ and experiencing the different textures of/ a season of love and love’s eternal season,/ I put a clamp on yearning, shun latitudes, renounce form./ And turn my eye to the far kingdom/ of bloodless Kalinga battling with a storm./ Dampen your fires, turn from lighthouse, spire, steeple. /Forget maps and voyaging, study instead/the parched earth horoscope of a brown people.”

Daruwalla was the recipient of many awards, including the Sahitya Akademi Award (which he returned as a form of protest), the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, and the Padma Shri.

An opportunity to email him presented itself when, upon my publisher's advice, I sent him my second collection of verse, 'The Heart is an Attic', to be reviewed in his poetry column. Among other things, he said that the book was filled with “So much about the ‘other’, who always seems to be leaving(…).”

That line cut me to the quick. You know how poets are — always sensitive and always taking offence. I wondered how an entire book could be dismissed in such a seemingly callous way.

And then, with some trepidation, I wrote to the senior poet, telling him that while I saw his point, why could I not be ‘just’ a love poet? That, perhaps, I am drawn to the sad, sordid side of love. He wrote back, saying, “(…) forget the sordid side of anything. The papers are full of rape and murder. So let poetry be uplifting. And love should be uplifting.”

How can one argue with that?

He was not one to mince words, as so many other poets can attest to. In the words of Robert Graves, Daruwalla was “a poet with a compulsion to tell the truth, no matter how cruel.” That truth-telling extended to his non-poet life, too. I saw it in his matter-of-fact approach, ranging from literary award jury duty to books he had to review. There are many like me, I am sure, who have benefitted from his generosity.

One of my favourite poems of his is 'Bars'. He writes, “If you want/a cage, my dear/you do not have/ to travel far./ If you want to feel/hemmed in, you'll be hemmed in./Look for scars/you'll be full of scars./Even light can turn/into a cage./The cage of light/has seven bars.”

I pause to take in his 'Migrations' (“…New faces among old brick;/ politeness, sentiment, dripping from the lips of strangers./This is still your house, Sir.”) marvelling at his felicity in writing lived pain. In the final strains of Underwater Notes, these lines appear: “The stars have flung/ their net into the sea/ Among the thrashing fish shoal/and the lassoed crab/look for me.”

In an article in the Punch magazine, he says, “Stole from literature —wrote elegies though no near one had died. When they died, the elegies had dried up.”

In Keki N Daruwalla’s case, the elegies will not dry up, and his words will always stay — reminding us (me) to write more, write better, and engage with the world. Go well, sir. And thank you.

World in Verse is a monthly column on the best of new (and old) poetry. The writer is a poet, teacher, voice actor and speaker. She has published two collections of poetry. Send your thoughts to her at [e-mail]