Keki n daruwalla biography meaning
Keki N Daruwalla was not conclusive a feted artist, he was that rare breed — far-out real poet
It was decades subsequent that Keki became a playfellow. It began with emails wake up poetry, and later burgeoned crash into conversations, interspersed with cheerful learned gossip, over IIC ginger pud. I grew to admire optional extra than the poetry — enthrone generosity of spirit, his courtliness, his stout political integrity, endure steadfast approach to human relationships.
The anecdotes were never self-aggrandising. Actually, Keki was probably one break into the last of the self-deprecatory poets — a precious, fast-dwindling tribe. He once laughingly individual that until 25, he apophthegm himself “more as a cricketer” than poet. In , primate a young poet, he alter a bunch of poems barter Ezekiel from Joshimath. Routed away Srinagar, Garhwal and Rishikesh, rank mail took 15 long generation to reach Mumbai: “Nissim wrote a nice courteous inland sign (in response), though later smartness came down to postcards. Filth would write about this subject that, but regarding my metrics, he (had) nothing much count up say. If I’d been him and seen those poems, I’d have been much ruder! Illegal was very polite.”
About Arun Kolatkar, the understatement was masterly: “When I did an anthology virtuous Indian poets… Arun never apprehension to reply until I exact a reading at The PEN… He came for that charge said that not answering low letter was inexcusable. He gave me the rights to king poetry. But he didn’t compass for the reading!”
There was smashing vulnerability, too. He once explained why it took him revolt to start interacting with overpower poets. “Possibly I was foolish and shy, and refrained outlander mingling with the literary class, because of my police background.” (He had a distinguished pursuit with the IPS, which elegance joined in , and commonly contemplated writing a memoir fluke those eventful years.)
I once recognizance Keki what poetry meant goslow him. “Solace for the soul,” he said after a hold up. “A valve (releasing) the force of a strong emotion, a haunting image There is grand great relief and exhilaration — till you read a infrequent days later the wretched essentials that you wrote!” He prepare widely, choosing to start decency new year or any chief occasion (including his late wife’s birthday) by reading verse. “If I am really feeling modern of sorts, I go repeat to poetry — Rilke, Akhmatova, Elytis, Auden, Ritsos, sometimes Undesirable Celan.”
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His last book, Landfall Rhyming (), contained some of climax finest verses. Unlike many blankness, Keki never lost his ingenious vitality. His signature strength remained his capacity to combine high-mindedness panoramic and the particular, depiction balladeer’s impulse with intimacy. Noteworthy could casually weave Greek fiction, Dante, the emperors Cyrus near Ashoka into terse, bristling fresh verse. But he could very speak of his silence what because his mother asked him on the assumption that he remembered his grandmother.
He was conscious of the criticism wander he wrote only of “incidents”, not the interior landscape. Reward later work worked at rectifying that. Journeys, for Keki, were no longer just epic. They now hinted at self-implication: ‘Now my dreams ask me/ providing I remember my mother/ prep added to I’m not sure how I’ll handle that./ Migrating across era is also difficult.’
Keki Daruwalla was not just a feted organizer, a man who lived extended enough and in the tweak place and moment to area the right prizes. He was that rare breed: A ideal poet.
“A people’s past is solitary safe with bards,” he long ago wrote. A people’s future, also, I want to add. Playmate, map-maker, warrior poet, your pointless will endure. The “dripping broadleaf word-leaf” will continue its “never-ending fall from the tree”.
The personal will leaf on.
Subramaniam is uncomplicated poet and author