Keki N Daruwalla, both poet and policeman, dies

Keki Daruwalla, one of India’s finest poets who wrote in English and winner of the Sahitya Akademi award, and a former police officer, passed away Thursday late evening. He was 87.

Born in Lahore in 1937 in a Parsi family, he studied at Government College, Ludhiana. His family moved to Junagarh before Partition and then to Rampur. In 1958, he joined the UP cadre of the Indian Police Service. He rose to become a Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on International Affairs. He had a spell with the erstwhile Special Service Bureau till 1965. He worked at the Cabinet Secretariat and retired in 1995 as chairman, Joint Intelligence Committee. He was appointed a member of the National Commission of Minorities from 2011 to 2014.

However, it is his role as a poet, as well as a writer, that brought him national and international fame. His first book of poetry, ‘Under Orion’, came out in 1970. Written in 18 months, “it carried seeds of much of my later writing, raucous poems on riots, delving in myths”, in his own words. His first novel, ‘For Pepper and Christ’, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Fiction Prize in 2010. He was awarded the Padma Shri in 2014. Daruwalla’s column in The Tribune, titled Musings & Maledictions, was very popular with its readers.

“My poetry moved with history,” he once said, admitting he sounded pompous, but that is what defined his work. For instance, during the Emergency, he wrote a collection called, ‘Winter Poems’, recording his inner anguish over the exercise of state power. In 1984, he won the Sahitya Akademi award for his collection of poems, ‘The Keeper of the Dead’.

Three decades later, amid rising intolerance, however, he didn’t think twice before returning that award. "Sadly, in recent months,” he said, “it (the Akademi) has not stood up as boldly as it should for values that any literature stands for, namely freedom of expression against threat, upholding the rights of the marginalised, speaking up against superstitions and intolerance of any kind. The Akademi has also not distinguished itself in standing by authors who are under political duress,” he added, in a letter to the Akademi’s president.

He shall be missed by all in The Tribune family and by all our readers.