Remembering Keki Daruwalla, the gifted writer

Politics and murder

September 10, 2017

Indian public, and more so people from Karnataka and Maharashtra, are turning cynical because nothing has turned up from the investigations of three murders earlier, of Professors Dabholkar, Pansare and Kalburgi, all respected thinkers and writers.

I have written on politics and poetry before. Never knew I would also be writing on politics and murder one day. Every right thinking person in the country is shocked at the murder of Gauri Lankesh, a die-hard anti-right editor and journalist, on September 5 in Bengaluru.

New beginnings

January 7, 2018

A new year should not start with anything acerbic; no whining, no whingeing, nothing negative. Start with song and poetry and carols. That should be the spirit. Since these days the powers that be are taking us back to the Vedic age time and again, here’s a verse from WH Auden’s ‘Two Don Quixote Lyrics’, on the golden age:

‘Then flowers bloomed and fruits grew ripe with effortless fertility,/ And nymphs and shepherds danced all day in circles with agility;/ Then every shepherd to his dear was ever true and amorous,/ And nymphs of seventy and more were lovely still and glamorous.’

Crime and Punishment

February 25, 2018

Now why would Nirav Modi want to defraud a bank? You are living a decent life, have enough money and jewels to go around the world twenty times in a luxury liner. Why do you want more? Now he will be a hunted felon... Gandhiji once said, ‘There is enough for everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone’s greed.’

Friends, I am going to unload a philosophic theory on your unsuspecting minds. Here it goes. All would-be criminals are better off before they commit the crime than after. The aftermath is hell — and I am not referring to Dostoevsky’s ‘Crime and Punishment’ and such literary artefacts, conscience and such inconsequential feelings. I am talking of day-to-day reality, the bric-a-brac of our daily existence. The property dealer who kills his partner, the husband who suspects (possibly stupidly) his wife’s fidelity, the family which sets the daughter-in-law on fire for dowry, encounter specialists of Gujarat who knock out faux terrorists and their wives — all come within the ambit of my theory. Now you deal with lawyers and their fees and a lifetime in jail.

Apology for TV

March 4, 2018

The most disappointing feature of the past few days was the Indian television. It really let the country down. For three full days, if not four, it just went on and on about Sridevi. However fine an actress she was, and her sudden death was tragic, you couldn’t stand hour on hour, day on day of this. Yes, the viewer could have been given news of this from time to time, in 10-minute slots. But this was almost as bad as the Doordarshan coverage of Mrs Indira Gandhi’s death. If that death coverage had been shortened, less people would have died in 1984. It brings up the question — are we a people who suffer from necrophilia by any chance?

The TV went lachrymose, weepy, in ineffectual attempts to play on sentiments... Poor show, Television India. And meanwhile, three big elections, with no coverage, took place in the North-East. North-East is side-stream, isn’t it? It is not Haryana or UP.

The short story

March 24, 2019

The short story has made a sort of a revival. Some excellent anthologies of European fiction have come out from UK and USA. The short story has changed considerably during the last 50 years. The plot has become secondary, it is the narration that counts, with twists and turns of the narrator’s mood. Let us say, an elopement can be planned for the night, every angle thought of, and then the man goes home in the evening, and the story ends. You will not be told whether they manage to flee. Since then, this genre has been leaning towards metafiction. Borges and Marquez and Rushdie have shown writers the way. Kafka is always there in the unconscious, but Maupassant and O Henry are missing from the current vogue. Hemingway is also in the departure lounge. Despite the large-scale transfer of readership to the web, the printed word and the short story are holding forth.

Old order Changeth

March 31, 2019

As a kid in 1946, I watched in shock and awe two billiards players, in a semi-final, potting the white ball. It was never done. Now I am told it is par for the course, as golfers say. Bishan Singh Bedi got into trouble objecting to English fast bowlers applying cream or something on the ball.

Today, the ethos is aggressive. Bare your chest, pump your fist, shower expletives on the batsman. You cannot urge aggression and sportsmanship in players at the same time. Mindsets are going aggressive. Cow saviours are on the kill. The police get aggressive, killing 70 in 3,000 encounters in Uttar Pradesh. Now, space is turning into a battleground for aggression! The old order changeth.

Brown bread and liberty of J&K leaders

September 27, 2019

Little Tommy Tucker,

He sings for his supper.

What shall he eat?

White bread and butter.

Well, from all accounts, the Kashmiri political leaders in indefinite detention are better off. Listen to what the honourable Dr Jitendra Singh, Union Minister of State in the PMO, no less, stated on September 22 in Jammu on Maharaja Hari Singh’s birth anniversary. He stated that these leaders (detained Kashmiri leaders) asked for brown bread at breakfast and they got it. (Incidentally, some of what passes off for brown bread is actually ‘caramelised’, meaning the dough has been mixed with burnt sugar, but we will let that pass.)....

The minister’s logic cannot be taken seriously. If a good breakfast is all that people need, a few aloo paranthas in the morning and a CD or two, people would start pleading guilty in courts and lawyers would become briefless.

You want to be at liberty to do or speak what you wish. Let us not forget the speech in 1775.

Custodial interrogation

October 20, 2019

I see our agencies asking for ‘custodial interrogation’. They complain that the ‘culprit’ is not ‘cooperating’. What do the agencies want? Confessions from all they interrogate? You can’t compel a man to give evidence against himself. There was a time when no magistrate allowed any ‘police remand’. You just had 24 hours to get the meat out of the suspect or accused. That also was an incentive to third degree. Now the courts are merrily giving what one can only call ‘police remand’. Some sort of third degree is implied in the request itself. A few slaps here and there, three Inspectors taking turns during the night, asking the same questions and tiring the man out, all this is par for the course. Are the courts getting too liberal? Shouldn’t the presence of a lawyer on behalf of the accused/suspect be mandatory during this interrogation? These questions need serious debate. The CBI and the Enforcement Directorate need umpiring.

President’s rule

December 1, 2019

Details about the President being woken up at 4 am to revoke President’s rule have leaked out. In lighter vein, what could have been the conversation between His Excellency and the man who serves him tea on the fateful morning?

The President’s rule airlifts at five.

The Butler’s in a fix.

Sir, shall I serve the morning tea?

‘No, the swearing-in’s at six!’

So Uddhavji will soon be here?

‘No! Ajit and Fadnavis!’

TRIBUTES

The patron-saint

Keki Daruwalla has an assured place among the great trinity of Indian poets in English, together with AK Ramanujan and Nissim Ezekiel. Besides being a novelist, he was a political and literary columnist, and the patron-saint of budding Indian-English poets. He himself began with describing the gritty reality of rivers in ruinous spate and riot-torn cities in his first collection of poems, ‘Under Orion’ (1970). He evolved eventually to a grand trans-civilisational vision expressed in ‘Fire and Altar: Poems on the Persians and the Greeks’ (2013) — as befitted his Parsi heritage.

His poems are rich in nuance and yet lucid. They flow, in his own words, “cadenced and clear as mountain streams”. His works will remain and endure. But one will now miss his elegance, courtesy, and natural affability. He was witty and humorous, and a one-line email from him could light up one’s day. He will be much missed.

— Harish Trivedi

Khushwant Singh on Keki

February 28, 2004

Keki Daruwalla’s poems on the scarecrow were written for children; they can be read with equal profit by adults. They are witty and have a few well-aimed digs at fundoos. The time is set by the opening stanza:

In morning dew the scarecrow combs his hair.

In morning light the scarecrow looks so spry,

You know he’s had a good night’s sleep

He’s now in a fitter state to spy

On shouting monkeys and the porcupine.

He gets to see everything all the time, except his shadow which lazes about

Till the evening snuffs the fellow out.

Whether he sees the seasons come and go is a thing you and I may never know.

But busy as he is he keeps an eye

On all the bird traffic passing by.

Unique voice

It is impossible to speak of Keki the writer without referencing Keki the man. He rested lightly on his laurels, never favoured hierarchies and managed to inculcate respect and love without deliberately seeking them. His multi-genre literary talent and unique voice — marked by wit, realism and searing honesty — is impossible to replicate. Deeply ingrained in scholarship, he was exposed to the ground realities of the Indian ethos through his years of service in the IPS. Contrary to his gritty writerly voice, his warmth, generosity, kindness and all-out mentorship of younger writers was legendary.

I will take consolation that I edited a festschrift in his honour published by Sahitya Akademi, that was released earlier this year — ‘A House of Words’.

— Usha Akella

A remarkable individual

How will I remember Keki Daruwalla, my colleague and dear friend for 48 years? As a bright and fair-minded Uttar Pradesh police officer from 1958-59? Or as a young poet wining the Sahitya Akademi award for his collection of poems, ‘The Keeper of The Dead’, and earning more such awards for his 17 books of poetry, short stories and novels, some translated into Spanish, Swedish, Magyar, German and Russian? Or as the topmost national intelligence officer in charge of the Joint Intelligence Committee, which had the ultimate responsibility of integrating and interpreting strategic intelligence for the Cabinet?

Or as a deeply empathetic human being, moved by the cruelties of our penal system to write ‘Swamy and Friends’, describing the tragic death of Father Stan Swamy in prison?

Keki was all these: a remarkably sincere, honest, frank, affectionate and kind individual who always encouraged young poets and writers.

— Vappala Balachandran

Poet-philosopher

Keki Daruwalla was a poet-philosopher whose departure for a better world leaves a vacuum in Indian writing. He was gentle and introspective and yet had a robust humour and a circle of friendship that embraced the diverse range of Indian literature. Keki’s deep roots in the Zoroastrian faith were matched by an experiential understanding of the contradictions and confluences of India as a nation and culture. His grounding in the IPS led to a grassroots appreciation of its composite identity. This reflected in his prose, in the short stories and novels he so excelled in. His poetry, on the other hand, embraced our planet and cosmos in its flight of creative imagination.

In 1984, the year my debut novel ‘Paro: Dreams of Passion’ was published, Keki received the Sahitya Akademi award. My novel received a lot of criticism, and Keki was one of the very few who rose to its defence through a nuanced review. I salute KN Daruwalla for the tenderness of his vision, for the unrelenting, uncompromising truthfulness of his words, for the creative genius of his imagination.

— Namita Gokhale

Poetry

Migrations

Migrations are always difficult:

ask any drought,

any plague;

ask the year 1947.

Ask the chronicles themselves:

if there had been no migrations

would there have been enough

history to munch on?

Going back in time is

also tough.

Ask anyone back-trekking to Sargodha

or Jhelum or Mianwali and they’ll tell you.

What Lights Up...?

What lights up

the lightbulb filaments

of your recall Old Man

this streak of fire

through the thin wire

of memory and mind

what line

from which poet?

the ibex looking down

quizzically

at our car from cliff

the croc sunning corrugated hide

on the banks of the Rapti

as I cross the river rolling on elephant back

wary elephant treating riverbed like a mine

trundling diagonal across the current

Wolf

Fire-lit

half silhouette and half myth

the wolf circles my past

treading the leaves into a bed

till he sleeps, black snout

on extended paws.

Black snout on sulphur body

he nudged his way

into my consciousness.

Prowler, wind-sniffer,

throat-catcher,

his cries drew a ring

around my night;

a child’s night is a village

on the forest edge.