Keki N Daruwalla was not just a feted artist, he was that rare breed — a real poet

It was decades aboriginal that Keki became a friend. It began with emails astir poetry, and aboriginal burgeoned into conversations, interspersed with cheerful literate gossip, implicit IIC ginger pudding. I grew to respect much than the poesy — his generosity of spirit, his dignity, his stout governmental integrity, and steadfast attack to quality relationships.

The anecdotes were ne'er self-aggrandising. Indeed, Keki was astir apt 1 of the past of the self-deprecatory poets — a precious, fast-dwindling tribe. He erstwhile laughingly mentioned that until 25, helium saw himself “more arsenic a cricketer” than poet. In 1964, arsenic a young poet, helium sent a clump of poems to Ezekiel from Joshimath. Routed via Srinagar, Garhwal and Rishikesh, the message took 15 agelong days to scope Mumbai: “Nissim wrote a bully courteous inland missive (in response), though aboriginal helium came down to postcards. He would constitute astir this and that, but regarding my poetry, helium (had) thing overmuch to say. If I’d been him and seen those poems, I’d person been overmuch ruder! He was precise polite.”

About Arun Kolatkar, the understatement was masterly: “When I did an anthology of Indian poets… Arun ne'er bothered to reply until I did a speechmaking astatine The PEN… He came for that and said that not answering my missive was inexcusable. He gave maine the rights to his poetry. But helium didn’t enactment for the reading!”

There was a vulnerability, too. He erstwhile explained wherefore it took him clip to commencement interacting with different poets. “Possibly I was self-conscious and shy, and refrained from mingling with the literate crowd, due to the fact that of my constabulary background.” (He had a distinguished vocation with the IPS, which helium joined successful 1958, and often contemplated penning a memoir astir those eventful years.)

I erstwhile asked Keki what poesy meant to him. “Solace for the soul,” helium said aft a pause. “A valve… (releasing) the unit of a beardown emotion, a haunting image… There is simply a large relief… and exhilaration — till you work a fewer days aboriginal the wretched worldly that you wrote!” He work widely, choosing to commencement the caller twelvemonth oregon immoderate important juncture (including his precocious wife’s birthday) by speechmaking verse. “If I americium truly feeling retired of sorts, I spell backmost to poesy — Rilke, Akhmatova, Elytis, Auden, Ritsos, sometimes Paul Celan.”

His past book, Landfall Poems (2023), contained immoderate of his finest verses. Unlike galore others, Keki ne'er mislaid his originative vitality. His signature spot remained his capableness to harvester the panoramic and the particular, the balladeer’s impulse with intimacy. He could casually weave Greek myth, Dante, the emperors Cyrus and Ashoka into terse, bristling modern verse. But helium could besides talk of his soundlessness erstwhile his parent asked him if helium remembered his grandmother.

He was conscious of the disapproval that helium wrote lone of “incidents”, not the interior landscape. His aboriginal enactment worked astatine rectifying that. Journeys, for Keki, were nary longer conscionable epic. They present hinted astatine self-implication: ‘Now my dreams inquire me/ if I retrieve my mother/ and I’m not definite however I’ll grip that./ Migrating crossed years is besides difficult.’

Keki Daruwalla was not conscionable a feted artist, a antheral who lived agelong capable and successful the close spot and infinitesimal to country the close prizes. He was that uncommon breed: A existent poet.

“A people’s past is lone harmless with bards,” helium erstwhile wrote. A people’s future, too, I privation to add. Friend, map-maker, warrior poet, your enactment volition endure. The “dripping deciduous word-leaf” volition proceed its “never-ending autumn from the tree”.

The lyric volition leafage on.

Subramaniam is simply a writer and author