Poetry of witness
years ago, I wrote a story on the triple talaq, called “Crossroads”, which is also going to be a part of the collection. But I am not giving away its satirical plot! Q. Despite many literary festivals held routinely across India these days, why do you think poetry and literature continue to lurk in the margins? A. The novel still has some faint claims and pretentions to be called a major genre. Poetry has been shoved into the background by publishers, beginning with Oxford University Press. Secondly, none of the so-called “poetry editors” know anything about poetry. So, at least as far as poetry in English is concerned, cussed publisher (guided by her sales guys) and poetry-illiterate “poetry editors” have become a lethal combination — tear smoke and nerve gas hissing away in the same chamber! No one publishes plays either.
We need to talk of readership as well. I am talking of the youth — hooked as they are on TV and the internet — the male populace has gone into self-exile from the humanities. They’re all into computers and business management. Naturally the readership for literature has thinned down. Q. At the Kaafiya Poetry festival in Delhi, last year, you spoke extensively on “poetry of witness” — a 20th century phenomenon that saw a lot of committed writing on atrocities and bloodshed following World Wars, Partition, and so forth. What do you feel about today’s writers? Are they writing enough about the times they are living in? A. I don’t read enough to answer this honestly. A lot of novels are being written on tribals and Dalits, more so in Indian language writ- ing. Meena Kandasamy for instance wrote a sizzling novel, The Gypsy Goddess, a couple of years back on Dalit agricultural workers in rural Tamil Nadu. But there is not enough “poetry of witness” from poets writing in English. I do my bit though. In my next collection, Collected Poems 2005-2015 (unpublished so far, if not for ever), I have a whole section titled “Political Poems”. One of the poems, “Jerusalem”, was read out by me at the Medellin Poetry festival in June this year. It was talked about. Q. A lot of your poems, most famously “The Mistress”, deal with the preoccupation of an Indian struggling to write poetry in English. Do you think your concerns with Indian writing in English is also shaped by your identity as a Parsi, as someone who migrated to a pre-domi- nantly Hindu-Muslim India during Partition? A. This struggle with the language is now dated. We are at home with angrezi and no longer feel self-conscious about it. No complexes, no hang-ups on this score. Thirty years ago, we English poets had been put on the defensive by academics, who thought (oddly enough) that we should not be writing in English. Santhals should be writing in Santhali and Parsis in Avesta or Pehelvi. A few of us tackled this in our own way. For instance, Kamala Das wrote one of her finest poems, “Introduction”, on the subject. I tackled the matter through satire, in “The Mistress”, where I likened Indian English writing to a mistress with whom the poet wrestles and was particularly happy with the lines: Down the genetic lane, babus and Professors of English have also made their one-night contributions. Q. Your second novel, Ancestral Affairs, is a nostalgic look back at pre-Partition history and of a childhood spent in a Parsi household in Junagadh. If you could tell us a little bit about it? A. This would be a long haul. I remember my Junagadh childhood vividly. I saw princely India from close quarters. We lived in a sort of palace along with the Prince — to whom my father was a tutor and a guardian. I also consulted all the dailies of 1947. The build-up to the Partition is completely authentic. But the rest of the novel — the love story of Saam Bharucha (a Parsi lawyer) and Claire (a British woman) and the ill luck that befalls on saam’s son, Rohinton, who becomes a tragicomic counterpart to his father’s — are all an outgrowth of my imagination. The writer seldom gets credit for that. There are other vignettes in the novel of which I am proud of — the detailing of the East Anglia landscape, the scene at Rye between the lovers, and the slow unravelling of the plot that led to Rohinton’s initial ruin. In a way, it is a period novel, of a time that harks back half a century. I don’t think I can write about life today because I have zero knowledge about gadgets! Q. In one of your essays, you have gone to the extent of calling the Indian language “half caste”, one that has no specific origins. How difficult does it become to write in a language like that, in a form like poetry, which is often perceived to be restricted to one class with a certain educational background, aiming at an exclusive readership? A. I think you are referring to my essay “The De-Colonized Muse” which I read out at the Erlangen Poetry Festival in the late 1980s. I wrote textual English in my poetry and never tried what some fiction writers have done. I do take liberties when I want to. I also try not to “poetify” (to use the novelist’s speech rhythms) prose.
“This struggle with the language is now dated. We are at home with angrezi and no longer feel self-conscious about it. No complexes, no hangups on this score. Thirty years ago, we English poets had been put on the defensive by academics, who thought (oddly enough) that we should not be writing in English. Santhals should be writing in Santhali and Parsis in Avesta or Pehelvi. A few of us tackled this in our own way.”
Q. Also, how have you managed and balanced writing poetry throughout your long career in intelligence services [Keki Daruwalla retired as Secretary and Joint Chairman of R&AW]? A. English literature has had a host of writers coming out of the Intelligence stream. (Don’t forget Christopher Marlowe!) I navigated both without much discomfiture. Also, don’t forget that the writer of Animal Farm and 1984 was part of the Burma police forces.