Stopwatch Poetry
Publishers usually run a mile when they see a poet approaching with a manuscript. But when it’s a minister, and the meeting place is Khushwant Singh’s drawing room, it’s another matter. Two rival publishers—Penguin and Roli—were lined up in Delhi’s most famous literary hub two months ago to sign on Kapil Sibal’s book of poems, I Witness. Sibal’s’s only condition: he’d sign up with whichever publisher can bring out the book in two months flat. Penguin, which has a waiting period of six months, had to retreat, leaving Roli with the MS. So why was Sibal in such a hurry to publish his cellphone rhymes by early August? Ostensibly, it’s because it coincides with his birthday, but it also had something to do with political timing: he didn’t want the book out in the middle of the next elections.