The Towering Literary Legacy of Keki N. Daruwalla

This story was published as part of Outlook's 1 November, 2024 magazine issue titled 'Bittersweet Symphony'. To read more stories from the issue, click here

We will all miss that heart-melting smile of his and the warmth of his handclasp. Not an Angrezi handshake, but the soft love you feel when an elder brother caresses your palm like solace. Few poets of high stature and fame could compare with Keki N. Daruwalla when he was sharing his bonhomie with his huge group of admirers across the country. But remember, he was never an inch of a celebrity in his manners and demeanour.

Keki passed away at his residence in New Delhi late in the evening on September 26, 2024 at the age of 87. He had been unwell for some time. It is difficult to track down such a long and chequered career, but suffice to say that he was like an iconic Parsi gentleman and Elizabethan buccaneer rolled into one.

I would rather start with my personal experiences with Keki. His poems used to appear in the popular Illustrated Weekly of India along with other stalwart poets, mainly of the Bombay group, when I was in college. The name ‘Daruwalla’ struck me, but never for the wrong reasons. Bejan Daruwalla was also contributing his much-vaunted weekly astrological forecasts in the same magazine. Keki would have frankly spoken on his views on horoscopes, but I never had the guts to ask him if Bejan was his elder brother! One thing leads to another—I found out that he was a top cop, an IPS officer, who rose to the rank of Special Assistant on International Affairs to the then Prime Minister Charan Singh.

Keki was born in Lahore of undivided India, where his father was a professor of English in a government college. But the family shifted to India before the Partition. Keki studied English literature before embarking on his policing career in 1958. I think his formal English education in college was the trigger point of entering the world of English poetry. But there was more to choosing a language left behind by the colonisers. He himself admitted that when his father’s library was filled with 3,000 books in the language, he had no other choice but to latch on to English. As early as in 1964, his poems appeared in Quest and his first book, Under Orion, was published in 1970 by Dr P. Lal of Kolkata’ s Writers Workshop. His books of poetry began to appear at regular intervals thereafter, establishing him as one of the foremost English poets of India, winning the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1984 and the Commonwealth Poetry prize in 1987. A barrage of other literary honours also decorated his haloed cap. He has written 16 books of poetry and fiction, including his Collected Poems (1970-2005, Penguin India) and Landfall (2018-22, Speaking Tiger Books).

It was a great stroke of fortune for me to meet my hero in person in June 2003 in Guwahati at the meet of Indian-English poets sponsored by the Sahitya Akademi. I gave him my first book of verse and he said jovially, “We are from the same stable!” Well, he was referring to WW, the publisher. It was so nice to watch his easy access to much younger poets like us, on that occasion mostly from the North East. He was soft-spoken, well-mannered, never verbose, firm and straight as a war-horse when he rose to read his poetry in his distinctive voice. In the evening, he whispered in my ears, “I must give a treat to the boys late at night at one of our hotel rooms. Where can I buy some whiskey bottles?’’

“There are about ten of us excluding the ladies. We can fetch two bottles from Fancy Market.” We made sure poet Jayanta Mahapatra would join the party and left for shopping together.

I was taking a respected cop and poet in an auto rickshaw to buy booze. Nissim Ezekiel had once said, “Keki has the energy of a lion.” How true it seemed then. While I bought a mekhala (traditional garment) for my wife, I asked him whether he would buy one for his wife. Sadness veiled his face instantly. “She passed away, leaving me alone…I’ ll rather buy a pair of bed sheets for my daughters…you choose the colour…but not gaudy,” he said.

The night at the Ashoka Hotel was not revelry, but an intimate and cozy get-together of poets mostly unknown to each other basking in the attention of the two foremost living poets of India—Keki dada and Jayanta da. Later, Keki used to come to Kolkata to attend talks and seminars. He always informed me beforehand so we could meet up: usually at our rooftop Srijan stage where he read his poems or at the Tolly Club. He was jolly but never exuberant; the epitome of his Parsi lineage. He was so well-travelled both in India and abroad that it gave new dimensions to his poetry and fiction. His poetry has the narrative energy and sweep to paint a vast portrait of post-colonial India as “a landscape of meaninglessness”.

“...Then why should I tread the Kafka beat/or the waste land/when Mother, you are near at hand/one vast, sprawling defeat?” His canvas extends from ancient kingdoms of India to terrible chaos of the modern metros like Delhi and Mumbai or often meanders into rural and small towns like Benaras where “the corpse fires and cooking-fires/burn side by side,” while the pious River Ganges flows in, “dark as gangrene”.

Keki never used to deliver sermons on poetry. He was an avid listener and would proffer his views only when needed. He took up his poetry as specific projects on diverse themes. I guess he hated abstractions and words like “postmodernism”. Instead there is a marked fascination with myths, violent biography of nations and searing moments of personal monologues. His concern for poverty-stricken Indians is genuine and waves of protest surface in the lines he wrote. His anti-establishment stance was clear when he returned the Sahitya Akademi Award in October 2015 in protest with the statement: “The organisation Sahitya Akademi has failed to speak out against ideological collectives that have used physical violence against authors.” In our many conversations, I could understand he had always tried to decolonise himself although he had no option but to use the destiny-oriented English language, to which he was both faithful and an effective tour de force, grammatically, syntax-wise, metaphorically, in terms of imagination and other ingredients of superior poetry. But he also had doubts.

An Indian writing poetry in English is an exile in his/her own land. But wasn’t it the second language of most educated Indians? That was his best consolation. Looking back, he found that the poem “had to be securely fastened to an Indian setting. That is the only way I can explain my fierce commitment to place, site, landscape.” He loathed the diet of Shelly and Keats at university because when he left the campus he faced the harsh realities around him—drought, poverty and communal riots. He always hoped they would cease in the near future. A poet should not be a cynic. That was his watchword and eternal dream.

The last of the Mohicans of Indian-English poetry has gone to a restful sleep. But what he has left behind is Plutarch’ s mine. We need to excavate the rich treasures of the muse.

Boudhayan Mukherjee is a bilingual poet, translator and critic