Kalyanee Rajan with Keki N Daruwalla, at the launch of his third novel Swerving to Solitude: Letters to Mama on 31^st August 2018 at India International Centre, New Delhi.

Keki N Daruwalla, Padma Shri, Sahitya Akademi Awardee and an eminent IPS officer of yore, has always been at the forefront whenever it comes to stating his mind or taking a stand. Scathing satire and acute observation coupled with a powerful imagination are the hallmarks of his writings. Poet, short-story writer and a novelist, Daruwalla is also a prolific columnist. Here he speaks to Kalyanee Rajan about everything he does: his poetry, short fiction, novels, columns, reviewing, literary fests and prizes to name a few, in his trademark winding, no-holds-barred style.

Kalyanee Rajan: Sir, the first thing I want to understand is your view of yourself as a poet. You have dealt with a lot of themes through all your published poetry volumes. Which ones are very close to your heart and how exactly did you go about working on those themes?

Keki N Daruwalla: The first part of the question should be left to critics: their view of me as a poet. My answer would be too long. How do you describe someone turning his encounters in life, and his life, in a way itself, into poetry? About the second part of the question, are you referring to some particular themes which are tackled? A poet can’t keep ploughing in a solitary furrow. Poetry, you write as it comes to you; you know I don't want to make a big song and dance about the mysterious coming of a poem to a poet. But word and cadence come to you and the poem is the end product, though to call poetry a product may sound like insulting it.

It is an idea which strikes you, a feeling that springs up, demanding expression, sometimes instant expression. There are times when I put a stop to poetry because of the fear of repeating myself unconsciously. Poetry is not fiction you can churn out when you wish. Poetry has an expiry date to it... You can't write for 60 years or 70 years; because firstly the cadence of the poem will be repeated and you'll say, oh god, wasn’t this the beat of the poem which I wrote years back! So there's a time you have to stop and you do stop. But if something strikes me, I still write. An idea comes to you, you want to satirize something particular, or attack it, say a biased move by the government, then I take up the pen. A lot of things are happening in this country which need to be satirized. Actually in my columns, I attack them upfront.

KR: Absolutely.

KND: Then there was a recent example where I satirized the UP Police encounter upfront, and I don't want to name them, but the editors changed it quite a bit. The last paragraph they added on their own! Can you imagine this!

KR: That's shocking!

KND: Yes. And for a paper for whom I wrote political and national security columns for five years in the nineties to do this! Anyway, let's not get diverted from poetry at the moment.

KR: Sure Sir. You've published several volumes of poetry you began with Under (the) Orion and so on, to the latest, Naishapur and Babylon. So, which ones among them are your favourites?

KND: I am not sure, because a book of poems is like a child, you know. But I'm naturally fonder of my later poems, especially Fire Altar, I consider as my best.

KR: Which is also stemming from your Parsi identity.

KND: Well it's not just the Parsi thing you know, it is a requiem for a civilisation that is gone. With it has gone the philosophy of live and let live, respect for other faiths and streams of thought. Cyrus and Darius had that thought at the back of their actions. Now nobody normally embarks on a project like that. Urdu mein zaroor hai, you write a mersia on Karbala, a Shia poet might get up and write a book on the Karbala, but otherwise such a big theme will be avoided.

It was a big project, I finished the volume in two years (1991-93), and then I waited till 2013 to publish it. But I'm also very fond of The Night River and the one where I explore, what was it, it will come to me, yes, The Map Maker.

KR: And what about Naishapur and Babylon? It has several new poems.

KND: Naishapur and Babylon is new and it is a volume of collected poems, 2006-2017. So it is a decade-long collection and I'm obviously very fond of it. Moreover the poems fit in theme-wise, if you look at them carefully.

KR: What are your views about the current scene in publication of poetry? Do you think there are that many takers for poetry now, or the required seriousness, because I speak to some of the younger poets and they say that they have to self-publish because it is very difficult to find publishers. They say unless you grow age wise, cross your 50s, no one is really ready to publish your poetry. Is that so?

KND: I feel that the scene is much more open than when we were writing. We had nothing. You know, I had to coax OUP, the late Ravi Dayal to start publishing poetry.  But I wasn't the only one egging him on, because Parthasarathy was a part of OUP himself and was doing his bit. It was a fine team, Ravi, Nirupam Chatterjee and Partha.

(A phone rings and Keki Sir moves to the other room to answer it.)

So, as I was saying, it is a much better scene today, there is no comparison with our earlier days. You have on-line publishing, vanity publishing (some of it trash, let’s face it). Publishers: Penguin, Harper Collins do publish a book or two a year, even Collected Poems. Speaking Tiger has published Michael Creighton, and quite a few others including myself. Then Kanwal Sibal was published by Bloomsbury. Penguin Random House has published Ranjit Hoskote. Ranjit Hoskote, Jeet Thayil, these are big names. And some poets have big lit …, what is it called… literary agents! See how words slip me, I'm getting old! Literary agents! And that helps them; immediately people join in. I don't want to mention names with literary agents. The big plus point today is The Poetrywala, Paperwall as it is called now: it started with Poetrywala but they were a part of Paperwall and they've published some thirty poets. But of course, the Bombay poets get published more easily, because Hemant Divate, a fine Marathi poet himself, is pushing it. So, the Bombay poets have easy access, but all the others, Jayanta Mahapatra, Satchidanandan, though he is a Malayalam poet, he has got his works collected in two huge volumes.

KR: Right Sir. But what I also gather as I review books of poetry is that publishing has also to do with the quality of poetry that is being produced.

KND: It is much better, much better now. Formerly there were just 16-17 poets in all! I was asked this question recently at a talk in Jamia Millia Islamia, that there was an anthology edited by Parthasarathy and mine was around. Just about 20 poets. Now it is totally different!

KR: People are also starting to publish at a much younger age these days I guess, in terms of writing poetry, because recently I was requested to write the foreword to a UAE based Malayali teenaged poet's second volume of poetry titled "Dappled", the poet is Athmaja Kavia Bijo, published by the poetry publishing arm of DK Printworld called FreeVerse. Forty-nine poems and some terrific poems there Sir, reverberating with life and a keenness of observation.

KND: I would very much like to see the book, I can mention her in my poetry column! Do send me a copy.

Talking about online publishing, there's the Red Hen Press, the Copper Coin Publishing, so there are quite a few publishers out there. Much of self-promoted or self-published poems are bad, I'm sorry to say it, and it's not a good thing for a poet to rush into self-publication, because he/she can't get a regular publisher. This would stop him/her from striving further, and striving further means you have to think more deeply, more profoundly, the subjects you are tackling, that is one, and secondly that you read more. You have to read more to write well, because a lot of these young poets I find haven't read much at all of poetry.

KR: The reading is definitely going down, that's true, a lot of them are still writing in the mode of the modernists or the postmodernists. In fact, some of my students who are getting published quickly on these web fora, and they say our 'poetry' is 'inspired' which sometimes sound like bad rip-offs. That's the other aspect of this seeming boom in poetry self-publication in particular.

KND: That's correct.

KR: Sir, moving on to your short fiction, how many volumes in all?

KND: I will tell you, the first one was Sword and Abyss, which I named after a poem that I had written, Vikas publication, 1979, Narender Kumar, and edited by Ritu Menon; she was not Menon then. Then came my volume with Ravi Dayal, Love Across the Salt Desert. Then The Minister for Permanent Unrest and other stories with Orient Blackswan. Then came Islands, by Westland, all short stories in there are totally based on islands. Then A House in Ranikhet with Rupa, also my favourite book, and finally Daniell Comes to Judgment with Niyogi, a conglomeration of old stories with five-six new ones. It goes the same with my poetry; for example my Collected Poems, - the opening section has all new poems and I'm fond of these. When I read from the volume, I read at least two or there.

KR: Sir, I also note that all these three genres are crisscrossing in the way you write, you write poetry, in between you also start working on short fiction, and you have worked on your novels. Yes, people keep saying that you came to novel-writing very late. I guess you also said somewhere that there was a time when you tried to write a novel but after thirty-forty pages, you felt exhausted and you left them the way they were.

KND: Not only exhausted but I had also written badly! (Laughs) And that would happen because one was short of time, one has been so short of time, I had very important desks all my life, so whether I was in the Intelligence, or when I was in the regular police, I had very heavy duty hours. So it was hard. One made the best of whatever time could be salvaged. Time can be a casualty  

KR: Sir, when I look at your novels, I've reviewed Ancestral Affairs, I've read Pepper and Christ, and now I'm reading Swerving to Solitude: Letters to Mama, there's a great amount of serious research that goes into it. You've prepared for them with all due method. And there is a procedure to it. Whereas some of the other writers, when we listen to them, they talk about how they require a greater economy of words and time when they are writing a short story. They find confining their focus to a short story much more difficult than in a novel. So they are able to write a novel sooner than honing a short story to perfection, to that razor-sharp edge where you are able to control all the characters where they exactly belong. How does it work for you?

KND: There are two aspects to this. One, the short story is a very aesthetic medium. Either you get it right, or you don't get it right. When I started writing short stories, I knew nothing about short stories and it was a question of, allow me to break into Hindustani, "jod, tod, marod", and you managed, and you contrived, there were contrivances, in my first book at least, and then I sort of graduated (sorry to be pleased as punch with myself. But I am fully aware of my shortcomings). Still, my short stories are normally based on incidents, events, but sometimes they also go with moods, as they have in my Islands. In Islands, there are five or six stories which are based on moods and other such things- like I've written on the Hieroglyph. There is a story called "Hieroglyph". I am happy with Islands, you must read it. There's another one on the Yeti, talking from the side of the animal world, and it is almost evaporating. I have a story, published in the Illustrated Weekly of India, now it has come in the book form. It is the Minotaur, and that's again beast versus man. The central idea is again how we consider beasts as grotesque. There's a little of myth or threads derived from myth, but it is actually a story about a Minotaur who comes into a house and then a Sadhu comes in.

KR: So, the way you write your Short Stories is quite similar to the way you compose your poems. You don't require that kind of research. So Short Stories are also perhaps images that come to you?

KND: Short Story is not a genre where you go and look into too much of background. A novel is a world in itself.  A short story needs to end in just five or ten pages. I mean you can't write thirty thousand words in a short story, you know. In fact I'll be coming out with a book within a year with stories I wrote quite a few years back and it is going to be called "Long Stories". They are long, and they are under process now.

The novel, of course, needs a lot of research unless you're talking about you know; sorry I'm not making a gender statement here, but a woman writer talking about relations between a wife and a husband or that kind of stuff, there you don't need research, obviously because it is your personal experience, how you've responded to situations or how your friends have responded to situations. But my novels need a lot of research, especially because I write about the past. My first novel, Pepper and Christ, I started writing in 1996, and published it in 2009. You know, if Ravi Singh had not insisted on a contract, I don't know, I may have finished it today! (Laughs) That sort of triggered me on, so I'm very beholden to Penguin.

KR: Sir, you were associated with the DSC Prize.

KND: Yes, I was the jury chairman, giving away the Prize, and at that time, Jhumpa Lahiri got it. I know from the publisher's blurb that she's one of the finest writers in the world, but one has to read a lot of World Literature (WL), to come to that sort of a conclusion!

KR: I find it hard to believe that people are reading a lot of WL to come to conclusions, but maybe they are looking at a lot of World Pictures for sure!

KND: Who knows, maybe! (Laughs)

KR: Sir, what do you think of the numerous literary fests that have mushroomed and spread over the past few years?

KND: I feel that I could almost be envious! Why were these fests not there when we were young? They have come up in this century. Let's face it. Even in the 90's I don't think there were any literary fests in India, so it is a new fashion which has caught on and I'm very happy with the newer platforms now available with Literary fests.

KR: And the kind of people who are invited?

KND: Criticism toh hamesha hoga, I mean there's always going to be favouritism and hence carping.  We are not a very fair people, the same caste, bhai-bandhi, and in another way it comes up, "we are from the same publisher", "we are from the same stable", woh sab toh chalega, we are Asians after all! (Laughs)

KR: And the kind of prizes, the DSC Prize is one, with a good amount of prize money.

KND: They've reduced it from 50,000 to 25,000 USD now to the best of my knowledge, but 25 is as good as anything. Then The Hindu Literary Prize has three-four or five lacs as prize money, and The Hindu has a good standing. As far as I'm concerned, what is important is the shortlist.

KR: What do you think about Arundhati Roy's latest, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness?

KND: I have not read it. From whatever reviews I've read, they mostly considered the book above average. There is a lot of politics in the book. But why am I talking of a book I have never read? Bad show. Her political writings have never impressed me. Well, her first book was very good. And then it had that story, Pankaj Mishra or somebody getting down from the train and saying it is a great book, woh sab chalta hai, I got excited before the splendid book was published.

KR: Coming to Swerving to Solitude: Letters to Mama. Why did you choose to write it in the form of letters?

KND: Because I chose to. That's the only answer. I conceived it, thought of it as letters to Mama. And when Bhaskar Dharini asked me for a novel (she had edited my Islands), I took it on. That's how it got started. It took me a year and a half. But then, I only stuck to the novel and nothing else, I did not write anything else.

KR: At the book launch of Swerving to Solitude: Letters to Mama, published by Simon & Schuster, you said, "For the lack of a better word, what is happening today is an undeclared Emergency or perhaps, worse than Emergency." What kind of research did you put into this novel?

KND: Did I say that? I think one of the panellists did. The entire plot and characters are imagined. There is nothing autobiographical in this narrative. It is about the narrator coming to terms with the solitude that enters her life at a particular juncture. The research was concentrated on Mexico, MN Roy, the Russian Revolution and McCarthy. That’s a handful.

KR: What would be the driving force, the anchor for Swerving to Solitude? For Ancestral Affairs, it was the province, Junagadh, the political affairs and the love affairs.

KND: You read it and you find it! There are two or three anchors there. One is of course the relationship between the mother and the daughter. The daughter writing to the mother in a way, that is one. It is also a political novel- and it is very eventful. In fact all my novels are eventful.

KR: The columns that you write— what is the kind of response you usually get, by tackling issues upfront?

KND: No response, I get no response.

KR: Have you ever faced any problems like the one you mentioned about the editorial addition of an entire paragraph?

KND: No, I haven't faced any problem except when an editor got changed, and I found the new editor to be a little cool, so I immediately switched off. I had a regular column with that paper, normally two columns a month, but after a year and a half, I decided to stop. No names please. Also, please don't forget that I've been an analyst in my career. I have twenty to twenty-five years of expertise in that area and I exploit my expertise.

KR: Fair enough. Finally Sir, I want to know your views about the current scenario of Indian Writing in English in particular.

KND: See, I don't read much. I'm writing a poetry column, so I read a lot of poetry, but otherwise I have no time to read. Firstly, I am a slow reader, there are so many novels that I have read and halfway through I have left them. Suppose I go to Bombay, I take a book with me and I read half of it, and when I come back to Delhi, I don't feel like going back to it. Big cities are not the right places to work. My going to Shimla for a month or to my daughter's, those were by and far the most productive places or times for me. Ideas sink in and come slowly. You sit down in the morning and have a fresh idea. For example, in this, the last novel (Swerving...) I was reading something and the word "occult" caught me. I said, why can't I include the occult in the novel? The occult is almost central in the novel. I'm sorry, what was the question? Ah, yes, the contemporary scene. I enjoyed the first novel by Anuradha Roy, and also of Tishani Doshi, Kunal Basu, and Githa Hariharan. I have read everything by Salman Rushdie, and also by Amitav Gosh and Nayantara Sahgal. I also enjoy the writing of Neelum Saran Gour. Some of the contemporary writers are overrated though.

KR: I have reviewed Kunal Basu and...

KND: (Interrupting) But you're a reviewer and you haven't asked me about reviewing! In India, there are a lot of regional biases. If a chap is writing about Kolkata, you'll have the entire Bengali lobby running after him, supporting him. Urdu mein bhi yehi hota hai. And sometimes religion will also come in, even now reviewing is affected by such things, and as a result some writers are left to themselves. You will have Nairs and Menons reviewing authors from Kerala.  Great fun isn’t it, Mallu critics, Bong and Gujju critics moving in packs and praising their brethren to the skies.  Calls for a drink!

KR: Indeed, reviewing is clearly a very important issue Sir. I do hope this gets enough attention. Translation is the "in" thing in the Indian publishing scene right now. And translations are also winning awards. Have any of your novels been translated?

KND: Do you know, Bruce King called Pepper and Christ a big novel, and that is saying something. I have tried to get it translated, sent it to the academy based in Kerala thrice, but there has been no response. So that's how it is.

KR: Thank you so much for this extensive interview Sir, it has been a pleasure to hear you on your work as well as so many crucial topics. I am looking forward to completing Swerving to Solitude soon and talking to you in greater detail about it.

KND: And review it! You are most welcome, it is always good to talk to you.

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