Tribute to Keki Daruwalla

From  Night Fever ‘Island Poems’ Keki Daruwalla

Sanjukta Dasgupta

A poem is an island in itself

Heartburn and Frostburn lie outside the page…

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Keki Daruwalla (1937-2024) has left his unique contribution to the robustly ever- evolving twenty first century genre of Indian English poetry. Keki’s poetry exudes the impression of an intrepid creative mind, scholarly, insightful, playful, sombre, witty, satiric and uncompromising. As a thinker and poet, expectedly Keki was not afraid to return a government award, he was unafraid to ask tough questions in his newspaper articles wherein he criticised the administration for demolishing all vestiges of ethics and social justice.  Keki’s poetry as well as his prose writings, that include fiction, underscore emphatically the courage of his convictions, reminiscent of the timeless statement, ‘poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world’.

Keki’s sensitive, often humorous creative lines are simultaneously cerebral, empathetic, honest and sophisticated.  From readers, Keki’s poetry and fiction demand a critically informed mind and emotional engagement for an immersive learning experience. Our ever-smiling, affable poet Keki may be out of sight but he will live on in the minds of readers and poetry lovers for evermore.

Here is a quatrain  from Keki Daruwalla’s Naishapur and Babylon which I feel resonates with Keki inimitable voice, views and vision, from which we can learn-

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“What if quill and tablet have been impounded

I have dipped my fingers in my heart’s blood and pain

What if the tongue is sealed? I have kept

A tongue in each link of my iron chains”