Biography of any indian english poet keki

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His verse was filled with hometruths from myths, he used questions to zone his way into answers and his observations were lined with a curious imagination. That discussion – with Urvashi Butalia as our wonderful moderator – still glows like it happened yesterday.

Thereafter, Keki’s Collected Poems was launched at PEN@Theosophy Hall.

And the ‘lightness’ surrounding him–even in serious circumstances–was exemplary. Few knew of his devotion to Urdu poetry which he would recite occasionally. He received the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for his collection of poems Landscapes in 1987.

His first book of poetry was Under Orion, which was published by Writers Workshop, India in 1970.

The organisers provided accommodation in a boys’ hostel, telling us jocularly that we would be reliving our college days.

This is how we began our friendship, absentmindedly admiring each other’s works though I was aware that he was a great poet with an acute sense of history and a knife-edge mastery over linguistic inventiveness.

Often tender, tensile, and satirical at once, Keki was a poet of imagistic magic realism with visions of blazing beauty.

He is retired and lives in Delhi. She retired as Professor, English Department,  University of Delhi. But we both shared a love for the words of Faiz Ahmed Faiz, which Keki could recall seamlessly, and recite in his soft, mellifluous voice. He tried to keep his cool even when he passed through days of trauma and stress when his wife passed away in an accident, and was  always, fearlessly,  on the side of justice.

His last book of fiction was titled Going: Stories of Kinship (2022), a striking collection on the theme of departure, drawn from a range of contexts in colonial as well as post-colonial India. Unpredictably, I met him more frequently in Delhi than in Mumbai. Three days after the numbness of Keki’s passing, five months after my dad’s death, I thought: There, he’ll be joking again – saying, “You beat me to it!”

In April 2023, I visited Keki at his Dilli home in East of Kailash.

Keki, stalwart poet, was the kind and friendly elder in my poetic life whose quiet encouragement and appreciation like Faiz’ sweet morning breeze could make an ailing soul like mine, feel fine for no reason at all.

 Raat yunh dil mein teri khoee hui yaad aayee

Jaise veeraane mein chupke se bahaar aa jaaye

 Jaise sehraa mein haule se chale baad-e-naseem

Jaise beemaar ko be-vajah qaraar aa jaaye

For Keki Daruwala

Mrinalini Harchandrai