Write a note K.N. Daruwalla as a poet.

Describe the distinctive qualities of the poetry of K.N. Daruwalla.

Ans.

Keki N. Daruwalla is one of the most substantial modern Indo Anglian poets. The characteristic features of his poetry can be described as vigour and immediacy of language, knife-edge tone, an abiding and infatuated concern with love, death and domination, a skeptic and indignant cynicism about the plight of human society and a rare intensity in portraying living individuals. Daruwalla readily admits to critics, charges of being too much of a landscape poet who takes into his aesthetic stride the sights and sounds of England. Yugoslavia, Helsinki, Stockholm, Volgograd and Moscow which he has visited for poetry readings. His thematic canvas transcends the boundaries of India and stretches itself into the rest of the world. Critics maintain that his concern for broad landscape imagery rather than political and social issues, is a result of his long career as a Government official.

Daruwalla’s poetry has journeyed a long way both formally and thematically. His poetry reveals certain strong distinguishing characteristics – an ironic instance, an evocation of the multi-layered contradictory realities of Indian life, a preoccupation with diverse cultural, historic and mythic landscapes, a terse, vigour and tensile style, supple imagism, sustained narrative drive, and a capacity to combine an epic can as with a miniaturist eye for detail. A remarkable feature of Daruwalla’s poetry is its ability to vividly materialize its abstractions, to strike a creative tension between image and statement. His poetry has the narrative energy and sweep to pain, for instance, a vast portrait of post independence 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?”

But it can also offer a fine tuned vision of the particular evident in his evocation of the rumbling inwards of a miserable multitude listening to the speech of a corpulent political leader:

Within the empty helly

the enzymes turn multilingual

their speech vociferous

simmering on stomach wall.”

Daruwalla’s landscapes extend from the ancient kingdom of Kalinga under the region of the great Indian emperor Ashoka to the see-thing contradictions of the modern metropolis of Bombay:

From the lepers, the acid scarred, the amputees

-I turn my face. The road I feel

should be stratified so that

I rub shoulders only with my kind.”

as well as rural and small-town India-

Benaras is unforgettably evoked as the place where

Corpse-fires and cooking-fires

burn side by side.

even while the sacred river flows on

dark as gangrene

Daruwalla is at his best when he works with selective image and metaphor, ‘Pestilence’ contains several images. For example the body image is presented through many lines like the following:

Brown shoulders black shoulders

shoulders round as orbs

Muscles smooth as river-stones glisten.”

Other images in the poem are found in the expressions like ‘palanquin bearers’, ‘string beds’, ‘hospital floors’, ‘doctors with white faces’, ‘cattle dying at the takes’, ‘bird’ and ‘a plank. All these images have made the poem quite effective. ‘The Beggar has striking images-time circles round him like a knife’, and ‘tired light in his eyes’. The following lines contain striking images-

“Maggots, moments, worms

crawl like changing seasons

He is a straw Buddha with sperm.”

Daruwalla is a master of the art of building up imagery. His imagery is neither fantastic nor common place. His imagery is striking original and extraordinary. It is realistic and vivid. “In the Tarai’ a whole region is brought to life by means of realistic imagery. We get concrete and realistic pictures in ‘Rail Road Reveries’. There is unusual imagery in ‘The Revolt of the Salt Slave. ‘The Epileptic present a true picture.

They fanned her, rubbed her feet, and looked around

for other ways to summon black her senses.

‘Crossing of Rivers’ presents realistic imagery charged with emotion. Landscape has been a characteristic feature of Daruwalla’s poetry. He has written very powerful and vivid poetry about places. So he is often called a landscape poet. He has published the sixth volume of his poems as ‘Landscapes. This volume points various landscapes taken from home and absurd. Daruwalla considers himself a writer of rural landscape’. The ‘River Poems’ mirror both the harsh as well as mild aspects of landscape. Many poems of Daruwalla are about religious places such as Badrinath. The description of cities and towns has become an important aspect of his landscape poetry. His landscape poems include several nature poems which describe beautiful scenes.

Death, disease and fire are the favourite images and themes of Keki N. Daruwalla, ‘Pestilence’ tells us about death and violence.

Pairs of padded feet

are behind me

astrid me

in front of me

the foot paths are black feet

converging on the town.”

the ending of the poem hints at death.

“and when of a sudden

cholera turns to death

the feet keep up their padded progress

Only the string-bed is exchanged for a plank”

Daruwalla is a great satirist. He is equally a great master of the weapon of irony. His poems are satirical. His poems expose the evils and malpractices prevalent in the society. Daruwalla is praised for his bitter, satiric tone. Such a bitter, scornful tone has never been heard before in Indo-Anglian poetry. There is irony in The Epileptic’, ‘Rumination’, ‘Routine and In the Tarai”. We have satire, using the weapon of irony.

(i) The right buck at the right time tips the scales

(ii) To legalize a bastard you’ve to bribe the priest…

he’ll wed you to a Turk or a Rabbi’s daughter

even though you may be uncircumcised.

We mark irony in ‘Pestilence’

Who says, they have cholera?

They are down with diarrhea

Who says it is cholera?

It is gastro-enteritis

Who says they have cholera?”

“The Begar has a note of irony.

(i) He just sits there, while time

Wheels round him like a kite.”

(ii) Maggots, moments, worms

Crawl like changing seasons.

He is a straw Buddha with sperm.”

Like all the other Indian English poet, Daruwalla has made Indian sensibility as one of his themes. The poetry of Daruwalla is suffused with varied aspects of Indian sensibility. Most of them paint the portraits of the landscape of North India.

Daruwalla is a gifted poetic artist. His technicality and craftsmanship occupy a unique place in the domain of modern Indo-Anglian poetry. His poetry has many stylistic and artistic qualities. He shows great love for fine phrases. Ironical and detached style characterize some of the best poetry of Daruwalla. He has exceptionally powerful narrative and descriptive skills. His imagery is rich, varied and extremely effective. The use of similes and metaphors, use of sequencing as a formal device, skill of condensing material, free verse and rhythmic skill are some other artistic qualities of Daruwalla’s poetry. We have the following example of the felicity of word, phrase and sentence –

Maggots, moments, worms

Crawl like changing seasons

He is a straw Buddha with sperm.”

There is a striking simile in the following lines-

“Beggars hoist their deformities

as boatman hoist their sails.

“Death by Burial’ contain fine similes and metaphors, craftsmanship. Death of Bird abounds in felicity of word and phrases. In fact Daruwalla is one of the most successful poetic craftsman writing today.