Keki Daruwalla (1937-2024): A sculptor of words with a keen ear for rhythm and metre

“This myth of roots is overplayed. There is nothing great in being in the same hell hole.”

Wherever he may be now, Keki Daruwalla may be smiling at his own aphorism as he departed for another world on 26 September, 2024 after a long period of indisposition. A recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Award (1984) as also the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for Asia in 1987, he was also honoured with a Padma Shri by the Government of India in 2014. Ensconced in his Parsi identity, he wandered into varied linguistic domains in India and abroad, acquiring extensions into a rich cosmopolitanism. His poetry amply reflects how he gathered “scraps” – as he called them – of mythology from different countries and communities with sensitivity and keen alertness:

…Nubra, the garden of the North
and slept in a tent at Tsomoriri-
the rocks brown, the lake blue;
I got hold of a myth here
(at 15000 feet it’s good scrap to grab)
It was very hot, and a woman called Tsomo
riding a yak couldn’t rein him in
as the yak made straight for the lake
She kept shouting ‘riri, riri’, ‘stop,stop’ in Tibetan
But the yak went in and they both drowned.

From picking up small bits of lesser known mythology to exploring the more iconic examples, Daruwalla excelled in documenting in his poetry...

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