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Articles /Interviews
Unforgettable Times
Indo English Poetry in
the Seventies – 4
by
Dr. Amitabh Mitra
Poet, Translator, Filmmaker and
Graphic Artist, Pritish was a one man factory, churning out poetry,
experimenting with form, design, adding Hindi, Bengali words for that unique
experience. His poetry was rejected by overseas publishers whereas Indian
poets refused to include him as a part of a new poetry renaissance. I
remember discussing about him in Masters Classes of Literature at the Jiwaji
University, Gwalior. The professors had either not known about him or they
didn’t encourage the style of his writing which was considered very
unliterary. I was considered an outsider trying to pollute students of
English Literature with my talk and poems.
Professor PN Laha, Late Professor
of Medicine at the Medical College, Gwalior, a poet and a contemporary of
Dr. Balai Chand Mukhopadhyaya, popularly known as ‘Bonophool’ once took me
to the Usha Kiran Palace Hotel where I was supposed to talk on Contemporary
Trends in Indo-English Poetry to a group of Rotarians who were essentially
business people. After I have finished talking, one of them stood up and
asked me, why I haven’t talked about Tagore. Pritish Nandy got a
similar rebuff many a times, unemployed, writing poetry seventeen hours a
day he knew that his poetry would gain recognition.
I met many students thereafter
who did their PhD on the Poetry of Pritish Nandy. In ‘Strangertime’
he wrote ‘Poetry has come out of class rooms of English literature, of
professors talking pedantic wisdom to a group of students who drowsily think
of escapades, sexual or otherwise’. 'Strangertime' was an anthology
of major players in the love poetry scene, include such senior poets like
Nissim Ezekiel, Keki Daruwala but also my favorites like Arun Kolkatkar,
Eunice Desouza, Bodi Prasad Padhi and off course Maqbool Fida Hussain. 'Strangertime'
was a beautiful book brought as a paperback by Hind Pocket books and was
available at AH Wheeler Book Shops in the Railway stations.
Pritish defended love poetry
saying 'Love poetry is the only poetry that can be read and imagined’.
Every one of us has encountered love, a love that never reached its
destination. A love poem is therefore to be read again and again, somewhere
there you may find the fragments you lost in one rush lonesome hour. 'Strangertime'
brought accolades to him as he exposed the Indian poets writing in English
in such a cheap edition.
By this time Pritish had been
published far and wide.
His books include –
Of Gods
and Olives
On Either side of Arrogance
I hand you in turn my Nebbuk Wreath
From the outer bank of Brahmaputra
Masks to be interpreted in term of messages
Madness is the second stroke
The poetry of Pritish Nandy
Dhritarashtra, Downtown : Zero
Riding the Midnight River
Lonesong Street
In Secret Anarchy
A Stranger Called I
The Nowhere Man
Translations
The
Flaming Giraffe – Poems by Sunil Gangopadhyay
Shesh lekha: The last poems of Rabindranath Tagore
The poetry of Kaifi Azmi
Krishna, Krishna
Among all his books, I specially
enjoyed reading ‘Riding the Midnight River”.
Nandy’s experimental style and all he could ever do with words to produce a
different poem is there.
Tonight
when the sunflower cries
Bring the whisper of night flower in your dreams
And listen to the whistling whip as a lone carriage
Carries windswept promises into the dark
Tonight when the sunflower cries I shall unopen this gypsy love
And ride midnight river to your eyes
Where an autumnal lust will declare your absence in my skies.
Tonight when the sunflower cries……
Riding the midnight river, we
reached a new dream called summer.
The strength of Pritish Nandy’s
poetry derives from a language that is breakaway and yet simple, sensitive
and universal. And that perhaps explains his large following. Mulk Raj Anand
in his tribute to Nandy describes him as “the harbinger of the new Indian
consciousness” It is this identification of his concerns with the root
metaphors of his time that has impulsed such wide interest in his work.
– Continued
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