T.S. Chandra Mouli: Namaskar! Thanks for permitting us to interview you, sir.

Sunil Sharma: Namaskar. Pleasure is mine. Grateful I am  because a high-value critic like you considers an unknown writer---a mere wordsmith---worthy of your precious literary/critical gaze that Janus-like looks backwards and forwards to arrive at a correct time-continuum and all the lows and highs of the terrain of poetry located in that historical  spatial-temporal domain. I feel honoured that I got this opportunity to talk to a distinguished critic like you about things that bind us both---poetry and literature.

TSCM: How and when did you start writing poetry?

SS: I started quite late. A few years back, when I was on the wrong side of the 40s. The real blooming took place in last one year at 53 of age when people start thinking of retirement plans and investments to secure the remaining days of their life as an amnesiac. This is a remarkable development of my humble creative career…writing poetry. At this advanced age, you talk and see hard prose in a world becoming more prosaic for you and think of Thanatos and final cessation, of soon shedding your mortal coil for other more fascinating realms whose existence and promise keep you working most diligently, in this reality grim, like that wonderful guy, that ceaseless Sisyphus.

So thinking of sublimity, while commuting in a superdense Mumbai local, is as amazing as a fading old man thinking of all the Alpine beauties, while strapped to an iron bed and in an etherized state in an ICU. And I do not mean no offense to both.

TSCM: Please tell us something about your childhood and studies?

SS: A typical middle-class childhood, adolescence and youth in the North that was once more liberal, tolerant and less stupid. Grew up in a fairly good and progressive environment, in a highly-educated family of teachers, where Muses were permanent patrons. My Pa was highly intelligent and versatile. He gave me the best of that small world and what is more---happiness that, despite affluence of some sectors of Indian society, we can’t give to our own kids in these hedonistic and hyper-competitive times. Maa was/is a well-read teacher who taught painting in an intermediate college. So, life was a limited canvas but bursting with vibrant colours and energy of ideas.

I did a Ph.D in Marxist aesthetics thanks to some wonderful teachers and a diploma in journalism. It is meager, this bare-bone CV of mine that won’t impress any head-honcho anywhere, in these days. But that is all I could manage. 

TSCM: What are your concerns as a poet, sir?

-SS: All humanity is my province. And what appealed to Hemingway appeals to me even today, Donne at his very best in his Mediation XVII:

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls for thee.”

This sums up my attitude and makes Donne my enduring personal guide, despite an intervening lapse of three centuries. This high-Renaissance philosophy---and Marxism is another significant development of this great thinking---of inclusiveness and social equity is deeply embedded in my psyche. My scale and given talent might not be as epic as that of the Renaissance figures like a Shakespeare, Michelangelo or Da Vinci but, in times of micro-narratives, it counts because it interrogates the logic of the late capitalism and tries to re-subscribe/re-integrate the lost values.

For me, the very act of questioning, dissidence, resistance is an act of heroic subversion. An ordinary man can start the great fires of a sweeping revolution involving masses. If you doubt, ask the Tunisian governments and Hosni Mubarak---if they permit you access. Ideas are material weapons and can easily destroy the most totalitarian political systems. The Arab Spring of 2011 proves that. Occupy Wall Street is another pointer. Earlier the French had the monopoly but these days, due to social media, even the Arabs are not lagging behind and Edward Said must be most happy person inhabiting in those rarefied spheres called timeless radical thoughts led by these gifted thought-leaders.

TSCM: What perceptible influences are there on your poetry?

SS: You know the answer, sir. It is the man/woman/child who is denied a voice by the system heavily overloaded in favour of the governing elites. I try to sing their songs. Slums, construction sites, homeless, elderly, the marginalized are my inspiration and humanistic ideals are my principles of composition.

TSCM: Do you feel social consciousness or ideological approach are necessary for a poet? Could you elaborate?

SS: Every act of speech or writing is an act of ideological significance. It signifies a meaning that is a social construct. Barthes has proved that in his own maverick way. For example, buying a Ferrari by a poet is an extreme statement of commercial success by him and overturning some popular stereotypes---true also---about poetry and its commercial use in a voyeuristic society that loves Sunny Leone more than its saints. Mario Puzo bought an island. Most writers will die thinking of such huge success or of the one notched by Rowling recently. So, every act and gesture is ideological. Great writers, through serious writings, resist and overcome false ideologies and try to reach the scientific one. Gorky is a good example. Neruda or Picasso is other cultural exemplifier of this truth. The writer must unveil the ugly face of the reality and expose the true character of a system that is basically exploitative and unjust. Writing must raise consciousness.

TSCM: How do you employ images and symbols in your poetry?

SS: Synthesis process called creativity that quickly translates observations and ideas into artistic images of aesthetic delight---hopefully, in my case---to readers. Sometimes, it is quick. Sometimes, it takes long time---by hibernating. Then the ideas, images, settings come cascading down like a torrential fall in monsoon. Everything falls in place. The force carries all the elements in its fast flow ahead.

TSCM: What are the recurring themes and images,sir? Could you give a few examples.

SS: The invisible is made visible in my poems. Urban decay, loss of empathy and ties, pursuits of wealth and power and hedonistic pleasures that empty you of your sedimented human dimensions are some common strands. A barefoot slum boy walking down to his school is nobler subject to me rather than a pampered son crying all the way to an international gated school in his yellow bus. Tramps, homeless, workers, girl-children are my other worthy subjects.

Take this poem - The yellow bus

On the construction site,
Stands this yellow bus---
Much admired and envied
By the workers’ black
Famished kids,
Little Laxmi
Often cries
For a ride
And is denied,
Gets a daily beating
By her asthmatic mother
For her persistent desire
For the yellow bus
That ferries fat sleeping children
To the glass-n-brick structure
Gated and ferociously guarded
From the pests.
The girl-child
One morning cries bitterly
And her desperate maa
Pleads with the conductor
Of the now-parked bus,
The bored conductor agrees,
And little Laxmi
Sits on the upholstered seats,
Prancing in the aisle,
Like a wayside flower,
Smiling happily
While her maa
Cries and beams
Alternatively,
Hoping---
For a guardian angel
That can allow
A poor worker’s kid
To ride daily
In
Yellow bus.

Or, the poem - Street Children: 

The little kids playing
With the paper ball,
On the left side of the
Hard street,
Unmindful of the
Manic traffic,
In the early morning,
In the suburban Mumbai,
Screaming,
Running,
And
Catching
The soggy ball
In tiny dark hands,
While their mothers
Cook the breakfast
On open stoves,
Outside tin sheds.
The morning was
Never welcomed so fast,
By the semi-naked 
Beaming kids
And
Their anemic mothers
Talking with each other,
Squatting on the hard street.

These two poems give a working idea about my shift back from individualism and middle-class themes to urban poor made invisible by us---as both citizens and writers. Poetry should verbalize their social condition and their struggles as denied human beings the way Baudelaire did or regional poets do in India. This is important shift in terms of images and focus---away from an internal gaze to bitter social realities of a post-colonial nation still sunk in abysmal poverty and human rights abuse. We writers must resurrect our vestigial social conscience through this conscious poetic exercise of rendering the invisible India visible. Your poems must prick the conscience of your middle-class insulated readers living in gated communities. I think if we achieve that, we would be successful in our task as the conscience-keepers of the nation.

TSCM: Do you feel poetry festivals or meets promote poetic creativity? Are they relevant at all?

SS: Not in my view. They are a big tamasha that promote the promoted and get the mileage. The sponsors are seen as the cultural elite, get good press and tax benefits. You don’t find the celebrated Vijaydan Dheta from Borunda, Jodhpur, in the Jaipur Lit. Fest. Suburban and rural voices are neglected there---like the other regional voices. It rides on lot of media hype and glam Q of film stars. Middle-class authentic India is missing from this brouhaha. Most other Indian writer of repute do not have the guts to register their dissidence for this commodification of culture by a few arbiters of taste. Rest of India falls for this trap. Such fests shamelessly promote a West-centric NRI-view of India and its development preferred by the Anglo-American axis. We need intellectuals of the stature of Aijaz Ahmad to question this neo-colonialism.

TSCM: As a poet what is your view of the prevailing scenario?

SS: Some wonderful talent is on display online. They are gifted poets but largely shunned by mainstream critics, dons and publishers. 

TSCM: What are the trends you could notice in post-Independence Indian English Poetry?

SS: As I said, recent signs are encouraging in the new crop. They have a way with the word and renew the language and come up with fresh images that can be startling. Your own poetry site is a rich collection of such invigorating voices.

TSCM: Which trends have gained ground? What is conspicuous now?

SS: Linguistic dexterity and inversion of tired symbols and clichés and re-thinking the language and canon.

TSCM: Could you sum up your views on your poetry, please?

SS: Poetry is like blossoming pink and red roses and other flora viewed from the framed window of a cancer ward or imagined and re-imagined by a terminally-ill person. They revive the dying inner landscapes and freshen up sterile environment; they are like irrigating river flowing in the middle of marubhoomi, a desert. The poetry uplifts and checks stasis, moral, ethical and emotional, physical. It is like watching the first dawn by our early ancestors that brought hope and promise of living in a harsh environment. It is seeing Poseidon is sea for the early Greeks and Varun in the wind for us Indians. That capacity to see gods in natural elements belongs to poets only. Wordsworth could do that. And it makes the whole process of seeing and recording a holy act; something sacred and sacrosanct for both poets and readers. It is anti-commercial and anti-hedonistic impulse that elevates the spirit and makes it lighter and buoyant. The imaginary potential, once unleashed, makes it vibrant and liberating for the poetry warriors.

TSCM: What is your prognosis of Indian English poetry?

 SS: Poetry speaks in former masters’ colonizing voice and inverts the entire paradigm of colonialism. The nativity is well-expressed and reaches wider, pan-Indian, almost global audiences.

TSCM: How far the trends or movements abroad have influenced Indian English poetry, sir? Kindly elaborate.

SS: Earlier, we all were Eliots; now, we are more Indians, comfortable in our own skin. We are naturalized and more spontaneous and less apologetic about our themes and syntax and grammar. It is taking poetry to very next level. It is good. It is robust and enthusiastic response.

TSCM: How far these have had an impact on your thought or craft, please?

SS: For me, there are some all-time favourites that keep on re-visiting me and guiding me through the critical phases of life and career.  They speak to me at odd hours. The great break came when I got my autonomy from them---like an adult son but I continue to walk in their lengthening shadows. They are the gods of my literary pantheon that keep on watching my every step like guardians. They are in my DNA. I am them. And they reside within---these immortals from world literatures. I feel blessed by these fresh encounters with them. My short fictions explore this relationship with art and artistes of the past more in detail and depth. So, intertextualities can be productive and epiphaneous as well for the receptive minds.  

TSCM: Thanks for sharing your erudite views on poetry in general and Indian English poetry in particular. It helps us in appreciating your poetic thought better. We are honoured, sir.

SS: I remain in debt to you. Your questions remind me of the ‘Paris Review’ that conducted such wonderful, in-depth questions and made the poets---big or small---feel very special. You heard me out and that, in itself, is a great moment for me. If you get heard these days, it is most beautiful feeling!