Indian English Poets

Nissim Ezekiel, Kamala Das, Jayanta Mahapatra, A.K.Ramanujan, Keki N.Daruwalla and Adil Jussawalla
 

There is nothing as that to put that Nissim Ezekiel is credited with the introduction of modernism in Indian English poetry, but the things are not exactly so as because the trends and tendencies were present even before in the writers of the pre-independence time. The other problem of the study is this that we often leave the poets of the pre-independence as for the materials cannot be reached at and found. If things are unreachable and inaccessible, how can we dismiss as naught?
 

There were some very good poets, but at that time Indian English poetry was nowhere as it is talked around and the matter a discussion of the syllabus and the board of studies. We generally submit the poems of Sarojini Nadu and Harindranath Chattopadhyaya for our studies as and when we take up the pre-independence time for whatsoever reason. When they started, we mean P. Lal, Nissim Ezekiel, Kamala Das, Jayanta Mahapatra, A.K. Ramanujan, Keki N. Daruwalla, R. Parthasarathy, Gieve Patel, Arun Kolatkar and Adil Jussawalla, we need to peruse it. R. Parthasarathy’s discussion of modern Indian English poetry with the inclusion of some poets cannot be the complete of such a study.
 

Studying and reading is good, but can poetry be restricted to a few select poets? Has modernism come to a halt? The answer is not, not at all, this cannot be the reply to our question asked to know it. We may too ask, what is modern in modern Indian English poetry as we question, what is Indian in Indian English poetry? Indian English poetry is an evolving genre of literature and has taken time to evolve. It was so derivative, imitative and copious in the beginning and even now it is, which but cannot be dismissed at one go. Most of the modern Indian English poets are private and personal in their presentation. What they write and read, they know it the best and we too have taken time in coming to know them, in understanding their thin thematic, so devoid of Indian thought and idea, history and culture.
 

What is un-Indian in modern Indian English poetry? P. Lal as the harbinger of modernism started with his self-styled publication house publishing the commoners in an experimental basis and the experiment ludicrously failed as well as showed the signs of progress. But the Editor of the Illustrated Weekly of India C.R. Mandy had not been satisfied with the bad verses written by the Indians and sent to them for publications in the magazine. Indian English poetry got restricted to coteries, cocoons and circles, the Pondicherry School and the Bombayan School and most of them came through such an approbation. Had the ashramite press been not, could the volumes of Savitri come out? Could the poems of Aurobindo?
 

Aurobindo got published, but his compatriots took time to evolve under the light of the guru. So was the case with Tagore. Had he not got literary mentors, could they have been published? If we go through Gitanjali, we shall come to know how the Indian classics and classical devotional literature hang it heavy upon Tagore in writing the book and collecting the poems.
 

In the sixties Nissim Ezekiel started to write and publish, but was just a starter then, but the studies of modern Indian English poets show it differently. Today we discuss Meena Alexander, but not Anna Sujatha Mathai. I wonder why she has been left out who is not less than Meena. So is the case with Romen Basu and we cannot negate his poetry as has appeared from big international houses. A recipient of the Padma award, Krishna Srinivas even now remains a promoter of new poetry. Supervisors have given topics to their research scholars but have failed to talk of O.P. Bhatnagar as for inclusion in the syllabus committee meetings.
 

Ten Twentieth-Century Indian Poets edited by R. Parthasarathy in 1976 cannot be the epilogue of modern Indian English poetry. Will there be no addition? Was K.D. Katrak not a good poet? We read Gieve Patel, but not K.D. Katrak. Patel was famous when his poems were appearing in journals after his first publication was on the offing. Are Katrak’s poems on syllabus? Perhaps the readers of Indian English poetry know it not the name of Katrak as they know the names of Daruwalla and Patel. V.K. Gokak may be a great poet, but his poems are not easily available in English, and he has not so many, maybe he a professor of English literature and a great poet of Kannada. Now I think as per my intensive reading of such a genre for decades without going for grants and awards and fellowships, the whole Pondicherry School must be perused, picking the best practitioners.
 

What more do we know about the foreigner critics of Indian English poetry who have promoted it? Is Yeats’ Introduction to Gitanjali not a good piece of criticism? We do not know how has Tagore taken to Yeats’ poetry? What are his reactions? What is his evaluation?
 

Adil Jussawalla has re-surfaced after having gone missing for years and years. When he was Literary Editor of Debonair, he did a great service in introducing the new poets and giving a chance to them in its issues. But Shiv K. Kumar’s name and fame have waned a bit and so has P. Lal’s fame too as poet. R. Parthasarathy, how long will he go pedaling with Rough Passage?
 

Can one book be all? Can it be a pillar of success for the all the times to come? Will he not revise his anthology of ten poets? Are there no poets after them? Instead of Keshav Malik has broken through. How modern are modern Indian English poets? This too can be a topic of a doctoral dissertation. R.R. Menon, we do not know him. But he is that poet who has more than ten volumes of poetry and most of his works have appeared from Writers Workshop, Calcutta. People talk about prose and poetry as being separate genres, but Mahapatra’s Door of Paper will surpass any book of poetry in lucidity of thought and idea. So is the case with Aurobindo’s The Life Divine which is Savitri in prose, but his language is not so lucid rather than strict metrical pattern it follows.
 

Adil Jussawalla's Land's End and Missing Person are as such that these give a tougher situation to deal with as because they take to foreign lands and climes to tell their tales of adjustment and liaison we are not aware of, even the jokes and talks form a part of their gossip. A modern poet, he pedals though broken statements, half-said truths. The Western psyche we cannot divulge as we are not a part of that, so complex, so tedious to make forays into.
 

It is strange that we could not know Joseph Furtado, the great poet of Goa. How could he go unrecognized? And even if you give posthumous awards to him, those will be of no avail. Have we ever prescribed his poems for our boys and girls? We do not know. We generally keep the pre-independence time at bay.
 

It is a specialty of Jayanta Mahapatra that he is a poet of the morning, the dawn, the noontime, the twilight and the eve too. There are lots of poems on the twilight. He is an image-maker and a photographer too. Jagannatha’s tales he knows them best. He is a lover of the dawn, of Puri and the Ratha-yatra. We may do a dissertation taking Mahapatra as a poet of serenade, quietude and silence. There are so many poems titled Morning, Twilight, Dawn break or Silence. Now it is the duty of the readers to know them by the lines with which they start. Historically, Jayanta is a poet of Khandagiri, Dhaulagiri, the river Daya, Asokan edicts and the battle site of the Kalinga war dreaming about blood-letting, crossing of swords and the wounds inflicted upon, rising in askance to know it from the river which has been flowing since then. He is a poet of the Konark Sun Temple, the architectural excellence and the sculptural carving, the iconic wheels and the chariots. Door of Paper: Essays and Memoirs is more lucid than his poetry and it would have been great had it been poetry. The work reminds of the lucid style of The Discovery of India by Nehru.
 

Khushwant Singh too praises Kipling’s verses as for the use of Indian pidgin English, but we take him otherwise. We talk of knowing English, but we know it not George Orwell was born in Bihar’s Champaran.
 

We have failed to study comparatively. Can we not compare Toru’s Savitri with Aurobindo’s and Tagore’s Urvasi with Aurobindo’s? We may compare Nissim Ezekiel’s Hymns in Darkness and Latter-Day Psalms with Keki N. Daruwalla’s Bombay Prayers. Why is Nissim Ezekiel silent about Aurobindo? R. Parthaasarathy and Keki N. Daruwalla, we think, will not like Aurobindo. It is also a fact that the sadhaka sitting with the bones and the skull one may not, as they are modern poets. What it pains us most is this that we have failed to admire and appreciate A.E. Russell, the great Irish poet who wrote poems on Indian religion and spirituality. His poems on morning serenade, dawn break, quietude seconded by thankfulness surpass those of Jayanta Mahapatra. A great votary of Indian thought and culture he was a mystic par excellence. We too are as such that we have failed to include in his poems in our syllabuses even in ones or twos.
 

Instead of the constructive criticism attempted and the genre studied, I have finally come to deal with the poetry of the poets under our perusal for a literary study sake in this volume and I do not how far have I been able to do justice to the topic in hand which but I shall not say it, the readers will say.
 

It is not as that modern Indian English poetry starts it abruptly from here and that too with these practitioners of poesy merely, the kernels of modernism lie in the poetry-writers who appear even before them. The story begins it not with them and the poetic process has not been carried it far for the first time, but there is no doubt in it to say it that it has been continuing since long and the whole of it must be studied while making a true assessment of it in the absence which it will not be complete at all. That is why, keeping in mind, I have tried my utmost best to illustrate and charter the course of poetry as it has come down to us trickling and tumbling through their first publications to latest developments made as because there is in them a story of evolution to be marked, a virgin field of literature making a way from the pre-independence time to spill into the realms of the post-independence period. The tale of poetry, the process of writing, it is very difficult to describe it and that too here it is that of the Indians writing in English which is not their vernacular, but a foreign language to be acquired which they learn to be conversant with even in the dearth of a feeder dialect of its own. Even the Anglo-Indians carry it not which could keep the language alive here as it is in South Africa and the Caribbean nations. In the beginning, Indian English poetry was not so as we call it today; it was Anglo-Indian, Indo-Anglican, Indo-English and Indian poetry in English. Indology, Sanskrit Studies, Indian culture, used to be the things of our concern and the times too were hard.
 

In The Indian Contribution to English Literature, published in 1945, K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar discusses Baldoon Dhingra, P.R. Kaikini, Manjeri S. Isvaran, Humayun Kabir and so on to present the then time status of Indian English poetry. The perception with regard to new poetry and new poets was different during independence and after it. We generally club the time after 1950 as that of the so-called modern Indian English poets, but the scenario was not so. It took time in developing, evolving. What it is written will take time in to be included in.
 

The fifties, the sixties, the seventies and the eighties helped in gathering the harvest. We cannot say that the time-span started just with the independence of India. Some tendencies were definitely present, some new ideas were germinating and the poetry-takers wished to contribute to such a virgin field of literature. Seeds were shown as for the plants to grow and for getting a good yield, but instead of studying the time-spirit we started to demarcate it abruptly to serve our ends. Everybody of us is in the know of it definitely or we suppose it to be so that it can happen to any branch of evolving genre of literature. But outside their periphery, coterie and circle, there were poets who could not get an opportunity of being included.
 

We do not know if it represented the whole of India or not. Only they flourished who were published by P. Lal. This too cannot be the basis of inclusion and criticism, but we included and made a critique of. It is also a fault with that since their start they were poets. Indian English poetry is in some way a discussion of first-poem and first-book writers and the books which appeared from consisted of just a few pages. Can we ever say Nissim Ezekiel was famous since the publication of his first book? His name figured in Indian Writing in English written by K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar.
 

But the verses written by the Indians and sent to the Editor of the Illustrated Weekly were not of a good standard, as no one was not so satisfied with them, is also a fact. Had the earlier editors been, they would have enlightened upon the topic in details bringing to light their weaknesses and shortcomings which but we know it not and Nissim too cannot escape it.
 

Nissim Ezekiel who made a start in the nineteen fifties is in some way one of the stalwarts of modernism whose names we cannot help without taking and starting the journey from there onwards. A poet of the modern times and the age he was born into, he made a tryst with modernity and modern elements to incorporate in such a genre which was bereft of it completely.
 

Modern Indian English poetry too got an impetus when they started the journey from and came along with publishing poems which showed the signs of promise and the first ventures were published or books on the anvil of which he too was no exception to it. Whatever be it our constructive criticism, there are some new tendencies in his poetry, the waves of new thoughts and new ideas so discerning and sifting with a Western look ever to make a way into the realms of it. He derives from observation and experience and intermixes poetry with knowledge and wisdom and philosophy.
 

A birdwatcher, a poet, a lover and a philosopher, he is introspective and reflective, but so ordinary in his expression. But what pains us is this that he is so detached with and aloof from Indian thought and culture. Indian myth and mysticism is not his subject. A recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1983 as for Latter-Day Psalms and Padma Shri in 1988, he is not only a poet, but a prose-writer, an art critic and a play-writer.
 

Kamala Das, a poetess from Malabar, Kerala, is now considered an exponent of feminism, the showpiece, the vocal side of Indian feminism, but is in reality is confessional and autobiographical. She started with love and sex and dream; the body and its inclinations. Human relationship, the stories of it drew her closer and she sought for an expression. Spiritually sick, she delved and dipped into the layers of dark relationships, human bonding and sympathies. What does the body want? What does the heart say it? This is her matter. Where is it fulfillment? Perhaps it comes from sex. Sexual desires burn it a soul, a heart, without which one cannot unless it gets fulfilled, the hunger needs to be fed and the thirst needs to be quenched. The thirst of the soul, the hunger of the belly, is it all. From personality to she turned to generalizations, impersonality in art, from subjective emotions to a recording of objective impressions and sensations.
 

To see it in the words of K.R.S. Iyengar:
 

“One of the most aggressively individualistic of the new poets is Kamala Das (Madhavikutty), who has poetry in her blood as it were, both her mother and grandfather being poets in Malayalam.” (K.R.S. Iyengar, Indian Writing In English, Sterling Publishers, 1987, p.677)
 

To continue with, he says:
 

“The title-piece in Summer in Calcutta scatters its fall-out of heat, sweat and weariness over the entire volume. Even the imagery painfully recurs. Summer heat, urban modes; vital heat, urban sophistication; the contrast between the desire and the spasm, the dream and the reality--Kamala Das explores this theatre of enervation, this vestibule of unresolved tensions.” (Ibid, p.677)
 

Jayanta Mahapatra, a professor of physics, he strangely happened to be our poet stunning with his presence whose poems were taught in English classrooms. He is the first recipient of Sahitya Akademi Award given to any book of poems in English and Relationship is that which fetched him the prize in 1981. Initially, he too started with a shaky start, but got noticed as he had wanted to be a novelist, but from a visitor and photo-taker of the temples he turned into a poet. But Relationship as a literary work is of a visionary glide and delving, dream sequence and allegorical stride. It is a book of relationships with the land of his birth, nativity and rearing and he wants to be with it.
 

The small book, if we see it otherwise, is a Leaves of Grass in miniature and he speaks like Walt Whitman of the States. It is Orissa and the Oriyas which hang heavy upon him, on his mindscape taking to the sea, rivers, forests, sea-beaches, rocks, stones and trees and his mind can go nowhere barring it. The rock-built temples haunt the self of the poetic persona often and he wishes to be there. The myth, history, art, culture, society and race and identity of the mass which inhabit the land, their struggles and sufferings, troubles and tribulations he penetrated deep into mythically to stride along clutching the lore. What is it that makes happy? What it is that makes them sad? Under the benediction and shadow of the phallus, the phallic stone, he tells the tales of Orissa and the Oriyan people held by myth and mysticism.
 

A.K. Ramanujan, who after his teaching in India for some time left for the U.S., was an academician, a linguist, a translator and a poet who delved deep into South Indian stock and drew from far after being settled abroad to be a part of the diaspora dais and contradicting it there from, ‘How far Indians are those who live abroad?’ to be called an Indian poet. As a poet he is a south Indian poet of some Dravidic entity; a folklorist whose study is but folkloristics. There is nothing as English like, British or American stuff, only typical Indian stuff is therein. Horoscope-makers, astrologers, palmists, fortune tellers, soothsayers and astronomers are the birds of a feather who flock it together. But somewhere it is samsakara which but upholds it apart from his laughing stock which he has got. A recipient of Padma Shri from the Govt. of India in 1976 and of the Sahitya Akademi Award posthumously for The Collected Poems in 1999.
 

Keki N. Daruwalla as a poet is first of all a Parsi, then an IPS officer, a RAW man, a member of the Minorities Commission who made his start with the publication of Under Orion and Apparitions.
 

While picking up the books of Keki N. Daruwalla’s Apparitions and A.K.Ramanujan’s Relations for book-discussion, Nisim Ezekiel writes:
 

“Daruwlla’s poetry is sometimes raw, the phrasing journalistic, even the punctuation inconsistent, as if only the heart of a poem matters and let the other organs look after themselves. This is a very masculine attitude to poetry, and as in all other matters needs the feminine values to complete it. Besides, linear progression carries within it the hazards of predictability, which the poems in Daruwalla’s first book escape but those in the second do not.” (Nissim Ezekiel, Selected Prose, Oxford Univ. Press, Delhi, 1992, p.151)
 

Adil Jussawalla, after his return from Oxford as for the course he had gone to finish, did it a bit of teaching for a brief stint to be wholly given to journalism and editorial services. A poet who published at a young age, drew from Auden and so on, read it poetry, reviewed and promoted, but took to intermittently personally and even if he, took to it not seriously to bring them out, the latter collections of poetry. After the publication of the two books, he turned into a journo, an editor, a columnist. Jussawalla had been the Literary Editor of Debonair magazine published from Bombay and for some time he even acted as its Acting Editor. His write-ups appeared in newspapers on different matters and turned silent with regard to his writings. Again after a gap of so many years, the missing man surfaced it again to spring upon with his poetry books and he authored to discern his image. The poet collected his notes, added to and represented. The poet receives the Sahitya Akademi Award for his third collection of poems, named Trying to Say Goodbye in 2014. The Right Kind of Dog and Shorelines & Other Poems too are like the previous ones as because style changes it not, remains it unto the last and this is applicable to the poet.
 

It is not so easy to assess the things of an evolving genre of a virgin field of literature which we are seeing it in terms of Indian English poetry, but frankly speaking there is nothing like Indian English. Had it been, it would have a feeder dialect of its own. Indian English poetry was not Indian, but Anglo-Indian, Indo-Anglican, Indo-Anglian, Indo-English and Indian poetry in English before being called or labelled Indian English poetry. But here the modern phase of Indian English is the focal point of study with special focus on Nissim Ezekiel, Kamala Das, Jayanta Mahapatra, A.K. Ramanujan, Keki N. Daruwalla and Adil Jussawalla. But what it pains us most is this that the poets who have taken to writing in the fifties, the sixties, the seventies and the eighties deal with mainly personal and private things as they have done it so far barring some who are outside the mainstream of writing. When they started to write, there were no buyers of theories, no takers of their poetry. Who would recognize them? This was also before them. The other thing was this that their writing too was not a standard one. The other as that they copied the masters and imitated them and it is for which the echoes of them can be heard in our poets. Most of the poets were city-bred and urban who had nothing to do with rural and agricultural India; with the India of myth and mysticism and detached from the lore of it, they kept writing in their own way without paying any heed to ancient heritage and culture.
 

As it is asked, ‘What is Indian in Indian English poetry?’ or ‘How far Indian is Indian English poetry?’, so can we ask, put the question before as for an answer from their end or from us, ‘What is modern in modern Indian English poetry?’ or ‘How modern are modern Indian English poets?’.
 

When the modern Indian English poets were introduced for the first time, the olden professors used to shirk from teaching or taking up such a topic. Materials were not available on them. People had no idea with regard to them and their poetry. The blurbs too were silent about them; their whereabouts unknown. There was none to say who they were. The books of the poets too were not available in the market and to write following R. Parthasarathy’s Ten Twentieth-century Indian Poets, it was difficult to write a summary or to critically evaluate poems and poets’ contributions. Today they may be great poets, but were not so in the beginning. And it happens only into the realms of Indian English poetry, whatever you write, will be accepted if it is published by them. Did P. Lal’s Writers Workshop, Calcutta, represent it all? Did he publish? And whom he published, did he keep a record of them? To publish and to leave is it not all. There must be some standards of selection and inclusion.
 

Before including Nissim Ezekiel, we want to see who recommended his poetry first or he turned into a poet all of a sudden? This needs to be perused whose favors did he get when he was a beginner? And without taking it into consideration, without discussing it, we call it that Nissim is a great modern Indian English poet. Who knew him then and since when got appreciated? What editors and poets did he approach for turning the tables? Who are the critics of Nissim Ezekiel? We think that there is nobody to answer it around. Had K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar been, he would have. This should be kept in mind that Iyengar too had his mentors or the people of his company to see and review what he wrote it or took to for a deliberation.
 

Kamala Das is the most autobiographical of the Indian poetesses writing in English and whose base is one of Kerala and Malayalam. We do not know what poets has she read or has she written it spontaneously and experimentally basing on her experiences and feelings which are primarily her own? Whatever say you or go you on arguing, we do not know so much about her higher education as well as about the impact of English poets on her. To discuss her in the absence of impacts and influences does not prove us to be in a healthy literary state and position. Whoever be he or she that persona, something needs to be critiqued and analyzed for criticism sake; everything cannot be a push-up for. Today people are doing Ph.Ds. on her poetry, theses after theses lie heaped upon in the research sections or cells of Indian universities, the syllabus-committee members keep pressing for including her poems into courses of studies and the Indian guides and supervisors running for topics on her poetry. But may we ask, what is new in her? What is new in your topic?
 

The Mood & Mind of Kamala Das: A Study, The Psychology of A Woman: A Study in Kamala Das, The Psychology of Kamala Das: A Study, Sexology & The Neurotic Mind: A Study In Kamala Das’s Erotic Poetry, The Abnormal Self & The Disturbed Persona : A Study In Kamala Das’s Poetry, we may keep our stuff as thus if we want to really peruse and pursue her.
 

To make a portrait of her is to make a portrait of a confessional, a feminist and a womanly persona all the three in one. Her portrait is one of a modern young maiden in a tulsimala around her neck or in the rudraksha bracelets and mala. A disciple of Acharya Rajneesh, supposed to be, as per her dream and its annotation, to say it otherwise, she believes in Sambhoga to samadhi. Real satisfaction comes from sex, but a disturbed sexual life yields to several complications. The histrionics and coquetry of Kamala none can explain it in words; just a theatre critic can, not one of poetry.
 

Jayanta Mahapatra is first and foremost an imagist then a poet of Orissa, so national and international from linguistic point of view, in taking to the tales of hunger, poverty, underdevelopments, backwardness, superstition, social evil and moral depravity. Flesh trade, woman trafficking, dowry deaths, poor living, rake us apart when we sit to read and discuss him. But when a myth-maker, he lures us with make believe poetry, with his mythical glides and references so untold y anyone. We look up to him in hearing the tales of Orissa and Oriyan landscapes. The sea on calm and clamor enchants us and we continue to enjoy the serenade by being on the seashore, seeing the Puri beach. His rath-yatras have always eluded us with the gala and glee, the mammoth crowds thronging in to see Jagannath, Balbhadra and Subhadra going on the chariot wheels for an outing and a darshana.
 

A.K. Ramanujan’s poetic journey from hashya, vyangaya to vakrokti, a horoscope- maker astrologer’s journey from family matter to laughingstock to the oblique approach is ironical indeed. A folklorist, how could he be a professor of English? If he had to be a folklorist, why did he English? He would have folklore. But apart from folklore, he draws from sociology, anthropology, psychology and ethnicity. In the poem, The Last of The Princes, the poet discusses the fall of the deshi kings and nawabs during the British period and their deplorable conditions. More especially, the Mogul power, how did it collapse, take time to decline? The folklore brothers, ill maintenance and the lack of revenue take a toll upon. How do they try to keep power with, emulating the Europeans? They want to educate in the way of the Europeans, but problems and troubles leave them not behind. A River is a description of Madurai, the temple town by the bank of the river and the floods taking the scenario and the landscape. The older poets have so far sung of the flood waters engulfing, but it is the new poets who have at least tried to see realistically, how do the waters inundate an area, put unnecessary hurdles and the things come to a stop!.
 

Keki N. Daruwalla is the most unsentimental of the modern Indian English poets whom we discuss for our pleasure and reading as for his hard-shelled poetry, bombastic words so obsolete and archaic, curtailed phrase and verbose style of deliberation. Frankly speaking, he is a poet of accident, tragedy, bloody clots; murder, crime, violence; fury, mob, crowd; vengeance, hatred, animosity, anger and wrath. To read him is to overhear a talk between a policeman and a criminal, a judge and a convict. But man is always not a prisoner, a convict and a criminal as John Galsworthy says it and Gandhi wishes the jails to be mental hospitals with the convicts and criminals to be treated as patients. Walt Whitman too may opine the same that man is but a judge donning the dress, the same man a criminal after doing the offence. But where is justice? Is it dispensed really? Is it not delayed? Who a judge, who a pleader and who a criminal? Wait, try to read you, placing them under awkward situations and situations never faced before. And Time will tell it.
 

But his mysticism starts taking wings or deepens it when he talks of Fire-Hymn and Bombay Prayers and here one can see a true Daruwalla whispering prayers and talking of the Towers of Silence.
 

Adil Jussawalla is really difficult to be perused and the material is short on him. He needs to evolve even after as because he has just restarted the process after keeping it at bay for so long. The problem lies with his story of being gone missing and the critics too were such that they could not search him, find him out even. Now that the ships have reached ashore and he has been found, people are talking of, reading his poetry. But the lazy researchers of Indian English are even now exploring possibilities as for choosing topics on him and his poetry. He tried to say goodbye to poetry, but could not and has come to stay. From the plane boarded about to land at Santa Cruz Airport, Bombay, he takes an aerial view of his beloved city, the metropolitan city and the commercial hub so famed for international connectivity and gala syndromes and hectic traffic activity. How has Bombay given shelter to all, he thinks it about, how to the Partition people, to the caravans of refugees so distraught and devastated in their dreams of life, so shattered and broken, reeling heavily under, to job-seekers and it all!
 

After reading their poetry and collections of poems, the representative anthologies of modern Indian English poetry, we seem to notice it that it is very tedious to go through and enjoy modern poetry written by the poets whom we are studying it here as because they can explain their poetry best rather than attempted criticism made as for revealing them and the difficulty lies it in understanding their psyche, mood and mind and coming to know how difficult it is really to intrude and encroach upon their private and personal space as for a deliberation! We do not know to read and assess them; how to evaluate them as the things are not as they seem to be. To work in the dearth of collections available and materials lying unattended to so far, it is really troublesome to make forays into. The whole saga of modern Indian English poetry has turned into a tangle of several knots which need to be untangled. Instead of, we love reading modern poetry written by the Indians so diverse in tone and tenor though the mood is the same.