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Articles /Interviews
Unforgettable Times
Indo English Poetry in
the Seventies
by
Dr. Amitabh Mitra
The seventies were great years.
They had a momentous impact on me. I found myself in the midst of a lot of
happenings. Bangla Desh was liberated. Noor e Alam Siddiqui alias Tiger
Siddiqui, Abdul Qudus Makhan, Shahjahan Siraj and Mohammad Abdur Raub, their
bravery at the helm of Mukti Bahini stuck to my mind. General Niyazi
was brought to my home town of Gwalior. His surrendered pistol adorns the
mess at Gwalior. The boy king, His Excellency Jigme Singhe Wangchuk sat on
the throne of Bhutan at the same time. I had embarked on my medical studies
in Gwalior Ten years later, I watched him playing soccer with his uncle at
the stadium in Thimphu.
I read yesterday that he wants to
quit monarchy and give Bhutan a democracy as much as I would love to leave
medicine and enter a world of creative involvements.
Anglo Indian Literature had
already found roots. I was far more entranced to the Anglo Indian Community
in Kolkata who I firmly believe gave the first input to culture and
literature in India. Aparna Sen made “36 Chowringhee Lane” and later
Tanuja with Victor Bannerjee made “An August Requiem”, a salute to
this wonderful vibrant community in Kolkata. Kolkata was swinging to the
strains of such popular groups as Frustrations Amalgamated, the
Forbidden Fruit and the Savages. Sushmit Bose was writing and
performing music at Delhi. He released his album “Train to Calcutta”
which was an instant hit.
Ananda Shankar, schooled at the
Scindia School, Gwalior had the world agog with his fusion music. Years
later I had to buy his Vinyl Discs from an obscure collector in Copenhagen.
I frequented the pubs in Park
Street and listened in trance to two great legends, Braz Gonsalves and Pam
Crain. Pam still croons at the Trincas in Park Hotel. Usha Uthup was making
her presence felt. She too was singing her own compositions.
There was poetry in motion, ‘Once
again the murmur of voices settled into a hushed whisper, a white spotlight
cast an oval patch, soft, softly, a jingle of anklets…… that was Kavita
Bhambani Miss India in the seventies doing her catwalk at Ritu’s Boutique in
Kolkata. Desmond Doig, the editor of JS and an artist par excellence had
brought the hearts of young people like me to a perfect culture of Anglo
Indian happenings. JS a youth journal from the House of Statesman, Kolkata
dominated the Indo English Culture and Literary scene for nearly a decade.
Popular writer Anees Jung took over the editorship of Youth Times. She
brought out an issue on Love Poetry, a feat that got hold of poets all over
the country writing in English to show case their work.
During this period I encountered
love and started trying my hand in writing. I never stopped writing after
that. It was difficult to accept, a small town boy from Hindi heartland in
Gwalior writing love poems in English, I remained the odd chap out. From my
town in Gwalior, I kept a close watch on the Indo–English Poetry movement. I
read the works of Henry Louis Derazio and Post Derazio era poets like Toru
Dutt, Tagore, Aurobindo Ghosh and Sarojini Naidu.
Much later, I was so excited when
my wife started working on a thesis towards her PhD, ‘A comparative study
on the works of Kamala Das and Sarojini Naidu’, a study she couldn’t
complete. I was meeting a lot of poets from Delhi, reading my poems at
Jawaharlal Nehru University Campus and got involved in a leftist literary
cultural organization called ‘Hundred Flowers’.
Poets like Purushottam Agarwal,
Hemant Joshi ‘Hem’ and Renuka Singh all from Delhi influenced me. I remember
Renuka Singh’s ‘Solitary Seconds’ published in the seventies adorning
the shelves of book shops like ‘The Book Worm’ in Connaught place and
‘Teksons Book Shop’ in South Extension, New Delhi. She teaches Sociology at
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
I was peddling my book ‘Ritual
Silences’ at Janpath, on the street at any price. Poetry hardly sells as
they all say. R. Raj Rao had brought out his first poetry book titled ‘Fracture’
in a stenciled form. I bought his book from Manney’s Pune. Medical Doctors
like Gieve Patel from Mumbai had already established their art and poetry in
the international circuit while Kuldeep Singh Tuteja with a Masters in
Physiology and English Literature was being regularly published by Imtiaz
Dharkar, herself an artist and a poet in Debonair. Dr. Tuteja is a
Professor and Head of the Department of Physiology at the Medical College in
Indore. Dr. Rajen Srivastava and Dr. Hari Prakash Jain from Gwalior are my
course mates, wrote poetry profusely, and shared emotions over endless cups
of tea at all odd hours.
I am especially indebted to Rajen
Srivastava for introducing me to the literature of Dr. Nirmal Verma. His
book ‘Wey Din – Those Days” about sudden love in Prague is a virtual
prose in poetry. Hari Prakash Jain now an Ophthalmologist in Shivpuri, near
Gwalior has a book of poems published and is well known in Madhya Pradesh
Literary scene. He was chosen to represent at the Hindi Samellan in
Mauritius.
– Continued
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