Indian Writing

… is a little collection of poems, a compilation of the “favourite poems of famous Indians” (whatever those are).

“If one can find the right poems, quoting someone else can be as much an expression of one’s deeper self as anything one can write oneself,” writes Amartya Sen in his foreword to the book. The collection reveals a few predictable choices and some interesting ones; it also produces some odd combinations of “famous Indians”. Here are 86 poems, from Wordsworth’s “We Are Seven”, chosen by Kiran Bedi, to Saahir Ludhianvi’s “Intezaar”, chosen by Yash Chopra. Wordsworth’s “Daffodils” is the favourite poem of - if you ever wondered what they could have in common - Mulk Raj Anand, Vishwanathan Anand, and Karan Johar. And a whole bunch of people, including Aamir Khan, Rahul Bajaj, Aruna Roy, Prannoy Roy, Mallika Sarabhai, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Kavita Krishnamurthy, and more, have chosen Tagore’s “Where the mind is without fear”. Other anthology favourites include “The Road Not Taken” (Azim Premji, Harsh Goenka, Uday Kotak, Vindi Banga); “Ulysses” (Fareed Zakaria’s choice) and “If” (Rahul Dravid, with four more celebrities). Tarun Das selects Francis Thompson’s “The Hound of Heaven” (”You can’t run away”). The Dalai Lama picks “Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life” from the eight-century Buddhist Master Shantideva:

For as long as space endures, and for as long as all living beings remain, until then may I too abide, to dispel the misery of the world.

Leela Samson chooses “Under One Small Star” by Wislawa Szymborska:

My apologies to chance for calling it necessity
My apologies to necessity if I’m mistaken, after all.
Please, don’t be angry, happiness, that I take you as my due.
May my dead be patient with the way my memories fade.
My apologies to time for all the world I overlook each second.
My apologies to past loves for thinking that the latest is the first.
Forgive me, distant wars, for bringing flowers home.
Forgive me, open wounds, for pricking my finger.

The whole thing here.

Naseeruddin Shah chooses “The Pied Piper of Hamelin” for being “the first poem I ever memorised (as a punishment)… It had something to do with my becoming an actor.” Jehangir Sabavala chooses a sonnet by Dom Moraes dedicated to him (”These landscapes have the colours of absence.”) For others, it helps when poetry runs in the family: Shabana Azmi chooses Kaifi Azmi’s hauntingly lovely “Meri Aawaz Suno, Pyaar Ka Raaz Suno”, while Amitabh chooses Harivanshrai Bachchan’s “Kya Bhooloon, Kya Yaad Karoon?” And Sachin Tendulkar chooses the rather sweet “Sachin” by Ramesh Tendulkar:

Perhaps, maybe because of you,
But cricket to me,
Dear Sachin, is no more a game, but a poem
A lyrical poem!

Poems in Indian languages other than English are presented in their original languages as well as in translation, except for one poem from Tagore chosen by Pandit Ravi Shankar without what Amartya Sen calls “the compromise of translation”. Sen adds, “There is also some delicious irony in finding such a marvellous example of graceful parochialism by the most universalist of our great musicians.”

Sonal Mansingh selects a poem by Narsinh Mehta: “Whatever is ordained by the Lord”, while Anna Hazare chooses “Jana Gana Mana”. The collection ends with Pandit Bhimsen Joshi’s choice, G.D.Madgulkar’s “On the Banks of the Indrayani”:

On the banks of the Indrayani
In God’s Aalandi
Is the samadhi of Dnyaneshwar…

Amartya Sen’s foreword emphasises the cause for which the book has been put together:

To celebrate India’s current success in globalised technology without looking into the imaginative developments that have made this success possible is to miss out a critically important link. Kaifi Azmi’s message about children holding ‘the future in their hands’ is a huge vision, of which some parts are easily seen (like internet cafes right across the country), while other parts have remained obscure and neglected, in great need for a fuller understanding and cultivation (like transforming our ‘country of first boys’ into a nation where every child receives a decent education).

A sweet little collection. Please do consider supporting the effort, as royalties from the book will go to CRY and the cause of child rights. More details about the book here.