Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay: A Voice of Society, a Conscience of Literature

Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay (15 September 1876 – 16 January 1938) occupies a unique and enduring position in the history of Indian literature. Few writers have been able to enter so deeply into the emotional, social and moral life of ordinary people as he did. Writing at a time when Bengal and India were passing through profound social and political transformations, Sarat Chandra transformed literature into a sensitive instrument for examining society. His contribution was not confined to the enrichment of Bengali literature; it extended to the awakening of social consciousness, sympathy for the marginalised and a deeper understanding of the complexities of human relationships.

Sarat Chandra came of age in a period when Bengal was witnessing enormous changes. The nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were marked by the impact of British colonial rule, the growth of modern education, the Bengal Renaissance, the rise of nationalism and attempts at social reform. Yet beneath these intellectual and political developments lay a society still burdened by rigid conventions, poverty, social inequality, patriarchy, caste distinctions and deeply entrenched prejudices. The lives of women, the poor, widows, the socially ostracised and those belonging to disadvantaged sections were often governed by rules over which they had little control. It was into this complex social landscape that Sarat Chandra introduced his remarkably compassionate literary vision.

What distinguishes Sarat Chandra is the extraordinary humanity with which he approached his characters. He did not merely describe society from a distance; he entered into the inner worlds of those whom respectable society frequently ignored or condemned. His protagonists and supporting characters are often imperfect, emotionally vulnerable and caught in circumstances beyond their control. Through them, he revealed the tensions between individual desire and social convention, between love and duty, between personal freedom and social expectations.

His treatment of women constitutes one of his most significant contributions. In novels such as Devdas, Parineeta, Biraj Bou, Palli Samaj, Charitraheen, Grihadaha and Srikanta, women are not simply decorative figures or passive participants in the narrative. They possess intelligence, emotional depth, dignity, courage and moral agency. Sarat Chandra repeatedly drew attention to the injustice suffered by women because of social conventions. He made readers question the easy habit of judging women according to standards created largely by a patriarchal society. His sympathetic portrayal of widows, socially condemned women and women trapped in unhappy relationships was particularly significant in an age when such subjects were often treated with embarrassment or silence.

His sympathy, however, was not restricted to women. Sarat Chandra possessed a profound understanding of the common people. His literary world includes villagers, workers, students, impoverished families, wanderers, social outsiders and people struggling to preserve their dignity in difficult circumstances. Poverty in his works is not merely an economic condition; it affects relationships, choices, ambitions and self-respect. By bringing such lives to the centre of literature, he challenged the notion that only the lives of the socially privileged were worthy of serious literary treatment.

Another remarkable feature of his writing is his ability to expose social hypocrisy. Sarat Chandra was often less interested in preaching than in showing the contradictions between what society professes and how it actually behaves. A society may speak of morality while humiliating a widow; proclaim honour while denying women freedom; or uphold tradition while practising cruelty. His stories compel readers to confront these contradictions. In this sense, his literature became a quiet but powerful form of social criticism.

His engagement with the question of Indian identity and nationalism also deserves attention. Works such as Pather Dabi reflect the political ferment of colonial India and the intensity of the freedom movement. Sarat Chandra understood that nationalism was not merely a political slogan; it was intertwined with questions of dignity, sacrifice, freedom and the right of individuals and communities to determine their own destiny. At the same time, his larger body of work demonstrates that the liberation of a nation cannot be completely separated from the liberation of the human being from social injustice and prejudice.

Literarily, Sarat Chandra's achievement was equally remarkable. He brought an extraordinary simplicity, naturalness and emotional immediacy to Bengali prose. His language was accessible without being impoverished, and his narratives were compelling without depending on unnecessary ornamentation. He possessed an exceptional understanding of dialogue, characterisation and psychological nuance. His characters often remain memorable because they appear to breathe and suffer like real human beings. Readers do not merely observe them; they empathise with them.

This accessibility also helped Sarat Chandra's influence travel far beyond Bengal. His novels and stories were translated into several Indian languages, enabling readers across India to encounter the social and emotional world of Bengal through his characters. His works have also inspired numerous adaptations in theatre and cinema. Consequently, his contribution belongs not merely to the history of Bengali literature but to the broader cultural history of India.

Perhaps Sarat Chandra's greatest achievement was that he humanised literature. He asked readers to look beyond labels—respectable or disreputable, rich or poor, man or woman, traditional or unconventional—and to recognise the human being underneath. His sympathy was not sentimental weakness; it was a moral force. He believed, implicitly and often explicitly, that understanding another person's suffering is itself a step towards a more humane society.

More than eight decades after his death, Sarat Chandra's relevance remains undiminished. The social circumstances of India have changed enormously, yet questions concerning gender, dignity, inequality, social prejudice, individual freedom and the conflict between tradition and modernity continue to concern us. His characters therefore remain alive because the human dilemmas they embody have not disappeared.

Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay was not simply a great storyteller. He was a compassionate observer of his age, a critic of social injustice, an advocate—through literature—of human dignity, and one of the most powerful interpreters of the Bengali and Indian psyche. His greatest legacy is perhaps the compassion he taught generations of readers: to see the human being before the social label, to question injustice before accepting convention, and to recognise that literature at its finest can become a mirror of society as well as a conscience for it.

Subodh Ghosh: A Master Craftsman of Modern Bengali Literature

Subodh Ghosh (14 September 1909 – 10 March 1980) occupies a distinguished place in twentieth-century Bengali literature as one of the finest short-story writers, novelists, and journalists. Born in Hazaribagh (now in Jharkhand), he overcame poverty through determination and eventually joined Anandabazar Patrika as a journalist. His literary career combined realism, psychological insight, social criticism, and historical imagination, making him one of the most versatile Bengali litterateurs of the modern era.

The greatest strength of Subodh Ghosh lies in his short stories. He transformed the Bengali short story by introducing unusual themes, ordinary characters, and profound human dilemmas. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he explored the lives of workers, tribal communities, the urban middle class, and marginalised people with remarkable empathy. Stories such as Ajantrik, Fossil, Jatugriha, Gotrantar, Parashuramer Kuthar, and Thagini reveal his extraordinary ability to blend realism with symbolism and psychological depth.

His celebrated story Ajantrik is considered one of the most original works in Bengali literature. It tells the story of a taxi driver whose emotional attachment to his old car blurs the boundary between man and machine. The story raises philosophical questions about loneliness, technology, and human emotions. Ritwik Ghatak adapted it into the classic Bengali film Ajantrik (1958), now regarded as a landmark of Indian cinema.

Another masterpiece is Jatugriha, a poignant exploration of marriage, loss, and emotional separation. The story depicts a couple whose relationship slowly collapses after the tragedy of losing their child. Tapan Sinha's Bengali film Jatugriha (1964), starring Uttam Kumar and Arundhati Devi, faithfully captured the emotional intensity of the story. Decades later, Gulzar adapted it into the Hindi classic Ijaazat (1987), starring Rekha and Naseeruddin Shah. The film earned widespread acclaim, and Subodh Ghosh posthumously received the Filmfare Award for Best Story.

Subodh Ghosh also wrote powerful socially conscious fiction. Sujata attacks the evil of untouchability through the love story of an upper-caste man and a Dalit woman. Bimal Roy's Sujata (1959), featuring Nutan and Sunil Dutt, became one of the greatest social films in Indian cinema and won Subodh Ghosh the Filmfare Award for Best Story.

His political story Fossil exposed the exploitation of workers through the alliance of feudal landlords and industrial capitalists. Bimal Roy adapted it into Anjangarh (1948), a film noted for its strong political message. Similarly, Gotrantar, dealing with labour exploitation in a sugar mill, inspired Mrinal Sen's Hindi film Ek Adhuri Kahani (1971). Chittachakor became the basis for Basu Chatterjee's immensely popular Hindi film Chitchor (1976), while Thagini was adapted into Tarun Majumdar's Bengali film of the same name. These adaptations demonstrate the cinematic quality and universal appeal of Subodh Ghosh's storytelling.

Apart from short stories, Subodh Ghosh enriched Bengali literature through novels such as Trijama, Gangotri, Tilanjali, Sujata, and Suno Baranari. His novel Trijama was successfully adapted into a Bengali film starring Uttam Kumar and Suchitra Sen, while Suno Baranari also reached the silver screen. His novels often portray complex human relationships, women's emotional worlds, and changing social values.

A unique contribution of Subodh Ghosh is Bharat Premkatha, a collection of romantic tales drawn from the Mahabharata, Ramayana, and other Indian legends. He reinterpreted ancient myths in a modern, humanistic style, making epic characters emotionally accessible to contemporary readers. The book remains one of the most loved works of Bengali literature.

Stylistically, Subodh Ghosh combined simplicity with intellectual richness. His language is lucid, conversational, and free from unnecessary ornamentation, yet it carries deep emotional and philosophical resonance. His stories often end with irony or quiet revelation rather than dramatic resolution, leaving readers with lasting reflections on life and society. Mahasweta Devi praised him for opening “a new horizon” in Bengali short fiction, while Ramapada Chowdhury acknowledged him as one of the guiding influences of his generation.

In conclusion, Subodh Ghosh remains a towering figure in Bengali literature because of his remarkable range—from psychological stories and social realism to mythological retellings and political fiction. The enduring success of film adaptations like Ajantrik, Sujata, Jatugriha, Ijaazat, Chitchor, and Anjangarh proves that his stories transcend language and time. His works continue to inspire readers, filmmakers, and students of literature across India.

Roald Dahl: A Birthday Tribute

On 13 September 2026 we mark the 110th anniversary of the birth of Roald Dahl, one of the most inventive and enduring storytellers of the twentieth century. Born in Wales to Norwegian parents in 1916, Dahl grew up to become a master of the mischievous, the macabre, and the magnificently odd. His books have sold hundreds of millions of copies and continue to delight (and occasionally unsettle) readers of every age.

Dahl’s gift lay in treating children as intelligent, resilient creatures rather than delicate flowers. In Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, The BFG, James and the Giant Peach, and The Witches, he peopled his pages with greedy grown-ups, brave small heroes, and worlds where justice is deliciously creative. His prose is lean, rhythmic, and shot through with dark humour; his characters—Willy Wonka, the Trunchbull, the Grand High Witch—are unforgettable. Even his adult short stories, collected in volumes such as Kiss Kiss and Someone Like You, display the same precision and wicked twist.

Behind the stories stood a man of striking contradictions: a wartime RAF fighter pilot who later became a celebrated children’s author; a writer capable of both tender invention and sharp satire. He wrote with the conviction that stories should entertain first and moralise second—if at all. That approach has kept his work fresh across generations.

As we celebrate his birthday, we remember not only the man but the enduring invitation his books extend: to look at the world sideways, to side with the underdog, and to believe that imagination can turn the ordinary into something extraordinary. Happy birthday, Roald Dahl.

Ketaki Kushari Dyson passes away...

Ketaki Kushari Dyson was born in Calcutta on 26 June 1940......

She studied English literature at Calcutta and Oxford, obtaining firsts from both universities. She also holds a doctorate from Oxford. She settled in Britain after her marriage to an Englishman, but did not give up writing in her first language and her links with the literary life of her native Bengal. She writes in both Bengali and English and belongs to that small minority of poets who write poetry in two languages. Poet, novelist, playwright, essayist, translator, scholar, and critic, and well-known for her skill in mixing the genres, she is the author of more than thirty titles in her two languages and is regarded as an outstanding Bengali writer of her generation. She received the Bhubanmohini Dasi Medal of the University of Calcutta for eminent contribution to contemporary Bengali letters (1986), the Ananda Award twice (in 1986 and 1997), and in 2009 the Star Ananda Award for being the Best Bengali of the Year in Literature. She led an interdisciplinary research project on the effects of Tagore’s protanopic colour vision on his writings and visual art, leading to a major scholarly publication (Dyson, Adhikary et al, Ronger Rabindranath, Ananda, Calcutta, 1997).

Her English publications include two acclaimed scholarly books, A Various Universe: A Study of the Journals and Memoirs of British Men and Women in the Indian Subcontinent, 1765-1856 (Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1978, second edition 2002, Oxford India Paperbacks, 2006), and In Your Blossoming Flower-Garden: Rabindranath Tagore and Victoria Ocampo (Sahitya Akademi, Delhi, 1988, reprinted 1996). She was for a period a Research Associate at Oxford’s Centre for Cross-Cultural Research on Women, for which she co-edited Bilingual Women: Anthropological Approaches to Second-Language Use (Berg, Oxford/Providence, 1994). Her translation I Won't Let You Go: Selected Poems by Rabindranath Tagore (Bloodaxe Books, 1991; second expanded edition, 2010) was a Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation.

From: bloodaxe

Remembering Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay

Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay (12 September 1894 – 1 November 1950) was a legendary Indian author who wrote prominent works in the Bengali language. 

Early Life and Education: Born in Muratipur-Ghoshpara village near Kanchrapara in West Bengal.Family: Son of Mahananda Bandyopadhyay, a Sanskrit scholar and storyteller, and Mrinalini Devi.Education: Graduated with a degree in History, Economics, and Sanskrit from Ripon College (now Surendranath College) in Kolkata. 

Career and Professions: Worked as a school teacher, a travelling publicist, and a secretary to support his family before focusing full-time on writing. 

Masterpiece: Gained widespread fame with his 1929 autobiographical novel [Pather Panchali] (Song of the Road), which formed the basis of Satyajit Ray’s acclaimed Apu Trilogy films. 

Notable Works: Authored classics like Aparajito, Chander Pahar (Mountain of the Moon), Aranyak, and Ichhamati. 

Personal Life: Married Rama Chattopadhyay in 1940; their son Taradas Bandyopadhyay was born in 1947.

Death: Died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 56 on November 1, 1950, in Ghatshila, Bihar (now Jharkhand). 

Siegfried Sassoon

Siegfried Sassoon was born on September 8, 1886, in Kent, England. He attended Kent's New Beacon School and Marlborough College before attending Clare College, Cambridge, in 1905. While there, he privately published his first volume of poetry in 1906. He left Cambridge before receiving a degree and spent several years privately publishing his verse, including a parody of John Masefield called The Daffodil Murderer (John Richmond, 1913).

Sassoon is primarily known for his his poems inspired by his experiences in World War I, which were originally published in three volumes: Picture-Show (Heinemann, 1919), Counter-Attack and Other Poems (Heinemann, 1918), and The Old Huntsman (Heinemann, 1917).

Sassoon enlisted at the beginning of the war, in 1914, but a riding accident delayed his commission. In April 1915 his brother was killed at Gallipoli, and in May 1915 Sassoon was commisioned to the Royal Welch Fusiliers and soon left to fight in France. He returned to England in 1916, to recover from an illness, and in 1917, to recover from a gunshot wound. During these periods he developed ties to several pacifists, including Bertrand Russell. In June 1917 he wrote a statement protesting the war that was read aloud in the House of Commons. The poet Robert Graves helped him avoid a court martial through a diagnosis of neurasthenia, and as a result, he was hospitalized at the Craiglockhart War Hospital. While there, he became friends with the poet Wilfred Owen. He returned to France in 1918, where he was wounded by friendly fire.

After World War I, Sassoon published a series of fictionalized autobiographies known collectively as The Memoirs of George Sherston, and he also served as the literary editor of the Daily Herald for several years. Sassoon was gay, and after the war he had a series of relationships with other men before marrying Hester Gatty in 1933. Together they had a son, George Sassoon, before separating in 1945. In 1951 he was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire. He died on September 1, 1967. On November 11, 1985, his name was added to a memorial in Westminter Abbey's Poet's Corner.

The new life of English poetry

Long confined to a niche literary circle, Indian poetry in English is becoming part of the mainstream
By Mayank Austen Soofi 

Fancy giving somebody Rs.2 lakh because you like their poetry? That’s exactly what happened this year at the Jaipur Literature Festival. Arundhathi Subramaniam received the inaugural Khushwant Singh Memorial Prize for Poetry for her collection, When God Is A Traveller. The annual prize will be sponsored by marketing professional Suhel Seth.

“If Suhel Seth is giving away money for a poetry prize, then we’ve entered the mainstream,” says New Delhi-based poet-novelist-guitarist Jeet Thayil, only half-jokingly—he was on the jury.

Poetry has a rich tradition in India. It was instrumental in earning the country its first (and only) Nobel Prize in Literature, awarded to Rabindranath Tagore in 1913 for his collection Gitanjali. Old Delhi’s Urdu-speaking dwellers spice up their daily conversations with couplets of 19th century poet Mirza Ghalib and 18th century poet Mir Taqi Mir. The Sufi poems of Bulleh Shah are sung across the Punjab countryside. Indian poetry in English, which began in the 1820s, has produced its own share of canonical poets.

Poetry has a rich tradition in India. It was instrumental in earning the country its first (and only) Nobel Prize in Literature, awarded to Rabindranath Tagore in 1913 for his collection Gitanjali. Old Delhi’s Urdu-speaking dwellers spice up their daily conversations with couplets of 19th century poet Mirza Ghalib and 18th century poet Mir Taqi Mir. The Sufi poems of Bulleh Shah are sung across the Punjab countryside. Indian poetry in English, which began in the 1820s, has produced its own share of canonical poets.

Even so, Indian writing in English has mainly meant prose. That seems to be changing. “You’d be surprised at the number of people reading poetry nowadays,” says Seth. “Once we announced the award, we were flooded with applications, which show that more and more of us are dabbling in verse.” The award presented at Jaipur, he indicated, was a first of its kind. “While there are enough annual awards for fiction and non-fiction, there was none for poetry.”

Arguably some of the best poetry so far goes back to the 1970s. But though today’s poetry hasn’t yet found its way into the best-seller lists, excitement is mounting. It’s almost as if an underground club of poets, publishers, critics and readers has joined forces, defying the scepticism of some publishers. The poetically inclined have responded by turning out in droves.

Indian poetry in English is no longer the solitary art of crafting verses that few will read.

On Monday, the venerable Adil Jussawalla was given the Sahitya Akademi Award for Trying To Say Goodbye, his first collection of poetry in nearly 35 years. It was the first book published by Almost Island (AI), a small Mumbai-based outfit that began as an online journal. “Adil’s first print run of 500 sold out in a couple of months, and the second print run of 1,000 is almost sold out too,” says AI’s founder editor, Sharmistha Mohanty. Hachette India, meantime, will publish Jussawalla’s new collection later this year.

Vijay Nambisan’s forthcoming poetry book already has people gushing. “I’ve heard it’s amazing,” says poet and AI’s co-editor Vivek Narayanan. Nambisan’s First Infinities is being published by the Mumbai-based Poetrywala imprint, run by Marathi poet Hemant Divate from his home.

The (Great) Indian Poetry Collective, a publishing venture founded by a troika of Bengaluru poets in 2013, has recently announced an Emerging Poets Prize. The three winners will be awarded Rs.15,000 each; their manuscripts will be published with a minimum print run of 250 copies; and there will also be a book launch.

There’s more: In February, Kolkata-based Kindle magazine had a special issue on poetry. The Caravan magazine, whose March issue contains six pages on poet Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, has a dedicated poetry section. So does the Mumbai-based literary magazine Indian Quarterly; the editors say they carefully scrutinize a submitted poem’s “form, style, rhythm, line arrangement, poetic devices, imagery, as well as word selection and universality”.

Last month, Hyderabad-based poet Sridala Swami completed a book-reading tour of her new collection, Escape Artist. In Bengaluru, she recited her poems at the Atta Galatta book store and the Alternative Law Forum. In New Delhi, she read at the Hauz Khas Village bar Toddy Shop—a few minutes of poetry were followed by a party that went on till the wee hours. It was the first of the monthly Poetry at Toddy evenings launched by Thayil at the bar where the bills come in poetry books.

Over the past few months, it seemed you couldn’t turn a corner anywhere in an Indian metro without running into poetry. Such verse-festing would have been unthinkable for Thayil when he launched his first collection in 1992. Gemini was a slim Viking Penguin edition with debut poems by Thayil as well as Nambisan. “It got one review in a minor publication and then was forgotten,” says Thayil. Compare that with the press notices for Sridala Swami’s book, published by Aleph Book Co. with the support of the Jehangir Sabavala Foundation. It has been reviewed by The Hindu, The Sunday Guardian, Biblio: A Review Of Books and Millennium Post.

Invigorated by well-attended book tours and prominent reviews, poets have reason to be happy. “More gratifying (than reviews) are the moments after readings when people come up to me and say they liked this or that specific poem,” says Swami, “or when people write about the book on their blogs, or tweet about it.”

So, can our poets now be less melancholic?

“Indian English poetry is on the cusp of a new moment,” says Narayanan, who accepted Jussawalla’s award on his behalf this week because the Mumbai poet has curtailed his travel. “There seems to be a bunch of very talented young poets who are revving their engines up and all the older poets are writing better than before.”

Narayanan is also heartened by the emergence of “little clutches of poets and writers running small presses” who are rigorous about how they select and publish poetry.

But will these small presses suffer the fate of Clearing House, which had eight books to show for eight years? The iconic collective was co-founded in Mumbai (then Bombay) in 1975 by Mehrotra, Jussawalla, Arun Kolatkar and Gieve Patel—names that conjure up the image of a golden age. “There are more poets, more events, more books, more experiments with writing, but we haven’t yet approached the great era of Kolatkar and his compatriots,” says Divate, who has been publishing poetry for 23 years.

The landmark book encapsulating the fabled age of Indian poetry in English is The Oxford India Anthology Of Twelve Modern Indian Poets. Edited by Mehrotra, this 1992 compilation is into its 17th impression. While editing it, Mehrotra wanted to cast the net much wider than R. Parthasarathy’s compilation, Ten Twentieth Century Indian Poets (1976), which missed significant contemporaries like Dom Moraes and Dilip Chitre and didn’t include Agha Shahid Ali, Vikram Seth and Manohar Shetty simply because they arrived much later.

“Parthasarathy’s introductions were blandly descriptive; mine, heavily opinionated,” says Mehrotra. “I had a quite different idea of Indian poetry in English, a different idea of what a poem should be. The main difference between our anthologies was in the general introduction as well as the short introductions to individual poets. I wasn’t always polite when I introduced the poets. It upset some of them. Nissim Ezekiel reportedly chucked the book into the wastepaper basket.”

Two decades have passed. Indian English poetry is regaining its vigour. While Narayanan is waiting a little longer to celebrate, Shikha Malaviya, co-founder of The (Great) Indian Poetry Collective, is ready to bring out the champagne. “Indian poetry has never been more lively or diverse,” she says. “Even traditional publishers like HarperCollins are publishing more poets.”

She notes that Slam poetry (competitive performances) has also drawn many younger people. The past year has been phenomenal. Other than Subramaniam grabbing the first Khushwant Singh prize, Vijay Seshadri won the Pulitzer Prize, and Imtiaz Dharker won Britain’s Her Majesty’s Gold Medal for Poetry. “If that doesn’t say Indian poetry has arrived,” says Malaviya, “I’m not sure what does.”

Thayil’s personal experience illustrates this new reality.

“Twenty years ago, a poetry reading was an exercise in humiliation, for the poet, certainly, but perhaps for the listener too,” he says. “Last year, when I read poems from Adil’s new book at a furniture showroom in (New Delhi’s) Defence Colony, I expected 15 people at the most, including showroom staff. About a hundred turned up.”

Not all, however, share the same level of enthusiasm. Nambisan, who prefers a secluded life in Coorg, Karnataka, says, “It seems that the marketing mentality and commercialism have infected poetry as they have everything else. Publishing is, of course, rank with that infection and poetry can’t stay free of it, unless we choose not to publish. I find distasteful the idea of writers pursuing publishers with manuscripts of poems.”

Jussawalla, who rarely steps out of Mumbai, senses the buzz. “Today, there are a lot more people writing poetry with confident voices,” he says. “There are also many more readers, thanks to the Net.”

Facebook, Twitter and websites like PoemHunter.com are helping to get the word out for both new and established poets, and steadily bridging the gap with readers. It’s ironic that technology, which supposedly drives us away from reading, has brought people closer to poetry.

Much is discovered on the Internet these days, and poetry is no different, says Jaideep Warya, a landscape architect and poet who recently moved from New Delhi to London. “It is impossible to hear of a new poet through newspapers or TV. But when reading someone’s brief bio at the end of an opinion piece, you see it mentioned that the person also writes poetry, and then you google his poems. If you like these accidentally discovered poets, then you follow them online or order their books on the websites.”

The zesty poetry scene has also spawned quality commentary. “There has been some wonderful critical comment recently—Laetitia Zecchini’s lovely book on Kolatkar, for instance,” says Narayanan. “There are young writers who have just started publishing criticism—Mantra Mukim and Bharat Iyer come to mind—who are bringing the kind of intensity and empathy to their commentaries that I would normally expect only from poets.”

Even as Indian English poetry gains followers and notches up sales, some publishers are trying to look beyond financial considerations, looking at it as “art for art’s sake”. The AI website declares that it is “a space for literature that threatens, confronts, or bypasses the marketplace.”

Why be in the market then? “We love persecuting ourselves,” says Mohanty, with a mix of sarcasm and anger. “The idea that people do things only for monetary profit is an extremely superficial attitude to living. There was a need for a journal which would stand up to the market.

We are interested in great literature, whether the market considers it successful or not.”

To find new voices, the journal recently launched a manuscript-writing contest that will be judged by Jussawalla and New York-based writer Eliot Weinberger. The winner gets a publishing deal. It has also been holding an annual gathering of poets and prose writers called “Almost Island Dialogues” in New Delhi. The eighth edition was held last month at the India International Centre in the Capital.

“Both the journal and the Dialogues are funded by two people with a deep love for literature who will continue to support it, whether we make profit or not,” says Mohanty. “I have never paid myself for the work I do, and currently most of the team doesn’t get paid, or is given something which is like an honorarium rather than a salary.”

Since royal patrons are not available in modern India, those who live for literature must usually earn a living somewhere else. Poets in India have always had to find employment; it is no different for their publishers. Sarabjeet Garcha’s salary comes from his day job at a medical publishing company; he gets his creative satisfaction from Copper Coin, a press he co-founded a year ago. Last month, it published the India edition of English novelist and poet John Berger’s Collected Poems.

Garcha, who lives in Ghaziabad, near New Delhi, doesn’t even have an office for his firm. How did he manage to steal Berger? “I knew that John’s poems were being published by (UK-based) Smokestack Books,” he says. “I reached out to John’s son, who pointed me to John’s literary agent, from whom we obtained the rights for the Indian edition.”

Berger’s book is not available in New Delhi’s leading book stores, but it’s there on Amazon—Garcha’s major distribution outlet. “Publishing poetry cannot support anyone financially, at least not initially, but who’s to foretell the future?” he says. “It’s time for India to have its own ecosystem of small independent publishers who are driven by passion alone.”

Such passion is evident to anybody who has traced the career graph of independent publisher S. Anand. He says, “I have cut down on poetry because it is so difficult to sell.” Anand’s Navayana press recently brought out a memoir partly written in verse, but he isn’t hopeful about the future of poetry publishing.

“We started (poetry) in 2007 with Namdeo Dhasal’s book,” says Anand. “Despite his iconic stature as one of India’s finest poets, it took us four years to exhaust a stock of 1,400 copies of the low-priced hardback.” On a visit to The London Book Fair the same year, Anand realized poetry sells poorly everywhere. “However, in the first world, be it the UK or Australia, poetry publishing, and much of independent publishing, is supported by generous grants from the arts councils,” he says. “Between 2012-15, the grants allocated by Arts Council England for poetry alone were a phenomenal £6.6 million (around Rs.62.7 crore now). A gentle giant like Faber & Faber received £117,499 in this period. We need something similar in India.”

Anand has also published Meena Kandasamy, whose dramatic style of reciting her feminist and anti-caste poems on stage synchronizes perfectly with the title of one of her poetry collections. “Meena’s Ms Militancy has done well; but clearly, despite her high social profile, even she can’t make a living as a poet or writer,” says Anand. “But I’m sure her translations of Tamil poet Thiruvalluvar’s love poems that I’ll publish next year will be a hit.”

Anand speaks highly of Karthika V.K., the HarperCollins publisher: “She is regularly publishing contemporary poets. To sustain that in a trade publishing house is commendable.”

Karthika has brought out 22 poetry books in five years. Her poets at HarperCollins include Altaf Tyrewala, Anita Nair and Hoshang Merchant. She is now ready with a collection by US-based Kazim Ali, who has never been published in India.

Some might argue that Karthika’s rival publishing house is less suicidal. “At Penguin, we haven’t focused on contemporary poets,” says executive editor R. Sivapriya. “The exceptions are Arvind (Krishna) Mehrotra and Ranjit Hoskote.”

HarperCollins brings out about five volumes of poetry a year, each with a print run of 1,000 copies. “That’s a really small number and the reason to publish is not the revenue we earn from it,” says Karthika. She goes on to say that the belief driving the list editorially is simply that poetry is at the heart of literature, it’s where ideas and language originate, and it’s important to help sustain it.

If Mehrotra were to prepare an anthology of modern Indian poets of the new generation, who would he pick?

“It would have more poets than 12,” he says. “Thayil’s 60 Indian Poets, that comes 15 years after mine, has redrawn the map. Then there’s the Internet. I would, though, use it more to discover the past of Indian poetry in English than to keep up with its present.”

Mehrotra adds: “I’d written that the origins of modern poetry in English go no further back than the poets in my anthology. I was ignorant; I’m less so now. The parallels between us and some of the 19th century poets like Kasiprasad Ghose and Toru Dutt are too strong to be missed. Which is why we need good literary history.”

Happily, one such book is being edited in Kolkata by academic Rosinka Chaudhuri. To be published by the Cambridge University Press, New York, it may be priced exorbitantly. A wealthy poetry lover wouldn’t mind paying if it was printed in India by one of our little anti-market presses.

But, then, we are talking of a perfectly poetic world.

Read more at: http://www.livemint.com/Leisure/t16DetGjFaaUxsX1BE9fdK/The-new-life-of-English-poetry.html?utm_source=copy