The inaugural edition of the Deepankar Khiwani Memorial Prize celebrated the power of poetry
Poets are good actors,/ Good actors as they say are fresh,/ They are elses to the part they play/ So I play out this frowning poet’s role/ And you look at me tenderly. from
Entr’acte by Deepankar Khiwani
Deepankar Khiwani died at the age of 47 on March 28 last year. A fortnight before his death, Khiwani had shared his latest poems, where he describes art as “a dark condemned space with the door unlocked”, with Arundhathi Subramaniam. “I shall revisit those finely-wrought last poems, reminding myself that, for all the darkness and incarceration around us, somewhere there is an ‘unlocked’ door,” wrote Subramaniam two days after Khiwani’s death.
A Poet Interprets an Interpreter s Diary
This weekend s Verse Affairs is a review of Arjun Rajendran s new collection of poetry, that takes off from a meticulously kept 18th century diary.
Ananda Ranga Pillai, the 18th century interpreter. Photo: Public domain
In a diary entry on November 30, 1745, Ananda Ranga Pillai notes:
“This day, there was an event worthy of record. In the village⦠a church has been constructed by Kanakaraya Mudali⦠In honour of this, he invited, without distinction, all the Brahmans, Vellazhas, Komuttis, Chettis, goldsmiths, weavers, oil-mongers, and people of other castes; and all Europeans and Christians, and entertained them with a feast⦠Meals for Europeans were prepared at Pondichery [
Dated 1748 and set in the French colony of Pondicherry, Arjun Rajendran writes about the second hanging of a convict in the titular poem of his latest collection,
One man: Two executions. When the noose breaks during the unfortunate incident, the priest orders the executioner to disregard this holy sign and hang the man whom divinity had spared. Such and many other incidences of bizarre nature are to be found in the Pondicherry of Rajendran’s musings, conjured against the backdrop of a province embroiled in the Carnatic wars.
The Private Diaries of Ananda Ranga Pillai which chronicle the events of 18