At a Poetry Reading

There are certain kinds of people I am totally in awe of like those who are good at mathematics and those who write poetry. That is because I can neither solve problems nor write poems. However, when I was very young, I was infatuated by a pretty girl and I spurted poetry at every occasion, day and night. When the scales fell from my eyes the poetry dried up inside me. It is easy, especially when one is infatuated, to write a few lines and call it poetry. But writing the sort of poetry that does something to the heart is very difficult which is one reason I don’t write any.

Writing poetry may not be my cup of tea but I love to read it. In fact, the first book I bought years ago was an anthology of poetry that I still have with me and read occasionally when I feel low. The book has poems by Edna Vincent Millay, ee cummings, Hart Crane and others whose names have stuck in my mind since then. Later on I got to read the Indian poets- AK Ramanujan, Keki Daruwala, Gieve Patel, Nissim Ezekiel and others. Recently I had been to the poetry readings by Anjum Hasan and Sridala Swami, and through her messages I came to know about the Srinivas Rayaprol Literary Trust and the reading of his poetry by Jeet Thayil and Sridala Swami at the Hyderabad Central University on Saturday.

This month’s Literary Review of “The Hindu’ had a review of ’60 Indian Poets’, an anthology of poetry edited by Jeet Thayil. The reviewer mentioned many names in the anthology but seems to have left out Srinivas Rayaprol and Sridala Swami, both Hyderabad based poets. I had heard of Rayaprol but haven’t read his poems. (One reason why he was not so well known was that he was from Secunderabad.) But when I heard them read out at the reading on Saturday I realized how good a poet he was. I was also pleasantly surprised to learn that he was a Chief Engineer with the AP Government which goes to show that not all who work for the Government are dull.

The reading was at Hyderabad Central University, which is quite far away from the city, and I was surprised to see that there were more than a hundred people gathered for the event. It was a wonderful an hour and half I spent in that sylvan campus listening to the poetry of Jeet Thayil. Both the poets, Thayil and Sridala Swami read Rayaprol’s poetry in the way only poets can read out another poet’s work. It was pure pleasure listening to the poems and the audience was very appreciative. In the audience were big names like Meenakshi Mukherjee, Sachidananda Mohanty, Sudhakar Marathe and also Shankar Melkote.

There was an announcement of some kind of a prize for upcoming poets beginning next year. I hope it generates a good response like the reading.