Keki N Daruwalla, one of India’s pioneering English-language poets died on Friday. He was 87. He obtained his master’s degree in English Literature from Government College, Ludhiana, University of Punjab and spent a year at Oxford as a Queen Elizabeth House Fellow in 1980–81.
Daruwalla was also a former Indian Police Service officer, which let him witness the harsh realities of life from which he drew the substance for his literary pursuits. He wrote 12 books, and his first novel, For Pepper and Christ, was published in 2009. He received the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for his collection of poems Landscapes in 1987.
His first book of poetry was Under Orion, which was published by Writers Workshop, India in 1970. He then went on to publish his second collection, Apparition in April, in 1971 for which he was given the Uttar Pradesh State Award in 1972.
Daruwalla was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award, in 1984 for his poetry collection, The Keeper of the Dead and the Padma Shri in 2014. However, he returned the Sahitya Akademi award in 2015 in protest and with a statement that “the organisation had failed to speak out against ideological collectives that have used physical violence against authors”. The poet did not take back his award even after Sahitya Akademi passed a resolution condemning the attacks on rational thinkers.
The writer’s final book, Landfall: Poems, was published in 2023 by Speaking Tiger Books.
Many scholars and writers expressed their sorrow on social media about Daruwalla’s death.
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