With extraordinary wit, delightful humour and unyielding compassion manifesting in one’s flair for the pen, there are only few who might fail to charm. Vikram Seth does not need to worry about it though, because he is already several notches above these yardsticks. His world is filled with vivid metaphors, and a sense of yearning that patents a gamut of delight. It is interlaced with a web of sentiments, imageries, and communication; which is why when Seth returns with a collection of poems written over a period of 20 years, it is a cause for celebration. Summer Requiem, at only 60 pages long, is a thin but striking anthology of 45 poems, which was launched about 10 days back at the Taj Mahal hotel, New Delhi.
Educated in The Doon School and later at Oxford University, Seth is now a resident of Salisbury, England, where he lives in what was originally the house of poet George Herbert. I wait at the conference centre of the hotel for the interview to start, a little finicky because his poetry reading session is due to start in 30 minutes, which means I’m already racing against time to have an elaborate discussion with him. He’s still in the middle of another interview and I overhear bits and pieces of the conversation, as I go through my own scribbled notes. It’s his mother’s — Justice leila Seth, the first female judge on the Delhi High Court — birthday and his parents and sister would be in the audience at the event (later in the evening, he also sang for his mother when she cut the cake). Frequently checking the time, I mentally grunt that the interviewer is eating into my time; worse, I realise that I have too many questions to ask him at such a short notice. As my turn finally comes, he greets me with his quintessentially effervescent smile, remarking that he got swayed in the previous interview and lost track of time. That would be 15 minutes of the 20 I was allotted, I was counting.
Starting with Mappings in 1980, it has been more than 30 years since he started publishing novels, poetry, expressions, and a children’s book too. He says that in Summer Requiem, particularly in the context of the titular poem that runs for a little more than five pages, he no longer understands it, that what he wrote is now beyond comprehension for him too. Is he then implying, in Roland Barthes’s famous words, that the author is dead, and his subject is for the readers to consume and interpretIJ He says, “I don’t think the author is dead but he certainly loses authority. It’s now out there in the world, so if you tinker with it, it would be annoying. I can still feel the mood, for instance, if you tell me to paraphrase All You Who Sleep Tonight (1990), I can do it, but if you ask me to paraphrase Summer Requiem, I will have a hard time. One thought just led to another — And whether the sheep escape or the radishes are blighted — what am I going on about, reallyIJ With fiction it’s easier, you have to use a certain amount of common sense. You can’t just be yourself, you have to get into the skin of every character you create. You have to be the Minister of Revenue, a courtesan, the vicious dog who comes to bite you (references from A Suitable Boy, 1993). You can’t just meander self-indulgently talking about lost sheep!”
Talking of sheep, I sheepishly ask him if he types or writes. This time the edge of his sharp wit points towards me. “This is a predictable question, but it is usually asked in the end, you know!” I blurt that unfortunately I will have to wrap the interaction before his event starts, which is only a few minutes away, and hence the incohesive hurry. He patiently answers, “The generation I come from, we only wrote, but now I’ve adapted to typing as well. For instance, I could both write or type prose, in fact, some parts of A Suitable Boy were handwritten and some were typed, The Golden Gate (1986) was entirely handwritten. Except my handwriting tends to be illegible and so I can’t eventually read what I write and then need to print it out!”
The quest for meaning seems to have stemmed from a forlornness that denies him the privilege of belonging. He had earlier spoken about how coming to terms with his bisexual identity was initially traumatic. His mother’s memoir too discussed the same. Most of the poems in this collection are ostensibly about unrequited love. While Caged is about two people in love wishing they weren’t, This Room is about reminiscing love. There is also a combination of haiku, collectively titled Haiku, Index of First and last lines, and so on, where he has experimented with writing styles and structures. I ask him if they are dedicated (though no dedication is officially issued) to his former partner, violinist Philippe Honoré. He jokes, “This is an unusual question and I haven’t been asked this in the last 15 interviews, you just compensated for your earlier query!” But on a more serious note, he continues, “This is actually the first book which I have not dedicated to someone. It would be unfair to dedicate the collection to Philippe Honoré because they have been written over two decades. Some of them are for him, but some are to other people. Secondly, it would also be unfair because we are fortunately very good friends now. There was a traumatic phase in between but I am not bitter. It was such a pity that such a long period of intimacy was lost because of a short period of unhappiness”.
Winner of multiple prestigious awards such as Padma Shri, Sahitya Akademi, Crossword Book etc, he has consciously stayed away from activism unless it’s a cause that he feels from within. He had famously opposed Section 377 of the IPC, the Iraq war, and supported the Tiananmen Square protests etc. We are currently at a phase when reputed national awardees are returning their awards as a mark of protest against the Government. It started with the Sahitya Akademi holders and now filmmakers have joined as well. Seth had urged the Akademi to condemn the recent murders of writers like MM Kalburgi but a recent online circulation of a photograph of him collecting his Sahitya Akademi award from then Congress politician Jagdish Tytler, who was accused of inciting the riots of 1984, accused him of hypocrisy. “I am aware of what the ‘trolls’ are saying, but I did not know till the last minute then that the minister who would hand me the award would be Tytler. When I was informed about it, I was perplexed and I asked my mother, ‘Mama, what do I doIJ’ She said, ‘You have been honoured and it would be an insult to the country if you return it’. I felt trapped, honestly; maybe I shouldn’t have accepted the award but I didn’t want to insult the country. I didn’t know what the impact of the photograph would be later. If you notice, I am not comfortable in it. I am very careful about not shaking hands at times, and we Indians are lucky to get away with it by saying a polite namaste! I think it’s a difficult moment. Amartya Sen too accepted his award during the supposedly fascist NDA Government. I leave it to your judgement”.
His love for Alexander Pushkin has been known to his ardent followers. But one wonders why he didn’t learn Russian then, though he did learn Chinese. After all, Seth’s fascination for language is apparent as well. “I read Pushkin in English and would strongly recommend Charles Johnson’s translation of Eugene Onegin for anyone who might be interested in reading him. China interests me geographically and its language is fascinating, be it the tonal aspects, the calligraphy, and other attributes. I was fascinated by the 8th century poet, Wang Wei. But I am also inspired by the works of Surdas, Ramprasad Sen, Mir Taqi Mir, and so on”.
I ask him yet another predictable question: When do we get to read A Suitable GirlIJ Publishing giant Penguin ended the contract after he had failed to meet the deadline (speculatively because of a writer’s block following his breakup with Honoré) but now speculations are rife that it will release in the autumn of 2016. He grins, “I will give my predictable answer in a way I have never before — ask her why she’s being so coy! I usually say nazar lag jayegi, she’s shy!”
Right then, his publicist enters the room, reminding that everyone is awaiting him at the terrace garden . As he obliges her request, he tells me as a parting note that when A Suitable Girl releases, we will hopefully have an elaborate conversation. I also notice that he does not “get away with just a namaste” this time.
It is indeed enough hope for a requiem.ananyapioneer@gmail.com