Q Why do words make so much difference in our lives, when uttered or heard in different contexts?
A word has depth and dimension, a registry of music, colour, pace, mood, light and shade. When placed beside each other words combust, making fire, adding to more hues.
It’s alchemy.
Language is the richest instrument.
Words are weapons in mass destruction or mass construction. They can heal or steal. Psychological recourse but not perfect art. That’s why we need constant explanations. A word is not absolute but most of India traded by it. We still depend on the tongue, no matter how forked it threatens to get.
Q In the birth of a poem, what comes first - words, meanings, concept or emotions?
I never wished to be a poet. Who wants financial poverty? But a poem snatches you from the dark behind, it attacks, abducts. Once radicalized, you don’t care for money.
The word becomes a coin, the currency to a new country. And you write and write until the poem leaves you alone. Writing poetry is the banal act of disrobing in an infinite walk-in wardrobe.
Practically speaking, poems come to me with their first lines, like drawstrings.
Q Do poets take it granted that everybody would understand what has been written?
Poets are meant to architect labyrinths; to provide a solution infused with metaphors that only aggravates the problem.
A good poem is an exciting problem to have like a complicated romantic relationship.
Also, art is its interpretations, and hence always on a psychedelic spectrum.
Different readers have reacted differently to my poems “ always refreshingly dissimilar from each other.
Q Literature mirrors our life and the world around us. Do you prefer to pen it as you see it with naked eye or do you add your imagination to give it an aura?
Every naked eye has a coloured lens and a vantage point, a perceptive based on where the gaze places itself on the 360 degrees of a circle, assuming the subject is at the center and not on a tangent “ or even then. After that comes a backing of bias and beliefs, even if self-sponsored.
No wonder each account is as unique. We never share the same geopolitics of a standpoint even on the same side of the rink. My writings too are a sum total of my blasphemous assumptions, optimism, and idealism.
I also love the skirmishes associated in choosing language, while at this. If writing shows evolution I like tracking down the poems I still haven’t outgrown. I don’t consciously add ingredients; I write subconsciously as though in a trance but editing-rounds have enriched my pieces.
I am an accidental publisher!
Author of three previous books of poetry, including Lullaby of the Ever-Returning (Poetrywala, 2012) and a collection in Hindi, besides two books of translations, Sarabjeet Garcha was on the Panel of Critical Readers for the third edition of Garner’s Modern American Usage (Oxford University Press, 2009) and recipient of a fellowship in Hindi literature (2013“14) from the Ministry of Culture, government of India and is the chief editor at a publishing company
Q You are writer first or publisher?
A writer first, of course. I am only an accidental publisher.
Q What is the basis or the foundation of your writing? How do you choose the subject of your writing?
All of us lead an inner life which barely resembles the life the world sees us live. A keen desire to express the space, place, seasons, topography, joys, wonders, undulations, and constant malleability of this shielded life is the basis of my writing.
All artists have their preoccupations and obsessions, which point them to subjects that demand to be written about. So do I, but what makes such preoccupations interesting is that they are stationed on shifting sands.
Q Poetry is the expression of self. Do you feel better when a poem is written or delivered?
The self changes, and if you are alert enough to all the lessons life sends your way in various forms, the self develops and becomes wiser, quieter, deeper. The self which writes the next poem has travelled a little longer and therefore has more to share, and sharing is always delightful. Every new poem is another clue to the treasure I have been after. It doesn’t matter who finds it first, but every new clue to it reaffirms the belief that there’s much more to this beautiful life than what our senses make of it collectively. Therefore, I feel wonderful when a good poem is written.
Q In today’s writers and writings, what is missing?
Nothing is missing. We have everything”in fact, every single thing one can think of. This very immensity of things that threaten to crush the soul is worrying. Today, we have all the resources at our disposal that make good art possible. We are so slaked as to risk forgetting all about thirst. A phenomenal prosthetics is at work that nearly makes good every loss, but more needs to be done to let the soul’s light and love percolate into the new limb the body acquires.
Abundance thrills, but it can also numb.
Q What is it that you find common in modern writers?
A deep commitment to craft is something I find common in the best writers, modern or otherwise.
Q Can you compare contemporary writing to old school literature?
We must not forget that what we call old school literature was also contemporary in its time. Trends and time periods come in handy in studying the history of literature. We still lovingly turn back to works written centuries ago. Many contemporary writers openly acknowledge being influenced by old school literature. I believe excellence should be celebrated, irrespective of when it is born. While talking about the jet engine, it’s unfair to negate the contribution of the Wright brothers to aerodynamics.
