| Bookshelf So Far ~ Poems by Gerson da Cunha |
|||||
There are all too few multifaceted personalities left in these one-dimensional days we live in, and Gerson da Cunha is one of them. After a long career in advertising, he moved on to a decade-long stint in UNICEF, his work taking him to many continents and countries. Today he works actively with child relief and citizens' action groups in Mumbai, and is still a familiar kurta-clad presence at poetry readings, plays and cinema screenings. |
Book Reviews • Fasting,Feasting • Love in a Dead Lang • Weretiger • The Tiger is a Gent • Snakes & Ladders • The Other Tongue • Where Streets Lead • Village Before Time
Author Interviews | ||||
Poetry is another facet of Gerson da Cunha's life. One might be forgiven for imagining that they are merely an effete and very private indulgence, the sort of poems that ought to be suppressed swiftly. And Dom Moraes has written, in his brief foreword to this collection, describes his surprise when he read these poems for the first time: "I knew that Gerson had led a full and busy life, mostly concerned with action.
The poems were the record of what he had thought and
felt during this life of action." And Moraes judges
them with his inimitable crispness: "probably better
than the work of many people who are ranked today as
leading Indian poets in English."
We travel with him through Uganda and Tanzania, Brazil and Argentina; and then, suddenly, to London: at the Olivier, "People gentled by Anouilh hold doors open for each other lusts and terrors masked for an evening. " In Bombay Wallahs, at an exhibition of photographs by Ketaki Sheth, he remarks, "Nowhere is ever home but this may be the town of least effort for me."
But there are also visits to Goa:
"I went to Goa for the silver of my ghosts and you for answers of Heidi on the sands." The poems are intelligent and gentle, whether about an afternoon at Lake Victoria or Thanksgiving in New York. And they are surely enriched by the experiences, outer and inner, of a man who has travelled a great deal. I especially liked the little observations of the natural world: the eagle on the lawn, the neighbour's spaniel limping across the road for a cookie, the snowfall on the tenement. A pleasant experience.
|
|||||
 |
|||||
Editor: Romola Butalia (c) India Travelogue. All rights reserved. |
|||||