Gulzar on A Poem a Day, his collection of translated poetry chronicling India's history since 1947

 These words, translated from poet Haldhar Nag's Sambalpuri original, open Gulzar's magnum opus A Poem a Day: 365 Contemporary Poems 34 Languages 279 Poets. Hardbound in maroon leather with light golden lettering, the book stands tall and sits heavy on one's lap, offering exactly what it promises — a poem for each day of the year. The inaugural piece therefore, sets the tone for the collection that flows through the length and breadth of not just the country, but the subcontinent that celebrates its several identities through its myriad tongues, mirroring its indiscriminately colourful temperament.

Gulzar doffs his hat to the tribal poet, a Padma Shri awardee, by addressing a letter to him before taking off on his poetic pilgrimage, by saying:

"ये कवि जब अपने गाँव की ज़मीन पे चलता है, तो लगता है पूरे ग्लोब पर चल रहा है |"

Haldhar's words are amplified by his footsteps, and it is these diverse footsteps of 279 poets that converge in Gulzar's formidable compilation, which has been in the making for over eight years.

Only days before the book's launch, this writer finds herself on a call with the poet on a gloomy winter afternoon that soon turns warm in the company of his musings on life, language and everything in between. I begin our conversation by asking him if this has been his most adventurous literary outing till date.

"It was very challenging," he answers, rather gently and slowly. "Maine kahin suna tha, ki jungle baahar se bohot ghana lagta hai — but when you enter the jungle, jab dheere dheere ped do taraf se dikhne lagte hai, tab woh utna ghana nahi lagta," he says, laughing, allegorising the magnitude of the enterprise he had undertaken.

The idea had been sparked by an editor (who was previously with HarperCollins India, the publisher of the book) who urged Gulzar to offer his readers "a poem a day" — a clever thought, they realised. But said editor had not really mulled over the implications of her suggestion that the poet seemed to have taken a fancy to.

"I asked her in which language (should these poems be)? She said in English, because we are English publishers," — that, however, did not sound convincing enough. He saw no challenge or creativity in reading books and culling out poems, only to arrange, edit and compile them into a collection. It is this hackneyed approach that he sought to evade — one that took him back to his textbooks where he met the classical greats of Rabindranath Tagore, Alfred Tennyson and William Wordsworth, and not the contemporaries who wrote about their prevailing struggles and joys.

"I thought, let's look at the contemporary poetry of India, because when students read poetry in their textbooks, they cannot relate them to their everyday lives...It does not relate to their climate, migrants, Naxalites, strikes, or any aspect of their everyday lives," he tells me. Reading poetry to get good grades in examinations made little sense to him, so he decided on sieving through works he read while growing up, especially those that inspired the poet in him.

The year 1947 seemed like a good point of inception for the project, however, the issue of the anthology's language continued to riddle him. "Choosing (poetry in) any one language does not make it the face of Indian poetry," he says. "If I collect only Hindi poetry and know Hindi, I cannot claim that this is the poetry of India. I should know what is happening in other languages too...The same applies to cinema. Only Hindi cinema can't make Indian cinema — it has to include Bangla, Hindi, and four other major South Indian languages among others." That is the only way one can complete the "face of Indian poetry", he says, "Nahin toh aap kaan pakde honge, ya naak pakde honge, yaa honth pakde honge.

Read more about: Hindi Poetry Recitation

Source: https://www.firstpost.com/art-and-culture/gulzar-on-a-poem-a-day-his-collection-of-translated-poetry-chronicling-indias-history-since-1947-9074221.html