MEHROTRA, Arvind Krishna

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Nationality: Indian. Born: Lahore, Pakistan, 16 April 1947. Education: University of Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, 1964–66, B.A. 1966; University of Bombay, 1966–68, M.A. 1968. Family: Married Vandana Jain in 1969; one son. Career: Lecturer in English, 1968–77, and since 1978 reader in English, University of Allahabad. Visiting writer, University of Iowa, Iowa City, 1971–73; lecturer in English, University of Hyderabad, India, 1977–78. Editor, damn youla magazine of the arts, Allahabad, 1965–68; founder, Ezra-Fakir Press, Bombay, 1966. Awards: Homi Bhabha fellowship, 1981; Gettysburg Review award, 1994. Address: Jyoti Apartments, 1 N.K. Mukerji Road, Allahabad 211001, India.

Publications

Poetry

Bharatmata: A Prayer. Bombay, Ezra Fakir Press, 1966.

Woodcuts on Paper. London, Gallery Number Ten, 1967.

Pomes/Poemes/Poemas. Baroda, India, Vrischik, 1971.

Nine Enclosures. Bombay, Clearing House, 1976.

Distance in Statute Miles. Bombay, Clearing House, 1982.

Middle Earth. New Delhi. Oxford University Press, 1984.

The Transfiguring Places. New Delhi, Ravi Dayal, 1998.

Other

Editor, Twenty Indian Poems. New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1990.

Editor, The Oxford India Anthology of Twelve Modern Indian Poets. New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1992.

Editor, with Daniel Weissbort, Periplus: Poetry in Translation. New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1993.

Translator, Three Poems, by Bogomil Gjuzel. Allahabad and Iowa City, Ezra Fakir Press, 1973.

Translator, The Absent Traveller: Prakrit Love Poetry from the Gathasaptasati of Satvahana Hala. New Delhi, Ravi Dayal, 1990.

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Critical Studies: "Image As an Immoderate Drug" by N.R. Shastri, in Osmania Journal of English Studies 13 (Hyderabad), 1, 1977; "A Wonderland of Riddles and Fantasies," in Toronto South Asian Review 2, 2, 1983, and "Looking into the Poetry of Arvind Krishna Mehrotra," in Living Indian English Poets, edited by Madhusudan Prasad, New Delhi, Sterling, 1989, both by Bibhu Padhi; "The Abstraction of Language: Jayanta Mahapatra and A.K. Mehrotra As Indian 'Postmodernists'" by Joseph Swann, in Fusion of Cultures?, edited by Peter O. Stummer and Christopher Balme, Amsterdam, Netherlands, Rodopi, 1996.

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Arvind Krishna Mehrotra has said that "a poem comprises games, riddles and accidents … and the poet creates as many accidents as he can." Mehrotra is probably the best-known Indian writer of surrealist English verse. He uses some of the characteristic techniques of surrealist writing, such as an uninhibited dependence on chance or accident in composition, the collocation of unusual words and phrases, the yoking together of heterogeneous objects and situations and contexts, broken syntax, the ascription of unusual characteristics to familiar objects, and the exaltation of the dream state. The general aim is to transform the reader's consciousness and to change his conception of reality. Mehrotra has cited Breton's first Manifesto (1924) as one of the influences on his work. Breton defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism by which it is intended to express either verbally or in writing, the true function of thought. Thought dictated in the absence of all control exerted by reason and outside all aesthetic or moral control."

Mehrotra modified these aims of course, and not all of his poetry fits the surrealist category. For instance, poems such as "Songs of the Ganga" (Nine Enclosures) are relatively straightforward works in which experimentation is held to a minimum. Another, perhaps better known, poem that is more characteristic and not particularly difficult is "The Sale," in which the language of salesmanship is exploited to suggest the sellout of the world and its impending conversion to a wasteland. It would be misleading, however, to suggest that Mehrotra's poetry is "about" this or that, about something external to itself. The poems are "enclosures" whose aims are to capture the reader within themselves. Their principal means are a haunting poetic rhythm and the disturbing image:

The widow next door
Lives off her trained
Parrot.
It reads the future
And tells you when
To avoid it.
At night
She dances in the streets
And fills the air
With abuse.
The decorated general
Is alone
In his tent;
The pyres burn
Like new volcanoes.

While the second strophe reads like a summary of World War I poetry, the first reads rather like a joke, a story, a song. Children enjoy it as it is and do not ask for its meaning. The world of the child and the world of the grown-ups are juxtaposed, and the meaning arises from this juxtaposition.

Poetry such as Mehrotra's is international, and it is not much bothered with the question of "Indianness," which is such a persistent concern of some of his contemporaries. His poetry is difficult and chancy, but the chances quite often come off. His later poems, however, seem to be written in a non-European mode and with only a touch of the surrealistic technique:

Summer is at hand.
New leaves fill the branches
With sunlight, a red and green kite
Bends into the wind. It is two bits
Of thin paper joined
In the middle. It opens the sky.
I have three small rooms and a terrace
Where I sit out and read Han Shan
To my new-born son, or make
That kite. My possessions are few.
I'll stay here.

Poems such as these raise no questions, debate no issues, wave no flags. Peaceful in themselves, they also provide a moment of peace to their readers.

Middle Earth contains many new and uncollected poems. The image continues to be the mainstay of Mehrotra's style. Some of the poems, "The World's a Printing House," for example, may be read as his apology for the poetry he is interested in writing. There is, however, a narrative structure in many of the poems, and they perhaps indicate a new phase in Mehrotra's career.

Mehrotra's translations, especially of Prakrit love poetry, have been justly praised for their fidelity and poetic quality. He has succeeded admirably in restoring these ancient love poems to the enjoyment of the modern reader. In general, he has a remarkable gift for intuiting the meaning of poems written in other languages—transmitted to him through a collaborator—and for rendering the poems into English.

—S. Nagarajan