Man in exile: The late Dom Moraes (centre) with Sarayu Srivatsa (left) and a local vicar

Unquietly flows Dom

It was engrossing listening to one poet pay eloquent tribute to another on a BBC Radio 4 series called Lost Voices last week. The Liverpool-bred poet, Brian Patten, recalled his encounters with the late Dom Moraes, “the double exile”.

“In Britain, at least, his star has somewhat faded and his voice been lost — it wasn’t always like this,” Patten says by way of introducing Dom, who was born on July 19, 1938, in Bombay, where he died at the age of 66 on June 2, 2004.

Dom precociously made a name for himself by winning a prestigious literary prize, the Hawthornden, for his first book of poems while a second year undergraduate reading English at Jesus College, Oxford.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s Dom became part of literary London, where he entered into a “wild and volatile” marriage with the bohemian Henrietta, the first of his three wives. Legend has it that Dom told her he was just popping out to get a packet of cigarettes but never returned.

“In 1968 what happened to Dom was that he went to India and married a famous film star (Leela Naidu),” reveals Patten. “Yet in India Dom was still an outsider. Remarkable as it seems because of his background and education Dom could only speak English. For me this explained his alienation. In England he was an Indian poet in exile. In India he seemed to be an English poet in exile.”

I got to know Dom, with his companion, Sarayu Srivatsa (Ahuja), during the final phase of his life when he probably realised that contemporary England was not the country of his gilded youth when he had known literary giants such as Stephen Spender and W.H. Auden and was determined to become a poet just like them.

Patten reminds listeners of Dom’s words: “From an early age I was aware of a kind of soundless dance going on inside my head demanding to be fitted out with words.”

Perhaps now is the time for a new generation of Indians to discover Dom’s poetry, just as Patten did when he was 15.

Dom once wrote about his travels with his eminent journalist father, Frank Moraes: “We travelled and I looked for love too young/ More travel and I looked for lust instead.”

Sentinels of peace: Indian women in Liberia

Glory girls

It was fascinating listening to journalist Audrey Brown’s report on BBC World Service radio, Keeping the Peace, on the deployment by the United Nations of an all Indian women police force in Liberia.

The girls, in marked contrast to a few Indian men who were caught up in gold trafficking while serving as UN peacekeepers in the Congo, have covered themselves in glory.

According to the BBC, peace was declared between the Liberian government and rebel groups in 2003, “after the bloodshed of one of Africa’s most vicious conflicts”.

As part of the UN’s mandate, “in 2007, the first all-female peacekeeping force, made up of 105 policewomen from India was deployed to Liberia to help rebuild the country”.

Audrey Brown quoted Liberia’s minister of gender and development, Vabah K. Gayflor, who said the Indian women had been “an inspiration” and had encouraged many Liberian women to join the police force.

Her comments are similar to those of Janet Tinsley, Africa project director of the UK charity, Everychild, who was surprised to come across the Indian women during a trip to Liberia.

“When I got home,” recounted Tinsley, “I did some digging, and I learned that the UN has sent three all-female Indian units since 2007 to serve in Liberia.”

She concluded: “The Indian officers also spend time with schoolgirls teaching self-defence techniques, self-esteem and even Indian dance. The Indian women are certainly an inspiration to me, and I hope their presence leaves a lasting impression on the Liberian people, especially the girls, for whom the sky is the limit.”

Maybe there is a Bollywood film in here set in Liberia, with a cast that includes, say, Manisha Koirala as General Officer Commanding, with such lieutenants as Raima and Riya Sen, Nandita Das, Bips, Ash, Kareena and anyone else picked by popular demand. To be sure, there would be a few catfights over missing make-up and some dance sequences behind sand dunes. Salman, the token male, could drive the unit’s jeep while the ladies would look fetching in AK47s kindly lent by brother Sanjay.

Seriously, though, India would be “up the Swanney without a paddle”, to quote British slang to denote an awkward situation, without her women.

Page-turner: A corner at the Foyle's bookshop

All booked up

Once everyone in India aspired to be a doctor, an engineer or, if all else failed, a lawyer. This was followed by a craze to get a degree in business administration and make a fast buck. Now, thanks to such role models as V.S. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, Kiran Desai and Aravind Adiga, everyone wants to write a novel, win a Booker and get rich even quicker.

And everyone does have at least one good novel waiting to be made into a movie like Slumdog Millionaire, judging from the fame and fortune that has been thrust on Vikas Swarup, author of Q&A.

This year’s London Book Fair gets under way tomorrow at the exhibition centre in Earl’s Court with a keynote address by Amartya Sen on modern India, the “market focus country” for 2009. The three-day event should be happily chaotic since the British Council has been kind enough to fly in nearly 50 representatives of Indian publishing. There is no business, it seems, like the Indian book business.

It gives male Indian authors a chance to say things like: “I will be signing copies of my new novel right after this seminar. There is a 10 per cent discount for pretty girls.”

And the women authors can say: “Where’s Shekhar Kapur? I’d like to gift him a copy.”

There are related events, too, at Foyle’s, the labyrinthine bookshop in Charing Cross Road where there will be a session with first time Indian novelists. And at the British Library in King’s Cross, the topic will be “Cities in Literature”. Suketu Mehta, author of Maximum City, will explore “What is it about cities that inspire so much writing?”

“Can you be a Gujarati and a novelist?” Suketu was once asked.

“Only if there is money in it,” he replied.

There is.

Glam girl: Freida Pinto

Pretty Pinto

The inclusion of Freida Pinto as a latter day “Helen of Troy” by Vanity Fair, the American glossy, which has listed the most beautiful women in the world, is unsurprising.

Complexion is in the eye of the beholder. But in London, several British Indian actresses who have told me they have been rejected for roles because casting directors deemed them to be “too fair”.

In not so many words, they were told: “You don’t look Indian enough.”

 

mirror image: Sachin Tendulkar with his wax statue

Tittle tattle

Sachin Tendulkar, the world’s most respected living batsman, is going into Madame Tussaud’s, the waxwork museum in Baker Street. The national outpouring of joy at this news will be tempered by the announcement that the museum is also immortalising the late Jade Goody. All that remains is for Shilpa Shetty and her mum to be measured up.