Patna, Feb. 27: Amarendra Kumar stays far away from the cities but has made a place in the hearts of many.

Kumar (74), a resident of Shambhupur Koari near Hajipur and a retired professor of English, is fond of writing on things around him. He writes both in English and Hindi.

His father, Ram Swaroop Sinha, a district board doctor, used to do critique on the works of writers like Thomas Hardy and George Bernard Shaw, as he sat with his friends for a game of cards at night. His father encouraged Kumar, who used to study in a village school at the time, to write.

For topics, Kumar would pick up anything around him and describe it. Later, Indian writers like Mulk Raj Anand, K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar and D.P. Vidyarthi also inspired him. R. Krishna Sinha, another inspiration, also guided Kumar in his research paper on British novelist William Sansom’s short stories.

Kumar, who is at present reading James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake, said: “I also admire the works of Joyce and Salman Rushdie. They incorporate their feelings in their works. Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, which won the Booker Prize, inspired me a lot. It is difficult to read Finnegan’s Wake without being critical, but I am trying to read it.”

On his own works, Kumar said: “I have a small room in Hajipur, which is everywhere for me. It inspires me to write about everything under the sky.”

Till now, he has penned five anthologies of English poems, one of Hindi poems (Awartan) and one of short stories. Kumar, who has focused on issues like terrorism in the country, has also written at least three poems on actress Vyjayanthimala. The actress had once even sent a letter of appreciation to Kumar for his poem Sound and Shell that he had written for her. Kumar said: “Once my wife and I met Vyjayanthimala and she told me I write beautiful poems.”

Apart from writing poems and short stories, Kumar, who has taught at RN College, Hajipur, and Dhamar University in the Republic of Yemen, has also presented several research papers that have been widely appreciated.

He presented one on Mulk Raj Anand’s novel, The Bubble, during a national seminar at Kerala University in Thiruvananthapuram. Two more — The Short Story and the Ballad: Perspective of Form and The Short Form: Linear and the Rose Ballad: Interlinear — were presented at the American Studies Research Centre in Hyderabad.

Although Kumar has health problems, he still feels young at heart and does not forget anybody who helped him in his works. He mentions Shyamala A. Narayan, the head of the English department at Jamia Millia Islamia University, who helped him a lot. Narayan has reviewed five books of Kumar in the Journal of Commonwealth Literature. Prema Nand Kumar, the daughter of K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar, has also reviewed Kumar’s works, he said.