Bengaluru: "How do I translate Gulzar? Because I am a poet too," smiles writer and former IFS officer Pawan K. Varma, whose latest book, Yudhisthir and Draupadi, will have him in conversation with the poetic legend, Gulzar.
"We met back when I was DG of ICCI," Varma recalled, as Gulzar added with a grin, "He was afraid of me, I was wary of intellectuals! But he had a lot of affection for me and had a natural connection with poetry, too. When I read his sonnet, I knew he was an accomplished poet." The rest, as they say, is history - two compilations of translated works by Varma - Selected Poems (2008) and Neglected Poems (2012).
Questions about politics and film only appear to irk him. “My poems that have not been written for films are far deeper and far more diverse. And still, all I get are questions like, ‘Why didn’t you marry Rekha’?” he said, sending a ripple of laughter through the audience. India, they agreed, at the a closeknit interaction with the media that cut the booksigning short, much to the ire of his fans, still bears traces of her colonial past. "We received political freedom, when our enslavement had been social and cultural," remarked Varma. "I studied Milton in College and Shakespeare. I admire the man, I have written about him, but I can't help but wonder, why didn't we learn Kalidasa instead?" And still, Gulzar's latest book, Suspected Poems, contains a strong political commentary. Does he have affiliations of his own? The question was dismissed, somewhat brusquely, as he said, "I react to politics without any affiliation. I'm a citizen who is affected by the political scenario. No matter who we are or where were from, we deal with emotion in the same way. "
