A House of Words: In Honour of Keki N Daruwalla is a Sahitya Akademi festschrift edited by Usha Akella. It pairs critical writing on Daruwalla’s poetry and prose with personal recollections from fellow writers, many of whom describe him as a generous reader and a mentor to younger poets. Read it for both purposes: the critical essays tell you how his work has been judged, and the testimony tells you how he treated the people around him.
What the book contains
Scroll’s review, published September 30, 2024, describes the volume as a mix of essays, poems, reflections, personal tributes, two interviews, and sections on imagery and aphorisms. The review calls it a festschrift, a collection published in honour of a scholar or writer. Contributors named in its account include Anita Nahal, Arundhathi Subramaniam, Basudhara Roy, Firdaus Gandavia, and the editor, Usha Akella. A section titled “Reflections” considers aspects of Daruwalla’s poetry and prose.
Akella explains the purpose of such books in terms that go beyond one writer. As Scroll quotes her: “Books of this kind harness and preserve the cultural wealth of the country which is people of talent whatever the sphere of activity.”
The book was not only a posthumous tribute. Scroll reports that the first copy was presented to Daruwalla on June 20, 2024, while he was still alive. He died on September 26, 2024.
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Choosing a way in
The three main ways into Daruwalla’s work serve different purposes, and it helps to decide which one you want before you start.
| Reading route | What it gives you | Where to begin |
|---|---|---|
| A House of Words (festschrift) | Critical essays, personal tributes, and interviews about the poetry and prose | The “Reflections” section, then the two interviews |
| Poetry collections | The verse itself: landscape, history, love, death, and social life | Night River or A Summer of Tigers, which the Library of Congress profile lists among his recurring works |
| Short fiction | Social settings from colonial India to the present, satire, exile, and belonging | The Minister for Permanent Unrest & Other Stories or Going |
The work and its recurring concerns
The Library of Congress South Asian Literary Recordings Project describes Daruwalla’s poetry as vigorous and immediate in language, with a sharp tone. Its profile identifies recurring concerns, which are useful as a checklist when you read:
- love, death, and domination
- the condition of human society
- landscape imagery
- a geographical reach beyond India
These are the profile’s characterizations, not a settled definition of the poems, and critics will weigh them differently.
Scroll’s discussion adds historical and social settings, satire, exile, identity, and belonging. Basudhara Roy’s reading of the short story collection Going is the clearest example in the review. She writes: “Going, in its primary sense is a book about transit, movement, and relentless motion… In terms of setting, the five stories in Going offer a diachronic arrangement as they move from colonial India to the present times. Daruwalla’s sweep, in every story, remains wide and panoramic in its attempt to take in the entire social scenario at one go.” This is Roy’s critical reading, not a summary by the publication.
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The review also points to the poem “Cranes,” quoting the phrase “a vale of compassion/where none is harmed,” and to Fire Altar: Poems on the Persians and the Greeks and Naishapur and Babylon as evidence of his engagement with histories and cultures beyond India.
Influence as recalled by writers
The memorial pieces make the case for Daruwalla’s legacy as personal as well as literary. They are attributed recollections rather than a measure of his influence, but they agree on several points: he supported younger writers, he helped get new work published, and he read first books carefully.
Anju Makhija
Writer and editor Anju Makhija, writing in Hindustan Times, recalls that he supported writers without favouritism.
Priya Sarukkai Chhabria
Poet, novelist, and editor Priya Sarukkai Chhabria says that when he was at Sahitya Akademi he helped publish writers for the first time.
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- Brand: Wonder House Books
- Language: english
Sukrita Paul Kumar
Poet, editor, and arts administrator Sukrita Paul Kumar recalls working with him to conceptualize the Poetry Society of India. The aim, she recalls, was to give Indian poetry in English a public life outside an “ivory tower.”
Jeet Thayil
Poet and novelist Jeet Thayil remembers his thoughtful reviews of first books and his sense of responsibility toward new poets.
Usha Akella
Akella’s account in Scroll is the most direct statement of his mentorship: “His proclivation to mentorship was just astounding as that energy touched not one or two but numerous young writers.” She also writes that he “lived in a community of writers” and that “accessibility did not dim greatness.” The review’s spelling, “proclivation,” is the source’s own.
Basudhara Roy
Roy, quoted in Scroll, says writers were touched by him through his work, through his mentorship, and as a colleague or friend.
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Career and honours
The Library of Congress profile says Daruwalla was born in Lahore in 1937. He served in the Indian Police Service, later became Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on International Affairs, and then served in the Cabinet Secretariat until retirement. The profile names the Sahitya Akademi Award and the Commonwealth Poetry Award among his honours.
Writers Workshop India identifies Under Orion as his debut collection, published by Writers Workshop in 1970. It reports that The Keeper of the Dead (1982) received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1984. The Akademi’s awards listing independently names the book and author in its 1984 English entry.
The same Writers Workshop memorial account reports that Daruwalla returned the award in 2015, after the killing of the writer M M Kalburgi. It describes his protest as aimed at what he saw as the Akademi’s insufficient public defence of freedom of expression and of writers under political pressure. This is the publisher’s explanation of his motive, not the Akademi’s own account.
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The Library of Congress bibliography lists the titles below. Publisher and date are as given in that record. The Rupa & Co. entry for Under Orion is a later edition; the original debut was published in 1970.
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| Title | Form | Publisher and date (as listed) |
|---|---|---|
| Night River: Poems | Poetry | Rupa & Co., 2000 |
| A Summer of Tigers: Poems | Poetry | Indus, 1995 |
| Landscapes | Poetry | Oxford University Press, 1987 |
| Winter Poems | Poetry | Rupa & Co., 2000 |
| Under Orion | Debut collection | Original: Writers Workshop, 1970. Listed record: Rupa & Co., 2000, a different edition |
| The Minister for Permanent Unrest & Other Stories | Short stories | Ravi Dayal Publishers, 1996 |
| Going | Short stories | Publisher and date not stated in the sources cited here |
Current availability, price, and edition differences should be checked with the publisher or a bookseller before you buy. The sources cited here do not establish them.
What the sources can and cannot show
The tributes are personal accounts, so they show how colleagues experienced Daruwalla rather than how many writers he helped. No readership figures, sales data, or total count of his publications are established in the sources cited here. The Library of Congress profile gives a figure of “about 12 books,” but it is undated, so it should not be presented as a current total. The title’s phrase “enduring influence” is an editorial framing of these recollections, and the book is best read as a set of informed testimonies and critical essays rather than a complete account of his career.
The Library of Congress recording project and Writers Workshop India are useful for bibliographic details. Scroll is the source for the book’s contents and quoted reviews. Hindustan Times is the source for Makhija’s recollection.
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