‘I write because I am angry about my country’

The second poem that he read out at the event was written a month before demonetisation. “It was Mahatma Gandhi’s birth anniversary and it occurred to me that, if he were alive today, how would he see this country? So, I wrote My Dinner with Gandhi,” says Puthiran. The Father of the Nation sits opposite the poet and “beholds the sight of / humans skinned / for consuming meat”. And then, the Mahatma “bites a piece of meat” but “doesn’t bother asking / about the animal behind the meat”.

Eighteen collections and 2,000 poems capture Puthiran’s idealisms and conflict. They are dedicated to his muse as hundreds of love poems, closely examine the life of a specially-abled person or are studies on the human body and loneliness. Puthiran suffered an attack of polio when he was three and his father filled the house with books. He grew up with a love for literature and began to write at a young age.

His first collection of poems, Manushya Puthiran Kavithaigal (Poems of Manushya Puthiran) was published when he was 16. A year ago, at 15, he had taken up the pen name — he was born S Abdul Hameed — to reflect his ideology. It translates into “Son of Man”, a title given to Jesus Christ, whose philosophy has been of abiding interest to Puthiran. “In Tamil Nadu, after the Self-Respect Movement of Periyar, we do not use our caste names. Whatever ideas I had in my mind, I framed it in my name,” he says.

Puthiran says his handicap has fuelled his poetry and personality. Among his works on the subject is a poem called An Album of Legs through which he attempted to understand his body. “Whenever people try to help me, I don’t like it. It is not that I want to deny their goodness but I am deeply affected by it. There is a certain kind of resistance in me. In order to come out of it, I write a lot,” he adds.

He is unable to go a day without writing though the fuel now comes from Delhi. “India has become a country that triggers a sensitive poet. I write because I am angry about my country,” he says. His last poem, Black National Anthem, was inspired by BJP leader Tarun Vijay’s comments that Indians could not be called racists as they live with black people from southern states. “I feel we are generous enough to treat white people better in this country, so I wrote Black National Anthem,” says Puthiran.