Always the outsider

It had become fashionable in recent years to dismiss Dom Moraes, poet and writer, as a child prodigy who had fifteen minutes of fame, and th...

It had become fashionable in recent years to dismiss Dom Moraes, poet and writer, as a child prodigy who had fifteen minutes of fame, and then slid into obscurity, never really fulfilling his promise. The truth is a little more complex. Moraes was a poet who did not want to be known as an Indian poet, but will be remembered precisely as just that.

Dominic Francis Moraes was the famous son of a legendary father, journalist Frank Moraes. Dom’s parents were staunch nationalists and their “flat was always full of unshaven and furtive young nationalists who had either just emerged from prison or were hiding from the police”. From his father, Dom inherited the gift of writing crystal clear English. Allied to an unusually precocious intelligence, his gifts brought him quickly to the notice of the likes of Mulk Raj Anand, W.H. Auden and Stephen Spender. At the age of 19, his collection of poems, A Beginning, won the Hawthronden Prize. He was the first non-English and youngest ever person to have bagged it.

After several volumes of poems, the muse deserted Moraes. He led a peripatetic existence as a journalist, editing magazines, working with the UN, making documentary films. He wrote some 25 books, which helped pay the rent but did nothing for his reputation, with the exception of his memoirs, later combined under the wonderfully ironic and self-aware title A Variety of Absences. The nadir was reached with Mrs Gandhi, replete with errors and mis-statements. Dom returned to India in 1979 and began to write poetry again. Collected Poems, Serendip and In Cinnamon Shade followed, the last winning the Sahitya Akademi’s award.

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Moraes’s reputation will rest on his memoirs and poetry. After the initial enthusiasm had worn off, the critics came down hard. Even friend and mentor Nissim Ezekiel once noted that “it may be argued that Dom has nothing special to offer those Indians who use English for creative purposes. He writes like an English poet, and does not reflect any significant aspect of Indian life. There are allusions to his life in India but they are personal, with no social and cultural implications.”

The charge of formality was well-founded for the early work, but as Moraes noted in 1987: “In 1982 something happened to me which I can not account for. I not only started to write poetry once more, but a new style seemed to come to me without my ever trying to master it.” The tight, structured rhymes gave way to a less formal, flow of words, more personal in tone. In any case, this carping is only at the level of the critic, the ordinary reader with an interest in poetry will be bemused by it. Ironically, the poet least Indian in tone is possibly the one who is the most accessible, and, at the same time, the one from whom Gen Next of Indian poets learned their trade in form and structure. The outsider has been co-opted.

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