He had a way with verse, prose

Among the last of the major poets who continued to work from Mumbai, Moraes was an erudite and soft-spoken man battling cancer in the last years of his life. Architect-author Saryu Srivatsa, with whom he co-authored a few books, was his companion for the last decade after he separated from erstwhile actress Leela Naidu. In one of his last interviews, when the questioner suggested that he had loved ‘‘a series of women’’, Dom replied, ‘‘Not true. Remember I have lived longer.’’

Born in Bombay in 1938, Dom, son of former Indian Express editor and author Frank Moraes, had a rather unusual childhood, travelling through Australia, New Zealand and the whole of South-East Asia with his father, after his mother was institutionalised. He began writing poetry at the age of 12.

Moraes went to Oxford and drew praise from the likes of W.H. Auden and Stephen Spender, who helped publish him. At 19, he published his first book of poems, A Beginning, which won the Hawthornden Prize for the Best Work of Imagination in 1958, the first non-English poet and the youngest to win the award.

He wrote what is regarded by many as a vastly under-rated book on Sunil Gavaskar. ‘‘He would speak passionately about cricket and describe vividly the famous matches and performances,’’ said Mark Manuel, managing editor, Afternoon Despatch & Courier, who had known Moraes for nearly two decades.

While his father wrote a biography of Pandit Nehru, Moraes wrote that of his daughter Indira Gandhi. ‘‘When I met her after writing this book, she gave me a nasty look. Obviously she didn’t like it,’’ he said in an interview. Among his acclaimed works are Out of God’s Oven: Travels in a Fractured Land (2002) and an autobiography, My Father’s Son.