Pritish Nandy (15 January 1951 – 8 January 2025)
Writers Workshop remembers and celebrates Pritish Nandy as the 16-year-old poet who came to Professor P. Lal with his first manuscript of poetry, Of Gods and Olives (which we published in 1967). He wrote about his experience with P. Lal, who gave him the “confidence no one else was willing to offer” in his homage, “To Sir With Love“.
Of Gods and Olives went on to become “A huge hit and was widely acclaimed” as Pritish Nandy described later in an interview.
His next book, On Either Side of Arrogance, appeared the very next year, followed by the play Rites for a Plebeian Statue (1969) and more poetry in Masks to Be Interpreted in Terms of Messages (1970) – a book every year since his debut. In 1970, WW published his translation of The Complete Poems of Samar Sen, one of Bengali literature’s leading modern poets.
In Modern Indian Poetry in English (WW, second edition, 1971) the young Pritish wrote this
impassioned defence of Indian writing in English:
“Yes, Indian writing in English is the result of Anglomania in the same sense that such writing in Bengali is the result of Bengalimania. There is and can be only one circumstance,
one motivation for writing in a particular language: one loves the language and feels like expressing himself in it. Thousands learned English in India and thousands more are learning it despite the onslaught of Hindi jingoites.”
He added:
“Not plenty of Indians feel in English; it is not the language of their emotion. But then, again, for some this holds true. And this minority is significant if we study the statistics of literacy in the country. But whether English is or not an Indian language should not affect the body-logic of our argument once we accept the premise that if you love a language enough to make love in it, you have the right to write in it. In fact, there can be no question about the right to write in any language – the point is the right to expect an open mind. Though creative mannerisms preclude the element of choice the linguistic vehicle need not: this axiom, if held valid, can knock the bottom off the argument that does not distinguish between these two planes of the creative act. If you love English – which is a fact you must probabilistically reckon with – the question becomes: then why not in English?” (p. 120, Section 1)
The Government of India recognized Nandy’s contribution to Indian literature with the Padma Shri in 1977. He also received the E M Forster Literary Award, the UNESCO Asia Pacific Heritage Award, the International Association Award from the Humane Society of the United States, and the Friends of Liberation War Honour from Bangladesh, among many others.
Writers Workshop mourns the loss of Pritish Nandy, poet and force of nature. We share this poem from Masks to Be Interpreted in Terms of Messages:
beyond that rock is the silent exile
the burning of corpses at the end of a journey
you have marked the place where we shall return where empty cities burn in
the desert air
there where the waters meet your dusk-drawn thighs circling the passion of
night with a gesture of despair for you are here and everywhere Urvashi you
are nowhere and yet you are the evening the sullen dusk the sound of rivers
running mountains broken rocks ruins you move through prayer with the gait
of suffering
white again is the colour of insanity
the fascia of shells
and I will ask you what you know about those mad blue eyes that have
tracked me everywhere disentangling the hopes of countless continents
and the alphabet of stars will haunt me on this night of fast
the moons will be peopled by agony for the way forward must be backed by
the backward steps and what you cannot explain in terms of symbols is lost
forever like blind totems and ruins on an old man’s face
broken monuments on tresses that have known desire
words that are shells and insane waters
the burning of corpses at the end of a journey
beyond that rock is the silent exile
of gods who have aged and are not aware