Being a Successful Poet is an Exercise in Obscurity

I can try. Narcopolis mixes fantasy and reality to create a powerful story that deals with a less-known aspect of life in metropolis like Bombay, where episodes collapse into one another.

To some extent. Bombay is a mistress to many a lonely soul, its opiate histories and drunken peripheries have a natural intoxication. I have been a literary junkie for the most part of my life. By-lanes of Shuklaji Street, the place where my book is located, is both real and an imaginary continuum.

 

Newton Xavier is really the aesthetic fulcrum of the book. To a large extent, he could be seen as articulating the romantic view of the opium culture on Bombay in the 1970s. There’s an aromatic exuberance in Xavier, and my next book will explore his character in greater detail. Dom Ulis, the narrator, is also present, but as an observer mostly, a quiet participant sometimes. He is the eye of the novel, but Xavier is the mind. Dimple, the hijra, can be seen as the heart, if you want to put them in such boxes.

When I read out excerpts from a book the last time I was here, I came face to face with a menacing side of culture. Now more than ever, there is pressure against expressing oneÕs mind without fear. The future appears bleaker.    

Being a successful poet is an exercise in obscurity. I have been a poet and an anthologist for long now, but poetry, unfortunately, does not attract many readers. Fewer takers now than there were ten or twenty years back. I would love to see a revival of the culture of poetry reading and writing.