Keki N. Daruwalla (born 24 January 1937[1]) is an Indian poet and short story writer in English.[2][3] He is also a former Indian Police Service officer.
He was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award, in 1984 for his poetry collection, The Keeper of the Dead, by the Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters.[4] He was awarded Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian award in India, in 2014.[5]
Keki Nasserwanji Daruwalla was born in Lahore to a Parsi family in 1937. His father, N.C. Daruwalla, was an eminent professor, who taught in Government College Lahore. Before the Partition of India, his family left undivided India in 1945 and moved to Junagarh and then to Rampur in India. As a result, he grew up studying in various schools and in various languages.[6][7]
He joined the Police Service in 1958. Working as a police officer offered him various opportunities to work in different parts of the country. He witnessed the harsh realities of life from which he drew the substance for his literary pursuits. He has written twelve books and his first novel for Pepper and Christ was published in 2009. He received Commonwealth Poetry Prize for his collection of poems, Landscape in the year 1987.
He was appointed in the Uttar Pradesh cadre of the Indian Police Service (IPS) on 24 October 1958 after competitive examination.[1] On his first central deputation, he worked as Area Organiser, Chamoli, in Joshimath in the erstwhile Special Service Bureau (now, Sashastra Seema Bal) till 1965.[8] On subsequent central deputation, he worked as Special Assistant on International Affairs to the Prime Minister, Charan Singh from 2 August 1979[9] to 19 January 1980.[10] Subsequently, he resigned from the IPS to join the Research and Analysis Service (RAS),[11] the internal cadre of R&AW. Within R&AW he rose to the rank of Special Secretary.[12] When his batchmate,[13] Ajit Singh Syali, was promoted to Secretary, R&AW, Daruwalla was shifted as chairman, Joint Intelligence Committee, in the rank of Secretary, on 29 July 1993.[11] He retired as chairman, JIC in 1995.[14] Post-retirement, he was a member of National Commission for Minorities from 3 February 2011 to 2 February 2014.[15]
His first book of poetry was Under Orion, which was published by Writers Workshop, India in 1970. He then went on to publish his second collection Apparition in April in 1971 for which he was given the Uttar Pradesh State Award in 1972. His poems appeared in many poetry anthologies such as Anthology of Contemporary Indian Poetry[16] edited by Menka Shivdasani, and The Dance of the Peacock[17][18] edited by Dr Vivekanand Jha.
He won the Sahitya Akademi Award, given by the Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters, in 1984 and returned the same award in October, 2015 in protest and with a statement that "The organisation Sahitya Akademi has failed to speak out against ideological collectives that have used physical violence against authors".[19] Daruwalla did not take back his award even after Sahitya Akademi passed a resolution condemning the attacks on rational thinkers.[20] In an interview to The Statesman, Daruwalla expanded on why he did not take back his award, saying "what you do, you do once and you can’t be seen as giving back an award and then taking it back."[21] He received the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for Asia in 1987. Nissim Ezekiel commented "Daruwalla has the energy of the lion".
J. P. Dutta's Bollywood film Refugee is attributed to have been inspired by the story of Keki N. Daruwalla based around the Great Rann of Kutch titled "Love Across the Salt Desert"[22] which is also included as one of the short stories in the School Standard XII syllabus English textbook of NCERT in India.[23]
Appearances in the following poetry Anthologies[edit]
^"Padma Awards Announced". Press Information Bureau, Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India. 25 January 2014. Archived from the original on 22 February 2014. Retrieved 26 January 2014.
