THE ONLY WAY TO WRITE IS TO READ

Tabish Khai, born in Ranchi in 1966, dld hIs MA from Gaya, his hometown in Bihar, worked as a reporter for the Times of India and immigrated to Denmark, where he completed his PhD from Copenhagen University. He is currently an associate professor at Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark. He has published widely in India, England, USA and Denmark. His poems, papers and articles have appeared in the Guardian, the Independent, New Left Review, P.N. Review, Journal of Commonwealth Literature, London. Magazine, Wasafiri, etc and his poetry has been widely translated and anthologised. He is the author, among other books, of the study Babu Fiction (Oxford University Press, 2001), the much-acclaimed poetry collection, Where Parallel Lines Meet (Penguin, 2000) and the novel, The Bus Stopped (penguin, 2000), which was short-listed for the prestigious Encore Award in the UK. His prizes and honors include the All India Poetry Prize and honorary fellowship of the Hong Kong Baptist University.

Jaydeep: When did you start writing?
Tabish: Quite early, in secondary school. But, of course, one really starts writing (seriously) at a later age, when one becomes conscious of having a vocation as a writer.
Jaydeep: Why did you leave India?

Tabish: Personal reasons. Had a Danish girlfriend who was studying medicine in Copenhagen and could not leave Denmark.
Jay deep: What made you think of Denmark as a destination?  
Tabish: See above. Just stayed on after arriving. Married my girlfriend. Have two children now. My connections to Denmark are personal rather than cultural. I had never imagined living in Denmark; simply ended up
here.

Jaydeep: How is the poetry in Denmark?

Tabish: Lively scene, but rather parochial at times and very Europe-facing. It does not concern me as I write in English and there is little or no space for writers like me in Denmark.
Jaydeep: Do you read Danish?
Tabish: Yes, I have written a couple of articles in it too.
Jaydeep: Do you see a strong Indian diaspora of authors over there?   

Tabish: No. I seem to be the only serious Indian writer here. There are a couple of other writers from other parts of the world, though.
Jaydeep: Do you consider yourself  as a migrant writer?

Tabish: No. I lived in India for almost 30 years and in Gaya, Bihar, for about 24 of those 30 years. I can go back whenever I want, and I visit India at least once every year (which explains why I do not have the money to take vacations in the West!). I read Indian publications and have many friends and relatives in India. If migrancy is connected to displacement, I do not feel displaced in cultural terms. I think of myself as an Indian writer based Europe

Jaydeep: I want to know if any one influenced your poetry.
Tabish: Many people, poets, writers and ordinary readers. Influences a hard
to pinpoint.
Jaydeep: Could you list the poets you read and your favourites among them?
Tabish: Like most Indians, I grew up reading the major British poets. M favourites were Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, Walt Whitm Emily Dickinson, Browning, W B Yeats, Auden, Louis Mac Niece, Ellio Plath etc. Later on, I added to them poets like Seamus Heaney, Ar Kolatkar, A. K. Ramanujan, Derek Walcott, Les Murray, Keki Daruwalla, Nissim Ezekiel, Jayanta Mahapatra, Vikram Seth, Micha Longley, Eavan Boland etc
 Favourites in languages other than English include Kalidas, Kabir, Rum Ghalib, Zauq, Pushkin, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Lorca, Wislawa Szymbors Adam Zagajewski and many others. I guess the only way to write is to rea The one thing I dislike about having a regular job, about having to earn m livelihood, is that it leaves me with less time to read freely and widel
Jaydeep: Who are the "senior poets" among the Indian-English poets you like?
Tabish: All ofthem made it possible for us to write and publish, to the extent that poetry is published even today. The poets who speak most to Bhatt had Vikram Seth and almost all of Ramanujan and Koltkar.

Jaydeep: Any of the younger poets you particularly like?

Jaydeep: What differences do you find between modern European or Latin  

American poetry and Indian poetry written English.
Tabish: Too many to be listed both bad and good. Most significantly the different ways in which English relates to India compared to, say, how Spanish relates to Spain or even to Latin America.
Jaydeep: Why do you use Indian space .in your writings? Do you consider yourself as an Indian poet writing m English?

Tabish: I would hope so. Yes, definitely.
Jaydeep: Which one is your mother tongue? Are you a bilingual?

 Tabish: I grew up speaking Hindi, Urdu and English. I read much more in English than in Hindi or Urdu, though I can read Hindi (Devnagari) and the Urdu (Arabic) scripts.
Jaydeep: Do you think your training in English Literature was more or less responsible for writing in English?
Tabish: Perhaps, but I started off as a science student and switched to literature much later. What was more important in my case was the (false and political) tension between Urdu and Hindi. It drove me to English as a neutral territory.
Jaydeep: Are you satisfied with the trend of criticism on Indian English poetry?

Tabish: No
Jaydeep: How popular in Indian Literature in Denmark?
Tabish: The internationally visible writers (Rushdie, Roy) get a hearing, of course, but it does not translate into large-scale visibility for Indian writing. For that, India will have to be a major economic power. Canadian and Australian embassies and governments do a good job of promoting their literatures these days because they have the money to float literary prizes, exchange programmes, student scholarships etc. So-called 'post­colonial' studies are dominated by Canadian, Australian and 'multi­cultural British' interests in the West.
Jaydeep: Do the students of the Universities/Colleges in Denmark study Indian poets in English?
Tabish: Almost never.
Jaydeep: Would you comment on the images in your poems?
Tabish: No.My critics should.
Jadeep: why do you refer to Kabir’s “Doha”

Tabish: Kabir remains an all-time favourite. I remember many of his dohas by heart. Of course, Kabir is also a symbolic figure in today's political India.
Jaydeep: You have the fascination for long lines and occasional use of pauses which suit the narrative poems. Please comment on this observation.
Tabish: Again, I would much rather not comment on my own poetry. That is the critic's job, if my poetry is considered good enough.
Jaydeep: According to Arvind Joshi, at times you speak of "almost Arnoldian sense of loss." Do you see any autobiographical reference behind this sense of loss?

Tabish: Please see above. In general, poems can have autobiographical significance to the writer, but to the reader they need to work as text.

Jaydeep: Most of your poems are written in simple speech, uttered
lainly. Will you comment on the style of your poems?
Jaybish: I write to be read. I have always believed that plainness can be deceptive and is often more difficult to achieve than turgidity.
Jaydeep: Why did you opt for an abstract title like Where Parallel Lines Meet (2000) for your poetry volume?
Tabish: Actually, that had to do with the kernel of the concerns of many of the poems in the collection. Mathematically. speaking, parallel lines meet at infinity. But my collection argues that affinity IS not out there but in the human heart. Hence, the implicit statement is that parallel lines meet in the human heart. In other words, we can reconcile our differences only by a sympathetic effort and that reason (math’s/ parallel lines) has to be combined with emotion/feeling (heart). What makes us human is our ability to feel for others just as much as our ability to think abstractly. There are other aspects to the title, but that is the rough gist.
Jaydeep: You have published poems widely in Indian magazines and journals. How do you rate the standards of Indian journals compared with those in Denmark?
Tabish: I have very little knowledge of literary journals in Denmark. I have written for Danish newspapers but hardly ever for Danish literary journals. I do contribute to literary journals and papers in England and there the standards are usually a bit higher. But India does have some excellent publications: Biblio: A Review of Books, The Book Review and Kavya Bharati, among others, when it comes to journals or literary magazines; The Hindu when it comes to newspapers.
Jaydeep: Do you think that the first draft of a poem should be the final draft? Do you work on your poems again and again?
Tabish: I mostly work on my poems a number of times. Sometimes nothing more than a line or two and the main idea are left of the first draft.
Jaydeep: Who is a great poet or great poem, according to you?
Tabish: It varies from person to person, mood to mood.
Jaydeep: You have written works of fiction too. How did you get involved in this genre?
Tabish: I see myself as a writer, not as a poet or a novelist or a critic.
I believe that the project, the theme and the topic determine the genre I adopt.
Jaydeep: How is the publishing industry in Denmark? Do they take up the risk of publishing poetry   collections of new poets?
Tabish: Competitive and at times subsidised publishing industry.    Quite open to Danish-language    poetry, compared to the scene in    India. Much official funding is there for Danish poetry. But of course         poetry does not really sell in most cases anywhere.

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