"Calcutta If You Must Exile Me" is the best known single poem of the renowned Indian English poet and media personality Pritish Nandy. The poem is widely anthologised in major Indian English poetry collections and is regarded as a pioneering classic in modern Indian English writing. [1] The poem is remarkable for its breathless tempo, vivid imagery and unsuppressed angst at societal decadence. The poem is addressed to the Indian city of Kolkata, although not in eulogical terms.
The poem was written in the late 1970s or early 1980s. The poet himself reminiscences in a 2009 interview that the poem describes his feelings of a city he left 27 years ago. [2]
The poet was a resident of Calcutta (now Kolkata), and in the poet's own words, the poem is based on his direct real life experience of the city. The poem evokes the mood of a man born in Calcutta, bred in Calcutta and living in Calcutta. [3]
The poem is notable for its fast tempo, impassioned conversational diction and sharp images depicting the "brutalities of city life. The most unusual feature of the poem is that it does not have a single punctuation mark - no comma, fullstop or hyphen. In fact, the entire poem is composed only of words, without any hyphenation or fancy spacing, almost as a rebellion against regimentation of any poetic structure. Such a style was a trendsetter during the period of its composition.
In the poem, although Nandy portrays the ruthlessness prevalent in the city, he loves the city so much that he does not want to leave it. [4]
The unique style of the poem has inspired many modern Indian poets. The poem was harbinger of a new style of realistic writing on urban life in fast-paced tempo. [5] Although the poem has spawned many imitations, none has equalled the power and majesty of the original.This poem brought a breath of fresh air, almost true in an Indian environment and starkly different from the mainstream Indian writings of the day. [6]
Li-Young Lee is an American poet. He was born in Jakarta, Indonesia, to Chinese parents. His maternal great-grandfather was Yuan Shikai, China's first Republican President, who attempted to make himself emperor. Lee's father, who was a personal physician to Mao Zedong while in China, relocated his family to Indonesia, where he helped found Gamaliel University. In 1959 the Lee family fled Indonesia to escape widespread anti-Chinese sentiment and after a five-year trek through Hong Kong and Japan, they settled in the United States in 1964. Li-Young Lee attended the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Arizona, and the State University of New York Brockport.
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Writers Workshop is a Kolkata-based literary publisher founded by the Indian poet and scholar Purushottama Lal in 1958. It has published many new Indian authors of post-independence urban literature. Many of these authors later became widely known.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Swadesh Bharati is a Hindi poet, recipient of "Premchand Award" and "Sahitya Bhushan Award". He lives in Kolkata from where he edits Rupambara, a literary bilingual quarterly journal. He has been in active field of creative writing since more than 45 years. He is chairman of Rashtriya Hindi Academy and was guest lecturer at Madaras Christian Academy.
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Pritish Nandy is an Indian poet, painter, journalist, parliamentarian, media and television personality, animal activist and maker of films, TV and streaming content. He was a parliamentarian in the Rajya Sabha from Maharashtra, elected on a ticket from the Shiv Sena. He is the author of forty books of poetry in English and has translated poems by other writers from Bengali, Urdu and Punjabi into English as well as a new version of the Isha Upanishad. Apart from these, he has authored books of stories and non fiction as well as three books of translations of classical love poetry from Sanskrit. He was Publishing Director of The Times of India Group and Editor of The Illustrated Weekly of India, The Independent, and Filmfare in the 1980s, all simultaneously. He has held six exhibitions of his paintings and calligraphy. He founded Pritish Nandy Communications Ltd, the content company, in 1993. He also founded People for Animals, India's first animal rights NGO which is currently run by co-founder Maneka Gandhi as chairperson.
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