Daruwalla's debut collection, Under Orion, came out in 1970 and including the present volume he has nine to his credit, a prolific outpouring of verse mostly drafted and crafted in the course of a career in the Indian Police Service. Like George Orwell he has made effective use of his experience as a police officer, as when he sketches with clinical precision the horror of mob violence:

There is nothing much to distinguish

one lathi blow from another;

the same inverted back, the same arc through the air

the curve consummated on the cowering body

and beneath the raining blows

a swarm of limbs

twisting like tentacles.

("Death by Burial")

A more recent poem, "District Law Courts", gives a cynical view of the institution that deals with crime, introducing us to "a hacksaw left/ by a fleeing intruder;/ a pipe gun, a projectile,/ sealed envelopes bigger than/ headstones on a grave--/ exhibits all" and the rundown courthouse where "A ceiling fan creaks/ around its arthritic bolts", and ending with a dispiriting snapshot of the guardians of the law:

Black-jacketed lawyers

and a black-robed judge

munch away at the body of the law.

More generally, Daruwalla consistently records his critical responses to the unsavoury aspects of the human condition, ranging from bitter satire to anguished protest. Among the New Poems that open the book are responses to the Gujrat holocaust of 2002, to Palestine and to the Osama phenomenon. But topicality is only one of many facets of Daruwalla's verse. He can delve with equal facility into engaging historical themes. The second poem in the book is a fictional account of the Galileo affair from the perspective of Pope Urban VIII. Once friendly with the maverick scientist, Urban used to enjoy kenning the heavens through the latter's spectacular invention, 'the Galilean refractor':

...all that astral phenomena

lit into our ken--not just star and planet,

but the fiery vapour of comets

and the patina of scabs on the sun. ('Urban VIII Confesses')

But the relationship steadily slips into one of unavoidable confrontation over the question of the Copernican theory, resulting in Galileo's recantation. Daruwalla's historical interests are eclectic and wide-ranging: Mohenjodaro, Buddha's Fire Sermon, the Poseidonians, the transatlantic slave trade, admired writers like Borges, Lorca, Osip and Nadezhda Mandelstam, all these and many more feature in Daruwalla's pages.

Whatever the subject, Daruwalla's poems are notations and meditations on what Louis McNiece startlingly described as 'the drunkenness of things being various':

Morning: islands, like somnambulists

which had walked out on the mainland

and woke up to find themselves

waist-deep in the seas. ('Mandwa')

Daruwalla is one of the most fluent of Indian English poets; he is never at a loss for words as his omnivorous sensibility digests varied experiences in all their boredom and horror. If glory, the third quality in the Eliotesque series, isn't much in evidence the fault lies in the world, not in the observer. Daruwalla's strength can be interpreted as a weakness: readers have complained of wordiness, and not without reason; but the charge is applicable to all poets who go for amplitude rather than lapidary concentration, even a great poet like Whitman.

Daruwalla's poetic career is a love affair with a 'half-caste' mistress, whose 'genealogical tree' features 'a Muslim midwife and a Goan cook' and, happily mixing metaphors, 'Down the genetic lane, babus/and professors of English' who have 'made their one-night contributions'. His 'love for her survives from night to night'/even though each time/I have to wrestle with her in bed/....She is Indian English, the language that I use.' ('The Mistress')

May he wrestle on with her with undiminished vigour and keep adding to their lusty, streetwise progeny.

Kaiser Haq is professor of English at Dhaka University.