Gieve Patel (b. 1940) one of “the Parsi Quartet” of Indian English poetry (the other three are Adil Jussawalla, Keki N. Daruwalla and Kersey D. Katrak) is a doctor in Bombay and has published two volumes of poetry so far, Poems (1966) and How Do You Withstand, Body (1976). He is an actor – playwright too, with three productions, Princes (1970) Savakasa (1982) and Mister Behram (1988) to his credit. He is also a painter and his paintings were displayed at the Menton Biennale. His poems have been included in New Writing in India (Penguin, 1974) and Young Commonwealth Poets ’65 (Heinemann, 1965).
The poems in the first volume make use of local subjects and are born of observations leading to contemplation on the self and its social attitudes. Patel’s perception of his environment is different from that of R. Parthasarathy or Ramanujan in that the former avoids emotional involvement in the scene and event portrayed. A Patel poem derives its strength from the space that he creates between himself and how he perceives others.
He is aware of local conditions of life, yet defends himself from involvement. The poem “Grandfather” (Poems) is a case in point. In his distancing himself from the scene viewed and debated on, Patel is closer to Ezekiel than to Kumar or Ramanujan. In fact, Ezekiel seems to be ‘precursor’ to Patel, the ‘anxiety’ of whose ‘influence’ is very much felt in the first volume. Patel’s early poems register his sympathies with the oppressed, the underdog in society. “Servants”, “Norgol”, “Catholic Mother”, “Naryal Poornima”, which are an anthologist’s delights, “suggest some one with a sensitivity to social injustice and suffering who, to survive, has found it necessary to harden himself” (Bruce King). He writes deliberately in a low-key showing a careful avoidance of flights of imagination and a fastidious etching of sparse images.
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These poems; their intense concern with pain and suffering notwithstanding, avoid the pitfall of maudlin sentimentality. Also, Patel’s perception is influenced by his scientific (medical) career, which is not only the source of his imagery and metaphor, but also his ability to portray with clinical precision. The ‘deadpan’ tone of his poetry has been too conspicuous to escape any critical scrutiny. The elliptical, compressed, rough style and harsh rhythms capture the violence and cruelty, the signature of our times.
Patel is “the laureate of Body, of its wounds, aches, pains, resiliences and recuperations” (Prema Nandakumar). The title poem “How Do You Withstand, Body” outlines the theme of the second volume. In this poem and other poems of the volume, like “Say Torture”, “Body Fears”, Patel has attempted (in his own words) “to understand through the medium of poetry, a commonplace of our times: the periodic and continuous assault on the human body”. But can a poem achieve anything against the onslaught of corporate violence? Patel believes, “if a poem is clear, well thought out, purposive, logical and true, it will have changed something… first in the poet himself… because if this does not happen… there is no poem”.