Speaking to the soul

The Spectator

I have in my hands an extraordinary book. Titled  A poem for Cry, it contains an anthology of the favourite poems of Indians of the calibre of Prof Amartya Sen, Adi Godrej, Amitabh Bachchan, Baba Amte, Deepak Parekh, Julio Riberio, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Karan Johar, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, LK Advani, Lata Mangeshkar, Lord Meghnad Desai, Mani Shanker Aiyar, Vindi Banga, Naseeruddin Shah, Pesi Shroff, Prannoy Roy, Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, Shah Rukh Khan, Sonia Gandhi, Subhash Chandra, Tariq Ansari, Sunil Mittal and Zubin Mehta, amongst others.

That such a remarkable group of people could be persuaded to contribute their favourite poem is extraordinary enough. What is even more exemplary is the fact that all proceeds from the book, which is published by Penguin with a foreword by Prof Amartya Sen, will be given to Child Rights and You, CRY, the legendary NGO which has been doing yeoman service to the cause of children for the past 25 years or more.

But more extraordinary than all of this is the fact that the book is the brainchild and result of the efforts of two young people who conceived and started working on it when they were still in school! Avanti Maluste and Sudeep Doshi were students of the Cathedral School in Mumbai when they came across a book titled Lifelines published in Ireland which featured eminent people and their favourite poem with an accompanying commentary on their choice.

Adapting it to India, they drew up a list of renowned Indians from whom they requested their favourite poem. Some whom they wrote to said they did not read poetry, others said they did not have a favourite, some did not respond, but 108 did, and when Penguin came forward with an offer to publish it in book form, they knew that they had a winner on their hands.

Any one who knows about these things, knows that in poetry we drop all our masks. It is the secret, most private language that our souls speak, and that we now have a record of the favourite poems of such an extraordinary collection of men and women is invaluable archival material.

In this book you will be moved by top cop Kiran Bedi’s simple choice of William Wordsworth’s  We are Seven, editor MJ Akbar’s pick of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Baba Amte’s preference of The Poem by Rabindranath Tagore and Shah Rukh Khan’s option of Abraham Lincoln’s Letter to his son’s teacher.

There are also interesting pairings. Who would have thought that Tariq Ansari, Rahul Bajaj, Amir Khan, Anand Patwardhan, Aruna Roy, Pranoy Roy, Mallika Sarabhai and Kiran Mazumdar Shaw would choose the same poem — Tagore’s Where the Mind is Without Fear — as their favourite?

Or that Mulk Raj Anand, Vishwanath Anand and Karan Johar would see eye to eye on Wordsworth’s Daffodils? Or that Adi Godrej, Rahul Dravid and Lord Bagri would choose Kipling’s If?

I too have contributed my favourite poem to this collection, Maya Angelou’s rousing anthem for the oppressed And still I rise. Turning the pages of this extraordinary book, to be released on Sunday by Amitabh Bachchan, it occurred to me that sometimes nothing engulfs us quite as much as poetry.

Buy the book. It will afford you many days of pleasant reflection. And your money will go to the empowerment of a deserving child somewhere.

s_malavika@dnaindia.net