Orissa-born Prabhanjan Mishra is Deputy Commissioner of Central Excise at Old Customs House, Mumbai. Mishra is also a well-known Mumbai city poet, whose two books, Vigil and Lips of a Canyon, cover the gamut of human relationships in the faceless postmodernist world of the city. He has been President of the Poetry Circle, Mumbai. Mumbaibest asked the soft-spoken Mr Mishra to share his views on poetry and life .

When and how did you start writing poetry, and what does poetry mean to you ?

The beginning was marked by emotional outbursts and recordings of internal churnings. It was a bit of a search, some self-flagellation in a guilt-ridden mind. Then a phase came when I developed a fancy for words - new words, nice sounding words. Every new word I learnt contained a spark for me. My efforts were more word-oriented than giving attention to the emotions, interactions and the involvements. The latter were rather embroidered around the former. In hindsight, I feel the reverse would have been the right strategy . Then this phase passed and poetry became my private room: insular, sheltered and sacred, like a sequestered practice, like a sacristy in a monastery. In this room you can completely strip before yourself, brutally, truthfully, sensually, morally. In this room even the lies, the abilities, and sins have private auras and intimate affairs.

Till 1985, I worte only in Oriya, my mother tongue, then I shifted to English. From 1995, a phase began when I simultaneously wrote in both languages Oriya and English, often on a common theme. The practice continues.

How do you reconcile the dichotomy of your life as a high-ranking public official with the very private persona of the poet ?

Every moment is a split moment. A spinning coin with faces blurring into one another. It matters when and where the spin stops, which facet of the personality dominantly takes over. Even during an official meeting one falls into a poetic mode and scribbles lines on the note pad. During a poem, an office problem may poke its head and dash the inspiration.

My academic training in Physics and my job of a public servant have helped. Physics has taught me the cosmic approach, looking for systems amid chaos (entropy) , the magnificence of asymmetry vis-a-vis symmetry. My job has exposed me to greed, power, glory, ambition, even conceit. Life has been a roller coaster.

How has your attitude to human relationships changed from the position you adopted in your first book 'Vigil' to that taken up in your recent work 'Lips of a Canyon' ? What do you think defines human relationships ?

The attitude has not changed, the perspective has. In 'Vigil' I am an observor. In 'Lips of a Canyon' I am a participant. From the spectator's gallery, I have stepped into the ring, from speculations into real action. In 'Vigil', I described pain, pleasure, combats, sharing, gambits, loss and resurrections in relationships. In 'Lips of a Canyon' I have lived through them.

Would you define yourself as a Mumbai city poet ? How have your fellow poets in and around Mumbai influenced your work ?

I write in an urbane diction spontaneous to a city-based poet. I have spent roughly 20 years in and around Mumbai. But I have spent my school and college years in villages and towns of Orissa. They, therefore, often surface in my poems.

I have, in one major aspect at least, been influenced by my city colleagues. Many of them have little exposure beyond Mumbai. Yet, in poetry, they weave a magic which reaches beyond Mumbai. They adopt a craft where words and usages camouflage their lack of lived and felt experience, yet they succeed. They may not be exact, but it is not necessary to be exact. They have contributed to my growth.

Tell us more about Prabhanjan Mishra, the man

Do you mean a confessional statement ? I am what I am - a teacher in the past, a law-abiding citizen, a normal family man, some sort of a poet, and story teller. I always identify myself as an underdog, a maveric, an unorganised plodder and introverted fool. But I take my job very seriously, and handle this aspect without interference from my creative and artistic inclinations.

My present passion is fiction. I plan to write all plots in both languages, English and Oriya. Why this new medium ? I think it is an attept to grow, to evolve, though I will continue writing poetry in both languages. I have also started translating .

Following is the title poem from Prabhanjan Mishra's 'Lips of a Canyon'

Mounds of letters
look mythic and gaunt,
flanks of extinct emotions.

Marches a road from here,
from the plain and crumbling biscuit houses
of latticing syllables. Weaving cadences

it sinks through a tormented ravine
leaving behind the lanes
of verses and reverses, a derelict town.

Monoliths hacked
out of an emotion,
about to subside again

into its native rock
taking with them the bare acacias
of human talk.

The vestiges of a relationship
in labyrinths of accusations
swallow our curt prehensile past.

At the lips of a canyon
our parched acres
blindly pallor for a sun.

The differences, reduced
by distances, are shark-teeth
in a zoo's indifferent skeleton

Prabhanjan Mishra

Author: Patrick Coelho
Photographer : Vinayak Prabhu