Usha Akella
Introduction
Keki N. Daruwalla was especially keen to publish his aphorisms. He had gathered a sizeable amount—a medley of truisms, aphorisms, quotes, maxims, witticisms, dicta, and idioms, over the decades, stored away in a file, looking for the right time, and place to publish them. These brisk and pithy utterances seemed to be a glove-fit to his customary satire, astute observations of human nature, intolerance of humbug, and his acerbic eye viewing the political arena. While browsing through, and filtering the initial lists he had sent me, I was also simultaneously reading his poetical works permeated with pithy pouches of innuendo and, bite. Embedded in poems, posturing as, and aligned with the poetry line, they constitute the voice of his ‘kekisms’—a term playfully coined to convey the distinct writing style or his ‘U.S.P’ in Urna Bose’s words—that has been alluded to repeatedly by the writers in this festschrift. Once I became aware of their presence, they leapt off the pages in his poetry books, plain in sight, confident, assertive, and swaggering, squarely standing on their own two feet like little principalities within a kingdom. So, I culled a selection of aphorisms from his poetry as well, and added it to his list. Daruwalla stayed out of the shaping of this book largely—but his happiness was undisguised when the decision was made to include his aphorisms (and their merry cousins). For the writer, and institution that he is, this seemed hardly an indulgence but an opportunity to delineate a separate space for a very quintessential component of his writerly style. Like the Imagery section in this book, these aphorisms are positioned to be savored alone in their own right.
I enjoyed my own elvish moment when positioning these two aphorisms as the ‘Introduction’ and ‘Conclusion’: Introduction: Don’t write aphorisms. By tendering advice, you presuppose that you are wiser than the sod receiving it. Conclusion: Write aphorisms. It is good to be wise in speech and foolish in life. Enjoy!
Excerpt:
Don’t write aphorisms. By tendering advice, you presuppose that you are wiser than the sod receiving it.
General/Advice
1. Lamps do not light the way always. Lamps also gather soot.
2. Silence prancing around, disguised as wisdom is just ignorance. Delink the two.
3. Promise is a lie doled out to others. Resolution is you lying to yourself.
4. A dribble of water on sand will tell new shapes take some time to settle.
5. A dribble of water will tell a physics student ‘liquid finds its own level.
6. Living means sameness. Get used to it.
7. Don’t paint the riverside. Paint the landscape as you see it in the river’s mirror.
8. This myth of roots is overplayed. There is nothing great in being stuck in the same hell hole.
9. All that you see is not what you absorb. All that you absorb is not all that you can articulate. And all that you articulate may have nothing to do with reality.
10. Write aphorisms. It is good to be wise in speech and foolish in life.