Why poetry is a political act
'In India at the moment, if you were to write a poem about the prime minister, as I did, it is immediately polarising. It's a moment in our history.
'It's not even particular countries. I think it's a worldwide phenomenon, when the right and the left are at each others' throats in a way that hasn't [before] been so divisive.
'There's no way to even make an utterance about some things at the moment without it becoming political.
'There are poets that say that they are not political, but even that is a kind of political stance, to say that I am purely all about art for art's sake. I think that's a kind of extreme aesthetic, which is very political. It's a way of saying how disgusted you are by politics, to say that I'm above it.'
The politics of his ghazal
'The reason that writing a ghazal called Malayalam's Ghazal is an extremely political act in India is because the ghazal, according to the urduwhallahs, belongs to Urdu. And one of the rules is that you mustn't write a ghazal in any other language than Urdu.
'So to write a ghazal in English first of all, you're doing something verboten, and you're doing something indefensible. And then to write a ghazal with the word Malayalam in the title, that's compounding it. So when I read this poem in North India, I'm always prepared for people to throw shoes.
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'The only language I can read and write with any degree of fluency is English. My parents speak Malayalam, but only to each other. To me they speak in English, and I've always spoken back to them in English.
'I can understand Malayalam, but I can't speak it. I can speak Hindi, but very, very badly. I can read French, but slowly. The only language I feel comfortable reading and writing in is English.
'Some of the lines in that poem are fibs. For example: "When you've been too long in the rooms of English / open your windows to the fresh air of Malayalam."
'One of the rules of the ghazal is that the poet appears in the last couplet, he mentions himself. And the last couplet is "Jeet, such drama with the scraps you know / Write a couplet, if you dare, in Malayalam."'
Why he's a poet rather than a novelist
'Not all novelists will agree with me, but I look at novel writing as a form of drudgery and the writing of poetry as a form of joy.
'You're there from nine to five like a slave on the wheel.'
How to read poetry
'[Reading poetry] is a pleasure and it is intuitive. But there is also a science involved that I think can deepen your pleasure, when you know the nuts and bolts of a line and what goes into making the poem have the effect that it does.
'When you look at a line in terms of its cellular structure, I think it deepens your pleasure.'
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