I am grateful for a Homi Bhabha Fellowship that gave me what poet-anthologists yearn for, most of all: licence to read.
My sincerest thanks to the following:
To theatre stalwart and friend, the late Satyadev Dubey, who orchestrated the Fellowship application process from his hospital bed with a maestro’s panache.
To Prof. S. M. Chitre and H. D. Pajnigar of the Homi Bhabha Fellowships Council for their support.
To Kamini Mahadevan, my editor at Penguin, for mooting the idea, and for being a perceptive and gentle fellow-traveller.
To Adil Jussawalla and Gieve Patel for believing in the project, for affirmation and encouragement.
To Ranjit Hoskote for believing in it too, for solidarity, for dialogue.
To Jerry Pinto for intuition, laughter, bibliophilia.
To Rudi Heredia and Priya D’Souza for faith and friendship.
To FIR. Umamaheshwaran for his patient and skilful textual unravelling, and ‘Marabin Maindan’ Muthiah for opening up the world of Abhirami Antadi for me in its many textures, for his contagious passion for the work.
To the many poets and translators who are in this book. To many who are not. And to the many people who played significant roles behind the scenes, sometimes without knowing it: Viju Chitre, Dhruba Hazarika, Naushil Mehta, Hemant Divate, K. Satchidanandan, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, Udayan Vajpeyi, Satyasheel Deshpande, Shoba Ghosh, David Shulman, Lata Mani, Maa Karpoori.
To Sadhguru, for opening my eyes to the fact that I am, however flawed, a bhakta, above all else.