It's a necessary quality of a diplomat
or a politician that he will compromise.
Uncompromising politicians or diplomats
get you into the most terrible trouble.
-John Keegan
A diplomat is a representative chosen by the government to represent the country with other governments who have also served their countries as diplomats.
Kavishala presents the top Indian contemporary poet-diplomats who are well-known for their literary contributions too. Some of them are Abhay K, Indran Amirthanayagam, Kofi Awoonor, Philip McDonagh, and Yiorgos Chouliaras.
This year we're going to celebrate the 5th edition of International Diplomats Day with an outsourcing idea inviting the celebrities and general public in the celebrations from across the world in Dubai.
Realizing the importance of Global Peace and happiness on the occasion of the International Day of Diplomats, Kavishala is compelling to present the list of our Poet - Diplomats from different corners of the world on our platform.
1. Abhay Kumar- Abhay Kumar is a well-known Indian poet-diplomat and our country's 21st Ambassador to Madagascar who is an Ambassador to Comoros. Although he has served in various diplomatic capacities including Russia, Nepal, and Brazil. His most read collections of poetry include The Seduction of Delhi, The Eight-Eyed Lord of Kathmandu, The Prophecy of Brasilia, The Alphabets of Latin America, The Magic of Madagascar among others, while his edited books are CAPITALS, 100 Great Indian Poems, 100 More Great Indian Poems, New Brazilian Poems, The Bloomsbury Anthology of Great Indian Poems, The Bloomsbury Book of Great Indian Love Poems among others. He has translated Meghaduta and Ritusamhara of Kalidasa into English from Sanskrit.
HIS ASTONISHING ACHIEVEMENTS
- He has also recorded his poems at the library of Congress.
- He had also written an anthem for SAARC spurring in the search for an official SAARC Anthem.
- He compiled a 'Moon Anthem' to celebrate the success of India's Moon Mission Chandrayaan-2 .
- He has penned a 'Mars Anthem' to inspire the younger generation to explore our neighboring red planet.
- He had received the SAARC Literary Award for his contribution to contemporary South Asian Poetry and was nominated for the Pushcart Prize 2013.
- Honored with Asia-Pacific Excellence Award in 2014.
- His translation of Kalidasa's Meghaduta and Ritusamhara has received Kalinga Literary Festival 2020-2021 Poetry Book of the Year Award. Let's read out his wonderful poem of all time -
Earth Anthem
Our cosmic oasis, cosmic blue pearl,
the most beautiful planet in the universe,
Asia, Australia, Europe,
Africa, America, Antarctica,
Pacific, Atlantic, Arctic or Indian,
all the continents and the oceans of the world
united we stand,
united we stand as flora and fauna
united we stand as species of one earth,
black, brown, white, or yellow,
different colors
but one truth,
we are humans
and the earth is our home,
our cosmic oasis, cosmic blue pearl
2. Shashi Tharoor: He is an Indian politician, writer, and former international diplomat who has been serving as a Member of Parliament, Lok Sabha from Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, since 2009. In 2006 he was Under-Secretary-General of the UN.
Shashi Tharoor had served as a Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology and All India Professionals Congress. He had been appointed as the Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs from 2014 to 2019.
In 2019, Tharoor had received the Sahitya Academy Award for his book An Era of Darkness in English.
This poem is from Shashi Tharoor's book The Riot:
How to Sleep at Night
Try to think of nothing.
That's the secret.
Try to think of nothing.
Do not think of work not done,
or of promises unkept, calls to return,
or agendas you have failed to prepare for meetings
yet unheld.
Think of nothing.
Do not think of words said and unsaid,
or minor scandals and major investigations,
of humiliations endured, insults suffered,
or retorts that did not spring to mind
in time.
Think of nothing.
Do not think of your wife,
of lonely children and their reproachful demands,
or the smile of the pretty woman
whose handshake lingered just a shade too long
in your palm.
Think of nothing.
Do not think of newspaper headlines,
of the insistent transience of the shortwave radio,
or the seductive stridency of the TV microphones
thrust so thrillingly
into your face.
3. Amarendra Dhatua: Amarendra Dhatua is a multi-talented leading Indian diplomat who is an expert in Foreign Policies and Trade.
Here are the few lines of poetry -
REACHING OUT INTO NOTHINGNESS
Say it again, the simple words
won't denote meaning to such banal
meaninglessness, as we know,
the precious waiting is a dignified
entity, the backside of your temperamental
visiting card.
Bones have this funny habit,they have to
shed flesh, water down the blood and
have to embrace dust to become dust.
Inevitably our knowledge regarding
despair does never flower into
protected relationship and, it is really funny, that
relationship is like fossilized bone,
once intact, now seemingly meaningless dust
even nostrils failing to acknowledge.
4. Gauri Shankar Gupta: Gauri Shankar is the Author of Mongolia: The Land of Blue Skies, which was published in 2007.
But as a part of his diplomatic assignments, Gupta had served as India's ambassador to Mongolia, Hungary, and Bosnia & Herzegovina and as High Commissioner of India to Trinidad and Tobago.
HIS PROMINENT WORKS
- Appointed as India's Deputy Permanent Representative to UNESCO.
- Worked as India's diplomat and Deputy Chief of Mission in Belgium, Bangladesh, Bahrain, Mexico, and the Philippines.
- His 4th book Unraveling Mysteries of Life – Modern Science and Ancient has received excellent reviews around the world.
- Other books are Science and Spirituality, published in 2017 is a including Limits of Consumption – Environmental Degradation and Ancient Wisdom was published in September 2018.
Mother India
A land,
Ancient and old,
With thousands of legends in the fold;
A cradle of cultures and civilizations,
And the mother of spiritual reflections.
A land,
Where Rama once walked,
And Krishna revealed his thoughts;
Where Vedas were unveiled,
To let the truth prevail.
A land,
That gave birth to human speech,
Where love and tolerance are preached;
The idea of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam was born,
And hatred, evil, and violence were scorned.
5. Navdeep Singh Suri: Navdeep Singh was an Indian diplomat who has recently completed distinguished 36 years in the Indian Foreign Service, having served in India's diplomatic missions in Cairo, Damascus, Washington, Dar es Salaam and London and as India's Consul General in Johannesburg.
HIS ACHIEVEMENTS
- He was India's High Commissioner to Australia and Ambassador to Egypt and UAE.
- President of UAE conferred on him the Order of Zayed II, the country's 2nd-highest civilian award.
- His innovative use of social media in public diplomacy in 2010 also received extensive recognition and two prestigious awards.
- Navdeep has written on India's Africa policy, on Public Diplomacy, and on the IT outsourcing industry.
- His English translations of his grandfather Nanak Singh's classic Punjabi novels have been published by Penguin as ‘The Watchmaker’ and by Harper Collins as ‘A Life Incomplete’ and ‘Khooni Vaisakhi’.
Here are a few lines of his poem -
Five-thirty sharp the clock had struck
Thousands gathered in the Bagh, my friends.
Leaders came to lament the nation’s woes
Taking turns to speak out loud, my friends.
Voiced grievance, hardship, anger, sorrow
Saying, no one listens to us, my friends.
What can we do, what options left?
Can’t see any ray of light, my friends.
Those words forlorn, they barely voiced
Came soldiers thundering down, my friends.
At Dyer’s command, those Gurkha troops
Gathered in a formation tight, my friends.
Under the tyrant’s orders, they opened fire
Straight into innocent hearts, my friends.
And fire and fire and fire they did
Some thousands of bullets were shot, my friends.
6. Geoffrey Chaucer: Geoffrey Chaucer was a diplomatic English poet who has been called the "father of English literature", or, the "father of English poetry".He was considered the first writer to be buried in what has since come to be called Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey.
HIS ACHIEVEMENTS
- Chaucer has also gained fame as a philosopher and astronomer, composing the scientific A Treatise on the Astrolabe for his 10-year-old son Lewis.
- Maintained a career in the civil services as a bureaucrat,courtier, diplomat, and member of parliament.
- Authored The Book of the Duchess, The House of Fame, The Legend of Good Women, Troilus, and Criseyde.
He is seen as crucial in legitimising the literary use of Middle English when the dominant literary languages in England were still French and Latin.
The Canterbury Tales
Here bygynneth the Book of the tales of Caunterbury
Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licóur
Of which vertú engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye,
So priketh hem Natúre in hir corages,
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
7. Gabriela Mistral: Lucila Godoy Alcayaga (pseudonym Gabriela Mistral)was a Chilean poet-diplomat and humanist . Although some central themes in her poems are nature, betrayal, love, a mother's love, sorrow and recovery, travel, and Latin American identity as formed from a mixture of Native American and European influences.
- In 1945 she became the first Latin American Author to receive a Nobel Prize in Literature,"for her lyric poetry which, inspired by powerful emotions, has made her name a symbol of the idealistic aspirations of the entire Latin American world".
Few lines of her poetry -
Bible, my noble Bible, magnificent panorama,
where my eyes lingered for a long time,
you have in the Psalms the most burning of lavas
and in its river of fire I lit my heart!
You sustained my people with your strong wine
and you made them stand strong among men,
and just saying your name gives me strength;
because I come from you I have broken destiny
After you, only the scream of the great Florentine
went through my bones).
8. Pablo Neruda: Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto well-known by his legal name Pablo Neruda , was a Chilean poet-diplomat and politician who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1971. He became a poet when he was 13 years old, and wrote in a variety of styles, including surrealist poems, historical epics, overtly political manifestos, a prose autobiography, and passionate love poems such as the ones in his collection Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (1924).
HIS ACHIEVEMENTS
- Neruda had served many diplomatic positions in various countries during his lifetime and served a term as a Senator for the Chilean Communist Party.
- He was a close advisor to Chile's socialist President Salvador Allende.
- Accepted his Nobel Prize in Stockholm.
If You Forget Me
I want you to know
one thing.
You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail.
9. Sir Thomas Wyatt: Sir Thomas was a 16th-century English politician, ambassador, and credited with introducing the Sonnet to English literature. He was born at Allington Castle near Maidstone in Kent, though the family was originally from Yorkshire.
His poems were circulated at court and may have been published anonymously in the anthology The Court of Venus during his lifetime, but were not published under his name until after his death; the first major book to feature and attribute his verse as Tottel’s Miscellany.
My Lute Awake
My lute awake! perform the last
Labor that thou and I shall waste,
And end that I have now begun;
For when this song is sung and past,
My lute be still, for I have done.
As to be heard where ear is none,
As lead to grave in marble stone,
My song may pierce her heart as soon;
Should we then sigh or sing or moan?
No, no, my lute, for I have done.
The rocks do not so cruelly
Repulse the waves continually,
As she my suit and affection;
So that I am past remedy,
Whereby my lute and I have done.
10. Dyaneshwar Mulay: Being an Indian Career Diplomat and as a Member of the National Human Rights Commission in April 2019. He was also a part of the Indian Foreign Service in 1983 and has served in several capacities, including the Consul General of India, New York, and the High Commissioner of India and Maldives.
HIS ACHIEVEMENTS
- Authored over 15 books, which have been translated into Arabic, Dhivehi, Urdu, Kannada, and Hindi.
- His magnum-opus – Maati, Pankh ani Akash, written in Marathi, has received immense popularity and has also been prescribed in the Arts curriculum at the North Maharashtra University, Jalgaon.
- He has inspired the Dnyaneshwar Mulay Education Society in Pune which seeks to introduce innovative concepts like Global Education. ‘Shanti Ki Afwayen’ – a collection of Hindi poems.