Poet Santosh Bakaya Talking on Poetry With Maria Miraglia

MARIA MIRAGLIA: When did you approach poetry?

SANTOSH BAKAYA: Till the sixth standard, I had no idea I could write poetry.  Then there came a girl in mid-session who would sit on the last bench in the class and scribble away. This stoked my curiosity, so I dared to ask her. “What do you keep writing?” She told me that she was writing a limerick. I did not know what a limerick was, so I went home and asked my dad. He told me that it was a five line verse with the rhyme scheme of aabba. Then there was no stopping me and I started churning out one limerick after another. So it was that girl who started me on my writing career, and the first poem that I wrote was about a haunted fort, where owls hooted and the trees rustled eerie tunes.  I was so fascinated by the limerick rhyme scheme that I wrote my poetic biography of Mahatma Gandhi in aabba rhyme scheme.

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