My Tryst With Saleem Peeradina, Trying To Know Him, Getting Introduced To Poem by Bijay Kant Dubey

Saleem Peeradina the man and poet,
How to lay it bare,
The poet already famed,
Used to hear about,
Saw him appearing,
But could not have a tryst
With his poetry?

First Offence (1980) , Group Portrait (1992) ,
Meditations of Desire (2003) , Slow Dance (2010) ,
Final Cut,
The collections
Offering meditations on flesh
And this human existence of ours.

A poetry-reader around the world,
He was writer-in-residence at The Chelsea Public Library, MI,2009-10,
At Lenoir-Rhyne College, NC,
At American College, Madurai,2003,
A Professor Emeritus at Siena Heights University, Adrian, Michigan Since 1989.

One from Bombay, the writer of The Ocean in My Yard,
The prose memoir of
Growing up in Bombay
Brought out by Penguin in 2005,
He is cinematographic
And of a multicultural space.

Born to Noorunnisa and Habib Peeradina on Oct.5,1944
In Bombay,
He graduated from
St.Xavier's College in 1967,
M.A. from Bombay Univ. in 1969,
M.A. again at Wake Forest Univ. in 1973.

A recipient of Fulbright Travel Grant,1971,
British Council Writer's Grant,1983,
He is a traveller,
A globe-trotter,
A poet Bombayan.


An expatriate academician,
A poet of the diaspora dais,
Saleem is more of the Sates
Rather than India
Though recollects and ruminates
And reminisces about
Like an alien insider.

What is poetry to him? ,
One may ask,
Poetry in undefinable and limitless,
The universe of it wide and diverse,
It catches the noises of everyday objects
And the vibrations of the distant events,
Poetry is a statement, a way of seeing
And a resolution.

A poet of the home
And family,
He recollects,
I remember, I remember,
The house I was born
Adjusting with changing time and situation
Shifting and changing places.

Saleem's love of Bombay and films, love stories and lyrics
And dialogues seconded with
The shayarana andaz has definitely
Added to the realm of poetry
With its type of reflection,
Memoir and souvenir
Turning it
Into a memento of life.