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'In Paz's death, India has lost a great friend'

''With the passing away of Nobel laureate Octavio Paz, India has lost one of its dear friends,'' Malayalam poet and Sahitya Akademi Secretary, Professor K Sachidanandan said today.

''Paz was a keen student of Indian philosophy and culture and one of the few foreign writers who really understood India, Professor Sachidanandan said.

Poet Keki Daruwala described the death as a ''great loss to world poetry''. Paz was 'very dear' to Indian writers, he said.

Paz wrote many poems on India. His well-known collection of poems Eastern Slope (Ladera Este), was entirely based on this country.

His poems on India include, The Day in Udaipur, For the Painter Swaminathan, In the Lodi Garden, The Tomb of Amir Khusro and The Mausoleum of Humayun.

The Sahitya Akademi had released a Hindi translation of his selected poems last year. The Akademi was planning to bring out translations of Paz's works in more Indian languages shortly.

Hindi poet and art critic Prayag Shukla, who translated Paz's poems, said he was deeply moved by the litterateur's death.

Shukla, who met him for the first time in 1963 during the Mexican poet's diplomatic stint in India, said Paz was very close to Indian writers and artists.

''Paz wrote the catalogue for an exhibition of 'Group of 1890' formed by J Swaminathan, Ghulam Mohammed Sheikh, Jayaram Patel, Bhupen Khakar and Himmath Shah in 1963. Jawaharlal Nehru had inaugurated the exhibition,'' he said.

UNI

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