The curious connection between poetry and diplomacy: Indian diplomat Abhay Kumar on his new book Celestial

Indian diplomat Abhay Kumar's journey of discovering constellations in clear, pollution-free star-lit sky in Madagascar leads to a new book called Celestial A Love Poem. He nudges readers to look up at the beauty of the night sky.

When diplomat Abhay Kumar was posted as ambassador in Madagascar in 2019, he had little knowledge about constellations. The pollution-free, clear and star-lit sky from the balcony of his residence in Antananarivo, enticed him to gaze at the different patterns every evening.

“I began reading about constellations and their names and was fascinated by the stories and mythologies associated with them,” he says. The first constellation he could identify easily was the Orion. The verses came to his mind one night when he suddenly woke up from sleep and saw, through the window, the constellation of Scorpion shining bright in the eastern sky. Lines of Locksley Hall by Alfred Tennyson that he had read during his college days played in his mind.

“I always wanted to write a dramatic monologue like Locksley Hall; so I reread the book inspired by Sir William Jones’ prose translation of Muallaquat, a group of seven long Arabicpoems. Tennyson’s poem consists of a set of 97 rhyming couplets and makes a reference to the Orion constellation . I sensed a connection,” says Abhay. He set out to write 100 rhyming couplets that would help to understand the beauty of the dark skies and the starlight. Astro-tourism is an emerging global trend but people in large cities do not get the ideal free-from-pollution location to stargaze, he proffers.

Somewhere along his two years of working on the book, it turned into a long love poem. The International Astronomical Union recognises 88 star constellations and Abhay kept dedicating a love-laced couplet to one constellation. He added linking stanzas to hit a century for the book, Celestial: A Love Poem, published by Mapin.

Wordplay is part of a diplomat’s job and the feelings wrapping those words stem from his impulses or emotions. What enhances the beauty of his book are illustrations of 48 constellations taken from The Book of the Fixed Stars by renowned 10th century Persian astronomer Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi, known in the West as Azophi.

Based on Ptolemy’s classic work Almagest, Al-Sufi’s book carried dual illustrations – one portrayed on the celestial globe and the other as viewed directly in the night sky - for each of 48 constellations as identified then. Abhay took the effort of getting the illustrations from a true to the original facsimile copy of the book available at the Library of Congress, USA, because he wanted to introduce the immortal work to new generation readers.

Talking of Celestial as one-of-a-kind poem that transcends poetry, art and astronomy, Abhay says, it has a plot. Someone on Earth is restlessly trying to find his beloved who is playing a game of hide-and-seek in the remote corners of the universe.