Chapter - 11
"Bells for William Wordsworth"

- Dom Moraes

Question- What do you know about Dom Moraes?

Answer - 

Dominie Francis Moraes, popularly known as Dom Moraes. Was a Goan writer, poet and columnist. He published nearly 30 books. He was born in Bombay (new Mumbai) to Besyl and Frank Moraes, former editor of the Times of India. He attended St. Mary's School (156), Mazgoan, Bombay and Jesus College, Oxford University. An editor, essayist, biographer and inveterate traveller who was one of the best known English language poets of India. His first book of poetry. A Beginning (1957) was published when he was only 19 years old. His father had a great influence on his life. Moraes grew up in minority Christian Culture. In his youth he witnessed his mother's increasingly creatic and violent behaviour, and she was ultimately institution alised. He travelled with his father throughout South-East Asia, Ceylon (now Srilanka), Australia and New Zealand. His first poems, were written at age 12, his first book 'Green is The Grass written about the sport of cricket was published when he was 13 years old. At 16, he attended the University of Oxford (as his father had), and in London he fell in with a group of poets and painters that included W.H. Auden, Stephen spender and Francies Bacon.

When 'A Beginning' won him the Hawthornden Prize for the best work of the imagination in 1958, Moraes was on his way. He was established as a serious poet with his third volume, John Nobody (1965), and followed that with Beldam Etcetera (1966).

After producing those volumes, Moraes took a long hiatus from the writing of poetry. At 20, he had conducted one of the first interview of the 14th Dalai lama, the Tibetan Spiritual Leader who had fled to India in 1959, and his peripatetri life had continued. In the following years, he edited magazines in London, Hongkong and New York, including in 1971, Asia Magazine. In addition, he wrote and codirected more than 20 Telivision documentaries for the BBC and ITV and served as a war correspondent in Algeria, Israel and Vietnam. He also worked for some time with the United Nations. Moraes returned to poetry with the publication of collected poems (1987). His autobiographics include My Son's Father (1968) and Never at Home (1992).

In 1956, aged 18, he was courted by Henrietta Moraes. They married in 1961. He left her, according to his close friends in London, but did not devorce her. He had a son, Heff Moraes, with his second wife, Judith. He later married celebrated Indian actress and beauty Leela Naidu and they were a star couple, known across several continents, for over two decades. They separated in the 1990s.

He had a life long battle with alcoholism Moraes suffered from cancer, but refused treatment and died from a heart attack in Bandra, Mumbai. He was buried in the sewri cemetery in Mumbai and as per his last wishes Saraya Srivatsa buried the soil from his grave in Odcombe somerset on 19th July 2002 (his birth date). Many of Dom's old friends and publishers had attended the memorial service in Odcombe. A headstone in yellow Jaisalmer stone lies embedded in the front lawn of the church to mark the service.

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