Samuvel Sankari

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 Gieve Patel is a medical practitioner by profession and has earned a reputation as a poet, actor, dramatist and painter. His collection of verse are Poems(1966), How Do You Withstand Body (1976). Though sensitive to social injustice along with his own predicament as a Parsi Poet, one of the preoccupations of his poetry is with the physical existence of human beings-not just the living world but also the human body itself. In his poetry, we see a careful craftsman at work using precise and direct images, economy of words and vigorous and colloquial expression. His poems, though devoid of sentimentality are sometimes empathetic and always rich with irony. “Forensic Medicine” was written by Gieve Patel. It was published in his second collection of poems, How Do You Withstand Body. He starts with a heart burdening picture of a fetus being destroyed in the embryo. The expert who examined the case says that a puerile in-law had thrust a glowing iron rods inside her daughter-in-law’s e...