Tushar Dhawal Singh (IRS),
Commissioner, Income Tax

By Tushar Dhawal Singh, IRS

Commissioner, Income Tax

WGF : It is quite uncommon to find a bureaucrat who is a poet-painteractor-photographer-orator as also with many more interests and talents.

How are you able to pursue so many passions amidst such a hectic life?

TD: The passion is only one: whatever I do, I’ll put in my best effort.

Right from my childhood, art and literature have sculpted my orientation towards the world we live in. Being a bureaucrat is a breadbutter for living but art, literature and philosophy is the essence of my existence.

All of us have 24 hours in a day and it all depends on how we utilize those 24 hours. I have done an honest audit of my time and have tried to put the available time to best use.

Moreover, if you remain focused on the work at hand, your energies get channelized in whatever you do irrespective of the different nature of jobs at hand.

WGF: You are an established and an important poet in contemporary literary scene, especially in Hindi.

How have your works influenced the intellectual scene in India and abroad?

TD: I cannot really say anything on this. I am not wedded to any particular intellectual tradition, whether it be the Left or the Right. If at all you put me in a bracket, well, you may call me a Liberal Humanist.

The human being and the human life is the central theme of my thought process. I have felt that there always has been a dialectical relationship between the Power and the Human Life. This is the source of most of our struggles.

Power does not only mean the seat of power but it is a fluid state of transaction and keeps changing sides in the process of human transactions. The exploiter and the exploited (if understood in a Marxist term), keep exploiting each other within the same situation.

Similarly, power situations emerge and remain fluid in love relationships as well. I see it existing everywhere but I oppose it only if it starts threatening the very essence of human life.

In a general way, my position is always on the side of the human and against the ‘seat of power’.

I do not follow any tradition but there are multiple sources of influences on my works. If what I write strikes a chord with the reader, be sure, the poem has started influencing him/her and has started sculpting his/her thought process. May be, this is how I may roughly state how my works may have influenced the readers.​

WGF: You have authored 3 books and have also created a new technique in painting.

How did the inspiration come to you?

TD: I see the world in a state of a flux of a permanent-impermanence. To paint my perception of the world, I always visualized my paintings in terms of bubbles.

It took me thousands of failed attempts through as many sleepless nights to really arrive at the visual expression that I had in my mind.

I call it a mix-media on canvas. I create bubbles of acrylic colours and paint with those bubbles.

The working hours continue till 2:30 or 3:00 AM, almost every day. It is during the time when the world sleeps, I venture out on my lone journey. During the day hours, I am a Government Servant and at late nights, I am a ‘vairagi’, the recluse.

WGF: Any future plans?

TD: Go with the flow, keep discovering the world within and understand how it reflects on the external materiality.