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KPMG Partner-cum-Poet Resists Urge to Create Verse on His Blackberry

Believe it or not, employees of Big 4 firms possess talents that have nothing to do with elaborate spreadsheets, coffee and bagel consumption or fantasy football.

A perfect example of this would be Arun Kumar, a “battle-tested” partner in KPMG’s Silicon Valley office. Mr Kumar is a poet, who recently published a collection of 39 poems entitled “Plain Truths.” And regardless of his almost certain reliance on his BlackBerry, he manages to set it aside for the sake of his art.

Kumar, a partner at accounting and consulting giant KPMG, knows another kind of poetry. A poetry of nature and relationships, of whimsy and wisdom, a poetry of words that can be written on planes or between planes or in the quiet of the evening, but never, ever, on a BlackBerry.

“A poem, for me, is visual,” Kumar says at his Mountain View office. “Seeing it is quite important, so I can’t imagine — on a BlackBerry it’s not the same.”

So not only is Kumar a man of professional integrity, he also is one of artistic integrity, resisting the eyestrain and temptation to double-thumb inspiring words on to a 2.5 inch screen that may or may not be lost after he drops it one too many times.

But even more surprising (and disappointing) than his commitment to his craft, is Kumar’s ability to avoid penning poems related to his job. “Most [poems] are far removed from his work,” the article states, despite the undeniable muse that is life inside the House of Klynveld.

Arun Kumar, of Silicon Valley s KPMG office, finds poetry on the human side of the ledger [Mercury News]