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Six Marathi PoetsAuthor(s): Rajani Parulekar, Arun Kolatkar, P. S. Rege, Narayan Surve, Mangesh Padgaonkar,Dilip ChitreSource: World Literature Today, Vol. 68, No. 2, Indian Literatures: In the Fifth Decade ofIndependence (Spring, 1994), pp. 313-318Published by: University of OklahomaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40150158Accessed: 19/10/2009 00:43

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Six Marathi Poets

In the course of the past three or four decades, the world of Marathi poetry has been fragmented by the emergence of several new groups of writers, schools of writing, and literary and social movements. Each of these groups, schools, or movements represents an unprece- dented combination of interests, based on the writers' es- thetics in theory and practice, their social backgrounds (whether class, region, or caste), and their cultural poli- tics, among other factors. The poets included here belong to three distinct literary generations and can be situated in four or five different groups and movements.

P. S. Rege, the oldest of these poets, was a member of the generation of "modernists" who appeared in Marathi in the 1930s and 1940s. He was born in Ratnagiri Dis- trict, in the Konkan region of Maharashtra, in 1910. He studied economics in Bombay and London in the 1930s, taught economics at various colleges in Maharashtra and Goa, and retired in the 1970s as the principal of Elphin- stone College, Bombay. He began writing in the 1930s and continued until his death in 1978. Rege's work in Marathi includes eight books of poems, two collections of short fiction, three novels, several plays, and two volumes of essays and criticism. Among his later collections of po- etry are Dusara pakshi (The Other Bird; 1966), Priyala (Love and Desire; 1972), and Suhrdgatha (The Good- Hearted Story; 1975), the last a volume of selected poems.

In the years immediately following Indian Indepen- dence (1947), several highly accomplished younger poets joined the nava kavya (new poetry) movement inaugurat- ed by B. S. Mardhekar and P. S. Rege. Among the younger poets were Indira Sant, Vinda Karandikar, and Mangesh Padgaonkar, all of whom began publishing their mature work in the 1950s. Padgaonkar, represented here by a late satiric poem, was born in Vengurla, Ratnagiri District, Maharashtra, in 1929, and was educated in Bombay. He received his Bachelor's degree, a teacher's diploma, and a Master's degree in Marathi and Sanskrit from Kirti College, Bombay. Between 1958 and 1960 he worked as an assistant producer at All-India Radio, Bom- bay. For the next five years he was a professor of Marathi, first at Somaiya College and then at Mithibai College. In 1965-70 he returned to All-India Radio as a producer, and in 1970 he became a Marathi editor with the United States Information Service in Bombay, a position he held until his retirement in the late 1980s. Among his publica- tions are a verse play, a book of essays and sketches, and a dozen collections of poetry, including Vidushak (The Jester; 1966), Salaam (Salutations; 1978), and Ghazal (Ghazals; 1984). He received the national Sahitya Akade- mi Award in 1980.

In the late 1950s and the 1960s, the nava kavya poets - most of whom were based in Bombay - found their esthetics, politics, and sense of literary and social history challenged by a group of poets from various small- er towns and cities in Maharashtra, who consciously mod- eled their work on European and American avant-garde

movements. Among these poets influenced by the surreal- ists, dadaists, and the Beat writers were Arun Kolatkar and Dilip Chitre. Kolatkar was born in Kolhapur in 1934 and received his early education there. Subsequently he studied art in Bombay and Pune, receiving a diploma from the J. J. School of Art, Bombay, in 1957. Since then he has worked mainly in advertising and has won national professional awards for his work. Since the mid-1950s he has published poetry in English and Marathi, as well as English translations of Marathi poetry. His books are Je- juri (1976), a long sequence of poems in English, and Arun Kolatkarchya kavita (Arun Kolatkar's Poems; 1977), collected poems in Marathi. The former won the Com- monwealth Poetry Prize in England, and the latter re- ceived the Maharashtra government poetry award.

Dilip Chitre, born in 1938, grew up in Baroda and Bombay and studied English literature at Bombay Uni- versity. In the early 1960s he lived and worked as a schoolteacher in Ethiopia. Since then he has lived in Bombay and Pune, among other places, and has worked in advertising and as an editor and free-lance writer. In the 1980s he also served as the director of Bharat Bhavan, Bhopal. He has published poetry, fiction, criticism, and travel and journalistic writing in English and Marathi, and has translated extensively from Marathi into English. His publications include Travelling in a Cage (1980), poems in English; Kavite nantarchya kavita (Poems After Poetry; 1978), poems in Marathi; and An Anthology of Marathi Poetry, 1945-65 (1967) and Says Tuka (1991), both edit- ed volumes of translations. Among his honors are the Ma- harashtra government poetry award in 1960-61 and the Karad Puraskar and the Godavareesh Memorial Award, both in 1981. He was a visitor to the Iowa International Writing Program in 1975-77.

In the 1960s and 1970s the largely middle-class preoc- cupations of the early modernists, the post-Independence nava kavya poets, and the avant-garde experimentalists was displaced quite radically by the work of poets from the lowest classes and caste-groups in Maharashtrian soci- ety, especially Dalit poets like Namdeo Dhasal and "pro- letarian" poets like Narayan Surve. Surve was born around 1926. Orphaned or abandoned soon after birth, he grew up in the streets of Bombay, sleeping on the pavement and earning a meager livelihood by doing odd jobs and wage labor. He taught himself to read and write, and published his first book of poems, Majhe vidyapith (My School), in 1966. He has since been associated with the workers' union movement and has supported himself as a schoolteacher in Bombay. His second collection of poems, Jahirnama (Public Announcement), appeared in 1978. In the 1970s Surve was often championed in India as well as in the Soviet Union and various Eastern bloc countries as a "truly proletarian" poet. English versions of his early poems are available in On the Pavements of Life (1973).

In the 1970s and 1980s a multifaceted women's move- ment appeared around the predominantly male establish-

314 WORLD LITERATURE TODAY

ments in Marathi poetry. Among the more sophisticated women poets to emerge in the last ten years has been Ra- jani Parulekar, who was born in Paras, Ratnagiri District, Maharashtra, in 1945. She received her M.A. from El- phinstone College, Bombay, and teaches Marathi litera- ture at Burhani College there. Her collection of long nar- rative poems, Dirgha kavita (Long Poems; 1985), won a Maharashtra state award. Her new book, Kahi dirgha kavita (Some Long Poems), appeared in 1993. Together with older women poets like Indira Sant (who, as a nava kavya poet, began writing in the 1930s), and contempo- raries like Prabha Ganorkar, Aruna Dhere, and Jyoti Lan- jewar (a Dalit woman poet), Parulekar has contributed to a significant gender shift in recent Marathi writing.

With the exception of Dilip Chitre's poems, rendered here by Philip C. Engblom, all the poems below have been translated from Marathi by Vinay Dharwadker.

RAJANI PARULEKAR

A Pair of Snakes

A sound:

on a hot summer afternoon, an upright, wet, slightly tender sound that keeps accumulating in the evening, spread out like jaswandi petals, deep red, the pistil in the middle bowed a little in supplication. So many times that sound has dragged you away: you have shut the doors, but like an arrow shot through your thigh, its echo has penetrated the walls and pinned you down.

In every encounter with it you have walked quickly, you have spoken a lot and very fast about what was on your mind . . . as though you were talking to yourself. And once near a ruined, abandoned house, in the peace left to fill the place from one end to the other, while the wind sat hiding in the sky's hollow tree-trunk, that sound became an eruption:

so hot, so forceful, that in the time one leaf takes to fall into the water, it would have set off countless ripples, it would have made the pair of snakes playing in the grass stand up straight on their tails.

Birthmarks

The life of the nameless foetus in the thick fluids inside the womb: so happy, so free.

Once we have cut the cord and the child has taken in its first breath, it has to grasp the messages from the outside world, even as it sends out its own. When we interpret those sighs and gestures, they become the sounds of a magical mantra: one which brings the lifeless mind back to life, like the breeze that comes straight off the sea, carrying the green colour of the foliage on the hill spilt over into the lake.

Then, born once again, we live through all the phases of life, beginning with the stubborn, mischievous child-

hood; the past's abrasions heal; our soles are covered with layers of new skin, to keep the stones ahead from hurting. We meet the various shapes of our former lives in a fresh light: on the harsh night of the new moon the obscure, mysterious, ugly forms among them sit dozing and nodding like scarecrows around bins of grain. If we look at them with cruel eyes, if we size them up with detachment, they too come up with another standard to measure the new life against. And yet some birthmarks stay with us in their original forms; like blades of grass they stir constantly in the bloodstream. When, as a young girl, I had spent three or four hours making a festival pattern on the floor with dry powdered pigments, my mind would brim with a sense of fulfilment; but realizing a moment later that the pattern had to be wiped away the next day, that it could not be framed like a picture, I would be filled with anguish. And even now, when the darkness of death's world slowly but surely crowds into these four walls and squats all night long in a corner warming a vulture's eggs, that sense of loss tears itself from the past

SIX MARATHI POETS 315

and stands before me, and the greenness that had spilt over from the foliage on the hill into the lake turns black and blue like the blood congealed under the skin on a badly bruised foot.

ARUN KOLATKAR

The Life and Times of Mr Nene

the midwife tied a knot at my navel and said lay out the feast lay out the feast the goldsmith pierced my ears and said two rupees that'll be two rupees the nurse inoculated me for smallpox and said it doesn't hurt it doesn't hurt at all

baban measured my cock with a stick and said mine's longer than yours longer than yours baban punched me in the back and said our dads are wrestling our dads are wrestling baban kicked me in the balls and said crybaby you're a crybaby

bunny pedalled my feet with her feet and said let's play cycle let's play cycle bunny moistened her belly with spittle and said let's play doctor let's play doctor bunny pinched me in the belly and said come under the covers under the covers

a master rapped me on the head and said how much is eight times thirtythree a master boxed my ears and said where's Sheffield town where's Sheffield town a master stroked my thigh and said come to the mango grove the mango grove the barber twisted my head around and said don't move saheb please don't move the tailor measured my chest and said thirtyone inches just thirtyone inches the cobbler stuffed my foot in a shoe and said it'll loosen up it'll loosen up

my son mounted my back and said horsey horsey horsey horsey my boss planted his foot in my stomach and said there's no solution mr nene there's no solution my wife caught hold of my cock and said i'll cut it off one day i'll cut it off

a doctor shone his light on my balls and said hydrocele definitely hydrocele a doctor pricked my soles with a pin and said it's leprosy it's leprosy a doctor slapped my stomach and said an ulcer an ulcer it's an ulcer for sure

a man stepped on my toes and said i'm sorry my friend i'm sorry a man poked his umbrella in my eye and said forgive me brother forgive me a man rammed his truck into me and said can't you see motherfucker can't you see

P. S. REGE

From "Shahnaz"

6

Because you told me to ask I asked for your breasts naked, free.

How was I to know that they would wash my illiterate hands suck at my ignorant mouth?

How difficult you've made it for me to ask you for anything at all

Shahnaz.

8

Yesterday when I put my mouth to the two tight quickening petals of your flower and bit gently into them I didn't look up at you. You must have closed your eyes and folded your hands over your breasts lost in yourself.

Today I'll look Shahnaz

if you haven't already smothered my whole face

and drowned me in your fragrance down there.

316 WORLD LITERATURE TODAY

11

For many days you don't come back don't come back to me.

And I start asking myself if the truth of dreams will ever reveal itself to reality. That truth carries the curse of its own entangled relations.

But there's only one dream Shahnaz which keeps the knowledge of countless possibilities flowering constantly. For reassurance even a breath that hasn't been taken as yet proves to be enough. And if you had already overturned the chest and scattered the whole treasure

then why is it Shahnaz

that misfortune is merely a dream that reality can't afford?

n

c?n^n^ rc^i&tr In^n^rr.

th *«rcr wri ^^

Marathi text of "Shahnaz, " section 11

NARAYAN SURVE

The Day Nehru Died

The houses that sat warming their backs were troubled, frightened; the city turned grey, then purple up ahead - the darkness swallowed a ruby. The factories dressed in stone gowns lit their cigars and sank into thought. Later they pulled on their shirts soaked in sweat and headed home.

"What's happened, Sundari- "

- "Don't light incense today. Nehru's dead." "Really? then it's a holiday-" The world lay on its cot, exhausted.

I walked sadly, despondently; how terrible the streets seemed. A man pulling a handcart was carrying a paper

lantern. I asked him, "Why are you carrying this light now?" "Why, mister! the darkness up ahead must be opening its jaws." This is the story of the day Nehru died.

SIX MARATHI POETS 317

Bells

These were her last words "I'm going-" they scorched me the darkness in the ward deepened Her body is in my lap one eye open, fixed on me the other closed even as the fire went out she sowed the seed of her breath in me There are churchbells clanging in the distance

7£RT

MANGESH PADGAONKAR Marathi text of "Bells"

Fence-Sitting

Birds build nests in trees, in cosy nooks and crannies. Lions and tigers make their homes in jungle caves, or in zoo cages. In the children's tale, the sparrow lives in a house of wax and the crow in a house of dung. Common folk are willing to live in houses of mud and brick. But the wise man - the wise has to do things differently. He has to spend all his time exposed to the elements, sitting on a fence.

Fence-sitting is harder than munching iron pellets for lunch. Fences are made of barbed wire and keep pricking a man in awkward places. He can't even soothe his backside while sitting on a fence, since both his hands are busy holding on for balance. The man who first built a fence around a field - even his name hasn't survived in history. All that has survived is the fence. In the Stone Age there were no fences. The first real fence came into existence in the Iron Age. The man who built the first fence - did he sit on it? I don't know, but I sing his praises. If he hadn't invented the fence, all the world's wise men would've been highly inconvenienced. How big should a fence be?

It's hard to tell. The size of a fence depends on the size of the field that's fenced in, and the size of the rear of the wise man who sits on it. Wise men's butts have a tendency to grow, so wise men who're really wise have to keep switching fences. Small fences around small fields won't do for expanding rears. For a wise man it isn't enough to be wise. He must also have a wise fence under him. Like men, fences too are wise and expansive. Who'd call a fence wise that couldn't devour the field it encloses? In any field there are clever chameleons who run up to the fence, but they don't know how to climb and sit on it. The one who runs up to a fence is merely a chameleon. The one who knows how to sit on a fence is a wise man. This distinction has been laid down in the Yashashskanda Purana. Wherever there's a field there's a fence. Wherever there's a fence there's a wise man who's perched on it, enduring barbs and prickings in unmentionable places. Anyone whose fence is unoccupied -

318 WORLD LITERATURE TODAY

either he's an excessively wise man or else his buffalo's wiser than him.

Even the body is merely the soul's fence. The great discourse on fences came into being with Vedanta. That's True Knowledge of Reality which knows no earthly bounds. Those who feed on power donate their fences only to that cause. There are fences in every country, there are fences of many colours, there are fences to fit every size of butt, some fences are highly visible, some fences are invisible, the magicians with very visible rears who sit on those invisible fences are rarely to be seen, there are fences of this sort, that sort, many sorts, but there's only one undeniable truth - that there are fences.

Wise men sit on fences but they have their cohorts spread all over the field and some outside the field, and they keep their men on a leash even though they stay put on their fences. Wise men, fences, and God are truly inscrutable things.

May fences exist forever. May those who sit on fences sit there forever. We bow to the fence. We bow to the butts of the wise men who sit on fences.

DILIP CHITRE

A friend is meant to go and leave you At the street corner at the end of the lane at the

train station At the bus stop at the taxi stand at the airport In the doorway of the hospital in a telegram At the ring of a telephone in the news on the radio Wherever it is possible abruptly to disappear Or in any place at all where the news hits you And is buried, going through you from the top of

your head down To the bottomless pit at the soles of your very own

feet

A friend is meant to point death out to you Making clear from the start, patiently and consider-

ately, how

Events come to an end how things fall apart How memory condenses how loneliness solidifies How a hand waves in the air, a back turns, and you

start walking away

In this crowd of sad and lonely people I too am sad and lonely Groping my way Through Europe's opulent market of dreams It is hard to return home from here During the twentieth century Because the crowd of rich and poor at home Is struggling to arrive here As fast as they possibly can

As fast as they possibly can our own children Will sit playing alone Start earning a living sooner or later And if they turn out exceptionally capable Settle down in Europe or America Work night and day Keep buying ever new and better things And if they feel sad or lonely Take the help of psychiatrists Fight Get divorced Discover replacements for sexual pleasure Find means to sate their intellectual cravings Work out new ways to repress their feelings Where now can man find in himself The courage to celebrate his own wretchedness? The time of man itself has come to an end

To see cruelty Look through the eyes of little children And sin Through the eyes of saints But don't ever even look at love Because it can't be seen Love can't be touched Love has no smell, it has no taste Love can only be heard Like speech Exactly like speech A constant lump at one's throat On rare occasions Like a song, it gets released Little children easily understand cruelty As saints do sin But speech, used by everyone all the time, Touches no one, except so rarely And even if it does Long before the act of speech Or else long long afterward