Arun Kolatkar
Encyclopedia
Arun Balkrishna Kolatkar (Marathi
: अरुण बालकृष्ण कोलटकर) (November 1, 1932 – September 25, 2004) was a poet
from Maharashtra
, India
. Writing in both Marathi
and English
, his poems found humor in many everyday matters. His poetry
had an influence on modern Marathi poets. His first book of English
poetry, Jejuri
, is a collection 31 poems pertaining to a visit of his to a religious place with the same name Jejuri
in Maharashtra
; the book won Commonwealth Writers' Prize
in 1977. His Marathi verse collection Bhijki Vahi won a Sahitya Akademi Award
in 2005. His Collected Poems in English, edited by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra
, was published in Britain by Bloodaxe Books
in 2010.
Trained as an artist
from the J. J. School of Art, he was also a noted graphics designer, with many awards for his work.
, where his father Tatya Kolatkar was an officer in the Education department. He lived in a traditional patriarchal Hindu
extended family, along with his uncle's family. He has described their nine-room house as "a house of cards. Five in a row on the ground, topped by three on the first, and one on the second floor.". The floors had to be "plastered with cowdung every week".
He attended Rajaram High School in Kolhapur, where Marathi
was the medium of instruction. After graduation in 1949, much against his father's wishes, he joined the J J School of art, where his childhood friend Baburao Sadwelkar was enrolled. His college years saw a "mysterious phase of drifting and formal as well as spiritual education", and he graduated in 1957.
In 1953, he married Darshan Chhabda (sister of well-known painter Bal Chhabda). The marriage was opposed by both families, partly because Kolatkar was yet to sell any of his paintings.
His early years in Mumbai
were poor but eventful, especially his life as an upcoming artist, in the Rampart Row neighborhood, where the Artists' Aid Fund Centre was located. Around this time, he also
translated Tukaram
into English.
This period of struggle and transition has been captured in his Marathi poem ‘The
Turnaround’:
After many years of struggle, he started work as an art director and graphic designer in several advertising agencies like Lintas. By mid-60s he was established as a graphic artist, and joined Mass Communication and Marketing, an eclectic group of creatives headed by
the legendary advertiser Kersy Katrak
. It was Katrak, himself a poet, who pushed Kolatkar into bringing out Jejuri. Kolatkar was, in advertising jargon, a ‘visualizer’; and soon became one of Mumbai’s most successful art directors. He won the prestigious CAG
award for advertising six times, and was admitted to the CAG Hall of Fame.
By 1966, his marriage with Darshan was in trouble, and Kolatkar developed a drinking problem. This went down after the marriage was dissolved by mutual agreement and he married his second wife, Soonu.
"in the Bombay argot of the migrant working classes and the underworld, part
Hindi, part Marathi, which the Hindi film industry would make proper use of
only decades later". For instance, consider the following, which intersperses Hindi dialect into the Marathi:
To match this in his English translation, he sometimes adopts "a cowboy variety":
In Marathi, his poetry is the quintessence of the modernist as manifested in the 'little magazine movement
' in the 1950s and 60s. His early Marathi poetry was radically experimental and displayed the influences of European avant-garde
trends like surrealism
, expressionism
and Beat generation
poetry. These poems are oblique, whimsical and at the same time dark, sinister, and exceedingly funny. Some of these characteristics can be seen in Jejuri and Kala Ghoda Poems in English, but his early Marathi poems are far more radical, dark and humorous than his English poems. His early Marathi poetry is far more audacious and takes greater liberties with language. However, in his later Marathi poetry, the poetic language is more accessible and less radical compared to earlier works. His later works Chirimiri, Bhijki Vahi and Droan are less introverted and less nightmarish. They show a greater social awareness and his satire becomes more direct. Bilingual poet and anthologist Vilas Sarang
assigns great importance to Kolatkar's contribution to Marathi poetry, pointing to Chirimiri in particular as "a work that must give inspiration and
direction to all future Marathi poets".
He won the Kusumagraj Puraskar given by the Marathwada Sahitya Parishad in 1991 and Bahinabai Puraskar given by Bahinabai Prathistan in 1995.
His Marathi poetry collections include:
Kolatkar was among a group of post-independence bilingual poets who fused the diction of their mother tongues along with international styles to break new ground in their poetic traditions; others in this group included Gopalakrishna Adiga
(Kannada
), Raghuvir Sahay
(Hindi
), Dilip Chitre
(also Marathi
), Sunil Gangopadhyay
(Bengali
), etc.
had later influences on him. Along with friends like Dilip Chitre
, he was caught up in the modern shift in Marathi poetry which was pioneered by B. S. Mardhekar.
When asked by an interviewer who his favorite poets and writers were, he set out a large multilingual list. While the answer is part rebuff, the list is indicative of the wide, fragmented sources he may have mined, and is worth quoting in full:
and Salman Rushdie. Brought out from a small press, it was reprinted twice in quick succession, and Pritish Nandy
was quick to anthologize him in the cult collection, Strangertime. For some years, some of his poems were also included in school texts.
The poem sequence deals with a visit to Jejuri
, a pilgrimage site for the local Maharashtrian deity Khandoba
(a local deity, also an incarnation of Shiva
). In a conversation with poet Eunice de Souza
, Kolatkar says he discovered Jejuri in ‘a book on temples and legends of Maharashtra… there was a chapter on Jejuri in it. It seemed an interesting place’. Along with his brother and a friend, he visited Jejuri in 1963, and appears to have composed some poems shortly thereafter.
A version of the poem A low temple was published soon in a little magazine called Dionysius, but both the original manuscript and this magazine were lost. Subsequently, the poems were recreated in the 1970s, and were published in a literary quarterly in 1974, and the book came out in 1976.
The poems evoke a series of images to highlight the ambiguities in modern-day life. Although situated in a religious setting, they are not religious; in 1978, an interviewer asked him if he believed in God, and Kolatkar said: ‘I leave the question alone. I don’t think I have to take a position about God one way or the other.’
Before Jejuri, Kolatkar had also published other poem sequences, including the boatride, which appeared in his the little magazine, damn you: a magazine of the arts in 1968, and was anthologized twice. A few of his early poems in English also appeared in Dilip Chitre
's Anthology of Marathi poetry 1945-1965 (1967). Interestingly, though some of these poems claim to be 'English version by poet', "their Marathi originals were never committed to paper." (this is also true of some other bilingual poets like Vilas Sarang
.
Sarpa Satra is an 'English version' of a poem with a similar name in Bhijki Vahi. It is a typical Kolatkar narrative poem like Droan, mixing myth
, allegory
, and contemporary history. Although Kolatkar was never known as a social commentator, his narrative poems tend to offer a whimsical tilted commentary on social mores. Many poems in Bhijki Vahi refer to contemporary history. However, these are not politicians' comments but a poet's, and he avoids the typical Dalit
-Leftist-Feminist rhetoric.
While Jejuri was about the agonized relationship of a modern sensitive individual with the indigenous culture, the Kala Ghoda poems are about the dark underside of Mumbai’s underbelly. The bewilderingly heterogeneous megapolis
is envisioned in various oblique and whimsical perspectives of an underdog. Like Jejuri, Kala Ghoda is also 'a place poem' exploring the myth, history, geography, and ethos
of the place in a typical Kolatkaresque style. While Jejuri, a very popular place for pilgrimage to a pastoral god, could never become Kolatkar’s home, Kala Ghoda is about exploring the baffling complexities of the great metropolis. While Jejuri can be considered as an example of searching for a belonging, which happens to be the major fixation of the previous generation of Indian poets in English, Kala Ghoda poems do not betray any anxieties and agonies of 'belonging'. With Kala Ghoda Poems, Indian poetry in English seems to have grown up, shedding adolescent `identity crises’ and goose pimples. The remarkable maturity of poetic vision embodied in the Kala Ghoda Poems makes it something of a milestone in Indian poetry in English.
After his death, a new edition of the hard to obtain Jejuri was published in the New York Review Books Classics series with an introduction by Amit Chaudhuri
(2006). Near his death, he had also requested Arvind Krishna Mehrotra
to edit some of his uncollected poems. These poems were published as The Boatride and Other Poems by Pras Prakashan in 2008. His Collected Poems in English, edited by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra
, was published in Britain by Bloodaxe Books
in 2010.
He was survived by his wife Soonu Kolatkar.
Marathi language
Marathi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people of western and central India. It is the official language of the state of Maharashtra. There are over 68 million fluent speakers worldwide. Marathi has the fourth largest number of native speakers in India and is the fifteenth most...
: अरुण बालकृष्ण कोलटकर) (November 1, 1932 – September 25, 2004) was a poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
from Maharashtra
Maharashtra
Maharashtra is a state located in India. It is the second most populous after Uttar Pradesh and third largest state by area in India...
, India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
. Writing in both Marathi
Marathi language
Marathi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people of western and central India. It is the official language of the state of Maharashtra. There are over 68 million fluent speakers worldwide. Marathi has the fourth largest number of native speakers in India and is the fifteenth most...
and English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, his poems found humor in many everyday matters. His poetry
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
had an influence on modern Marathi poets. His first book of English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
poetry, Jejuri
Jejuri (poem)
Jejuri is the name of a series of poems by Arun Kolatkar in 1976, an Indian poet who wrote in Marathi and English. Jejuri won the Commonwealth Prize in 1977. The poem is made up of a series of often short fragments which describe the experiences of a secular visitor to the ruins of Jejuri, a...
, is a collection 31 poems pertaining to a visit of his to a religious place with the same name Jejuri
Jejuri
Jejuri is a city and a municipal council in Pune district in the Indian state of Maharashtra. It is famous for the main temple of god Khandoba.-Geography:Jejuri is located at . It has an average elevation of 718 metres ....
in Maharashtra
Maharashtra
Maharashtra is a state located in India. It is the second most populous after Uttar Pradesh and third largest state by area in India...
; the book won Commonwealth Writers' Prize
Commonwealth Writers' Prize
Commonwealth Writers is an initiative by the Commonwealth Foundation to unearth, develop and promote the best new fiction from across the Commonwealth. It's flagship are two literary awards and a website...
in 1977. His Marathi verse collection Bhijki Vahi won a Sahitya Akademi Award
Sahitya Akademi Award
Sahitya Akademi Award is a literary honor in India which Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters, annually confers on writers of outstanding works in one of the following twenty-four major Indian languagesAssamese, Bengali, Bodo, Dogri, English, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri,...
in 2005. His Collected Poems in English, edited by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra
Arvind Krishna Mehrotra
Arvind Krishna Mehrotra is a noted Indian poet, anthologist, literary critic and translator.- Biography :Arvind Krishna Mehrotra was born in Lahore 1947. He has published four collections of poetry in English and one of translation...
, was published in Britain by Bloodaxe Books
Bloodaxe Books
Bloodaxe Books is a British publishing house specialising in poetry.-History:It was founded in 1978 in Newcastle upon Tyne by Neil Astley, who is still editor and managing director. Joined in 1982 by chairman Simon Thirsk, Astley was later awarded an honorary D.Litt by Newcastle University in 1995...
in 2010.
Trained as an artist
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
from the J. J. School of Art, he was also a noted graphics designer, with many awards for his work.
Life
Kolatkar was born in Kolhapur, MaharashtraMaharashtra
Maharashtra is a state located in India. It is the second most populous after Uttar Pradesh and third largest state by area in India...
, where his father Tatya Kolatkar was an officer in the Education department. He lived in a traditional patriarchal Hindu
Hindu
Hindu refers to an identity associated with the philosophical, religious and cultural systems that are indigenous to the Indian subcontinent. As used in the Constitution of India, the word "Hindu" is also attributed to all persons professing any Indian religion...
extended family, along with his uncle's family. He has described their nine-room house as "a house of cards. Five in a row on the ground, topped by three on the first, and one on the second floor.". The floors had to be "plastered with cowdung every week".
He attended Rajaram High School in Kolhapur, where Marathi
Marathi language
Marathi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people of western and central India. It is the official language of the state of Maharashtra. There are over 68 million fluent speakers worldwide. Marathi has the fourth largest number of native speakers in India and is the fifteenth most...
was the medium of instruction. After graduation in 1949, much against his father's wishes, he joined the J J School of art, where his childhood friend Baburao Sadwelkar was enrolled. His college years saw a "mysterious phase of drifting and formal as well as spiritual education", and he graduated in 1957.
In 1953, he married Darshan Chhabda (sister of well-known painter Bal Chhabda). The marriage was opposed by both families, partly because Kolatkar was yet to sell any of his paintings.
His early years in Mumbai
Mumbai
Mumbai , formerly known as Bombay in English, is the capital of the Indian state of Maharashtra. It is the most populous city in India, and the fourth most populous city in the world, with a total metropolitan area population of approximately 20.5 million...
were poor but eventful, especially his life as an upcoming artist, in the Rampart Row neighborhood, where the Artists' Aid Fund Centre was located. Around this time, he also
translated Tukaram
Tukaram
Sant Tukaram was a prominent Varkari Sant and spiritual poet during a Bhakti movement in India.Sant Tukaram was born and lived most of his life in Dehu, a town close to Pune in Mahārāshtra, India. He was born to a couple with the family name "More", the descendent of the Mourya Clan with first...
into English.
This period of struggle and transition has been captured in his Marathi poem ‘The
Turnaround’:
- Bombay made me a beggar.
- Kalyan gave me a lump of jaggery to suck.
- In a small village that had a waterfall
- but no name
- my blanket found a buyer
- and I feasted on plain ordinary water.
- I arrived in Nasik with
- peepul leaves between my teeth.
- There I sold my Tukaram
- to buy some bread and mince. (translation by Kolatkar)
After many years of struggle, he started work as an art director and graphic designer in several advertising agencies like Lintas. By mid-60s he was established as a graphic artist, and joined Mass Communication and Marketing, an eclectic group of creatives headed by
the legendary advertiser Kersy Katrak
Kersy Katrak
Kersy Katrak was an Indian advertising man and poet of 1970s. He revolutionized Indian advertising when he founded the iconoclastic Mass Communication and Marketing in 1965, where he gave great leeway to creatives, and managed to attract an enormous talent pool includingAjit Balakrishnan,...
. It was Katrak, himself a poet, who pushed Kolatkar into bringing out Jejuri. Kolatkar was, in advertising jargon, a ‘visualizer’; and soon became one of Mumbai’s most successful art directors. He won the prestigious CAG
CAG
CAG may refer to:* CAG, in biology is the codon that codes for the amino acid glutamine* The CAG promoter used in molecular biology* Comptroller and Auditor General...
award for advertising six times, and was admitted to the CAG Hall of Fame.
By 1966, his marriage with Darshan was in trouble, and Kolatkar developed a drinking problem. This went down after the marriage was dissolved by mutual agreement and he married his second wife, Soonu.
Marathi Poetry and influence
His ‘Marathi’ poems of the 50s and 60s are written"in the Bombay argot of the migrant working classes and the underworld, part
Hindi, part Marathi, which the Hindi film industry would make proper use of
only decades later". For instance, consider the following, which intersperses Hindi dialect into the Marathi:
| मै भाभीको बोला | main bhAbhiiko bolA |
| क्या भाईसाबके ड्यूटीपे मै आ जाऊ ? | kya bhAisAbke dyuTipe main A jAu? |
| भड़क गयी साली | bhaRak gayi sAli |
| रहमान बोला गोली चलाऊँगा | rahmAn bolA goli chalAungA |
| मै बोला एक रंडीके वास्ते? | mai bolA ek raNDike wAste? |
| चलाव गोली गांडू | chalao goli gaNDu (quoted in |
To match this in his English translation, he sometimes adopts "a cowboy variety":
| allow me beautiful i said to my sister in law to step in my brother's booties you had it coming said rehman a gun in his hand shoot me punk kill your brother i said for a bloody cunt (Three cups of Tea) |
In Marathi, his poetry is the quintessence of the modernist as manifested in the 'little magazine movement
Little magazine movement
Little magazines, often called "small magazines" are literary magazines which publish experimental and non-conformist writings of relatively unknown writers. They are usually noncommercial in their outlook. They are often very irregular in their publication...
' in the 1950s and 60s. His early Marathi poetry was radically experimental and displayed the influences of European avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
trends like surrealism
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
, expressionism
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...
and Beat generation
Beat generation
The Beat Generation refers to a group of American post-WWII writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, as well as the cultural phenomena that they both documented and inspired...
poetry. These poems are oblique, whimsical and at the same time dark, sinister, and exceedingly funny. Some of these characteristics can be seen in Jejuri and Kala Ghoda Poems in English, but his early Marathi poems are far more radical, dark and humorous than his English poems. His early Marathi poetry is far more audacious and takes greater liberties with language. However, in his later Marathi poetry, the poetic language is more accessible and less radical compared to earlier works. His later works Chirimiri, Bhijki Vahi and Droan are less introverted and less nightmarish. They show a greater social awareness and his satire becomes more direct. Bilingual poet and anthologist Vilas Sarang
Vilas Sarang
Vilas Sarang is one of the most significant modernist Indian writer, critic and translator to emerge in the post-independence period....
assigns great importance to Kolatkar's contribution to Marathi poetry, pointing to Chirimiri in particular as "a work that must give inspiration and
direction to all future Marathi poets".
He won the Kusumagraj Puraskar given by the Marathwada Sahitya Parishad in 1991 and Bahinabai Puraskar given by Bahinabai Prathistan in 1995.
His Marathi poetry collections include:
- Arun Kolatkarcha Kavita (1977)
- Chirimiri (2004)
- Bhijki Vahi (2004) (Sahitya Akademi awardSahitya Akademi AwardSahitya Akademi Award is a literary honor in India which Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters, annually confers on writers of outstanding works in one of the following twenty-four major Indian languagesAssamese, Bengali, Bodo, Dogri, English, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri,...
, 2004) - Droan (2004)
Kolatkar was among a group of post-independence bilingual poets who fused the diction of their mother tongues along with international styles to break new ground in their poetic traditions; others in this group included Gopalakrishna Adiga
Gopalakrishna Adiga
Mogeri Gopalakrishna Adiga was one of the majors figures in modern Kannada poetry. He is known as the "pioneer of New style" poetry.-Early life:...
(Kannada
Kannada language
Kannada or , is a language spoken in India predominantly in the state of Karnataka. Kannada, whose native speakers are called Kannadigas and number roughly 50 million, is one of the 30 most spoken languages in the world...
), Raghuvir Sahay
Raghuvir Sahay
Raghuvir Sahay was a versatile Hindi poet, short-story writer, essayist, literary critic, translator, and journalist. He remained the chief-editor of noted, political-social, Hindi weekly, Dinmaan, 1969–82....
(Hindi
Hindi
Standard Hindi, or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi, also known as Manak Hindi , High Hindi, Nagari Hindi, and Literary Hindi, is a standardized and sanskritized register of the Hindustani language derived from the Khariboli dialect of Delhi...
), Dilip Chitre
Dilip Chitre
Dilip Purushottam Chitre was one of the foremost Indian writers and critics to emerge in the post Independence India. Apart from being a very important bilingual writer, writing in Marathi and English, he was also a painter and filmmaker.-Biography:He was born in Baroda on 17 September 1938...
(also Marathi
Marathi language
Marathi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people of western and central India. It is the official language of the state of Maharashtra. There are over 68 million fluent speakers worldwide. Marathi has the fourth largest number of native speakers in India and is the fifteenth most...
), Sunil Gangopadhyay
Sunil Gangopadhyay
Sunil Gangopadhyay , is a celebrated Indian poet and novelist.-Early life:...
(Bengali
Bengali language
Bengali or Bangla is an eastern Indo-Aryan language. It is native to the region of eastern South Asia known as Bengal, which comprises present day Bangladesh, the Indian state of West Bengal, and parts of the Indian states of Tripura and Assam. It is written with the Bengali script...
), etc.
Influences
Marathi devotional poetry and popular theater (tamasha) had early influences on Kolatkar. American beat poetry, especially of William Carlos WilliamsWilliam Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams was an American poet closely associated with modernism and Imagism. He was also a pediatrician and general practitioner of medicine, having graduated from the University of Pennsylvania...
had later influences on him. Along with friends like Dilip Chitre
Dilip Chitre
Dilip Purushottam Chitre was one of the foremost Indian writers and critics to emerge in the post Independence India. Apart from being a very important bilingual writer, writing in Marathi and English, he was also a painter and filmmaker.-Biography:He was born in Baroda on 17 September 1938...
, he was caught up in the modern shift in Marathi poetry which was pioneered by B. S. Mardhekar.
When asked by an interviewer who his favorite poets and writers were, he set out a large multilingual list. While the answer is part rebuff, the list is indicative of the wide, fragmented sources he may have mined, and is worth quoting in full:
- Whitman, Mardhekar, Manmohan, Eliot, Pound, Auden, Hart Crane, Dylan Thomas, Kafka, Baudelaire, Heine, Catullus, Villon, JynaneshwarDnyaneshwarDnyāneshwar , also known as Jñanadeva , was born into a Deshastha Brahmin Kulkarni family.He was a 13th century Maharashtrian Hindu saint , poet, philosopher and yogi of the Nath tradition whose works Bhavartha deepika teeka ,...
, NamdevNamdevSant Namdeo or Bhagat Namdeo was born on October 29, 1270 in the state of Maharashtra village of Narasi-Bamani, in Hingoli district . His father, a calico printer/tailor, was named Damshet and his mother's name was Gonabai...
, JanabaiJanabaiJanābāi was a Marāthi religious poetess in the Hindu tradition in India, who was born likely in the seventh or the eighth decade of the 13th century. According to folklore, she died in 1350....
, EknathEknathEknath was a prominent Marathi scholar and religious poet. He is called a "sant" in the Marathi tradition as are most other religious poets...
, TukaramTukaramSant Tukaram was a prominent Varkari Sant and spiritual poet during a Bhakti movement in India.Sant Tukaram was born and lived most of his life in Dehu, a town close to Pune in Mahārāshtra, India. He was born to a couple with the family name "More", the descendent of the Mourya Clan with first...
, Wang WeiWang WeiWang Wei , was a Tang Dynasty Chinese poet, musician, painter, and statesman. He was one of the most famous men of arts and letters of his time. Many of his poems are preserved, and twenty-nine were included in the highly influential 18th century anthology Three Hundred Tang Poems.-Name...
, Tu Fu, Han Shan, C, Honaji, Mandelstam, Dostoevsky, Gogol, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Babel, Apollinaire, Breton, Brecht, Neruda, Ginsberg, Barth, Duras, Joseph Heller ... Gunter Grass, Norman Mailer, Henry Miller, Nabokov, Namdeo DhasalNamdeo DhasalNamdeo Laxman Dhasal is a Marathi writer and Dalit activist from Maharashtra, India.-Biography:Dhasal was born on February 15, 1949, in a village near Pune, India. A member of the Mahar Dalit class, he grew up in dire poverty...
, Patthe Bapurav, Rabelais, Apuleius, Rex Stout, Agatha Christie, Robert Shakley, Harlan Ellison, Balchandra Nemade, Durrenmatt, Aarp, Cummings, Lewis Carroll, John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, Godse Bhatji, Morgenstern, ChakradharAshok ChakradharAshok Chakradhar at Aheerpada Khurja, BulandshaharAshok Chakradhar is widely been regarded as the greatest of the latest of Indian poets, his writings and his recitations are like nonetheless of an devout like an Ameen Sayani on radio ceylon and Vividh Bharti he's a leading Hindi poet...
, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Balwantbuva, Kierkegaard, Lenny Bruce, Bahinabai ChaudhariBahinabai ChaudhariBahinabai Chaudhari was a noted Marathi poetess from Maharashtra, India.-Life and works:She was born in 24 August,1880 in Asoda in Khandesh District...
, KabirKabirKabīr was a mystic poet and saint of India, whose writings have greatly influenced the Bhakti movement...
, Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Leadbelly, Howling Wolf, Jon Lee Hooker, Leiber and Stoller, Larry Williams, Lightning Hopkins,Andre Vajda, Kurosawa, Eisenstein, Truffaut, Woody Guthrie, Laurel and Hardy."
English poetry
Kolatkar was hesitant about bringing out his English verse, but his very first book, Jejuri, had a wide impact among fellow poets and littérateurs like Nissim EzekielNissim Ezekiel
' was an Indian Jewish poet, playwright, editor and art-critic. He was a foundational figure in postcolonial India's literary history, specifically for Indian writing in English....
and Salman Rushdie. Brought out from a small press, it was reprinted twice in quick succession, and Pritish Nandy
Pritish Nandy
Pritish Nandy is a Indian poet, painter, journalist, politician, media and television personality, animal activist and film producer. He is Bengali by ethnicity. He was member of Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Indian parliament representing Maharashtra based party Shiv Sena...
was quick to anthologize him in the cult collection, Strangertime. For some years, some of his poems were also included in school texts.
The poem sequence deals with a visit to Jejuri
Jejuri
Jejuri is a city and a municipal council in Pune district in the Indian state of Maharashtra. It is famous for the main temple of god Khandoba.-Geography:Jejuri is located at . It has an average elevation of 718 metres ....
, a pilgrimage site for the local Maharashtrian deity Khandoba
Khandoba
Khandoba, also known as Khanderao, Khanderaya, Malhari Martand and Mallu Khan is a regional Hindu deity, worshipped as Mārtanda Bhairava, a form of Shiva, mainly in the Deccan plateau of India, especially in the states of Maharashtra and Karnataka. He is the most popular family deity in Maharashtra...
(a local deity, also an incarnation of Shiva
Shiva
Shiva is a major Hindu deity, and is the destroyer god or transformer among the Trimurti, the Hindu Trinity of the primary aspects of the divine. God Shiva is a yogi who has notice of everything that happens in the world and is the main aspect of life. Yet one with great power lives a life of a...
). In a conversation with poet Eunice de Souza
Eunice De Souza
Eunice de Souza is a contemporary Indian English language poet, literary critic and novelist. Among her notable books of poetry is Women in Dutch painting .-Early life and education:...
, Kolatkar says he discovered Jejuri in ‘a book on temples and legends of Maharashtra… there was a chapter on Jejuri in it. It seemed an interesting place’. Along with his brother and a friend, he visited Jejuri in 1963, and appears to have composed some poems shortly thereafter.
A version of the poem A low temple was published soon in a little magazine called Dionysius, but both the original manuscript and this magazine were lost. Subsequently, the poems were recreated in the 1970s, and were published in a literary quarterly in 1974, and the book came out in 1976.
The poems evoke a series of images to highlight the ambiguities in modern-day life. Although situated in a religious setting, they are not religious; in 1978, an interviewer asked him if he believed in God, and Kolatkar said: ‘I leave the question alone. I don’t think I have to take a position about God one way or the other.’
Before Jejuri, Kolatkar had also published other poem sequences, including the boatride, which appeared in his the little magazine, damn you: a magazine of the arts in 1968, and was anthologized twice. A few of his early poems in English also appeared in Dilip Chitre
Dilip Chitre
Dilip Purushottam Chitre was one of the foremost Indian writers and critics to emerge in the post Independence India. Apart from being a very important bilingual writer, writing in Marathi and English, he was also a painter and filmmaker.-Biography:He was born in Baroda on 17 September 1938...
's Anthology of Marathi poetry 1945-1965 (1967). Interestingly, though some of these poems claim to be 'English version by poet', "their Marathi originals were never committed to paper." (this is also true of some other bilingual poets like Vilas Sarang
Vilas Sarang
Vilas Sarang is one of the most significant modernist Indian writer, critic and translator to emerge in the post-independence period....
.
Later work
A reclusive figure all his life, he lived without a telephone, and was hesitant about bringing out his work. It was only after he was diagnosed with cancer that two volumes were brought out by friends – the English poetry volumes Kala Ghoda Poems and Sarpasatra (2004).Sarpa Satra is an 'English version' of a poem with a similar name in Bhijki Vahi. It is a typical Kolatkar narrative poem like Droan, mixing myth
Mythology
The term mythology can refer either to the study of myths, or to a body or collection of myths. As examples, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece...
, allegory
Allegory
Allegory is a demonstrative form of representation explaining meaning other than the words that are spoken. Allegory communicates its message by means of symbolic figures, actions or symbolic representation...
, and contemporary history. Although Kolatkar was never known as a social commentator, his narrative poems tend to offer a whimsical tilted commentary on social mores. Many poems in Bhijki Vahi refer to contemporary history. However, these are not politicians' comments but a poet's, and he avoids the typical Dalit
Dalit
Dalit is a designation for a group of people traditionally regarded as Untouchable. Dalits are a mixed population, consisting of numerous castes from all over South Asia; they speak a variety of languages and practice a multitude of religions...
-Leftist-Feminist rhetoric.
While Jejuri was about the agonized relationship of a modern sensitive individual with the indigenous culture, the Kala Ghoda poems are about the dark underside of Mumbai’s underbelly. The bewilderingly heterogeneous megapolis
Megapolis
Megapolis is a variant of the word megalopolis, meaning a large city or urban area.Megapolis may also refer to:* Megapolis Festival, an annual audio arts festival in the United States.* Prajay Megapolis, a large housing estate in Hyderabad, India....
is envisioned in various oblique and whimsical perspectives of an underdog. Like Jejuri, Kala Ghoda is also 'a place poem' exploring the myth, history, geography, and ethos
Ethos
Ethos is a Greek word meaning "character" that is used to describe the guiding beliefs or ideals that characterize a community, nation, or ideology. The Greeks also used this word to refer to the power of music to influence its hearer's emotions, behaviors, and even morals. Early Greek stories of...
of the place in a typical Kolatkaresque style. While Jejuri, a very popular place for pilgrimage to a pastoral god, could never become Kolatkar’s home, Kala Ghoda is about exploring the baffling complexities of the great metropolis. While Jejuri can be considered as an example of searching for a belonging, which happens to be the major fixation of the previous generation of Indian poets in English, Kala Ghoda poems do not betray any anxieties and agonies of 'belonging'. With Kala Ghoda Poems, Indian poetry in English seems to have grown up, shedding adolescent `identity crises’ and goose pimples. The remarkable maturity of poetic vision embodied in the Kala Ghoda Poems makes it something of a milestone in Indian poetry in English.
After his death, a new edition of the hard to obtain Jejuri was published in the New York Review Books Classics series with an introduction by Amit Chaudhuri
Amit Chaudhuri
Amit Chaudhuri is an internationally recognised Indian English author and academic. He is currently Professor of Contemporary Literature at the University of East Anglia.-Life:...
(2006). Near his death, he had also requested Arvind Krishna Mehrotra
Arvind Krishna Mehrotra
Arvind Krishna Mehrotra is a noted Indian poet, anthologist, literary critic and translator.- Biography :Arvind Krishna Mehrotra was born in Lahore 1947. He has published four collections of poetry in English and one of translation...
to edit some of his uncollected poems. These poems were published as The Boatride and Other Poems by Pras Prakashan in 2008. His Collected Poems in English, edited by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra
Arvind Krishna Mehrotra
Arvind Krishna Mehrotra is a noted Indian poet, anthologist, literary critic and translator.- Biography :Arvind Krishna Mehrotra was born in Lahore 1947. He has published four collections of poetry in English and one of translation...
, was published in Britain by Bloodaxe Books
Bloodaxe Books
Bloodaxe Books is a British publishing house specialising in poetry.-History:It was founded in 1978 in Newcastle upon Tyne by Neil Astley, who is still editor and managing director. Joined in 1982 by chairman Simon Thirsk, Astley was later awarded an honorary D.Litt by Newcastle University in 1995...
in 2010.
He was survived by his wife Soonu Kolatkar.
See also
- Indian English LiteratureIndian English literatureIndian English literature refers to the body of work by writers in India who write in the English language and whose native or co-native language could be one of the numerous languages of India. It is also associated with the works of members of the Indian diaspora, such as V.S...
- Indian Writing in English