Poet Borkar
Encyclopedia
Balakrishna Bhagwant Borkar (Hindi: बाळकृष्ण भगवन्त बोरकर) (1910–1984) 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 Goa
Goa
Goa , a former Portuguese colony, is India's smallest state by area and the fourth smallest by population. Located in South West India in the region known as the Konkan, it is bounded by the state of Maharashtra to the north, and by Karnataka to the east and south, while the Arabian Sea forms its...
, 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...
.
Bā Bha Borkar, also known as Baki-baab, started writing poems at an early age. Vi Sa Khandekar was an early champion of Borkar's verse. Borkar joined Goa's fight for freedom in 1950s, and moved to Pune
Pune
Pune , is the eighth largest metropolis in India, the second largest in the state of Maharashtra after Mumbai, and the largest city in the Western Ghats. Once the centre of power of the Maratha Empire, it is situated 560 metres above sea level on the Deccan plateau at the confluence of the Mula ...
, where he worked for radio in 1950s. Most of his literature is written in 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...
, though his Konkani
Konkani language
KonkaniKonkani is a name given to a group of several cognate dialects spoken along the narrow strip of land called Konkan, on the west coast of India. This is, however, somewhat an over-generalisation. Geographically, Konkan is defined roughly as the area between the river Damanganga to the north...
output is also numerous. He excelled as a prose
Prose
Prose is the most typical form of written language, applying ordinary grammatical structure and natural flow of speech rather than rhythmic structure...
writer as well.
His long poems Mahatmayan (unfinished poem dedicated to Gandhi) and TamaHstotra (upon the possibility of blindness
Blindness
Blindness is the condition of lacking visual perception due to physiological or neurological factors.Various scales have been developed to describe the extent of vision loss and define blindness...
due to diabetes and old age) are famous.
One of his famous poems is 'mazha gaav' meaning 'my village'
After Borkar's death, Pu La Deshpande and his wife Sunitabai performed public readings of Borkar's poetry.