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January 13 Verbal Fisticuffs in the Festival of PoetryDept of Marathi, University of Mumbai, completed its 150 years and celebrated this event in a big way by organizing `Kavyotsav'-Festival of Poetry in their absolutely gorgeous Convocation Hall. They invited younger breed of poets and critics for the programme and thus invited trouble. These young turks brought in personal fights and dustups into the serene setting of the University providing entertainment for some and headaches for many peace loving souls who attended the conference. The war was between what some people perceived as a coterie formed by people associated with the premier Marathi literary magazines Abhidhanantar, Khel and Shabdavedh and Everyone Else consisting of many gangs belonging to the School of Resentment. The persons associated with the former `gang' were Hemant Divate, editor Abhidhanantar, Mangesh Kale,editor of Khel and Shabdavedh and Yours Truly editor of `Live Update: An Anthology of Recent Marathi Poetry'. Everyone Else included the Singing ( or Swinging) Poets who wanted to popularize popular poetry like Arun Mhatre, Krishijan Sanskritiwallahs i.e. the poets belonging to rural locale and associated with agriculture like Prof. Pravin Bandekar and Srikant Deshmukh, neo Marxists like Nitin Rindhe, neo Rightists(or something like that) like Shridhar Tilve and of course the good old old poets who wrote traditional sentimental and cliched lyrics like Mangesh Padgaonkar and Shanker Vaidya. It was three versus three hundred.
Arun Mhatre vented his frustration and envy by comparing Divate-Ketkar-Kale with Cannibals like Suresh Koli. Cannibalism, he said is what contemporary culture is like and the three poets mentioned above who propose contemporaryness in todays poetry were actually proposing cannibalism. Wonderful,na? Actually the poor chap gave outlet to his old anger and envy against Hemant.
Bandekar, Rindhe and Deshmukh felt that our stand that you write poetry without a need for a fixed ideological position was due to our lack of sensitivity and social awareness and we were the new formalists living in an ivory tower. Prof Bandekar wrote an appallingly bad poem in which he wrote that Kale, Joshi, Ketkar and Divate were bad poets. Poor chap ruined his reputation as a good poet and a critic himself with this funny clownish act. These chaps are self destructive. Poor Bandekar said that he was a follower of Nemade and nativism and the Dalits as well as others grilled him in many ways during the time of his presentation. He managed to fend off many of the arguments but was lost when he tried to imply that only the nativists were `moral people' and the people from metropolis were immoral!
Tilve feels that we are trying not to recognize his importance and not give him credit and so he too was angry with Hemant and Mangesh in particular.
But the entire thrust of the argument of our opposition was that we are `established-main stream' poets and they were marginal. Well we did not know that and if our enemies believe that we are established and main stream now, we must be!We thank our opponents for establishing us.
Prof Vasant Patankar and Prof. Harishchandra Thorat had hardly any ilking of the storm in the tea cups of the peaceful academic environment of the university and were visibly disturbed by two days of allegations and counter allegations. The worst part of these dustups was that the hatred was directed at a personal level and aimed below the belt. The main targets were of course Hemant and Mangesh. There is tremendous jealousy for Hemant's personal achievements in his career, especially his financial status and his flamboyant use of money in organizing poetry events and bringing out wonderful magazine. Mangesh was disliked for his irreverant stand and when he said that he did not like poets like Padgaonkar and that people who took ideological stands or claimed to take these stands were hypocrites. The Dalit writers tried to take issue with him but ended up mentioning Dhasal and that made Mangesh only too happy. He said that Dhasal's present ideological affiliation with the Shiv Sena, a right wing militant Marathi party, only confirmed his argument!
Well all these things were great fun and I enjoyed it thoroughly. If I am to believe in my detractors, I have truly arrived!!!
However, the greatest challenge for us does not come from our foes, but from ourselves. We have to live up to increased expectations and write better poetry.
Boy, that is something.
January 07 Sample Findings from the Laborotary of my LifeWhat have I learnt from my short life of thirty four years in this enigmatic and mysterious world? Not much, perhaps. However, I feel like taking stock of it often. You may know many things from books and hearing them from others, but the things that you discover on the basis of your experiences are so important to you. Obviously, these findings are hardly original, but being first hand discoveries they are so important to me personally. Great philosophers and writers have already talked about these things in a better way. Here is a small sample of my findings. 1) Man's life has meaning only if he finds `his woman' in life. Otherwise it is desolate, barren and meaningless. A man's life revolves around woman and so most of the male literature revolves around her. Human flesh is programmed to `replicateʼ. Flesh precedes morality. 2) Envy and Jealousy are rather underestimated and yet extremely powerful human motives and most of human `morality' is jealousy or envy in disguise. People donʼt talk about them enough simply because they are so powerful. Perhaps so powerful that I will call it an `instinct'. Anyone can be `insecure' about just anything about you. 3) Money is a form of knowledge and power. Because it gives you more control over your environment and life. People usually respond by saying that it canʼt get you everything. May be not, but it can get you more things than you can imagine. I am not money minded but I admire and appreciate its tremendous power. 4) While crossing the street on crossroads, I swerve, manipulate and improvise so spontaneously that I feel that from the point of view of motor co-ordination and neural science, this apparently simple task is incredibly complicated. Same can be said of the rather unglamorous process of digestion. I have often suspected that there is possibly some `design' behind bewildering complexity of this world. But I am not sure. Even if there is such `design' it is beyond the reach of human thought. Science, spirituality as well as religion endeavor to unravel this `design' behind nature. But I donʼt think any of these human pursuits can do the same. That makes me agnostic of some sort. 5) Words cannot catch the beauty and mystery of life and the world. The exact experience of living in this world is not communicable. The great Eastern philosophies as well as present day French philosophers have talked about how truth almost always escapes language. Go and watch a sunset on a near by sea shore and find out for yourself. 6) The basis of human relationships is the irrational and unconscious side of human consciousness. Why read Freud? Look at who you love and why. 7) The Indian Middle Class muffles and depreciates the emotional side of human relationships. Traditions and conventional social roles are considered `relationships', not the feelings one has for a person. Therefore most of our relationships are found on calculations, conventions and traditions. Does that mean that this class is too timid to have real relationships based on feelings and emotions? Of course. Send free SMS to your Friends on Mobile from your Yahoo! Messenger. Download Now! http://messenger.yahoo.com/download.php January 03 Art and TranscendenceMy friend Prachi , who has recently been infected with the blogging bug- allegedly from me, says that great art doesnt remain merely suffering, but transcends it. Yes art, like love, philosophy, ethics and religion is one mode of fabricating meaning to our essentialy meaningless existence, but the relation of the work of art to `spirituality' is not as simple as that. Art is not a way of employing the preexisting spritual ideas but discovering them for yourself, usually the hard way. No ready made dogma or school or sampradaya or guru is compatible with art because art is essentially transgression of what is in the quest for what can be.
Poetry for me gives purpose and meaning to my existence and hence in some way transcendental and spiritual. But if spirituality does not mean easy ready-to-eat answers, if it does it is not spirituality.
Harold Bloom says that literature helps us to face death. Yes. poetry is one way of facing our mortality.
But I feel Prachi's chronic optimism makes her stronger as a human being and I wish I had the same disease. |
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