New Ways in Marathi Literature

Recently there has been published in Poona a little book of verses, under a plain yellow wrapper, by one Keshav Kumar who tells his readers that the aforesaid publication is "Preparation No.1 of the Zhendu Pharmacy." This pharmacy too, we are informed, has been ‘registered under some act’, and there would be more preparations which will be made available to all such folk who are suffering from indigestion, surfeit of verses and poetry, and other such ailments. The name of this extraordinarily impudent little volume is ‘Zhendunchi Phulen.’

Now the publication of such a book of verses, parodying works of contemporary poets and verse-hacks in Maharashtra, is not without its significance; and when one considers that this little book has already reached a second edition and that the verses contained therein are on the lips of the school-boys and authors, and of all wags in an intellectual and critical city like Poona, one can easily realise the popularity of the said publication.

The publication itself is a sequal to the sudden outburst of literary output in verse in Maharashtra. This output has been considerable. The process began some thirty years ago when the popular monthly, the Manoranjan, commenced to publish regularly the poems of men like Gadkari, Kaviya Vihari and others. But all these attempts were sporadic and it was given to Anand Rao Tekade to combine music with verse. Most of his verses were set to music and fine music they made too. Tekade was an outsider, so to say. Inter-provincial rivalry is as keen in literature as it is in politics in India, and more ambitious and enterprising young men followed in Tekade's wake. Poona, as was and as it is, became the entrepot of a very successful trade in this commodity. There were poets by the dozen and there were mandals or groups where long-haired, half-starved, emaciated youths with bright eyes and without a penny in their pockets used to gather each Saturday afternoon and drowned their miseries and their poems in weak potfuls of tea and mouthfuls of Chivda with plenty of garlic in it. The output thus produced was most often pitiful translation of English poets and quite a deal of sentimental froth as well. It often found its way in dolefully printed pamphlets or the ready pages of college magazines and in one or two prominent Marathi magazines of Bombay.

It must however be remembered that I am talking of a period when the masters of some of the finest verse in Marathi had passed away. The names of the Rev. Narayan Waman Tilak, of Govindagraj, were long-forgotten. Maharashtra bad been maddened by the early death of its Balkavi; Tekade was still an outsider and hence a foreigner, and the later group of men and women who came to prominence not half a dozen years ago, were either still amateurs or grinding at their Trignometry and Physics in the three colleges in the city of Poona.

However, the first Literary Conference–the conference of literary men and women to put it more correctly–which was held at Baroda under the presidentship of Mr. N. C. Kelkar was a landmark in modern Marathi literature. Here at this conference quite a lot of original talent was exhibited and Maharashtra was made aware of a remarkable group of young men whose verses and whose performances did them credit.

Encouraged by their success, the more senior among this group put their heart and soul into the affair and delighted their audiences and some of the literary circles too by their brilliant contributions. The poet Yeshwant is one such. His poem written in his quaint pathetic way on ‘Ayee’ or ‘mother’ is a masterpiece. Often has the writer of these lines listened to the magic of this man's song as he sat in the shabby dwelling of the clerk's quarters within sight of Yervada prison hearing his verses. Yeshwant was a clerk in the office of the Superintendent, and the surroundings in which this little man lived were enough to depress anyone. It depressed me at any rate. But it was worth all that suffering with Yeshwant singing away. Later came Girish, the somewhat ambitious schoolmaster in one of the high schools of Poona. He was a clever coiner of words and had the genius of using happy, homely and lovable words and thus immortalising the smallest detail. Combined with this he had the gift of a good voice, and soon between Yeshwant and Girish the student world of Poona went crazy over their recitals. Soirees were the order of the day and no ‘club’ or association was worth its name if it had not invited to its gathering at least one of these men.

Hardly had the pair thus established themselves in the growing firmament of literary fame and authorship in Poona, than there appeared on the scene the frail wistful figure of Shreedhar Ranade and his young wife Manorama Ranade. Manorama Ranade and Shreedhar Ranade studied in the same college and for a time sat in the same lecture-hall and got to know each other through the verses they wrote in the pages of the Fergusson College Magazine. Later a kindly destiny brought them together and they married. It is needless therefore to dilate on their combined popularity. The hills behind Fergusson College have no end of romance about them both in prose and in verse, and the consummation of Shreedhar's friendship with Manorama was but the beginning of many such to come later. Manorama Ranade has since passed away.

Now came another. Audacious, meteor-like, impudent, careless of the sneers of the orthodoxy around, with scholarship behind him, with unerring instinct and fiercely independent, Madhav Julian announced himself. He flooded Marathi with the richness of his Persian vocabulary, a thorough study of the masterminds of the West, an authority on Browning, Shelley and others, with a rare good humour and with an intelligence rarely to be met with in others who belonged to the same profession. By and by the Ravi Kiran Mandal was started, and in the brief period it functioned assisted by Ghate the son of the old Datta Kavi, it was responsible for the publication of quite a number of brilliantly written verses.

But I must confess that in all that group of adoring votaries of the Poetic Muse, Madhav Julian stood supreme and very different from the rest of his colleagues. His verses had quality about them. They were never mawkishly sentimental. They were as brilliant in their imagination as they were superb in their imagery. It was impossible to read Madhav Julian's verses without emotion.

They took one to heights; they moved one to one's innermost depths. All this Madhav Julian achieved with Marathi words, Persian metres, and his own brilliancy. Educated at Baroda, a strange destiny brought this meteor to Poona as a Professor of Persian in the Fergusson College. Persian students were not many; and one amongst that small number Prof. Madhav Patwardhan has immortalised in his exquisite poem which he calls ‘Shyamala.’ Shyamala means one who is dark. The subject of his verse was indeed a dark person, with darker eyes and endowed with a charming personality. A very fine, noble but tragic admiration was the result and Madhav Julian or Patwardhan, to give him his real name, went out into the world, hungry but stark proud of his independence and freedom of thought and of action.

Such a revolt on the part of a poet was then unknown. He became at once an outcaste and one need not dilate upon the result of a poet making his own living in the somewhat cold and prosaic city of Poona. But the young men and young women swore by him, and in less than two years after his first publications saw the light of day, the name of Madhav Julian was a household word wherever Marathi was spoken.

It would be difficult to choose the very best among Madhav Julian's verses. But here are a few at random. I have mentioned ‘Shyamala.’ There is a very good collection of his earlier work published in a dainty attractive looking volume entitled ‘Shalaka.’ His later writings reveal Madhav Julian as a somewhat disappointed man. But his ‘Viraha Tarang’ is interesting reading. It is a tenderly conceived poem of great length telling of the simple love of a girl towards a boy. The local colouring which the poet has given and the intensely attractive figure of Indu fascinate the reader all through. Another verse or ‘khand kavya,’ as he calls it, is the ‘Sudhakar,’ which is a very subtle satire on middle-class life at Poona, and a tribute to the attempts at social and political reform on the part of younger men. It has been the privilege of the present writer to have listened to most of Madhav Julian's poems while the ink in which they we written was yet wet.

But I must say too that Madhav Julian has his faults. There are times when he can be horribly coarse as he could be rich and pure. That is because Madhav Julian will not care to move about or recognise the existence of others intellectually superior. His friends and admirers are, if I might be permitted to put it all somewhat crudely, one step below him. The result is a dangerous mixture of patronising and narrowness of outlook. Instances of this are found in plenty in his poem ‘Sudharak’ which I have mentioned already.

Amidst all this galaxy of new men and newer devotees came, as Shelley said, ‘one of lesser note.’ He too was a struggling pedagogue in one of the many crowded high schools of Poona. This was Prahlad Keshav Atre or Keshav Kumar as he loved to style himself, and who qualified himself in his profession by a degree in pedagogy in one of the English Universities. To Keshav Kumar belongs the credit of introducing in Marathi what is called the ‘Vidamban Kavya’, or satire. He is the Alexander Pope of Marathi literature. The publication I have mentioned above is by this man. The name of the book itself is suggestive. Zhendu is a flower belonging to the marigold family, and ugly to look at, blossoming profusely in a ridiculous combination of dull-orange and sickly green. Once a year endless garlands woven out of these flowers are hung across the horns of cattle and it is the privilege of the bulls to get themselves decked with these flowers. They blossom too in great profusion often by the roadside and neglected graveyards.

This then is the title of his book in which Keshav Kumar deals with the work in verse of most of those poets whom I have endeavoured to describe above and of a few others as well. Keshav Kumar's treatment is ingenious. His art is at once creative and suggestive and above all things his satire is one that neither hurts nor vilifies another. It is a pen-picture, a caricature and good-humoured fun besides. That is where I think the usefulness and the purposefulness of such work as that of Keshav Kumar lies. While you recognise the loftiness of a theme, Keshav Kumar tells you in his quiet funny way that there is also a palpably ridiculous side of the picture as well. Then you say Ah, Yes, and discover how absurd the loftiest sentiments and the finest emotions could be made. I feel perfectly certain that aspiring young poets in Maharashtra will now think twice before they commence to write on any subject at random. Keshav Kumar's work is very opportune, because it has come at a time when Maharashtra counts its poets by the hundred, and because too Keshav Kumar has not made the least difference between man and man. All come under his purview, including the big living bugs in versedom in Poona and elsewhere. The caricature on the wrapper itself is strikingly suggestive. It represents a worthy who goes about the streets of Poona reading his verses, much to the delectation of a poor woman who lives by collecting cow-dung and a host of mischievous street brats. The wretched poet is shown insanely smiling at the result of his recital on the astounded ‘maharin’.

The very first poem is about a thief and a poet. It is written in a mocking imitation of all the available metres. A lurking thief, so the story runs, is surprised to find that in all the silent stretches of the night, he should find one man labouring studiously. There was the man sitting, with books strewn around him and bundles of manuscripts in picturesque confusion. We are now told that, like the unhappy scorpion as soon as it sees the lizard on the walls, and forgetting all about the sting, awaits the lizard fascinated by its appearance, so also our hero (the thief) stood rooted to the ground at the sight of the poet. Then follows a warm welcome on the part of the poet to the thief. "My friend" says the poet, "you steal gold and I steal ideas; you are after the treasure of pearls and gold and the many gems; I am after the treasure of words; but the difference between you and people like us, my friend, is this: you do your work, you steal, you rob other people in the dark while we do it in broad daylight."

There is another equally arresting piece, a parody on the work of a very remarkable poet, Keshavsut. Originally, Keshavsut's poem itself is a very close imitation of those immortal lines "We are the music makers, We are the dreamers of dreams." "Lines written on a mosquito drowned in a tea cup" is a biting satire on the attempts of a famous contemporary writer of stale verse in Poona. But the joke reaches its climax when the poet, after his lamentation, slowly drinks off the tea and in the end drains the cup leaving the dead mosquito at the bottom!

"Lines to Shyamala" is another successful attempt on the same theme written by Madhav Julian.

"You are a darling little mouse, my dear" says the poet, "you are the vale of Kashmir, and I am a black boulder . . . ."

"You are the fertile plain of Guzerat, my dear, and I am the dry desert of Tharpakar…"

"You are the sweetness of the whisky and I am the sourness of toddy…"

"You are the cutlet of my dreams and I am the pattis of your desires…"

And so, on it goes. Each piece is brilliantly written and by merely glancing through it, one can at once make out who among the unhappy poets is the victim of Keshav Kumar's fancy.

There are other pieces too like the one on ‘Kadarkhan’ which stand out by themselves and speak of the brilliancy of the author's imagination and facility at parodying.

It is all to the good. Personally the present writer feels glad because it will do jolly well for some conceited folk to see themselves as others see them. And to be sure, most poets, if we forget their poems for the time being, are a conceited lot. One likes to have a good laugh at them too sometimes and that is where ‘Zhendunchi Phulen’ is a huge success.