Once Upon a Time in Mumbai...Convergence of Common Filth and Common Wealth !

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Copernicus Marg, 5th October:

Words are the only jewels I posses,

Words are the only clothes I wear, 

Words are the only food that sustains my life, 

Words are the only wealth I distribute among the people. 

     --- Saint TUKARAM (1609-1650) 

                                                                                                           

            Dilip Chitre (1938-2009) : Introduced Saint Tukaram and Namdeo Dhasal to the contemporary globalized world

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True to the spirit of Sahitya Akademi whose official motto above reflects the life and blood relation of an author with that of rigorous engagement he/she has with the process of literary creation, the unique festival and meet of Commonwealth Writers was inaugurated today. The enlightened ceremony was presided over by legendary former President of  Sahitya Akademi Prof. Gopichand Narang (http://gopichandnarang.com/profile.htm).  Opening class of authors were lead by renowned Marathi writer who is instrumental for creating flutters in the so called 'pure, orthodox, conservative' class of literary class where the destruction of form, degree of intellectual connections with the critical social life and potential to penetrate into the narrow comfort zones of the trend setters of established aesthetics was not respected. This poet-writer was none other than Namdeo Dhasal. 

 

Someone has said that:

Oh my master poet, 

Remember one thing, 

After the collapse of this ocean, 

You are my last link to the desert, 

Are you not ?

So, Namdeo is that link which connects our life to that of devil desert which is present in our own life towards which we refuse to pay meaningful attention.

 

The world should know him in following way but still refuses to recognize his credentials for appreciating gravity of the beauty and the pity of life and death in the convergence of clean and dirt. In 2004, India’s national academy of letters, Sahitya Akademi, honoured Dhasal with the only Lifetime Achievement Award it gave during its golden jubilee celebrations.

      "Namdeo is a big poet in the sense Whitman, Mayakovsky and   Neruda are big. But unlike them, his poetry contains large chunks of a real and dirty world peopled by have-nots and their slang. Henry Miller once said, “I am not creating values; I defecate and nourish.” Namdeo did precisely is for Marathi poetry. He restored its soil-cycle by feeding it the very excrement and garbage that could fertilise it for the future. 

                                 --- TEHELKA, October 23, 2004

 

 

Namdeo, struggling to recover from his physical weakness and treatment, showed no sign of downfall in spirit, enthusiasm and argumentative integrity when he was evocatively speaking for the need of literature to focus on the diverse experiences of life instead of being complacently happy and overjoyous in the ivory tower. He expressed his regret about lack of enough attention towards the translations of great, diverse Indian regional language literature. He believes that Indian language literature is in no way behind in experience, expression and excellence compared to its western counterparts but due to paucity of quality translations it is not being recognized worldwide. 

Dhasal shared his childhood days. Then he elaborated about younger times when he was kicked out of his home by parents because of affair with a girl which he never regretted. He was driving taxi upto 1972 when the movements of "Little Magazine"and radical dalit explosion of progressive sentiments erupted under the banner "Dalit Panther".   

Criticizing elite class attitude bypassing real life experiences feeling those not worthy of having attention of great synthesis of literature, Dhasal even did not forgive Nobel Laureate V.S. Naipaul. Naipaul when few years back visited Dhasal`s area and home in Kamatipura, a red light area in Mumbai and then suddenly Naipaul refused to relax there due to dirt and filth of the surroundings. Dhasal argues that if this is the commitment of the award winning author towards the stark realities of the life then I do not wish to get such kind of global recognition which pushes you to the brink of compromise your sensitivities. 

We can sense his angusih if we carefully read his poem "Kamatipua". He concludes in that poem:

Here queue up they who want to taste

Poison’s sweet or salt flavour

Death gathers here, as do words,

In just a minute, it will start pouring here.

O Kamatipura,

Tucking all seasons under your armpit

You squat in the mud here

I go beyond all the pleasures and pains of whoring and wait

For your lotus to bloom.

— A lotus in the mud.

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