The Year of Amogh

On the first of May, I completed one year as Reader in the Dept of English, MS University and it has surely been a very busy year indeed. Plenty of non-curricular activities. I was on various committees and doing all sorts of things apart from teaching. This was also a year of The Return of the Repressed: the good old Asthma. It was also a year away from Valsad and I am not feeling home sick at all. It was also a year of tackling my depression.

Guess what have I discovered after intensive counseling? That I need to look after my mental and physical health, and to look after my relationships. I have neglected or avoided looking at my life and I need to take on it rather than find subtle seductive ways of avoiding it. It was also a year of antidepressants.

I also discovered, rather lately too, that I am too much of `other-oriented' person. I allow other's to control my life, my emotion and to an extent my thoughts too. If someone avoids me or does not notice me, I feel hurt. Yes, Archana, Ashwini's friend was right to an extent when she said that I am addicted to attention from others and that I was attention hungry. Rather, I give too much importance to other's behavior. This is what has earned me the label of being`nice' as I am often worried about others moods.

Thinking too much about others has resulted in the neglect of my own feelings and emotions.

This was also the year of being reviled ,criticised and attacked as a writer and critic. These criticisms were launched by my contemporaries whom I thought were my friends. I had included them in Live Update. Result? I am labeled as `Pandit Kavi', as a poet without social awareness and what not. Disgusting.

This is also the year of Amogh going to school and surprisingly he doesn't cry and goes to school on his own in his Maruti van or auto rickshaw. It shows that the newer generations grow up faster than the preceding ones and that they remain children for smaller period too. They mature far too quickly compared to the preceding ones. His intelligence and his mischief has grown exponentially. I love him and he has brought happiness in my otherwise dark life.

In spite of all the grief and terrible hectic life, this is the year of Amogh. He is the light of my life. Three cheers to Shinchan aka Harry Potter of Vikram Baug aka Amogh!

Victory of Hope over Experience

Hemant asked me to scribble something like a blog for the forthcoming issue ofAbhidhanantar and I was wondering what to write. Actually, my poetry has come in for adverse criticism from various quarters and usual complaints are that I have no moral consciousness(ah-hem) ,I am actually a `romantic poet' and that my modernity is superficial, and that I have no social consciousness.That I resemble a `Pandit Poet' of the Pandit era of Marathi poetry. And I am irritated.

I feel that I should not have entered Marathi poetry scenario at all. I am taken aback at the crudity and superficiality of the conception of poetry today in Marathi. Poetry,according to many of those who supposedly take poetry seriously, ought to reflect social problems realistically and directly or ought to be a documentary criticism of society. For those who do not take poetry seriously it is hardly anything more than cliched and sentimental phrasing that they learnt at school. In short, the understanding of poetry in Marathi is shallow and crude. Do you hope to be appreciated Mr. Ketkar? Do you expect a sensible critique of your works? Forget it and write good poems and hope that some time in the far away future after your death, someone sensible and intelligent will come across your works and respond to it in more mature way.

Dr. Johnson described marriage as a victory of hope over experience. Writing poetry in Marathi is no different. You hope for a sensible and intelligent reader, even if you havent come across any.