Arun Kolatkar (1932-2004)

The poet of Jejuri and Kala Ghoda died yesterday of cancer. Nissim, Dom, and now Arun Kolatkar: we're losing all our poets. Adil Jussawalla said of Kolatkar: "For him, all that mattered was his work. He’d spend hours researching. He wanted to be accurate and true to life. Privacy preserved that space for him. And since he was also wary of things ostentatious, he avoided big publishing houses, invariably choosing the little magazines over them.’’ Another obituary is here.
Back in college, we read Kolatkar in dhabas and cafes the way I imagine another generation elsewhere must have read Lorca and Neruda. From Jejuri, here's one of my favourites:

Yeshwant Rao

Are you looking for a god?
I know a good one.
His name is Yeshwant Rao
and he's one of the best.
look him up
when you are in Jejuri next.
Of course he's only a second class god
and his place is just outside the main temple.
Outside even of the outer wall.
As if he belonged
among the tradesmen and the lepers.
I've known gods
prettier faced
or straighter laced.
Gods who soak you for your gold.
Gods who soak you for your soul.
Gods who make you walk
on a bed of burning coal.
Gods who put a child inside your wife.
Or a knife inside your enemy.
Gods who tell you how to live your life,
double your money
or triple your land holdings.
Gods who can barely suppress a smile
as you crawl a mile for them.
Gods who will see you drown
if you won't buy them a new crown.
And although I'm sure they're all to be praised,
they're either too symmetrical
or too theatrical for my taste.
Yeshwant Rao,
mass of basalt,
bright as any post box,
the shape of protoplasm
or king size lava pie
thrown against the wall,
without an arm, a leg
or even a single head.
Yeshwant Rao.
He's the god you've got to meet.
If you're short of a limb,
Yeshwant Rao will lend you a hand
and get you back on your feet.
Yeshwant Rao
Does nothing spectacular.
He doesn't promise you the earth
Or book your seat on the next rocket to heaven.
But if any bones are broken,
you know he'll mend them.
He'll make you whole in your body
and hope your spirit will look after itself.
He is merely a kind of a bone-setter.
The only thing is,
as he himself has no heads, hands and feet,
he happens to understand you a little better.

Arun Kolatkar