RIP Dilip Chitre

Courtesy: Poetry International Poet
Dilip Chitre passed away in Pune yesterday. Today's journalism resembles the era in communist countries where people opposed to the ruling coterie were airbrushed out of history, out of collective memory. What is worse is unlike communist countries where it was done for political reasons, Indian newspapers are doing it for financial reasons. Why waste column centimetres on people dead and gone is the attitude increasingly in the newsrooms? Why not give that space to advertisers? So, the demise of Bina Rai, who would rank among the most beautiful heroines to emerge from Bollywood ever, was reduced to four paras in Mumbai's leading newspaper. I am grateful to them for at least carrying the news. Therefore, I was actually happy to see that most papers took note of Chitre's death. On the web, I found an interview given by Chitre to Rediff.com's Lindsay Pereira in 2007. It's titled Portrait of An Artist where Chitre speaks in detail about his journey. One day I was trying to find Arun Kolatkar's Jejuri on the web, and I stumbled upon Chitre's blog on msn in which he has written a long piece on Kolatkar, his close friend. There are a number of pictures of his family friends, and much to read that would bring one up close to the man. Writing his profile, Chitre has written this beautiful expression:
 the Self is the dancer: the inner Self the stage: the senses are the audience.

 Check Dilip Chitre blog I also found some of his original poems in Marathi, and their translated versions at Poetry International. Do check some of Chitre’s poems
 Rest in Peace Dilip Purushottam Chitre...

Possibilities

Since I have posted poems from two Nobel laureates, I thought it would be a bit unjust to Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska not to mention her. Wislawa is someone I discovered while surfing the Nobel website. I am yet to find a hard copy of her book in Mumbai stores. But, the poem that I read on the Nobel website completely floored me. Wislawa won the 1996 Nobel prize for Literature and has 16 (!!) poetry collections to her credit.

Born in western Poland in July 1923, Wislawa wrote her first published poem "I am looking for a word" in the local Polish daily in 1945. She worked as a poetry editor and columnist in a Krakow literary weekly.

After reading her poem, I now dream of meeting her in a Polish coffee house and chatting with her.

Here's the poem. Tell me how you like it and which of Wislawa's "preferences" do you like. My favourite is - I prefer the absurdity of writing poems
to the absurdity of not writing poems!
___________________________________________________________________________

I prefer movies.
I prefer cats.
I prefer the oaks along the Warta.
I prefer Dickens to Dostoyevsky.
I prefer myself liking people
to myself loving mankind.
I prefer keeping a needle and thread on hand, just in case.
I prefer the color green.
I prefer not to maintain
that reason is to blame for everything.
I prefer exceptions.
I prefer to leave early.
I prefer talking to doctors about something else.
I prefer the old fine-lined illustrations.
I prefer the absurdity of writing poems
to the absurdity of not writing poems.
I prefer, where love's concerned, nonspecific anniversaries
that can be celebrated every day.
I prefer moralists
who promise me nothing.
I prefer cunning kindness to the over-trustful kind.
I prefer the earth in civvies.
I prefer conquered to conquering countries.
I prefer having some reservations.
I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order.
I prefer Grimms' fairy tales to the newspapers' front pages.
I prefer leaves without flowers to flowers without leaves.
I prefer dogs with uncropped tails.
I prefer light eyes, since mine are dark.
I prefer desk drawers.
I prefer many things that I haven't mentioned here
to many things I've also left unsaid.
I prefer zeroes on the loose
to those lined up behind a cipher.
I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars.
I prefer to knock on wood.
I prefer not to ask how much longer and when.
I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility
that existence has its own reason for being.



From "Nothing Twice", 1997
Translated by S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh