Never in the past 10,000 years…

                               Acharya Prahlad Keshav Atre                                             

Today, August 13, is the birth anniversary of the noted Marathi journalist, poet, author and an architect of the Samyukta Maharashtra movement, Acharya Prahlad Keshav Atre. This is the day every year, my father, Narayan Athawalay, (Nana) would got to Acharya Atre’s statue at Worli to pay his respects. He looked up to Acharya Atre.

My sister and I were told many anecdotes about Acharya Atre, and Nana would happily narrate his memories about him.

One of them was when Nana, who was from Pune, met Acharya Atre in Mumbai to request him to write a preface for his first book, titled in Marathi, ‘Three poems and ten stories’. Acharya Atre inquired where he was staying, etc. Nana told him where he was putting up and asked him when the preface would be ready. When Atre said in a couple of days, Nana said he would come and pick it up. “Baapachi jahagiri waya challi ahe ka? Nimut parat ja. Me pathawto,” thundered Atre.

Though they had a great many public fights later through their articles – Nana in Lokmitra and Atre in Maratha - both had great respect for each other. And it stayed, even after Nana hit Atre in front of a crowd of people. While I don’t clearly remember the reason behind this, it was probably because Nana had warned Atre about writing against S M Joshi. Joshi was an activist and another leader of the Samyukta Maharashtra movement. But Atre did write and Nana was ready for him at a function where the former was a guest. When Atre stepped down from the stage, Nana was waiting and began to hit him with a chappal before he was overpowered.

After reading an article by Nana that he did not like, Atre had once written about Nana’s mother in very bad language. Nana promptly wrote an article in reply, saying he respected all mothers, and that all mothers were equal, so what Atre had written could also be applied to his mother!

A great reader, Acharya Atre is also said to have read a new book – the entire book - every night before going to bed.

Perhaps the memory of Acharya Atre that Nana held most dear, was when they met after the Panshet dam burst in Pune. Nana’s family had fortunately survived, but they had lost everything they owned, even their house. Nana had gone to help them and others immediately. The next day Nana was in the rain and mud, in the midst of trying to salvage whatever he could find of their belongings, when someone came to tell him that a very huge man, dressed in shorts and a shirt was on his way there through the muck and mud, looking for him. That man was Acharya Atre. Atre went upto Nana and said, “What you lost was never yours. What belongs to you, is here,” and then he pointed to Nana’s head. Nana always said later that Atre was the only person then who offered him solace and said things would get better.

It’s also Nana’s birth day two days on. Both these men are giants in journalism. I wonder what they would feel about this sorry state of affairs in the media, especially print media?

Acharya Atre had a favourite line that he often said. If he liked something a lot, for instance, he would say, “In the past 10,000 years no one must have had tea like this!” or “In the past 10,000 years no one has baked a cake like this!” Borrowing it, I must say about him and Nana, “In the past 10,000 years there must not have been a mentee and a mentor like them!”

Meet a rickshaw driver

I always try to talk to rickshaw drivers, taxi drivers, bus conductors etc and often have engaging conversations with them. Firstly, they are impressed that a woman wants to talk to them and secondly, they feel good to talk to someone in their otherwise humdrum job. As for me, I get a perspective of things through their eyes and experiences.

This is Rajendra. I hired his rickshaw a while back to go to a friend’s house in Versova.

I noticed these handles (aren’t they called that?) first. They have Swagatam (Welcome) written on them. So often one hires such vehicles and fails to notice how lovingly the driver or owner has decorated them. The handles appealed to me and I realised the rickshaw was new. Everything was pretty shiny in it.

It turns out that Rajendra was a truck driver for about 12 years. Then he got diagnosed with diabetes and couldn’t do that job. So he decided to buy a rickshaw and drive around in the suburbs ferrying people to earn his livelihood. He’s been driving the rickshaw for some months. “I make enough for my family. I have to take care of my health and being a truck driver wasn’t going to help with that. This is less stressful. Sure the cab aggregators have made business tough, but I do manage. It’s going okay,” he says.

I took some pictures of the rickshaw and told him I liked it. Then I took his picture. “It’ll be better if you take a picture with me outside,” he suggested. So here he is. One of the thousands of rickshaw drivers in Mumbai and its suburbs. He loves his vehicle and his job and wants you to know that. So swagatam to his rickshaw.

Mother writes: Kokil

An article by my mother Anuradha Athavale

Class act

Every two months, on a Saturday this year, I’ve been making my way to Borivali. In his house on the first floor of a housing society there, retired professor, JC Coelho, has been holding informal poetry appreciation classes. A group of us have been attending them, over two decades since we last attended Sir’s classes at DG Ruparel College. He was the HoD of the English Department there.

When I moved back to Mumbai from Goa, I was in the SSC. A terrible year for studies and also to make friends. So it was with much excitement that I had joined college. But as an introvert who took time to make friends, I didn’t do well in the beginning.

In FYBA, I chose English literature as a subject, and truly felt ‘settled’ in college. I now had friends with the same interests as I – reading and writing – and great professors who not only taught the subject, but became our mentors.

Perhaps the most loved of our professors then was Coelho Sir. I don’t remember his first class, but I remember thinking, ‘Oh, this tiny man is the professor?’ Over the years he became more than a teacher to many of us. He became our parent, our friend, our guide and our critic. After we graduated, some of us were taught by him again at the Mumbai University, where he took classes for MA. Over the years we kept in touch with him.

Then last year, my friend Linda, convinced him to hold classes again, for a group of us. Four of us from our batch in college are joined by four others for these classes which began after Christmas in January. The choice of subject was poetry.

Every class is held with a break when Mrs Coelho – aunty June – makes tea for us and goodies to eat, some brought by students. As Linda says, “It’s also a food appreciation class.”

The first class was held after Christmas and so we had a lot of goodies to eat. We also got to see the crib made by the Coelhos. “Ashlesha, just pick up baby Jesus from there,” Sir said and I promptly obeyed. He wanted us to see how well their domestic help had painted the figurines. As we admired them, Sir casually said, “Some of these figurines are over 43 years old.” I was suddenly acutely aware that I have butter fingers and baby Jesus immediately went back into the crib.

Over 20 years since I last attended his class, I can see that the years have not lessened Sir’s enthusiasm and passion for literature or his students. His method remains the same. A serious lecture interrupted by anecdotes and jokes. As I chuckled and whispered into another friend, Sheena’s ear, one particular joke, I remembered he had told us back then. I think the humour in my book, Musings, also comes from Sir’s influence.

The class is interrupted with talks on politics in India and the world, civilization, culture etc. Some politicians from desh and videsh are particularly discussed. Sometimes, like back then, Sir goes overboard with his histrionics. There are many stories about him from college. As one Coelho legend goes, a student was standing near the window before he arrived for class, back in college. The class was a floor above the staff room. The student loudly said in her most mad literature student manner, “Romeo, Romeo, where art thou?” And Sir, who was on his way upstairs, promptly said, “Wait, wait, I am on my way!”

Then there’s that class I missed, when he did the catwalk. But despite that occasional mad professor behaviour, Sir always made us work. Even now, this class has assignments which he insisted on giving. He has also threatened to repeat prosody and scansion, a subject that I dread.

It must not be an easy task teaching a class with a varied age group, including millennials. But Sir has managed to hold everyone’s interest in the subject again. He still writes notes for us. No computer printouts. My handwriting …quite remarkable… is still the same, Sir recognised it.

As we go through the origins of poetry, speak on Sappho,  Shakespeare's sonnets, meet old friends like TS Eliot, Langston Hughes and so on, we are also revisiting our love for literature, something that has fallen behind as we moved on with our careers and lives. Sir’s class has once again provided our group of friends with a literary refuge that I realise, was necessary. For some time again we are that crazy bunch of teenagers who mostly speak about reading, authors and books. Some things that repeat in life can provide much needed succour when we least expect it. For this class we again have Sir to thank.

Kavya Dindi

The Chetana College and Vinda Karandikar Smarak Samiti organised a Kavya Dindi on August 23, the culmination of the birth centenary of the Dnyanpeeth award-winning poet, from Sahitya Sahawas to the college. Karandikar used to stay in Sahitya Sahawas, the colony of authors at Bandra East. The dindi had a palkhi with his books and photograph. His son Uday, and daughter-in-law Pratim, participated in it along with their former neighbours, authors, Samiti members and staff of the college. Students of the college performed lezim, carried placards with Vinda's verses, and recited his poems as they walked.

Bhau's (Vinda Karandikar) son Uday, to the right of the palkhi

An orphan shows the way

I recently edited a copy by my senior colleague Dharmendra Jore, about a courageous young woman, Amrita Karvande, who has become an agent of change in Maharashtra. She led Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis and his government to create a quota in education and jobs, albeit a small one, 1 per cent, for orphans in the state.

Karvande had met him after she scored good marks in a state service examination, but could not secure a job as she did not have any documents to prove her caste etc. Orphans are denied welfare benefits in education and jobs as they don’t have a quota. She met Fadnavis and he was moved to do something for people like her. Her decision helped bring into focus another section of people who are alienated from mainstream society. The quota will not only help orphans who have to leave orphanages after 18 years of age to get jobs, but even minor orphans in education.

Karvande grew up in an orphanage in Goa. One of her interviews states that her father left her at Matruchhaya in Ponda, and that is how she has a name. It took me back to the time when I was growing up in Goa and my parents had taken me to Matruchhaya.

My earliest memories of the place are of course, seeing many children there. And then, as a woman and man walked out with a baby, my mother saying, “See, that baby now has a home.”

Later, a girl, not much older than me, probably 8 or 10 years of age, insisted she was “coming home” with us. She rushed out and got into our taxi and refused to leave it. My father and the orphanage employees had a tough task at hand, but they managed to convince her she would be taken home “next time,” and then she stepped out.

Going home. Many of the kids would watch as one by one many of their friends disappeared to this “going home”. The others obviously wondered when they would do so. Or worry why they hadn’t yet.

Opposite Matruchhaya, stands the school that my father, Narayan Athawalay, built solely on the strength of his editorials in the Daily Gomantak, which got thousands of Goans to contribute to it. The Lokavishwas Pratishthan’s school began as a residential school for the deaf and mute, and now includes visually impaired and mentally challenged children as well.

The orphans at Matruchhaya we learnt, were very interested in the children (at the school) not far from their institute. Like them, they too stayed there. But this would change during the holidays. The orphans would poignantly ask where those children in the school had gone. They had gone home.

The outcome of Karvande’s courageous meeting with Fadnavis will help many orphans. While the rules and criteria for the quota may need to be changed, it has given orphans the one thing that they need most, hope.

Books, TV and films may portray them, but society may never fully understand what orphans have to face. Thanks to people like Karvande, slowly this will change, and orphans too, will be integrated into society, 100 per cent.

 

Move government houses to Borivali

It’s a shame that a minister, Nitin Gadkari, has spoken to the Indian Navy in an insulting manner. The union shipping minister’s pompous statement to the Indian Navy, “We are in power and not the navy or the defence ministry…” reeks of irresponsibility. And all because the Navy approached him to seek land for housing.

Gadkari claims the Navy has objected to developmental projects in Mumbai, especially towards a floating jetty at Malabar Hill. Hence his salvo. He has refused to give the Indian Navy land for housing.

But Gadkari should realise the Navy and its concerns are more important than his pet BOT ‘Build, operate and transfer’ projects. He should also not tell the defence forces to do their job, because they always do more than it. Which is why it is upto the country to ensure that whatever else they need, is given to them without issues. Why do our ‘leaders’ fail to understand our soldiers are more important than infrastructure?

Housing is a big headache for the forces, which may or may not have spoken about it. Gadkari says he does not want to part with prime land in south Mumbai. He should realise that our country has most of its land because of our defence forces, not our political leaders. Speaking of which, why do politicians have to stay in government houses in south Mumbai? They can stay in official residences beyond Borivali. Maharashtra can be governed from anywhere in the state. Demolishing government residences in south Mumbai will free more land for developmental projects. After all, as the prime minister said, he is ‘pradhan sevak’. So are all other ministers. Why then do they need lavish houses in south Mumbai?

But even if the Navy does not get more land for housing in south Mumbai, it is high time that its current residences there are rebuilt or repaired. Perhaps it needs more land to build new housing and shift those currently staying in dangerous quarters there. Most of their houses do seem very dangerous. Many houses for Army personnel are in the same condition. It is thanks to Field Marshal Sam Maneckshaw’s vision that many houses were built for Army personnel, but they need urgent attention now. It is a sad fact that Indian defence personnel know that the Pakistani defence forces enjoy better attention in all these aspects.

It won’t make much difference if a developmental project does not take off in Mumbai. But it will surely be a matter of shame for all Indians if there is a mishap with houses belonging to our defence forces.