Reviving the rural voice

That day, in 1967, also came after years of unappreciated poetry writing for the young Mahanor. Farmers by profession, in a village of just a 100 homes and 700 people, the Mahanors were barely literate. They could not quite comprehend what poetry writing was allabout.

quot;All I had known and seen since childhood was my village and its poverty,quot; rues Mahanor. But the poet was an optimist. His poetry blossomed; not on hunger pangs and pain but on the green environs, in his fields in a remote place called Palaskhed, near the Ajanta-Elora caves.

Little did Mahanor know that his poetry, which was based heavily on nature, was making a world of difference to Marathi poetry in general. quot;By the quot;60s Marathi poetry had, increasingly, started speaking in an urban language and the rural counterpart was confined to folk art alone.

Mahanor8217;s poetry revived the fading rural voice,quot; says Shraddha Belsare, a Marathi poetess.

The poet in him could relate to the abundance of nature around him. Mahanor8217;s poems spoke to trees and streams as he toiled in his field. quot;My poetry springs out of the fact that Iquot;m a farmer. I relate to the sorrow and happiness of my fields, the crop, the parched land and the rain,quot; he says. His fixation with nature stayed on; even when most other poetsbranded nature poetry as quot;escapismquot;. quot;What is Kalidasquot; Meghdoot? It8217;s just the protagonist asking the clouds to convey a message to his beloved. But it made Kalidas, quot;Mahakaviquot; Kalidas,quot; is his simple retort.

His conviction paid off. Though he maintained that farming was his profession and that he wrote poems because he loved to, his pen did earn him money. quot;I could get a pipeline fixed in my farm after I got the award,quot; says the thrilled farmer.

The water never let his jowar-bajra fields dry and his pen kept flowing too. Hand in hand with money, came fame. quot;My father first believed that his son was a poet of some repute when Yashwantrao Chavan, the defence minister in the early 70s, and P L Deshpande, one of Marathi8217;s greatest literateurs, visited the village and walked in his fields,quot; says Mahanor.

There was no looking back after that. The award-winning volume was followed by Pawsali Kavita Rain Poems, Vahi and Ajanta 8212; a love poem inspired by a folk lore that talks about an Englishman, RobertGill, and Paroo, a village belle.

But the big break came, in 1977, when none other than the Queen of Melody, Lata Mangeshkar offered him her Marathi film, Jait Re Jait, starring Smita Patil. Mahanor was asked to pen 16 songs. His song quot;Jambhul piklya jhada khali8230;quot; created history.

And won him more awards, more fame and more money. More film offers also came by 8212; to date, he has written songs for seven films.The farmer, also became an MLC when he got nominated to the Vidhan Parishad.

Poetry never took a backseat though. His latest volumes Prarthana Dayaghana and Panzad too have been appreciated. But they lack in freshness, in vision and joie de vivre. Is it a reflection of his mood or the fact that Mahanor is now well past his 60s? quot;Poetry is, after all, a dialogue.

The incidents, rather accidents, in life are bound to reflect in this dialogue,quot; he says, candidly. Belsare says that he is an unpretentious man who has accepted his age, quite simply.

This is not to say that nature has ceasedto appeal to Mahanor. quot;Every sunrise is new, the rains are new each year and every dew drop beautiful,quot; he says.