Arun Kolatkar in Chennai – The Hindu

Any mention of Arun Kolatkar (1931-2004) would bring to mind the image of a man with drooping moustache and unkempt hair smoking away on Thursday afternoons at Wayside Inn in Kala Ghoda, Mumbai, waiting for his friends. Mumbai apart, places that one would associate with modern India’s most elusive bilingual poet would be his hometown Kolhapur; Jejuri, the pilgrim town and title of his most famous book; and Pune, where he died, in pain, of stomach cancer. Not by a long shot would anyone link him with Chennai. Strangely enough, between 1955 and 1957, Kolatkar, still a young poet trying to find a voice in both English and Marathi, lived in Madras, as Chennai was called in those days.

Some years after Kolatkar’s death, his first wife Darshan Ladhamal Chhabda sent Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, the poet, literary historiographer and Kolatkar’s great admirer, two plastic folders. Forty years after their divorce, Darshan’s fascination for Kolatkar had not dimmed. The folders contained letters, notes, draft poems and sketches that had passed between the two. But Darshan had prohibited their publication in any form during her lifetime and for some years later; she died in 2011.

Life together

About as fastidious as Kolatkar, Mehrotra edited the letters with annotations, structuring it as an essay. Titled ‘I Love You, Idiot’, it was published in his Translating the Indian Past and Other Literary Histories (Permanent Black, 2019). It is from this essay that we know of his time in Chennai. In one letter Kolatkar says, “At least 27 letters I must have sent you since you left [Chennai]. How many did you receive?” Only four have survived, all dating to April-May 1957, towards the end of his stay.

Born in Kolhapur, Kolatkar matriculated from Bombay University and later joined J.J. School of Art, Mumbai, only to discontinue after a year. In the summer of 1953, he met Darshan and they married early next year despite disapproval from both families. Kolatkar’s was middle-class Brahmin while Darshan came from an affluent Punjabi family with connections to the film world. Kolatkar did not have a job: in fact, in sheer desperation, he even applied for a peon’s job in a newspaper. Then, thanks to M.F. Husain, he took up the painting of wooden toys.

Soon, however, sometime in 1955, Kolatkar and Darshan moved to Chennai. The young couple had probably fled an inhospitable situation resulting from their inter-caste and inter-class marriage. Having hopped from one lodge to another the previous year, this was the first time they led a settled life together and it was possibly their happiest. But it would also appear that Darshan was away for considerable amounts of time or there would have been no letters. They lived on Madley Road — the road connecting West (Old) Mambalam and New Mambalam, as T. Nagar was called then.

Versatile illustrator

Their house must have likely been a modest one. What is now the T. Nagar bus terminus was then a pond. Kolatkar would have taken the suburban electric train often. According to Mehrotra, Kolatkar painted clay pots to be sold on the streets. He could not have made much selling them. In April 1956 he applied for a position as assistant artist in the Ground Training School at the Tambaram Air Force Station, evidently without success. He learnt Morse code but could not find a job as a telegraph operator. It was probably the small monthly allowance remitted by Darshan’s mother that helped them out.

Painting clay pots and hawking them was not the only thing occupying Kolatkar. These were productive years. He met the painter Krishen Khanna, who had probably come to Chennai in his job as a banker, and passed on his poems in typescript. These were Early Poems, 1953-55 (a manuscript that, sadly, is forever forthcoming). He also met Shanti Dave of the Baroda School at this time. Kolatkar was an artist himself — in one letter, he refers to himself as a “versatile illustrator” — and the letters to Darshan are full of drawings and doodles. In one letter he asks for “a spray gun for finer type of work.”

Whom did he meet

According to Mehrotra, Kolatkar made friends among Chennai’s Tamil and Telugu poets and writers. But only four names are mentioned: Sri Sri, Arudra, Gora Sastri and Bairagi, all Telugu writers. Chennai was still the cultural capital for Telugu, although the controversial Andhra demand for the city had been settled a few years ago. The presence of so many Telugu literary personalities is therefore not surprising. Sri Sri and his nephew Arudra were well into their film careers, and had pronounced Left leanings. What conversations Kolatkar would have had with them is difficult to fathom. The Bohemian Bairagi may have provided better company.

Mehrotra doesn’t mention any Tamil writer although the city was teeming with them at the time. Jayakanthan, with his powerful short stories, was a rising star. The critic Ka.Naa. Subramanyam was mostly in Chennai at this time. Two years before Kolatkar’s arrival, Ashokamitran had moved to Chennai from Secunderabad and lived on Damodara Reddy Street, a stone’s throw from Madley Road: but he would have been busy at Gemini Studios and in any case he was only beginning his writing career then.

The broad-based leftist literary monthly, Saraswati, was at the height of its popularity, but Ci. Su. Chellappa’s little magazine Ezhuthu was still some years away. Evidently, Kolatkar did not establish contact with any of them. Whom did he meet, one wonders.

Kolatkar soon tired of Chennai. With prohibition in place he had to settle to drinking plain soda water. And eat pastries at McRennett. Bored, he once sat on a bench in Panagal Park overhearing the quotidian conversation of two lower middle-class families living in Triplicane: “I am feeling nihsaar [worthless]. I am feeling like acres and acres of insipidity. I am not feeling cheerful about anything in Madras. I go about with an offended expression on my face. I have constipation. I have got a snuff-tough cold. I am feeling sick…”

Soon after, in mid-1957, Kolatkar returned to Mumbai. As far as I can make out Chennai left no imprint on his writings: unless the idlis and images tumbling out of his famous poem ‘Breakfast Time at Kala Ghoda’ have something to do with his time in the city.

The writer is a Tamil historian and author.