For the past five months, since Arun was diagnosed with cancer, he summoned all his energies for his poetry. The only thing on his mind was to collect his unpublished work and put it in order with the help of friends. He went on doing that till September 23 when he went into a coma. He died two days later — but not before entrusting Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, Adil Jussawalla and me with his final book of poems, which Arvind will edit. Another friend Tulsi Vatsal is editing Royan, a work of prose in English.I first met Arun in 1954, when I was 16, he 22, at the office of the Marathi literary magazine Satya Katha. Arun, just married, was looking for opportunities to do cover designs or illustrations. We showed each other our poems and he took me home. The same year, we launched the first poetry magazine in Marathi, Shabda.For a person born in Kolhapur, it was rare to have such a global view of mankind. But Arun had a sense of perfection, sometimes working on something for 20 years. Just as he would work on a visual, a painting and a drawing, he would scribble and sketch a lot and out of that would emerge a magical image.For instance, he visited Jejuri in the mid-60s. But he wrote the poem in the 70s, working on the theme for years. At one level it’s like many of his poems, a screenplay. Always a keen observer, his long poem Reduced to Beggary by Mumbai is an absolute authentic documentation. Arun along with a friend walked from Mumbai to Nasik and beyond. On the way, they had to beg, sell off things, just like he has written.His poems make tremendous demands on the reader. You have to be familiar with Picasso, Michelangelo, the Quran and Persian folklore. If you look deeper, you find the richness of detail. Most of the poems are on women from different civilisations. Laila, Helen of Troy, Isis, Apala. It’s about women who stand for silent suffering and give birth to the next generation. In The Last Tear, he says there is a power of regeneration and creation in a single teardrop.For years, Arun spent his afternoons at a table at the Wayside Inn (which doesn’t exist anymore) at Kala Ghoda in Mumbai, taking in the street-life around it. The Kala Ghoda Poems, Sarpa Satra and Droan were published in July 2004, after his friends and contemporaries were galvanised into action.He was a gold medallist in fine arts from the J.J. School of Art but couldn’t sell a single painting. Later, he would top the commercial art diploma class, join an ad agency and take off like a rocket, finding place in the Hall of Fame of the Commercial Artists’ Guild. But Arun always said he was primarily a poet. (As told to Sudipta Datta)
