“We were unheeding in those days”: An interview with Ashok Shahane

Abstract

Ashok Shahane is one of the very important figures in the publishing of Marathi literature, both in terms of his involvement in the little magazine movement, and through the Bombay publishing house Pras Prakashan, which has brought out the work of many of the most significant Marathi writers. In this interview, conducted in Marathi in 2015 and 2016, and translated into English by his interviewer Anjali Nerlekar, he describes his admiration for Bengali literature and his early ventures in magazine publishing in Bombay in the 1960s. He goes on to discuss his collaborations with Bhalchandra Nemade and Arun Kolatkar, his own work as a literary critic, and his association with Allen Ginsberg during and after the American poet’s 1962 visit to India. Shahane also discusses his little magazine Aso, and the work of Pras Prakashan.

Keywords:

• Little magazines
• Bengali literature
• Phan Thi Kim Phuc
• Arun Kolatkar
• Bhalchandra Nemade
• Allen Ginsberg
• Pras Prakashan

Notes

1. In Marathi, “Ram Ram” is a way of saying goodbye.

2. Buddhadev Bose (1908–74), noted writer and editor of little magazines and journals.

3. Jibanananda Das (1899–1954) is one of the best-known modern poets of Bengal after Rabindranath Tagore.

4. Samar Sen (1916–87), noted modernist Bengali poet and journalist.

5. Bishnu De (1909–72), a prominent Bengali modernist poet who won the highest national awards for poetry.

6. Sathottari means “post-1960” in Marathi and stands for a certain rebellious modernist writing philosophy in Marathi that rejected traditional ways of linguistic usage and accepted modes of writing. Here, the term is also a period marker that points approximately to the years between 1955 and 1980.

7. Bhalchandra Nemade is one of the best-known modernist novelists and poets in Marathi.

8. For a description of these meetings, see the interview with Bhalchandra Nemade in this issue of Journal of Postcolonial Writing.

9. Darshan Chhabda, also sister of the painter Bal Chhabda.

10. This is a popular Marathi religious chant that names and praises Lord Ram. Here, the plan of covering the recto fully with the chant is employed as a sarcastic gesture to indicate meaningless repetitiveness and conservative politics.

11. In Marathi, katta implies conversations on the stoop, or meetings of an informal structureless kind.

12. Atharva (1961) was a Marathi little magazine, started by Shahane and his friends. It had just one issue, but it featured there some of the best known writers in Marathi today.

13. Author of Vadhvel and Dubuk, Raghu Dandavate (1933–2009) was a poet and a close friend of Ashok Shahane and Arun Kolatkar, and brother of graphic artist and playwright Vrindavan Dandavate.

14. Bhau Padhye (1926–93), Marathi novelist, close friend, author of novels Rada and Vasunaka, among others.

15. Ashok Kelkar (1929–2014), scholar, linguist, close friend of the poet Arun Kolatkar.

16. Vrindavan Dandavate is a close friend of Ashok Shahane, a playwright in Marathi, a graphic designer and a collaborator on several books published by Pras Prakashan.

17. See Nerlekar (2016), Chapter 4 for a detailed analysis of this cover.