Translating the Indian Past
and Other Literary Histories

A generation of Indian writers have willy-nilly come to be known as Bombay Poets. Foremost among them was Arun Kolatkar. Seen here for the first time is a sheaf of his early poems and his letters to his first love, Darshan Chhabda, where the communication turns into drawings or into poems.

In these early poems and fragments, we see Kolatkar exploring his discovery of the English language and English poetry. He stretches the language and compacts it ; he tests its speech rythms and sound patterns. A poet of sight who showed up the blindness of the sighted, there is enough in these poems to indicate the direction his future work will take.

Arvind Krishna Mehrotra was born in Lahore in 1947 and educated at the universities of Allahabad and Bombay. He has published six collections of poetry, three volumes of translations and edited several books, including an Illustrated History of Indian Literature in English. He lives in Allahabad and Dehradun.

KRISHNA MEHROTRA, Arvind ; Translating the Indian Past and Other Literary Histories. Ed. Permanent Black, 270 p., ISBN 978-8178245317.