Humane visionary

For Vinda Karandikar, poetry was a serious game. He played it earnestly and fought his battles, resulting in a rich tapestry of colours, sounds, feelings and ideas. A tribute to the poet who passed away last month at the age of 92…

It is a supreme irony that Govind Vinayak (Vinda) Karandikar, prolific poet, eminent critic, sophisticated thinker and creative translator, won the Jnanpeeth Award for Ashtadarshane (Eight Philosophies), a collection that came 20 years after he had announced his retirement.

He had intended Virupika (Distortions) to be his last collection. “I believe I have done what little I could in the field of poetry”, he wrote in the preface. His admirers grieved but hailed it as a rare and brave decision for an artist to take. Yet, to their joy (mixed with some dismay), he came right back with Ashtadarshane. He called these eight poems explicating the philosophies of Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Bergson and Charvak, an old man's game. The outcome of the game won him the country's most prestigious award.

Word games
In a sense, the entire body of Vinda Karandikar's work may be seen as a grand and serious game. He played with metres, words, forms, ideas. The result was a poetry rich in colour, sound, smell, feel, thought and emotion. In one of his poems, he pleads ardently for words to express the myriad shades of human life he sees around him — grey words, black words, happy, tasty, pregnant words. Words alone can marry abstract thought to concrete utterance to bring forth a sacred union.

Full report here Hindu

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