Narayan surve biography

Abandoned soon after birth, Narayan Gangaram Surve () was brought up by mill workers, but left to fend for himself once again at the age of twelve in the chawls of Mumbai. He grew up in the streets of the big city, taught himself to read and write—working as doffer boy in a textile mill, a sweeper, a peon—and became a school teacher and a celebrated revolutionary poet. An abiding allegiance to the workers&#; movement was the thread that ran through his extraordinary journey. His poetry was thus as much ammunition to fight the good fight as it was art. It evolved a new idiom, written in the Marathi spoken on the streets, freely borrowing words from Hindi or English, unafraid to break literary conventions upheld by the cultured elite. As he puts it, the people were &#;my holy books, my scriptures, my gurus&#;.

Surve makes no pretence to objectivity. His verse is unostentatious, unabashedly so. He wants to write about, and for, the masses. There&#;s no attempt to idealize them, however—to gloss over the ugliness of life—for he is one of them. His subjects let their guard down and speak their minds. Activists crack jokes while putting up posters, a sex worker hustles her client, and a butcher remembers how he lost his leg in a riot trying to save a woman from his co-religionists. The mill worker and farmer know exactly who oppresses them; there is anger in them. For all the misery we come across, though, these are not poems of despair, but, instead, of a dogged optimism.

Jerry Pinto renders a broad selection of Surve&#;s poetry into colourful yet effortless English verse, retaining both its raw energy and immediacy, and the essence of its unyielding commitment to a better future.

Marathi poet (–)

Narayan Gangaram Surve (15 October – 16 August ) was a Marathi poet from Maharashtra, India.

Through his poetry, he celebrated labor and challenged the conventional norms of Marathi literature, which was primarily focused on entertainment at the time. He aimed to convey the hardships of poverty and inspire the underprivileged to overcome it through hard work.

In , he became the chairperson of the Akhil Bharatiya Marathi Sahitya Sammelan.

Life and career

He was born on 15 October Orphaned or abandoned soon after birth, he grew up in the streets of Mumbai, sleeping on the pavement and earning a meager livelihood by doing odd jobs. He taught himself to read and write, and in , published his first collection of poems Aisa Ga Mi Brahma (ऐसा गा मी ब्रह्म&#;; Aisa Ga Mi Brahma). Majhe Vidyapeeth (माझे विद्यापीठ&#;; My University), the book he would be most known for appeared in while he stayed in Chinchpokli, Mahahrashtra. He received 11 prizes for his book Majhe Vidyapeeth. Though he studied only till Seventh standard and never climbed the steps of a college, he is known as one of the best poets of Marathi language.

Surve actively worked in the workers' union movement in Mumbai and supported himself as a schoolteacher. Surve, who had much faith in Karl Marx, won the 'Soviet Land Nehru Award' (for his book Majhe Vidyapeeth) from the Soviet Union in the year as communist people of Russia were fascinated by his views and considered him similar to them. He became the editor of Lokvadmaygruha in the year

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