Chapter : 3

Arun Kolatkar - Jejuri

Arun Kolatkar (b. 1938) was educated in Mumbai where he

works as a graphic artist. A winner of Commonwealth Poetry Prize,
Kolatkar has contributed to 'Kavi', 'Opinion Literary Review', 'New
Writing in India' and 'The Shell and the Rain'. He is a bilingual poet
and has translated the Marathi poets, especially Tukaram, into
English. His long poem, 'The Boatride' was published in the
magazine, 'Damn You'. Jejuri appeared in 1976. Jejuri, Kolatkar's
most controversial book, is commonly viewed as a quest poem: a
presentation of an encounter between modern consciousness and
ancient religious tradition.

Arun Kolatkar - Jejuri / 37

 3.0 Objectives
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Background of Jejuri poems
3.3 Theme of Jejuri poems
3.4 Summary of the selected poems
3.4.1 Summary of 'The Door'
3.4.2 Summary of 'The Butterfly'
3.4.3 Summary of 'Between Jejuri and
the Railway Station'
3.5 Conclusion
3.6 Summary
- Answers to check your progress
- Field work

3.0 Objectives
Friends, this chapter introduces you to the poetry of Arun Kolatkar
through the study of his selected poems from his poetry collection
Jejuri. This chapter will help you to explain:
Background of the Jejuri poems
Theme of the Jejuri poems
His poems : 'The Door', 'The Butterfly' and 'Between Jejuri and the
railway station'

3.1 Introduction
In the previous chapter we studied the Indian English poet, Nissim
Ezekiel with reference to his selected poems. This chapter will discuss
Arun Kolatkar, who is a bilingual poet. In Jejuri he writes about his
various observations about the things he comes across in his visit to
Jejuri. The study of the original text is recommended. We are going to
critically analyze his following poems from the text Jejuri:
1. 'The Door' 2. 'The Butterfly'
3. 'Between Jejuri and the Railway station'

Arun Kolatkar - Jejuri / 38

 3.2 Background of Jejuri poems
Jejuri is a village situated about 30 miles (48 km) from the city of
Pune in the state of Maharashtra. At Jejuri there is a holy shrine of
Khandoba to which hundreds of thousands of pilgrims from all
sections of the Hindu community particularly from Maharashtra and
North Maharashtra visit all through the year. Khandoba gradually
evolved from his status of a folk God and has been accepted as a
family God by Brahmins as well as non - Brahmins in Maharashtra.
Khandoba is accepted as a protector God. It is believed that he can
bestow wealth, health and children on his devotees. Like all protector
Gods, Khandoba must be propitiated by making suitable offerings to
him in his shrine at Jejuri.

3.3 Theme of Jejuri poems

Jejuri poems oscillate between faith and skepticism. In his plat and
colloquial tone, Kolatkar ironically treats the parallel scenario
reinforcing it with concrete imagery. Kolatkar's use of concrete
imagery, subtle irony and symbolism reinforces the central theme of
alienation and perception.

3.4 Summary of the selected poems

Following are the summaries of the selected poems for study:

3.4.1 Paraphrase of 'The Door'

The poem is in three line stanzas and is a description of sundry
objects that catch the narrator's attention. The object is seen on two
levels: mundane and the sacred, religious. The narrator sees a plain,
old dangling door, hanging on the hinge but describes it in terms of 'a
prophet half brought down / from the cross' and 'a dangling martyr'.
Thus the dilapidated condition of the door, perhaps suggests from the
narrator's point of view, the decay of religion and religious practices. It
is significant that the door should make the narrator think of Christ and
crucifixion.
The use of word 'medieval' situates Jejuri historically and suggests
that what was sturdy and functional in the medieval age is now just a

Arun Kolatkar - Jejuri / 39

broken down, decaying pathetic object. The wood grain stands out
because of the constant exposure to the sun, cold and dust. The
narrator suggests that the door remembers the days when the
tradition was alive. The poem evokes irreversible decay, degeneracy
and squalidness of the place.
"The pair of shorts / left to dry upon its shoulders" is certainly no
reason why the heavy door should not walk out. The image, thus,
arouses the feeling that the dysfunctional objects continue their
meaningless existence of irrelevance because they just cannot be
anything else.

3.4.1 Check Your Progress.

Answer the following in brief:
1. What is the structure of the poem 'The Door'?

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2. Describe the door in the poem.

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3. What does the door symbolically represent?

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4. What feeling does the poem evoke in the mind of the narrator?

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5. What is the symbolic significance of the use of the word

'medieval'?

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3.4.2 Paraphrase of 'The Butterfly'

'The Butterfly' is a lovely lyric consisting of four stanzas of three lines
each and a single line. The butterfly symbolizes life, sheer existence
and joy of existence, something that can be accepted for what it is
without a legend or myth to explain it.
The two halves of the wings open and close quickly in a second.

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Also the body of the butterfly is whole and not broken like the hinge of
the door in the poem 'The Door'. When a butterfly is pinned down, it is
dead, a thing of the past like the many things in Jejuri. The word
'present' is used in two senses: the present time and a gift from life.
The poet feels the lively butterfly takes under its wings the
wretchedness of the sterile and dead hills. The butterfly is of the same
color as of turmeric powder and celebrates life. Its quick movement is
suggested by O (opens). The butterfly is gone even before the
narrator can say - "opens". 'Just a pinch of yellow' is an expression
that occurs repeatedly in the Khandoba legends. 'Chimutbhar
bhandar' works like a magic. The narrator wants to suggest that the
'tiny butterfly' is itself 'a magic'.

3.4.2 Check Your Progress.

Answer the following in brief:
1. What does the butterfly symbolize?

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2. What does the word 'present' imply?

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3. What does the butterfly take under its wings?

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4. What is the color of the butterfly?

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5. What does the existence of the tiny butterfly imply?

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3.4.3 Paraphrase of 'Between Jejuri and the Railway Station'

The title of this poem is significant. The narrator is, as it were,
poised between two worlds: the world of Jejuri and the world
represented by the railway station; that world from which the narrator
came and to which he must return after his brief visit to bewildering
Jejuri.

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 The text of this poem is so arranged as to make its impact on the
reader by its physical appearance. If we simply look at the graphic
shape of the poem, we feel that we are looking at one of those figures
one finds in a Rorschach test or at the figure of an hour glass with its
two compartments brought together by 'The end' (line 15). In the
second part of the poem this order is broken down. That the narrator
at that moment belongs neither to Jejuri nor to the railway station is
suggested by the 'up and down' movements of the cocks and hens.
Like 'The Butterfly', this poem is again a celebration of life in
contradiction with the arid, stagnant hoary tradition ridden Jejuri and
equally mechanical and in a sense 'in - human' paraphernalia at the
railway station. The narrator is aware that as he stands, 'still like a
needle in a trance / like a needle that struck a perfect balance', he
must look silly to those who belong comfortably and securely to either
of the worlds.
Words like 'little' or 'huddled' show the smallness or diminutive
status of the temple down. Once again we note that in Jejuri the
sacred and the profane exist side by side. The narrator sardonically
notes that the house next to the priest's houses belongs to 'the temple
dancer', a euphemism for a prostitute. The narrator, perhaps, wants to
suggest also that the priests (supposedly connected with sacred
duties) and 'the temple dancers' function in tendem to 'soak' the
pilgrims. Note the reticence of the priest's son. Obviously the presence
of the temple dancer's house is an irritant to him for it could also be a
standing temptation for him - note that he 'hopes' he will never step
inside her house.
The narrator is obviously struck by the coexistence of the ancient as
well as Indian names - Gorakshanath and Mhalasakant - and the
modern or English words - 'hair cutting saloon, 'caf' etc. The reader
will note that this feature in a colonized country has always attracted
the writers in these countries who write in English for an English
reading audience and who because of their western education and
urbanization, find the coexistence of something deeply native with an
English complement rather comic and sometimes ludicrous. We find a
similar juxtaposition when the narrator carries a coconut in his hand,
given to him after he performed the pooja - and the priest's visiting
card in his pocket. The poem presents the two scales or pans i. e.
Jejuri and the railway station. The repetition of the words 'like a needle'

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suggests the narrator's desperate attempt to find an exact verbal
equivalence for the nearly incommunicable experience he is going
through. The phrase 'harvest dance' evokes associations with fertility
rites and hence celebrates the continuance of life. 'Craziest' is
probably used in two senses: maddening, not making any sense and
yet unlike the maddening crazy experience of Jejuri, this celebration
of life makes a strange sense or it could be strange and unusual for
an urbanite spectator who can never hope to see it in a city. The
stillness of the narrator is the sanity of one who belongs neither to
Jejuri nor to the railway station but to Chaitanya (life).

3.4.3 Check Your Progress.

Answer the following questions in brief.

1. What does the title of the poem signify?

__________________________________________________

2. What is different about the form of presentation of the poem?

__________________________________________________

3. What does the 'up and down' movement of the cocks and hens
suggest?

__________________________________________________

4. What does the use of words like 'little' and 'huddled' suggest?

__________________________________________________

5. What suggests that the priest's son considers the temple

dancer's house to be a standing temptation?

__________________________________________________

6. What does the narrator realize when he comes across the

ancient and modern Indian names?

__________________________________________________

7. What does the repetition of the words 'like a needle' suggest?

__________________________________________________

8. What does the stillness of the narrator signify?

__________________________________________________

Arun Kolatkar - Jejuri / 43

 3.5 Conclusion
This chapter deals with Jejuri, which is a bunch of short poems and
tells about the narrator's journey to a place of folk worship, covered in
a single revolution of the sun. The place, the time and the narrator
provide unity of a sort to the collection. The juxtaposition and the
contrastive placing of the human, the natural and the animal, the
graphic portraits of fellow - travelers and their experiences, the priest
and his son, the beggar woman, Vaghya and Murali and their songs
introduced for local color and the site of ruin that is Jejuri itself - all
these contribute to a skillful patterning of details that claims to have a
poetic logic of its own.
The next chapter deals with Indian English Poetess, Kamala Das
with reference to the selected poems from her poetry collection The
Old Playhouse and other poems.

3.6 Summary
The recurring theme in Jejuri is Time. The entire sequence is framed
between sun - rise and sun - set, the sun appearing in the poem from
time to time as a significant central symbol. The other important theme
is the very existence of life and the variety of forms it has. Jejuri
celebrates life in all its varieties and the reverent openness to life in its
livingness is one of the most endearing qualities of the poem. The poet
presents through a special kind of consciousness of microcosm
reflecting in some significant way the macrocosm of the universe. He
also puts forth man's quest for his identity in this vast universe. Infact
his journey to Jejuri is his journey towards eternity. The poems
prescribed although represents three different themes, the common
link between them is that they are the poet's account of experience at
Jejuri.

Answers to check your progress

3.4.1
1. The poem is in three line stanzas
2. The door is a plain, old dangling door, hanging on the hinge

Arun Kolatkar - Jejuri / 44

3. The door symbolically represents the decay of religion and
religious practices
4. The poem evokes irreversible decay, degeneracy and squalidness
of the place.
5. The use of word 'medieval' situates Jejuri historically and suggests
that what was sturdy and functional in the medieval age is now just
a broken down, decaying pathetic object.

3.4.2
1. The butterfly symbolizes life, sheer existence and joy of existence,
something that can be accepted for what it is without a legend or
myth to explain it.
2. The present time and a gift from life.
3. The wretchedness of the sterile and dead hills.
4. Color of turmeric powder
5. The 'tiny butterfly' is itself 'a magic'.

3.4.3
1. The narrator is poised between two worlds: the world of Jejuri and
the world represented by the railway station.
2. If we simply look at the graphic shape of the poem, we feel that we
are looking at one of those figures one finds in a Rorschach test or
at the figure of an hour glass with its two compartments brought
together by 'The end' (line 15).
3. The narrator at that moment belongs neither to Jejuri nor to the
railway station is suggested by the 'up and down' movements of the
cocks and hens.
4. Words like 'little' or 'huddled' show the smallness or diminutive
status of the temple down.
5. The presence of the temple dancer's house is an irritant to him and
he 'hopes' he will never step inside her house.
6. The narrator realizes that this feature in a colonized country has
always attracted the writers in these countries who write in English
for an English reading audience and who because of their western
education and urbanization; find the coexistence of something

Arun Kolatkar - Jejuri / 45

 deeply native with an English complement rather comic and
sometimes ludicrous.
7. It suggests the narrator's desperate attempt to find an exact verbal
equivalence for the nearly incommunicable experience he is going
through.
8. The stillness of the narrator is the sanity of one who belongs neither
to Jejuri nor to the railway station but to Chaitanya (life).

Field Work
Compare and contrast T. S. Eliot's Waste Land with Arun
Kolatkar's Jejuri as both are based on some common themes.

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Arun Kolatkar - Jejuri / 47

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