A thief walks into a house. The rest is poetry

It could, if one were to look at it with a poet’s compassion, be considered a venial transgression: A burglar walks into a house in Maharashtra’s Raigad district. Among the things he takes are an LED television, cooking oil, utensils and taps. On his way out, a life-size photograph of the former owner of the house — Marathi poet Narayan Gangaram Surve (1926-2010) — catches his eye. The rest, if one were to borrow Surve’s words, could go thus: “I’m run ragged, in and out./ My daily bread is my daily doubt…/ Don’t you quiver, don’t go ‘Tut tut’,/ My sins will be venial, Mr Saraswat.” (‘By Way of Introduction’, In That Mill, I Too Was Forged, Jerry Pinto’s English translation). For, when the poet’s family returns home, waiting from them is the TV set and an apology note: “I was not aware that the house belonged to Narayan Surve, or else I would have never stolen from there…”

It is a rare gesture but the burglar’s veneration for the working-class poet, considered one of the greatest of his generation, is understandable. Surve’s own hardscrabble life, and the poetry he wrung off it, speaks to and for everyone who has struggled, lost, but not stopped looking for better days or a revolution. Abandoned at infancy, Surve was brought up by mill workers in Mumbai’s chawls. In between working as a sweeper, a peon, a domestic help and a doffer in a textile mill, he taught himself to read and write, eventually finding employment as a school teacher. Renown as a poet would come later, through words advocating for those on the margins of society.