What do you think?
Rate this book
Jejuri
A sequence of stunningly simple but haunting poems, Jejuri is one of the great books of modern India. Jejuri is a site of pilgramage in author Arun Kolatkar's native state of Maharashtra, and Jejuri the poem is the record of a visit to the town -- a place that is as crassly commercial as it is holy, as modern and ruinous as it is ancient and enduring. Evoking the town's crowded streets, many shrines, and mythic history of sages and gods, Kolatkar's poem offers a rich description of India while at the same time performing a complex act of devotion. For the essence of the poem is a spiritual quest, the effort to find the divine trace in a degenerate world. Spare, comic, sorrowful, singing, Jejuri is the work of a writer with a unique and visionary voice.
52 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 1978
25 people are currently reading
1161 people want to read
About the author
Arun Kolatkar
11 books45 followersArun Balkrishna Kolatkar (1932–2004) is one of the most important and influential poets in the post Independence Indian poetry. He was born on 1 November 1932 at Kolhapur, Maharastra. He had his education as a fine artist from JJ School of Arts and he worked as an art director and graphic designer in many reputed advertising agencies like Lintas. He wrote in Marathi and English.
His Marathi poetry collections include:
* Arun Kolatkarcha Kavita (1977)
* Chirimiri (2004)
* Bhijki Vahi (2004)
* Droan (2004)
* Char Kavita
His first collection of English poems was Jejuri named after the religious site in Maharashtra (1976) and winner of the prestigious Commonwealth Poetry Prize in 1977. His other collections of English poetry are Kala Ghoda Poems and Sarpasatra (2004). He won the Kusumagraj Puraskar given by the Marathwada Sahitya Parishad in 1991 and Bahinabai Puraskar given by Bahinabai Prathistan in 1995. He has also won the prestigious CAG award given in the field of advertising for six times and consequently was admitted to the CAG Hall of Fame.
His poetry is something of a trendsetter in both the languages. In Marathi, his poetry is the quintessence of the modernist as manifested in the 'little magazine movement' in the 1950s and 60s. His early Marathi poetry was radically experimental and it displayed the influences of the European avant-garde poetry like surrealism, expressionism and the Beat generation poetry. These poems are oblique, whimsical and at the same time dark, sinister, and exceedingly funny. Some of these characteristics can be seen in Jejuri and Kala Ghoda Poems in English, but his early Marathi poems are far more radical, dark and humorous then his English poems. His early Marathi poetry is far more audacious and takes great amounts of liberties with the language of poetry. However, in his later Marathi poetry, the poetic language is more accessible and less radical compared to earlier works. His later works Chirimiri, Bhijki Vahi and Droan are less introverted and less nightmarish. They show a greater social awareness and his satire become more direct.
Sarpa Satra is an 'English version' of a poem by similar name in Bhijki Vahi. It is a typical Kolatkar narrative poem like Droan, mixing myth, allegory, and contemporary history. Although Kolatkar was never famous as a social commentator, his narrative poems tend to just that. Many poems in Bhijki Vahi contain plenty of comments on the contemporary history. However, these are not politicians' comments but a poet's, and hence he avoids the typical Dalit-Leftist-Feminist rhetoric. What is significant here is the shift in the poet’s attitude and technique.
While Jejuri was about the agonized relationship of a modern sensitive individual with the indigenous culture, the Kala Ghoda poems are about the dark underside of Mumbai’s underbelly. The bewilderingly heterogeneous megapolis is envisioned in various oblique and whimsical perspectives of an underdog. Like Jejuri, Kala Ghoda is also 'a place poem' exploring the myth, history, geography, and ethos of the place in a typical Kolatkaresqe style. While Jejuri, a very popular place for pilgrimage to a pastoral god, could never become Kolatkar’s home, Kala Ghoda is about exploring the baffling complexities of the great metropolis. While Jejuri can be considered as an example of searching for a belonging, which happens to be the major fixation of the previous generation of Indian poets in English, Kala Ghoda poems do not betray any anxieties and agonies of 'belonging'. With Kala Ghoda Poems, Indian poetry in English seems to have grown up, shedding adolescent `identity crises’ and goose pimples. The remarkable maturity of poetic vision embodied in the Kala Ghoda Poems makes it something of a milestone in Indian poetry in English.
His Marathi poetry collections include:
* Arun Kolatkarcha Kavita (1977)
* Chirimiri (2004)
* Bhijki Vahi (2004)
* Droan (2004)
* Char Kavita
His first collection of English poems was Jejuri named after the religious site in Maharashtra (1976) and winner of the prestigious Commonwealth Poetry Prize in 1977. His other collections of English poetry are Kala Ghoda Poems and Sarpasatra (2004). He won the Kusumagraj Puraskar given by the Marathwada Sahitya Parishad in 1991 and Bahinabai Puraskar given by Bahinabai Prathistan in 1995. He has also won the prestigious CAG award given in the field of advertising for six times and consequently was admitted to the CAG Hall of Fame.
His poetry is something of a trendsetter in both the languages. In Marathi, his poetry is the quintessence of the modernist as manifested in the 'little magazine movement' in the 1950s and 60s. His early Marathi poetry was radically experimental and it displayed the influences of the European avant-garde poetry like surrealism, expressionism and the Beat generation poetry. These poems are oblique, whimsical and at the same time dark, sinister, and exceedingly funny. Some of these characteristics can be seen in Jejuri and Kala Ghoda Poems in English, but his early Marathi poems are far more radical, dark and humorous then his English poems. His early Marathi poetry is far more audacious and takes great amounts of liberties with the language of poetry. However, in his later Marathi poetry, the poetic language is more accessible and less radical compared to earlier works. His later works Chirimiri, Bhijki Vahi and Droan are less introverted and less nightmarish. They show a greater social awareness and his satire become more direct.
Sarpa Satra is an 'English version' of a poem by similar name in Bhijki Vahi. It is a typical Kolatkar narrative poem like Droan, mixing myth, allegory, and contemporary history. Although Kolatkar was never famous as a social commentator, his narrative poems tend to just that. Many poems in Bhijki Vahi contain plenty of comments on the contemporary history. However, these are not politicians' comments but a poet's, and hence he avoids the typical Dalit-Leftist-Feminist rhetoric. What is significant here is the shift in the poet’s attitude and technique.
While Jejuri was about the agonized relationship of a modern sensitive individual with the indigenous culture, the Kala Ghoda poems are about the dark underside of Mumbai’s underbelly. The bewilderingly heterogeneous megapolis is envisioned in various oblique and whimsical perspectives of an underdog. Like Jejuri, Kala Ghoda is also 'a place poem' exploring the myth, history, geography, and ethos of the place in a typical Kolatkaresqe style. While Jejuri, a very popular place for pilgrimage to a pastoral god, could never become Kolatkar’s home, Kala Ghoda is about exploring the baffling complexities of the great metropolis. While Jejuri can be considered as an example of searching for a belonging, which happens to be the major fixation of the previous generation of Indian poets in English, Kala Ghoda poems do not betray any anxieties and agonies of 'belonging'. With Kala Ghoda Poems, Indian poetry in English seems to have grown up, shedding adolescent `identity crises’ and goose pimples. The remarkable maturity of poetic vision embodied in the Kala Ghoda Poems makes it something of a milestone in Indian poetry in English.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 56 reviews
October 12, 2015
A Scratch
what is god
and what is stone
the dividing line
if it exists
is very thin
at jejuri
and every other stone
is god or his cousin
there is no crop
other than god
and god is harvested here
around the year
and round the clock
out of the bad earth
and the hard rock
that giant hunk of rock
the size of a bedroom
is khandoba's wife turned to stone
the crack that runs across
is the scar from his broadsword
he struck her down with
once in a fit of rage
scratch a rock
and a legend springs
what is god
and what is stone
the dividing line
if it exists
is very thin
at jejuri
and every other stone
is god or his cousin
there is no crop
other than god
and god is harvested here
around the year
and round the clock
out of the bad earth
and the hard rock
that giant hunk of rock
the size of a bedroom
is khandoba's wife turned to stone
the crack that runs across
is the scar from his broadsword
he struck her down with
once in a fit of rage
scratch a rock
and a legend springs
February 1, 2012
The end of what I call The Januarius had finally come. It is one of my strange, compulsive little rituals: During the month of January, I read only authors I have never read before, Since New Year’s Day, I have read Sara Wheeler on Chile, Livy’s Early History of Rome, Herta Müller’s The Passport, Andrei Gelasimov’s Thirst, W. G. Sebald’s Vertigo (no relation to the movie), Henry Mackenzie’s The Man of Feeling, The Loeb Classical Library Reader, Deszö Kosztolányi’s Skylark, Curzio Malaparte’s The Skin, Christopher Langley’s Lone Pine, and now Arun Kolatkar’s slim book of verse in English entitled Jejuri.
That’s eleven books in all, tied together only by the fact that all the authors were new to me (except perhaps The Loeb Classical Library Reader, which contained excerpts of mostly familiar Greek and Roman classics).
Jejuri is perhaps the strangest of all. It is a poem cycle, originally written in English, by an Indian poet from Maharashtra. It is a coherent sequence which begins with the poet’s arrival in the pilgrimage city of Jejuri by bus, his desultory and not altogether devout visits to the local shrines and what he saw there, and finally his retreat by train—except we leave him at the station wondering when the train will arrive.
Here is one of my favorites:
The Scratch
what is god
and what is stone
the dividing line
if it exists
is very thin
at jejuri
and every other stone
is god or his cousin
there is no crop
other than god
and god is harvested here
around the year
and round the clock
out of the bad earth
and the hard rock
that giant hunk of rock
the size of a bedroom
is khandoba’s wife turned to stone
that crack that runs across
is the scar from his broadsword
he struck her down with
once in a fit of rage
scratch a rock
and a legend springs
Khandoba is the main God of Jejuri.
I am always amazed at how many excellent writers and poets there are in India who can write English with the best of them. Coming to mind are Salman Rushdie, G. V. Desani, and R. K. Narayan, who is probably my favorite.
It is reassuring to know that, even if Europe and America are taken over by drooling idiots, there will be those who can write elegant English from the other side of the world.
That’s eleven books in all, tied together only by the fact that all the authors were new to me (except perhaps The Loeb Classical Library Reader, which contained excerpts of mostly familiar Greek and Roman classics).
Jejuri is perhaps the strangest of all. It is a poem cycle, originally written in English, by an Indian poet from Maharashtra. It is a coherent sequence which begins with the poet’s arrival in the pilgrimage city of Jejuri by bus, his desultory and not altogether devout visits to the local shrines and what he saw there, and finally his retreat by train—except we leave him at the station wondering when the train will arrive.
Here is one of my favorites:
The Scratch
what is god
and what is stone
the dividing line
if it exists
is very thin
at jejuri
and every other stone
is god or his cousin
there is no crop
other than god
and god is harvested here
around the year
and round the clock
out of the bad earth
and the hard rock
that giant hunk of rock
the size of a bedroom
is khandoba’s wife turned to stone
that crack that runs across
is the scar from his broadsword
he struck her down with
once in a fit of rage
scratch a rock
and a legend springs
Khandoba is the main God of Jejuri.
I am always amazed at how many excellent writers and poets there are in India who can write English with the best of them. Coming to mind are Salman Rushdie, G. V. Desani, and R. K. Narayan, who is probably my favorite.
It is reassuring to know that, even if Europe and America are taken over by drooling idiots, there will be those who can write elegant English from the other side of the world.
December 28, 2015
To be read again and again.
June 3, 2024
English May: a poem
by Raj.
There's no Indian-ness, he says,
no identity of ours
in English, a colonial father
who doesn't borrow but steals
like the selfsame word loot.
English may try
but we're different,
always have been.
Our rakshashas we burn ritually, yearly
while their demons come East to die.
He's old, I think, too old
to divorce language from its past.
I wish he'd see English as the mediator,
misfired, soft-nosed transliterations
in our chats: kta haaal hau?
hai*
kya*
See how we prop our shelves
by ourselves with sturdy spines
of Sawant, Premchand, Kuvempu
more found in translation
than lost? See
our Karnads, our Kolatkars.
Watch them strut
letters to the edge of sentences,
strip their grammar
skinnydip in imports,
lapping around gleefully
in fierce abandon.
Almost as if the language repents
in our acceptance.
by Raj.
There's no Indian-ness, he says,
no identity of ours
in English, a colonial father
who doesn't borrow but steals
like the selfsame word loot.
English may try
but we're different,
always have been.
Our rakshashas we burn ritually, yearly
while their demons come East to die.
He's old, I think, too old
to divorce language from its past.
I wish he'd see English as the mediator,
misfired, soft-nosed transliterations
in our chats: kta haaal hau?
hai*
kya*
See how we prop our shelves
by ourselves with sturdy spines
of Sawant, Premchand, Kuvempu
more found in translation
than lost? See
our Karnads, our Kolatkars.
Watch them strut
letters to the edge of sentences,
strip their grammar
skinnydip in imports,
lapping around gleefully
in fierce abandon.
Almost as if the language repents
in our acceptance.
October 29, 2007
dont get this new york review books publication. read the indian publication--kolatkar designed the book itself and the assemblage is part of the journey.
December 9, 2014
Another vista in my mind opened...
Stones and gods,
crushed under the weight of the mountains.
And in the dust that flows in my direction,
some poems fly right into my eyes,
and all I have for them,
is my unexpected tears.
Couple of poems from the poet...
The Station Dog
The spirit of the place
lives inside the mangy body
of the station dog
doing penance for the last
three hundred years under
the tree of arrivals and departures
the dog opens his right eye
just long enough to look at and see
whether you're a man or a demigod
or the eight armed railway timetable come
to stroke him on the head
with a healing hand
and to take him to heaven
the dog decides
the day is not yet
Yeshwant Rao
Are you looking for a god?
I know a good one.
His name is Yeshwant Rao
and he's one of the best.
look him up
when you are in Jejuri next.
Of course he's only a second class god
and his place is just outside the main temple.
Outside even of the outer wall.
As if he belonged
among the tradesmen and the lepers.
I've known gods
prettier faced
or straighter laced.
Gods who soak you for your gold.
Gods who soak you for your soul.
Gods who make you walk
on a bed of burning coal.
Gods who put a child inside your wife.
Or a knife inside your enemy.
Gods who tell you how to live your life,
double your money
or triple your land holdings.
Gods who can barely suppress a smile
as you crawl a mile for them.
Gods who will see you drown
if you won't buy them a new crown.
And although I'm sure they're all to be praised,
they're either too symmetrical
or too theatrical for my taste.
Yeshwant Rao,
mass of basalt,
bright as any post box,
the shape of protoplasm
or king size lava pie
thrown against the wall,
without an arm, a leg
or even a single head.
Yeshwant Rao.
He's the god you've got to meet.
If you're short of a limb,
Yeshwant Rao will lend you a hand
and get you back on your feet.
Yeshwant Rao
Does nothing spectacular.
He doesn't promise you the earth
Or book your seat on the next rocket to heaven.
But if any bones are broken,
you know he'll mend them.
He'll make you whole in your body
and hope your spirit will look after itself.
He is merely a kind of a bone-setter.
The only thing is,
as he himself has no heads, hands and feet,
he happens to understand you a little better.
Stones and gods,
crushed under the weight of the mountains.
And in the dust that flows in my direction,
some poems fly right into my eyes,
and all I have for them,
is my unexpected tears.
Couple of poems from the poet...
The Station Dog
The spirit of the place
lives inside the mangy body
of the station dog
doing penance for the last
three hundred years under
the tree of arrivals and departures
the dog opens his right eye
just long enough to look at and see
whether you're a man or a demigod
or the eight armed railway timetable come
to stroke him on the head
with a healing hand
and to take him to heaven
the dog decides
the day is not yet
Yeshwant Rao
Are you looking for a god?
I know a good one.
His name is Yeshwant Rao
and he's one of the best.
look him up
when you are in Jejuri next.
Of course he's only a second class god
and his place is just outside the main temple.
Outside even of the outer wall.
As if he belonged
among the tradesmen and the lepers.
I've known gods
prettier faced
or straighter laced.
Gods who soak you for your gold.
Gods who soak you for your soul.
Gods who make you walk
on a bed of burning coal.
Gods who put a child inside your wife.
Or a knife inside your enemy.
Gods who tell you how to live your life,
double your money
or triple your land holdings.
Gods who can barely suppress a smile
as you crawl a mile for them.
Gods who will see you drown
if you won't buy them a new crown.
And although I'm sure they're all to be praised,
they're either too symmetrical
or too theatrical for my taste.
Yeshwant Rao,
mass of basalt,
bright as any post box,
the shape of protoplasm
or king size lava pie
thrown against the wall,
without an arm, a leg
or even a single head.
Yeshwant Rao.
He's the god you've got to meet.
If you're short of a limb,
Yeshwant Rao will lend you a hand
and get you back on your feet.
Yeshwant Rao
Does nothing spectacular.
He doesn't promise you the earth
Or book your seat on the next rocket to heaven.
But if any bones are broken,
you know he'll mend them.
He'll make you whole in your body
and hope your spirit will look after itself.
He is merely a kind of a bone-setter.
The only thing is,
as he himself has no heads, hands and feet,
he happens to understand you a little better.
Read
August 21, 2025God is the word
and I know it backwards.
I know it as fangs
inside my flanks.
But I also know it
as a lamb
between my teeth,
as a taste of blood
upon my tongue.
And this is the only song
I’ve always sung.
-Excerpt of “A Song for a Vaghya”
A poetry collection that demands to be read over and over. The way Kolatkar explores the intersection of and overlap between the divine and the mundane is deeply affecting and continuously shows his mastery of the form. Although this collection is very short, it remains deeply profound. Absolutely recommend.
02/01/2025 Reread:
as predicted, this collection is even more stirring and poignant upon my reread. I cannot wait to continue to revisit this work for many years to come.
“A Scratch”
what is god
and what is stone
the dividing line
if it exists
is very thin
at jejuri
and every other stone
is god or his cousin
there is no crop
other than god
and god is harvested here
around the year
and round the clock
out of the bad earth
and the hard rock
that giant hunk of rock
the size of a bedroom
is khandoba's wife turned to stone
the crack that runs across
is the scar from his broadsword
he struck her down with
once in a fit of rage
scratch a rock
and a legend springs
and I know it backwards.
I know it as fangs
inside my flanks.
But I also know it
as a lamb
between my teeth,
as a taste of blood
upon my tongue.
And this is the only song
I’ve always sung.
-Excerpt of “A Song for a Vaghya”
A poetry collection that demands to be read over and over. The way Kolatkar explores the intersection of and overlap between the divine and the mundane is deeply affecting and continuously shows his mastery of the form. Although this collection is very short, it remains deeply profound. Absolutely recommend.
02/01/2025 Reread:
as predicted, this collection is even more stirring and poignant upon my reread. I cannot wait to continue to revisit this work for many years to come.
“A Scratch”
what is god
and what is stone
the dividing line
if it exists
is very thin
at jejuri
and every other stone
is god or his cousin
there is no crop
other than god
and god is harvested here
around the year
and round the clock
out of the bad earth
and the hard rock
that giant hunk of rock
the size of a bedroom
is khandoba's wife turned to stone
the crack that runs across
is the scar from his broadsword
he struck her down with
once in a fit of rage
scratch a rock
and a legend springs
February 19, 2016
1. Try to get the Pras edition: it makes the difference between reading Jejuri as opposed to a photocopy of Jejuri.
2. Jejuri, more than just poems about a Temple town, speaks to everything in you that goes
Up&down and Up
&down and
Up
&down
Up
&downUp&downUp&
downUp&down
2. Jejuri, more than just poems about a Temple town, speaks to everything in you that goes
Up&down and Up
&down and
Up
&down
Up
&downUp&downUp&
downUp&down
October 16, 2012
"The presiding deity of Jejuri is not Khandoba, but the human eye." - Arvind Krishna Mehrotra.
August 17, 2016
About one fourth of the poems I found tough to interpret or appreciate. Rest were good.
A few spectacular.
A few spectacular.
October 1, 2020
A masterful, masterful collection. Some poems are absurd; absurdity becomes the key. Only Kolatkar can get away with such writing. The confidence of the poet oozes in and out of the poetic realm of Jejuri.
October 14, 2020
Absolute beauty. The layers of meaning hidden in these simple words and journey. Something I will read and keep rereading.
July 23, 2023
ich habe eine zweisprachige ausgabe dieses gedichtbands gelesen, aber, um direkt meinen größten kritikpunkt an der deutschen ausgabe vorwegzunehmen: die übersetzung hätte man sich sparen können. die gedichte selber sind dagegen wunderbar, bleiben vordegründig auf einer saloppen, deskriptiven ebene, gewinnen aber dadurch an eigenständiger musikalität und lassen verblüffende vergleiche und analogien zu. aus einer nervigen bettlerin wird beim blick in ihre leeren augen eine verzweifelte, die auf die verzweiflung des ortes selbst verweist; ein fahrplan ist für den bahnhofsvorsteher eine heilige schrift. jejuri ist ein indischer wallfahrtsort, der außerhalb der festzeiten im verfall begriffen scheint, so erfährt man im nachwort. kolatkar blickt als kosmopolit auf diesen ureigenen ort hinduistischer kultur und indischer tradition und beleuchtet verschiedenste facetten, nähert sich ambivalent und lässt doch nie zu, dass sein stil zur spöttelei wird. die gedichte spinnen ein netz, das jejuri an den meisten stellen wunderbar einfängt und das eine derart schlechte übersetzung nicht verdient.
January 10, 2013
Came across Arun Koalkar in a article and immediatly as I was in India bought Gala Ghoda Poems and Sarpa Satra few years back. Though thin volumes I only flicked through them and left it to adorn my book shelf. Thsi year I got Jejury and took it yesterday night to read.
Not being a poetry man most poems went above my head. But what does strike is his keen observation of the ambiguity of spirituality and pilgrimage in India.
What is god
and what i stone
the dividing line
if it exists
is ver thin
at jejuri
and every other stone
is god or his cousin
------
Not being a poetry man most poems went above my head. But what does strike is his keen observation of the ambiguity of spirituality and pilgrimage in India.
What is god
and what i stone
the dividing line
if it exists
is ver thin
at jejuri
and every other stone
is god or his cousin
------
Read
November 24, 2016Extraordinary. Compels one to read again and again.
October 15, 2024
"God is the word
and I know it backwards.
I know it as fangs
inside my flanks.
But I also know it
as a lamb
between my teeth,
as a taste of blood
upon my tongue.
And this is the only song
I've always sung."
Banger book ॐ Also shoutout to Amit Chaudhuri... I wasn't familiar with your game. Didn't think much of the novella by him that I read a couple years ago but his introduction to this book was great so I'll have to give him another chance.
and I know it backwards.
I know it as fangs
inside my flanks.
But I also know it
as a lamb
between my teeth,
as a taste of blood
upon my tongue.
And this is the only song
I've always sung."
Banger book ॐ Also shoutout to Amit Chaudhuri... I wasn't familiar with your game. Didn't think much of the novella by him that I read a couple years ago but his introduction to this book was great so I'll have to give him another chance.
October 2, 2020
Jejuri opened my eyes to the world of Kolatkar. His is not a world which I haven't witnessed before, but looking at it through his eyes, can only be defined as an experience.
It is lucid, whimsical, raw, irreverential and celebratory all at the same time.
And that's the genius of Jejuri. Genius of Kolatkar.
Please read once In a lifetime.
It is lucid, whimsical, raw, irreverential and celebratory all at the same time.
And that's the genius of Jejuri. Genius of Kolatkar.
Please read once In a lifetime.
November 19, 2023
If you normally skip intros do not do this for Jejuri, there's so much historical and cultural context that really makes this shine even if you're a beat poet hater (I don't hate but it's not my favorite)
kinda wish the notes at the end were footnotes on first read through, but that's probably incredibly annoying for anyone who already knows all of the background and for rereading
kinda wish the notes at the end were footnotes on first read through, but that's probably incredibly annoying for anyone who already knows all of the background and for rereading
January 3, 2024
"he popped a stone
in his mouth
and spat out gods"
in his mouth
and spat out gods"
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 31, 2025
“Scratch a rock, and a legend springs” stunning collection of poetry AND I learned new things 👍🏻
September 11, 2022
Flaneur bidnezz
August 23, 2015
This slim book of poems has Arun Kolatkar visiting the temple town of Jejuri in my own home state of Maharashtra where 'every other stone is a god or his cousin'. The poems are delicately written yet sharply observed - a temple door, a yellow butterfly and Maruti himself find equal care given to them all in turn.
The poet's words conjure up a world that to me is nearly achingly familiar. A pilgrimage is less of a spiritual and more of a mechanical experience these days and so it is here. But there is a god whose temple is more than a mere 'house of god' - Yeshwant Rao. the bone-setter, whose temple sits outside the gates of the main temple, a carelessly hewn mass of stony protoplasm, who cares for broken limbs because he has none of his own.
Kolatkar's poems mean so much because they remind me of temple towns I myself visited as a child with a particularly devout mother and they're all startlingly similar it appears.
In the end, there's a wait at a sleepy old train station where you never know when the next train will come and the sun sets while an indicator seems to say time really has stopped here. Not so strange really, to have left the land of gods and have ended up in limbo.
The poet's words conjure up a world that to me is nearly achingly familiar. A pilgrimage is less of a spiritual and more of a mechanical experience these days and so it is here. But there is a god whose temple is more than a mere 'house of god' - Yeshwant Rao. the bone-setter, whose temple sits outside the gates of the main temple, a carelessly hewn mass of stony protoplasm, who cares for broken limbs because he has none of his own.
Kolatkar's poems mean so much because they remind me of temple towns I myself visited as a child with a particularly devout mother and they're all startlingly similar it appears.
In the end, there's a wait at a sleepy old train station where you never know when the next train will come and the sun sets while an indicator seems to say time really has stopped here. Not so strange really, to have left the land of gods and have ended up in limbo.
May 9, 2017
This is probably more like a 5. I'm just an asshole, message me if you want to hear me go on and on about how much I enjoyed this. Someone please tell me how to properly say the writer's name. Alright that's enough before I get caught up and just start rambling. Already started. Fuck.
August 30, 2025
Arun Kolatkar’s Jejuri is one of those rare books that sneaks up on you quietly and then refuses to let go, not because of grand declarations or lofty philosophical arguments but through a deceptively simple sequence of poems that seem, at first, to merely describe what is seen.
And yet, in the way Kolatkar sees, in the sharp edges of his irony and the sudden softness of his lyricism, in his juxtaposition of the sacred and the profane, he creates a vision of modern India that is both unsettlingly real and strangely luminous. The book has rightly come to be considered one of the great works of Indian modernism, though it wears its greatness with the same unassuming simplicity with which it observes a roadside shrine or a cracked idol.
The premise of Jejuri is straightforward. The town of Jejuri, a pilgrimage site in Maharashtra associated with the god Khandoba, becomes the stage for Kolatkar’s poetic gaze.
But instead of reverence or outright rejection, Kolatkar positions himself as a traveller, a stranger who watches, questions, laughs, and sometimes pauses in awe. He sees the broken gods, the dusty temples, the hucksters selling faith, and the pilgrims who come seeking salvation but stumble across commerce at every step.
In his vision, the town is at once ancient and modern, holy and commercialized, sublime and absurd. What makes the sequence compelling is how Kolatkar manages to hold these contradictions without trying to resolve them. The poems simply witness, and through this act of witnessing, a deeper spiritual tension emerges.
The language of Jejuri is what startles most readers. It is pared down, almost skeletal. The metaphors are so plain they feel like everyday speech, and yet the effect is haunting. A cracked idol becomes an old man dozing in the sun; a temple is nothing more than stones precariously balanced; a priest is both comic and sinister.
Kolatkar’s spareness refuses ornamentation, stripping away devotional excess until we are left with the bare materiality of faith — a crumbling wall, a thin garland, a crow perched indifferently. But this spareness is not nihilism. Beneath the surface, there is something aching, a yearning for contact with the divine trace in a world that appears increasingly degenerate.
One of the miracles of Jejuri is its tonal balance. Kolatkar can be devastatingly funny — his satire on the priests, the pilgrims, and the machinery of faith is sharp, almost cruel. And yet, in the next line, he can turn sorrowful, letting a sliver of the sacred break through the cracks. In this oscillation between comedy and elegy, the book achieves its peculiar music. The poems sing because they don’t try to sing; they sing because they are fragments of overheard voices, glimpses of fleeting images.
Much has been written about the modernist sensibility of Kolatkar, about how he transforms the pilgrimage into an existential journey, a spiritual quest for meaning in the ruins of tradition. This is true, but it does not quite capture the lived texture of the poems.
Reading Jejuri is like walking through a town you think you know — temples, idols, priests, pilgrims — and suddenly realising that every stone, every broken wall, every crooked smile contains within it a history too large to grasp. Kolatkar gives us no solutions, no doctrinal answers. He merely allows us to see, and in that seeing lies a kind of devotion.
The introduction by Amit Chaudhuri in later editions frames the work as one of the masterpieces of modern Indian poetry, and rightly so. But it is important to note that Kolatkar himself was wary of grand literary categories.
He wanted the poems to remain small, approachable, almost throwaway. That is their genius. They are fragments of conversation, moments of vision, and snapshots that together form a mosaic of a place and its metaphysical condition. To inflate them into symbols risks missing their intimacy.
And yet, despite their humility, the poems endure. For readers today, Jejuri still speaks with the freshness of someone pointing out the obvious, making you laugh and then suddenly making you pause.
It captures not just the contradictions of India’s religious life but also the contradictions within any seeker — the desire to believe and the suspicion of belief, the pull towards transcendence and the drag of the everyday.
Kolatkar gives us no god, no revelation, but he gives us the flicker of something just out of reach, glimpsed in the cracks of stone, heard in the laughter of a pilgrim, felt in the dust of a road. That flicker may be all we have, but in Jejuri, it becomes enough.
And yet, in the way Kolatkar sees, in the sharp edges of his irony and the sudden softness of his lyricism, in his juxtaposition of the sacred and the profane, he creates a vision of modern India that is both unsettlingly real and strangely luminous. The book has rightly come to be considered one of the great works of Indian modernism, though it wears its greatness with the same unassuming simplicity with which it observes a roadside shrine or a cracked idol.
The premise of Jejuri is straightforward. The town of Jejuri, a pilgrimage site in Maharashtra associated with the god Khandoba, becomes the stage for Kolatkar’s poetic gaze.
But instead of reverence or outright rejection, Kolatkar positions himself as a traveller, a stranger who watches, questions, laughs, and sometimes pauses in awe. He sees the broken gods, the dusty temples, the hucksters selling faith, and the pilgrims who come seeking salvation but stumble across commerce at every step.
In his vision, the town is at once ancient and modern, holy and commercialized, sublime and absurd. What makes the sequence compelling is how Kolatkar manages to hold these contradictions without trying to resolve them. The poems simply witness, and through this act of witnessing, a deeper spiritual tension emerges.
The language of Jejuri is what startles most readers. It is pared down, almost skeletal. The metaphors are so plain they feel like everyday speech, and yet the effect is haunting. A cracked idol becomes an old man dozing in the sun; a temple is nothing more than stones precariously balanced; a priest is both comic and sinister.
Kolatkar’s spareness refuses ornamentation, stripping away devotional excess until we are left with the bare materiality of faith — a crumbling wall, a thin garland, a crow perched indifferently. But this spareness is not nihilism. Beneath the surface, there is something aching, a yearning for contact with the divine trace in a world that appears increasingly degenerate.
One of the miracles of Jejuri is its tonal balance. Kolatkar can be devastatingly funny — his satire on the priests, the pilgrims, and the machinery of faith is sharp, almost cruel. And yet, in the next line, he can turn sorrowful, letting a sliver of the sacred break through the cracks. In this oscillation between comedy and elegy, the book achieves its peculiar music. The poems sing because they don’t try to sing; they sing because they are fragments of overheard voices, glimpses of fleeting images.
Much has been written about the modernist sensibility of Kolatkar, about how he transforms the pilgrimage into an existential journey, a spiritual quest for meaning in the ruins of tradition. This is true, but it does not quite capture the lived texture of the poems.
Reading Jejuri is like walking through a town you think you know — temples, idols, priests, pilgrims — and suddenly realising that every stone, every broken wall, every crooked smile contains within it a history too large to grasp. Kolatkar gives us no solutions, no doctrinal answers. He merely allows us to see, and in that seeing lies a kind of devotion.
The introduction by Amit Chaudhuri in later editions frames the work as one of the masterpieces of modern Indian poetry, and rightly so. But it is important to note that Kolatkar himself was wary of grand literary categories.
He wanted the poems to remain small, approachable, almost throwaway. That is their genius. They are fragments of conversation, moments of vision, and snapshots that together form a mosaic of a place and its metaphysical condition. To inflate them into symbols risks missing their intimacy.
And yet, despite their humility, the poems endure. For readers today, Jejuri still speaks with the freshness of someone pointing out the obvious, making you laugh and then suddenly making you pause.
It captures not just the contradictions of India’s religious life but also the contradictions within any seeker — the desire to believe and the suspicion of belief, the pull towards transcendence and the drag of the everyday.
Kolatkar gives us no god, no revelation, but he gives us the flicker of something just out of reach, glimpsed in the cracks of stone, heard in the laughter of a pilgrim, felt in the dust of a road. That flicker may be all we have, but in Jejuri, it becomes enough.
January 29, 2022
Jejuri is a unique and inventive sequence of poems. Building upon a loose narrative (from the description: "a visit to the town [of Jejuri] - a place that is as crassly commercial as it is holy, as modern and ruinous as it is ancient and enduring. Evoking the town's crowded streets, many shrines, and mythic history of sages and gods"), from arrival in the town of Jejuri to departure. Or, attempted departure, as the mystically charged town seems to thwart the narrator's departure, stranding him on the platform waiting for the next train (with the arrival of said train being concealed from him)...
if only someone would tell you
when the next train is due
In-between, the sequence strays from narrative to descriptive, as in the poem The Doorstep that describes a doorstep thus:
That's no doorstep.
It's a pillar on its side.
Yes.
That's what it is.
The Doorstep also serves to demonstrate the varying length of the poems. Quoted above is the poem in its entirety. Whereas most poems are one page (or less) in length, others stretch a few pages.
The sequence also strays to include shorter narratives, such as Ajamil and the Tigers (a story with a moral, but with no apparent connection to the overarching narrative, aside from the possible relevance a shepherd and pack of tigers may hold to the people of the town).
My favourite poem from the sequence is Between Jejuri and the Railway Station, in which the strange habits of cocks and hens is described...
What has stopped you in your tracks
and taken your breath away
is the sight
of a dozen cocks and hens in a field of jowar
in a kind of harvest dance. The craziest thing you've ever seen.
Where seven jump straight up to at least four times
their height
as five come down with grain in their beaks.
What's remarkable about the poem, for me, is that the poet then attempts to replicate the "dance" of the cocks and hens by scrambling the layout of the words "up and down" repeating the words "up and down" as the scrambled letters descended into increasing disarray.
if only someone would tell you
when the next train is due
In-between, the sequence strays from narrative to descriptive, as in the poem The Doorstep that describes a doorstep thus:
That's no doorstep.
It's a pillar on its side.
Yes.
That's what it is.
The Doorstep also serves to demonstrate the varying length of the poems. Quoted above is the poem in its entirety. Whereas most poems are one page (or less) in length, others stretch a few pages.
The sequence also strays to include shorter narratives, such as Ajamil and the Tigers (a story with a moral, but with no apparent connection to the overarching narrative, aside from the possible relevance a shepherd and pack of tigers may hold to the people of the town).
My favourite poem from the sequence is Between Jejuri and the Railway Station, in which the strange habits of cocks and hens is described...
What has stopped you in your tracks
and taken your breath away
is the sight
of a dozen cocks and hens in a field of jowar
in a kind of harvest dance. The craziest thing you've ever seen.
Where seven jump straight up to at least four times
their height
as five come down with grain in their beaks.
What's remarkable about the poem, for me, is that the poet then attempts to replicate the "dance" of the cocks and hens by scrambling the layout of the words "up and down" repeating the words "up and down" as the scrambled letters descended into increasing disarray.
December 11, 2023
An absolutely stunning collection! Discovered the poignancy and nuance of Kolatkar's poems through one of my classmate's presentation and I'm in awe of his work. His poetry embodies what D.H. Lawrence called "the artistic creation of ordinariness". The following are two of my favourite poems from the collection.
HEART OF RUIN
The roof comes down on Maruti's head.
Nobody seems to mind.
Least of all Maruti himself
May be he likes a temple better this way.
A mongrel bitch has found a place
for herself and her puppies
in the heart of the ruin.
May be she likes a temple better this way.
The bitch looks at you guardedly
Past a doorway cluttered with broken tiles.
The pariah puppies tumble over her.
May be they like a temple better this way.
The black eared puppy has gone a little too far.
A tile clicks under its foot.
It's enough to strike terror in the heart
of a dung beetle
and send him running for cover
to the safety of the broken collection box
that never did get a chance to get out
from under the crushing weight of the roof beam.
No more a place of worship this place
is nothing less than the house of god. (The sheer brilliance of this sentence!!!)
AN OLD WOMAN
An old woman grabs
hold of your sleeve
and tags along.
She wants a fifty paise coin.
She says she will take you
to the horseshoe shrine.
You've seen it already.
She hobbles along anyway
and tightens her grip on your shirt.
She won't let you go.
You know how old women are.
They stick to you like a burr.
You turn around and face her
with an air of finality.
You want to end the farce.
When you hear her say,
‘What else can an old woman do
on hills as wretched as these?'
You look right at the sky.
Clear through the bullet holes
she has for her eyes.
And as you look on
the cracks that begin around her eyes
spread beyond her skin.
And the hills crack.
And the temples crack.
And the sky falls
with a plateglass clatter
around the shatter proof crone
who stands alone.
And you are reduced
to so much small change
in her hand.
HEART OF RUIN
The roof comes down on Maruti's head.
Nobody seems to mind.
Least of all Maruti himself
May be he likes a temple better this way.
A mongrel bitch has found a place
for herself and her puppies
in the heart of the ruin.
May be she likes a temple better this way.
The bitch looks at you guardedly
Past a doorway cluttered with broken tiles.
The pariah puppies tumble over her.
May be they like a temple better this way.
The black eared puppy has gone a little too far.
A tile clicks under its foot.
It's enough to strike terror in the heart
of a dung beetle
and send him running for cover
to the safety of the broken collection box
that never did get a chance to get out
from under the crushing weight of the roof beam.
No more a place of worship this place
is nothing less than the house of god. (The sheer brilliance of this sentence!!!)
AN OLD WOMAN
An old woman grabs
hold of your sleeve
and tags along.
She wants a fifty paise coin.
She says she will take you
to the horseshoe shrine.
You've seen it already.
She hobbles along anyway
and tightens her grip on your shirt.
She won't let you go.
You know how old women are.
They stick to you like a burr.
You turn around and face her
with an air of finality.
You want to end the farce.
When you hear her say,
‘What else can an old woman do
on hills as wretched as these?'
You look right at the sky.
Clear through the bullet holes
she has for her eyes.
And as you look on
the cracks that begin around her eyes
spread beyond her skin.
And the hills crack.
And the temples crack.
And the sky falls
with a plateglass clatter
around the shatter proof crone
who stands alone.
And you are reduced
to so much small change
in her hand.
December 5, 2025
What struck me about Jejuri was how disorienting most of it felt, and then how suddenly clear certain poems were, especially after reading the notes at the end. I was kind of drifting through the book, not always sure how the fragments connected, but “Ajamil and the Tigers” and “Yeshwant Rao” snapped into focus for me. In “Ajamil and the Tigers,” the shepherd/tiger setup looks like a simple fable at first, but the details complicate it. When we’re told that “Ajamil signed a pact / with the tiger people and sent them back…” the poem suddenly shifts from a moral tale about lying into something more like negotiation or survival. The shepherd isn’t just bad; he’s working inside a system where everyone wants something. Then the line, “Like all good shepherds he knew / that even tigers have got to eat some time,” really blurs the categories, you expect “good shepherd” to mean protector, but here it also means someone who understands and even accommodates the predators. That tension between care and betrayal, lying and practicality, made the poem feel way richer than a straightforward warning against dishonesty.
“Yeshwant Rao” hits a different note but connects back to those questions about what people want from gods and stories. After a poem where a “good shepherd” is quietly complicit with danger, the local god in “Yeshwant Rao” comes across as almost the opposite energy: modest, underpowered, but weirdly steady. Instead of fear, spectacle, or trickery, you get a god who just sits there and absorbs people’s wishes and anxieties, without demanding much in return. Next to Ajamil’s backroom “pact” and the whole ecosystem of taking in that poem, Yeshwant Rao feels like a figure of quiet selflessness. Even though I found a lot of Jejuri confusing, these two poems made the book click a bit for me: Kolatkar seems less interested in preaching clear spiritual lessons and more interested in showing all the crooked, compromised, and sometimes humble ways humans try to navigate faith, survival, and the need to be cared for.
“Yeshwant Rao” hits a different note but connects back to those questions about what people want from gods and stories. After a poem where a “good shepherd” is quietly complicit with danger, the local god in “Yeshwant Rao” comes across as almost the opposite energy: modest, underpowered, but weirdly steady. Instead of fear, spectacle, or trickery, you get a god who just sits there and absorbs people’s wishes and anxieties, without demanding much in return. Next to Ajamil’s backroom “pact” and the whole ecosystem of taking in that poem, Yeshwant Rao feels like a figure of quiet selflessness. Even though I found a lot of Jejuri confusing, these two poems made the book click a bit for me: Kolatkar seems less interested in preaching clear spiritual lessons and more interested in showing all the crooked, compromised, and sometimes humble ways humans try to navigate faith, survival, and the need to be cared for.
September 20, 2023
I don't usually pick up poetry collections and read them in one go but this time I picked up this wonderful book Jejuri by modernist bilingual poet Arun Kolatkar. To be very honest, I took it up because it was in my academia but at the same time, it did impress me. The ones who are into academia know about Kolatkar but the ones who are not might not have heard his name as frequently as Nissim Ezekiel or Kamala Das. Arun Kolatkar's works are par excellence if we look at the poetic skill.
Jejuri is the small pilgrimage town in Maharashtra where Khandobaji, a form of Shiva is worshipped. The poet writes a whole journey through the pilgrimage. It is a critique on the current institutionalised form of religion. Although I do read poetry a lot and it intrestes me, it is not always that a poetry collection truly impresses you. Arun Kolatkar is a master story teller through his un rhymed free verses. Every poem irrespective of its length tells a story. Every story is reflective of the people and society as a whole.
When I picked it up, I thought I would be just taking it up for the assignments part but rather ended up loving the whole of Jejuri itself. You will find these characters everywhere around you when looked carefully. If you are wishing to jump into Indian poetry and it's modern literary form, Arun Kolatkar's Jejuri is the best starting point before going to Nissim Ezekiel and the later writers like Kamala Das. I would suggest everyone to take this wonderful collection and read it. You won't regret even one bit
- Padmanabha Reddy
Jejuri is the small pilgrimage town in Maharashtra where Khandobaji, a form of Shiva is worshipped. The poet writes a whole journey through the pilgrimage. It is a critique on the current institutionalised form of religion. Although I do read poetry a lot and it intrestes me, it is not always that a poetry collection truly impresses you. Arun Kolatkar is a master story teller through his un rhymed free verses. Every poem irrespective of its length tells a story. Every story is reflective of the people and society as a whole.
When I picked it up, I thought I would be just taking it up for the assignments part but rather ended up loving the whole of Jejuri itself. You will find these characters everywhere around you when looked carefully. If you are wishing to jump into Indian poetry and it's modern literary form, Arun Kolatkar's Jejuri is the best starting point before going to Nissim Ezekiel and the later writers like Kamala Das. I would suggest everyone to take this wonderful collection and read it. You won't regret even one bit
- Padmanabha Reddy
March 17, 2025
I have written this short forum post that I think pretty much sums up the main theme of this poetry collection:
An overarching theme in Kolatkar’s Jejuri is the consignment of the sacred to the secular. In “Heart of Ruin,” the speaker is preoccupied with contemplating some puppies instead of thinking about the religious significance of the temple. He notices the “doorway cluttered with broken tiles … The black eared puppy [going] a little too far. A tile clicks under its foot.” The immediacy of this mundane scene elevates the temple into “nothing less than the house of god.” We can see the black eared puppy as a symbol of the speaker since its unheeding ruination of the tile reflects the poem’s figurative dismantling of the sacred: the parturition of the puppies in the temple transforms the place into a proper house of god. The next poem, “The Doorstep,” extends this theme of ruination: “That’s no doorstep. / It’s a pillar on its side.” The pillar reduced to a steppingstone indicates the speaker’s relativization of the temple into something more secular and workaday. In “Manohar,” the speaker’s friend enters a temple only to find a “wide eyed calf” staring back at him. He concludes that this “isn’t another temple … it’s just a cowshed.” Again, we see the sacred being vitiated into something plain and even laughable.
An overarching theme in Kolatkar’s Jejuri is the consignment of the sacred to the secular. In “Heart of Ruin,” the speaker is preoccupied with contemplating some puppies instead of thinking about the religious significance of the temple. He notices the “doorway cluttered with broken tiles … The black eared puppy [going] a little too far. A tile clicks under its foot.” The immediacy of this mundane scene elevates the temple into “nothing less than the house of god.” We can see the black eared puppy as a symbol of the speaker since its unheeding ruination of the tile reflects the poem’s figurative dismantling of the sacred: the parturition of the puppies in the temple transforms the place into a proper house of god. The next poem, “The Doorstep,” extends this theme of ruination: “That’s no doorstep. / It’s a pillar on its side.” The pillar reduced to a steppingstone indicates the speaker’s relativization of the temple into something more secular and workaday. In “Manohar,” the speaker’s friend enters a temple only to find a “wide eyed calf” staring back at him. He concludes that this “isn’t another temple … it’s just a cowshed.” Again, we see the sacred being vitiated into something plain and even laughable.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 56 reviews