Two Mumbai-based poets come together for the launch of a new poetry book

Mustansir Dalvi and Hemant Divate first met over 10 years ago during a poet-exchange programme by Alliance Française de Bombay. Pic/Satej Shinde

One writes predominantly in English. The other in Marathi. But when they meet, the two poets slip out of each other's language effortlessly, as if they were always writing and thinking in both languages. Sometimes, they break into Hindi as well. That's every Mumbaikar for you, they tell this writer. Multi-lingual. Their poetry isn't.

Poet-editor-publisher-translator and former adman Hemant Divate, 56, is a native of Shahpur village, who made Mumbai his home in the 1980s. Inspired by the city's changing grammar, he began experimenting with verse in Marathi. Divate's first book, Chautishiparyantchya Kavita, came out in 2001, and he has since published five collections, and worked on three translations. He is consumed by nature, and the changing polity and urban fabric.

His friend, Mustansir Dalvi, 59, who is also a poet, editor and translator, and a professor at the Sir JJ School of Architecture, identifies as a South Bombay poet, even though he resides in Navi Mumbai, and should, according to Divate, be called a suburban poet. "SoBo poets only write in English. I feel that Mustansir thinks in Marathi… like me," shares the Andheri resident. Dalvi has published three books of poems. He reveres buildings, is invested in Mumbai's heritage, but like Divate, is equally perturbed by the politics of our time.

Where one bridge divides them, another brings both together.

The two recently collaborated on a book of poems, Paranoia, that Divate had first written in Marathi in 2020. The collection, which won him the Maharashtra State Kavi Keshavsut Purskar, has now been translated into English by Dalvi. This is not the first time the two have worked with each other. During the pandemic, Divate translated Dalvi's poignant collection, Walk, into Marathi. His poems paid tribute to the millions of Indian workers, "already living precariously between village and the city", who were turned into migrants in their own land. Their writing, through their translations, continue to rub off on each other.

"I met Hemant sometime in 2011, when the Alliance Française de Bombay had invited three Indian poets [Dalvi, Divate, and Sampurna Chattarji] to Marseille, as part of a five-day exchange programme. While the French poets were expected to translate our works, we had to translate theirs," remembers Dalvi, when we catch him at JJ, on a rainy afternoon. Since the French poets didn't know Marathi, Dalvi recalls translating Divate's poems to English. That's how it all began, he informs. Their first project together was Struggles with Imagined Gods, a poetry book of Divate's that Dalvi brought to life in English. "He [Divate] is very much rooted in the contemporary, and Bombay becomes an obvious sight for his poems," he says, adding, "There was a time, when he would refer to his work as POGO [post globalisation] poems… he would talk about popular culture, obsession with the material, aspiration, and contemporary life."

Our conversation is interrupted by a phone call. Divate is on the other end, and is asking for directions. Dalvi suddenly lapses into Marathi, telling him to come to the room across the corridor. Divate joins us minutes later. Dalvi continues, "His poems also critique the language in which he is writing and how it is changing, and the nature of poetry." In Paranoia, a collection of 40 poems, he says, there's a slight shift. "The general atmosphere around us today has changed, and that has influenced his poems. Therefore, these poems are both subdued and darker, with an underlying rage."

Divate, who as publisher - his imprint Poetrywala turned 20 this year - has published over 150 books, feels that Dalvi "has a very Bombay style of writing". "All of his works are rooted in the city. Sometimes, when I see what he comes up with it, I feel jealous," he says. The last work of Dalvi's that he translated were his poems from the book, Walk. "He wrote about migration and pain in a very playful language," Divate remembers. "There are multiple layers in his [Dalvi] writing. In the first layer, only words reach out to you, and in the second, you experience a lot of emotions. The kind of reader that I am, I can see both the layers." Walk was also translated into Gujarati by Udayan Thakker, and Hindi by Dalvi himself. All the four translations were published together in one book. Divate also hoped that the blind would discover it in Braille. "We were in talks with an association, and perhaps it will in good time," he says.

Dalvi was quite impressed with Divate's translation of Walk. "He uses a variety of Marathis - I don't want to use the word dialects - in different poems. That enhances the reading experience," he thinks. "At no point does it feel like a translation because of that." The other delight, Dalvi says, is watching Divate read his poems aloud. "He is gregarious, outgoing… that's an experience."

Translating each other's works involves a lot of back and forth, especially after the manuscript is complete, and they often agree to disagree. Irrespective, they are both very devoted. Divate says, "it often feels like we are working on our own poems [rather than each other's]". "We are foodies as well, so it's so much fun when we sit down together… eating and creating," he says.

That Divate travels the world for poetry - only recently he attended the Slovenia Live Literature Festival - does great service to Indian poetry, says Dalvi. Divate's works have been translated in Arabic, German, Spanish, Irish, Estonian. "A lot of this has come out of travelling," says Dalvi. Next on their agenda is not another translation, but a trip abroad. "In 2024, we plan to return to Marseille, and revive those memories."