A new book celebrates the 30-year career of Eknath Avhad, a Sahitya Akademi award-winning children’s author and poet, who draws inspiration from his day job as a BMC school teacher
Though he writes for children, Eknath Avhad has never shied away from experimenting with form or taking up literary challenges. Pic/Sameer Markande
On a sunny afternoon at Chembur’s Swami Muktananda High School, we’re peering at a mobile phone, watching a charming video of six young school girls dancing to the catchy poem Chandobachya Deshat (In Mr Moon’s Country). The writer of the poem, Eknath Avhad, smiles proudly. He doesn’t know which school these girls belong to, or where it is located, but he’s grateful that his words have reached them through a Balbharati textbook.
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“My heart was full when I came across this video… I haven’t travelled to this place myself, but my words have—there’s no bigger puraskar (award) than this,” he says. Avhad, a teacher at a BMC school nearby, knows a thing or two about puraskars—his books Chhand Dei Aanand and Shabdanchi Navlai won the 2023 Sahitya Akademi Bal Sahitya Puraskar and the 2021 Baalkavi Puraskar respectively.
The halls of the Swami Muktananda High School, where he currently serves as the chairman of the school committee, were once the backdrop of his formative years, across classes 8, 9 and 10. Here, Avhad tells us about the upcoming launch of a new book about him, rather than by him, at the NCPA on April 3: Dapur Te Dilli, compiled and authored by Jyoti Kapile of JK Media, illustrates how a young boy aged five from Nashik’s Sinnar taluka—the son of a dock worker and vegetable vendor—journeyed first to Mumbai and finally to Delhi, buoyed by 35 poetry collections and fiction titles written over three decades. “And though this remains a proud moment for me, I reiterate that it is not the culmination of my own 30-year-old writing career, but rather the result of generations of children motivating me to put pen to paper. Perhaps if these children hadn’t liked my writing, I would never have ventured forth,” Avhad says.
A living example of the ways in which a municipal school education can broaden a student’s horizons, Avhad was certain he should be a teacher—more specifically, a teacher at a municipal school that resembled his own—before he held a chalk and duster in 1993. “The education one receives from class 1 through class 7 is foundational; it certainly shaped my own life and the person I have become,” he says in reflection, “Jobs in municipal schools aren’t easy to come by—you need to have good grades, do well in written and oral tests, and only then can you qualify. Municipal teachers are of A1 quality because of the rigour we are put through.”
Though writing may not have been his hobby of choice when he was a child, Avhad was entirely immersed in the world of books, grabbing at opportunities to read aloud in class, committing stories to memory, narrating them to his parents, cousins, aunts and uncles. Avhad’s exposure to literature was further strengthened by the presence of well-stocked libraries in his school. “I used to put away pennies given to me to buy snacks so I could purchase books. In a small diary that I carried around with myself, I’d pencil in the lines that stayed with me.” In present times, too, Avhad carries a small diary around—but this one is meant for his own verses.
His days of playing narrator to family prepared him to be a storyteller at school, where he teaches Marathi, Hindi and the social sciences to classes 7 and 8. It was the absenteeism of a daughter of a ragpicker that prompted Avhad to craft his first original poem. Over the years, he played with rhyme, metre and words to arrive at a style—which he terms taal katha—through which he could craft poems with a message. The father of one has also willingly taken up literary challenges. When he
noticed children’s difficulty in reading and learning words which feature fused alphabets, he took it upon himself to write a book of poems in which no verse would feature a ‘jodakshar’.
In the classroom, he leverages his personal relationships with fellow poets and writers to give his students a richer experience. “Whatever goodwill and richness in friendships I’ve earned over the years has been a result of literature. I’m always looking for ways to ensure that my students benefit from it. If we’re reading a poem or story by a writer I know, I don’t hesitate in calling them up and asking them to recite it to the class,” Avhad says.
He has crossed paths with a number of publishers thus far, from Aurangabad’s Saket Prakashan to Pune’s Mehta Publications, and the Goa Pradesh Sane Guruji Kathamala. But he faced many of the issues that first-time, lesser-known authors do. Yet, in the first month after his debut book Bodhai was published in 2006, he was surprised to find that over a thousand copies had sold. Now, publishers reach out to him, asking if he has more verses to offer to his eager audience: children.
“My experiments in poetry, education and literature evolved because of my students. They are my most honest and harsh critics—usually the first people to respond to my drafts—and their encouragement means more to me than honours and laurels,” he says.
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