Narayan Gangaram Surve


Narayan Gangaram Surve was a Marathi poet from Maharashtra, India.

Life and career

He was born on 15 October 1926. Orphaned or abandoned soon after birth, he grew up in the streets of Mumbai, sleeping on the pavement and earning a meager livelihood by doing odd jobs. He taught himself to read and write, and in 1962, published his first collection of poems Aisa Ga Mi Brahma. Majhe Vidyapeeth, the book he would be most known for appeared in 1966 while he stayed in Chinchpokli, Mahahrashtra. He received 11 prizes for his book Majhe Vidyapeeth
Though he studied only till second standard and never climbed the steps of a college, he is known as one of the best poets of Marathi language.
Surve actively worked in the workers' union movement in Mumbai and supported himself as a schoolteacher. Surve,who had much faith in Karl Marx, won the 'Soviet Land Nehru Award' from the Soviet Union in the year 1973 as communist people of Russia were fascinated by his views and considered him similar to them. He became the editor of Lokvadmaygruha in the year 1972.
In the 1970s, he was often championed in India as well as in the Soviet Union and some Eastern bloc countries as a proletarian poet.
He died due to old age and after a brief illness on 16 August 2010.

Awards and recognition

The following is a partial list of compilations of Surve's poems and essays: