Ry Deshpande

Hymns to Becoming Ry Deshpande

These poems were originally composed in 1978, during the last couple of years I was in Bombay. Since then they had been sort of lying in the 'drawers' though from time to time were touched up at places. Extensive revisions were carried out first in 1980, then in 1992 and in August 1997 after coming to Sri Aurobindo Ashram at Pondicherry. Ten of these poems were included in The Rhododendron Valley published by Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, Pondicherry, in December 1985, and one in The First Hymn of Rishi V?madeva, August 2018, published by Savitri Foundation. In between many of them had appeared in the Ashram periodicals. The entire lot has been presently taken up for final publication, with the addition of the first forming a kind of unusual prolegomenon, in it the metrical scheme for each line being dactyl-dactyl-cretic-iamb-anapæst.