When you think of poets, a person with a stethoscope and a white coat would never come to mind. Nevertheless, Gieve Patel, a renowned poet, playwright, and painter, who was a physician by occupation, was indeed an exception. Embarking on his journey of poems, he has also participated in saving the environment by becoming a part of the ‘Green Movement’, which was focused on protecting the environment. Gieve Patel records his journey to different art forms, including painting, poetry, and playwriting. In today’s blog, we are taking you to explore Gieve Patel Biography, a famous poet in Indian literature who has been successful in reflecting light on society.
Gieve Patel Biography
To begin with, Gieve Patel was an Indian poet, painter, playwright, and physician. He studied medicine, and after practicing as a general physician for more than four decades, he began to under human suffering, morality, and everyday experiences of life. It was after this that his interest in the arts took him to poetry and painting. Unlike other poets, he did not come from a literary background and was shuffling through the pages of medicine and literature.
Gieve Patel Early Life and Education
Gieve Patel born in a small affluent Parsi culture of Mumbai, was a renowned poet, painter, playwright, and doctor. He was born in Bombay (now known as Mumbai) on 18 August 1940 and spent his whole life in India. He was the son of a dentist and the daughter of a doctor. It appears that it was his background in his family that coerced him into studying medicine and working as a general physician. He attended St. Xavier’s High School and Grant Medical College, both in Mumbai. Once he was a doctor, he worked first in a government health position in his hometown of Nargol in the southern part of Gujarat. Subsequently, he worked as a general doctor in Mumbai until his retirement in 2005.
Gieve Patel, without exposing his personal life to the public despite the social realities and challenges, did not share his personal life with the public. Gieve Patel, being a public figure himself, was one to keep his personal life personal. People curious to know about Gieve Patel wife would be disappointed to learn that information about his wife is not in the public domain.
If you are searching for Gieve Patel age, he was 83 when he succumbed to death on 3 November 2023 due to cancer. His literary and artistic legacy may be walked miles beyond words and colours to emphasize human pain and to consider social norms and the impact it has on life and nature. Because even in death, his words live on, lingering in classrooms, in textbooks, and in readers’ hearts throughout generations.
Gieve Patel Famous Poems
Patel’s initial collection of poetry is titled Poems and was released by Nissim Ezekiel in 1966. His second collection, titled How Do You Withstand, Body (1976), was released by Clearing House, whereas his third and final collection of poems is titled Mirrored Mirroring (1991). One of the major themes of Patel’s poems is the connection of his wealthy zamindar family with the tribal Warlis who worked on their farms.
If ever you have searched for “Gieve Patel famous poems,” you might have encountered some of the following titles like On Killing a Tree, From Bombay Central, and Licence. His poetry is raw, brutal, and yet intensely lyrical. Though he never glamorized suffering or nature, he unveiled the harsh realities concealed at their bottoms.
In addition to this, Gieve Patel’s three plays, i.e., Princes, Savaska, and Mister Behram, were initially performed in Bombay in 1970, 1982, and 1987, respectively, and were published in print in 2008.
Gieve Patel Paintings and Sculpture
Besides poetry, Gieve Patel was interested in painting and sculpting too. He first received public attention when he painted the Politician series in the late 1960s and early 1970s. After that, his well-known artworks are his Railway Platform series. The ideas for these paintings were from his real-life experiences from the railway stations and watching the crowd on the platforms. In the later period, he painted some of his notable works, Two Men near a Handcart, Vegetable Seller, Bus Stop, and The Letter Home.
In 2010, Patel exhibited his sculptures based on two themes: the story of Ekalavya in the Mahabharata and the Greek myth of Daphne, a fair maiden who transformed into a tree to protect herself from Apollo’s advances. Patel’s sculptures depict Daphne’s body in a semi-transformed state.
He certainly earned the respect of being a painter, having shown his works in many places. His painting, almost like poetry, questioned the human body and urban space in relation to socio-political realities. It is an unsettlingly surreal aura that sometimes encompasses his works, enforcing on the viewer the idea that art is not meant to be enjoyed; it is a challenge.
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