Dilip Purushottam Chitre was one of the foremost Indian writers and critics to emerge in the post Independence India. Apart from being a very important bilingual writer, writing in Marathi and English, he was also a painter and filmmaker.
Background
He was born in Baroda on 17 September 1938 into a Marathi speaking CKP community. His father Purushottam Chitre used to publish a periodical named Abhiruchi which was highly treasured for its high, uncompromising quality. Dilip Chitre's family moved to Mumbai in 1951 and he published his first collection of poems in 1960. He was one of the earliest and the most important influences behind the famous "little magazine movement" of the sixties in Marathi. He started Shabda with Arun Kolatkar and Ramesh Samarth. In 1975, he was awarded a visiting fellowship by the International Writing Programme of the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa in the United States. He has also worked as a director of the Indian Poetry Library, archive, and translation centre at Bharat Bhavan, a multi arts foundation. He also convened a world poetry festival in New Delhi followed by an international symposium of poets in Bhopal.
Education
In 1951, at the age of 12, his family moved to Mumbai. Initially he studied at an English-medium school, but after three years he shifted to a Marathi-medium school. While in school, junior Chitre became fluent in Gujarati, Hindi and English and obviously Marathi which was his mother tongue. He then learned Bengali and Urdu as well. From the age of sixteen, Chitre began to seriously write poetry.
Career
He then learned Bengali and Urdu as well. From the age of sixteen, Chitre began to seriously write poetry. His literary career took a definite shape when he started writing for the Marathi magazine, Satyakatha, while as a student in Mumbai. In Mumbai, Chitre graduated in English honors and then worked as a journalist and a college tutor.