Biography
Gajanan Digambar Madgulkar was a prominent Marathi poet, lyricist, writer and actor from India. He is popularly known in his home state of Maharashtra by just his initials as Ga Di Ma (?????).It can be rightly stated that his contribution to Marathi culture was rich in its content as well as high in its quality.
Career
Madgulkar wrote poetry, short stories, novels, autobiographies and scripts, dialogs and lyrics for Marathi as well as Hindi movies. His poems are well known for being adapted to a wide range of musical forms such as Sugam-Sangeet (light music), Bhawa-Geet (emotional songs), Bhakti-Geet (devotional songs), and Lawani (a genre of folk songs in Maharashtra). Madgulkar entered the world of movies in 1938 at Kolhapur. He contributed to 157 Marathi and 23 Hindi movies.
He had knowledge of 10 languages including Marathi, Hindi, English, Urdu, Bengali, Gujarati, Punjabi, Kannada, Tamil & Telugu.
He was the elder brother of the famous Marathi writer -Vyankatesh Madgulkar,famous for poetry & novels.
Geet Ramayan
He wrote a much-acclaimed work in Marathi titled Geet Ramayan (lit. Ramayana in Songs). It consisted of 56 poems, and its theme was the story in the Sanskrit epic, Ramayan. Sudhir Phadke had composed the music for Geet Ramayan and then given its many renditions to the public. After this masterpiece, he was referred to as "Adhunik Valmiki" (Modern Valmiki).
Awards and Recognitions
Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1957
Honorary title of "Modern Valmiki" for having composed Geet Ramayan ..
