lord shriram listens in attention as kushluv sing ramayanyoung twins of tender age live statues of the lord himselffathers life his sons narrate like lamps in tribute to the sunthese are the opening lines of geet ramayana the masterpiece in marathi literature created by poet g d madgulkar and composersinger sudhir phadke which can now be sung in english nashikbased industrialistturnpoet chandrashekhar sahastrabuddhe has made this possible by translating all 56 songs of geet ramayana in english keeping the original tunes of the song in mind one can sing the english version of geet ramayana following the original compositions of phadke neither am i an expert in english language nor am i a poet but like thousands of marathi literature lovers i am an ardent follower of geet ramayana which is worshipped as the original valmiki ramayana in marathi households even today as a young engineering student i had translated some poems of kusumagraja v v shirwadkar and the poet who used to be in nashik those days had admired my work this inspired me to translate geet ramayana however it took me many years to take up the task recalls sahastrabuddhe who owns an engineering industry in satpur midcinitially it took two years to translate all the 56 songs but in my second reading i realised that the translation was not up to the mark so i decided to defer the project for some time he said it took another 13 years for him to revisit the project in august last year this time around the industrialist had ample time experience and technology too aid him in his unique projectreworking on my previous songs proved fruitful it was like building a bridge between the two languages he added sahastrabuddhes wife rohini an eglish professor in a college in nashik became his first critic she used to suggest me criticize me and correct me several times finally all the 56 songs were completed by february sahastrabuddhe said his idea was to release the english version online for free and make it available worldwide however nashiks leading publisher swanand bedakar insisted that he publish the poems in book format first the book was published on saturday the book contains the original marathi poems on the right side of the page and the english translations on the left another special feature of the book is the illustrations by internationally acclaimed painter anand sonar who has painted ramayana in his original indian ornamental style i understand the translation must stand on its own but my view was to give the simultaneous access of the original script to those who know marathi i followed the same stanza pattern and tried to retain the fluency of the language in my poems my aim was to translate the content without losing the original flavour and meaning of the poems sahastrabuddhe said now that the book has been released sahastrabuddhe plans to make it available online for free his dream is to see someone with