Poet, writer, filmmaker, painter, translator, editor. Author of 26 books. Widely traveled in Africa, Asia, Europe, and America. Recepient of many national and international awards, honours, and prizes. On the visiting faculty of many international universities. Lives in Pune, Maharashtra, India with wife and grandson aged 22 years. He started writing poetry in the late 1950s and the earliest influences on him were the Marathi Bhakti poets from the 13th to the 17th century, Jnanadev and Tukaram in particular, the French symbolist and surrealist poets, 20th century American poets such as Wallace Stevens, Spanish poets such as Lorca, Alberti, Vallejo, and Octavio Paz, Russian poets such as Mandelstam and Svetayeva. His poetry and other writing gradually resolved the differences between the aesthetic norms and the spiritual concerns of the two different civilizations in whose ways of thinking and feeling he was equally immersed.

Fellow, International Writing Program, University of Iowa, USA (1975-77); Writer-in-Residence and DAAD Fellow at the Universities of Bamberg and Heidelberg in Germany, three times Writer-in-Residence at the Villa Waldberta, Feldafing by invitation from the City of Munich, Bavaria, Germany.
Winner of Prix Special du Jury at the Festival des Trois Continents, Nantes, France (1984).
Paintings exhibited in India, USA, Germany, and the Netherlands and in private and corporate collections.
Winner of the Sahitya Akademi Award and the Sahitya Akademi Translation Prize (1994). Recipient of Lifetime Achievement Award, Maharashtra Foundation(2004) and Bharatiya Bhasha Parishad.
Was Professor and Head, Saint Jnanadeva Chair, University of Pune, Pune, India.