Vijay Tendulkar | |
---|---|
Born |
Vijay Dhondopant Tendulkar 6 January 1928 Kolhapur, British India (now Maharashtra, India) |
Died | 19 May 2008 Pune, India |
(aged 80)
Nationality | Indian |
Awards |
Padma Bhushan: 1984 Sangeet Nātak Akademi Fellowship: 1998 1977 National Film Award for Best Screenplay: Manthan |
Vijay Tendulkar (6 January 1928 – 19 May 2008) was a leading Indian playwright, movie and television writer, literary essayist, political journalist, and social commentator primarily in Marāthi. He is best known for his plays Shantata! Court Chalu Aahe (1967), Ghāshirām Kotwāl (1972), and Sakhārām Binder (1972). Many of Tendulkar's plays derived inspiration from real-life incidents or social upheavals, which provides clear light on harsh realities. He provided his guidance to students studying "playwright writing" in US universities. For over five decades Tendulkar had been a highly influential dramatist and theatre personality in Mahārāshtra.
Vijay Dhondopant Tendulkar was born on 6 January 1928 in Kolhapur, Maharashtra, where his father held a clerical job and ran a small publishing business. The literary environment at home prompted young Vijay to take up writing. He wrote his first story at age six.
He grew up watching western plays and felt inspired to write plays himself. At age eleven, he wrote, directed, and acted in his first play.
At age 14, he participated in the 1942 Indian freedom movement, leaving his studies. The latter alienated him from his family and friends. Writing then became his outlet, though most of his early writings were of a personal nature, and not intended for publication.
Tendulkar began his career writing for newspapers. He had already written a play, Āmcyāvar Koṇ Preṃ Karṇār (आम्च्यावऱ कोण प्रेम करणार Who will Love us?), and he wrote the play, Gṛhastha (The Householder), in his early 20s. The latter did not receive much recognition from the audience, and he vowed never to write again.
Breaking the vow, in 1956 he wrote Śrīmant, which established him as a good writer. Śrīmant jolted the conservative audience of the times with its radical storyline, wherein an unmarried young woman decides to keep her unborn child while her rich father tries to "buy" her a husband in an attempt to save his social prestige.
Tendulkar's early struggle for survival and living for some time in tenements ("cāḷ/chawls") in Mumbai provided him first-hand experience about the life of urban lower middle class. He thus brought new authenticity to their depiction in Marathi theatre. Tendulkar's writings rapidly changed the storyline of modern Marathi theatre in the 1950s and the 60s, with experimental presentations by theatre groups like Rangayan. Actors in these theatre groups like Shriram Lagoo, Mohan Agashe, and Sulabha Deshpande brought new authenticity and power to Tendulkar's stories while introducing new sensibilities in Marathi theatre.