Vyankatesh Madgulkar
Biography
Vyankatesh Madgulkar (1927-2001) was one of the most popular Marathi writers of his time. He became known above all for his realistic stories about village life in a part of southern Maharashtra called Mandesh, set over a period of fifteen to twenty years before and after the end of British rule in India. His admirers, friends and family often called him Tatya ("great old man").
Vyankatesh Madgulkar was born in the village of Madgul in the Sangli district of Maharashtra. His father was employed by the government of the princely state of Aundh. His brother was the famous poet G.D. Madgulkar (1919-1977), regarded as the greatest Marathi poet of his time.
As a teenager, Madgulkar left home and in 1943 joined a group of underground fighters for India's freedom from British rule. After the group was exposed, he had to go into hiding for two years to avoid arrest.
After India gained independence, Madgulkar returned home. Although he never completed high school, he passed the national final examination for seven-grade Marathi-medium schools with good marks. At just fourteen he was employed as a teacher in the village of Nimbawade. He had a keen interest in reading and taught himself English so he could read English literature. John Steinbeck, George Orwell and Liam O'Flaherty influenced him.
Madgulkar could also draw and paint well, and so he went to Kolhapur to take drawing lessons. During these studies, at the age of nineteen, he entered a short-story writing competition and won a prize. This encouraged him to pursue a literary career rather than painting. His skill as a painter is nevertheless visible in his books: on the one hand he illustrated his own books with drawings, and on the other he describes things, people and events so vividly that they appear before the reader's eyes.
In 1948 he became a journalist and two years later moved to Mumbai, where he got the chance to write screenplays for several Marathi films.
In 1955 Madgulkar took a position with All India Radio in Pune, working on programmes for the rural population. He remained there for the next forty years. This gave him a secure income as well as the opportunity to exchange ideas with many artists, which no doubt helped him to pursue his work as a writer. Throughout these years he was extremely productive.
Chitrarekha Mehendale
Work
Madgulkar wrote 8 short novels, over 200 short stories, around 40 plays as well as screenplays, several folk plays, travelogues and essays on nature.
His first book, Mandeshi Manse ("People of Mandesh"), was published in 1949. His 1954 novel Bangarvadi was translated into several languages, including Hindi, English and German. A film based on Bangarvadi was directed by Amol Palekar.
His short novel Karunashtaka (1982) can be regarded as an autobiographical work. It tells the story of the author's mother, a woman from an impoverished Brahmin family in rural Maharashtra. It is a large family: the grandmother, the father, the mother and eight children. The parents are unable to raise all the children and give some of them to an orphanage or to relatives. Bitter poverty worsens as the family falls into debt and sources of income dry up. After Mahatma Gandhi is assassinated by a Brahmin, the family also finds itself confronted with public anger directed at Brahmins. While material living conditions gradually improve as more family members earn money, the woman now watches her husband and several of her children die. She bears the tragedy bravely, but remains inwardly disheartened.
Madgulkar's writing style is simple and moving. His choice of subjects is varied, with nature and wildlife as well as ordinary rural people playing a major role. Although he lived in a city for many years, he never lost touch with his village and the many different places of his youth. He worked out with precision the difference between city dwellers and country people — an enrichment for readers. His works give a good insight into living conditions in rural Maharashtra.
In 1983 Madgulkar received the Sahitya Akademi Award for his novel Sattantar ("Change of Power"). This novel shows the influence of George Orwell's Animal Farm and is a parable in which monkeys stand for certain types of people.
Other Activities
Together with two other authors, Shankar Patil and D.M. Mirasdar, Madgulkar popularised a new art form in Maharashtra — storytelling. All three performed as a group at a wide variety of places and occasions, telling their own stories, and enjoyed great success.
Madgulkar translated a number of English works into Marathi, particularly books on wildlife, as he was a keen hunter — which earned him the ironic nickname "Colonel Bahadur".
Published in German
- Das Dorf hieß Bangarvadi, translated by Günther D. Sontheimer, Mersch Verlag, Freiburg 1986 (in German)
From the translator's afterword: "Madgulkar's mode of depiction is direct and authentic. He avoids ideologising and does not subscribe to the moralising know-it-all attitude of some social reformers. He illuminates things as they are. His work stands apart from nostalgic regional literature and opens the way to a literature of universal appeal. Small wonder that 'Bangarvadi', for instance, became a nearly classic novel about village India even outside India. […] But translations struggle to convey the vividness, concision, hidden humour and unassuming melancholy of the Marathi original." (Das Dorf hieß Bangarvadi, p. 131)
Excerpts
By kind permission of Mehta Publishing House, Pune; both stories translated from the Marathi by Chitrarekha Mehendale.
1. The Flea Market
As usual, there was a flea market by the riverbank on Sunday. Old clothes, old furniture, old pots, old tools, bicycles and their spare parts, nails and screws, water containers, tarpaulins, bottles, tin cans, locks, keys, umbrellas, shoes, piles of rusty iron objects, old, worn-out garments. The whole flea market resembled one great, sprawling rubbish dump, and many poor people had come in the hope of finding something useful. There was constant noise — people talking, vendors shouting loudly, all sorts of sources of din!
A foul smell of dried fish, sewage, sludge and sweat among other things; crowds and confusion, noise and shouting! The sun shone harshly and the flea market was in full swing.
In a dirty, wet corner of the market, near the railway tracks, was the poultry market. Women and men sat side by side in a row with chickens in front of them. Local chickens, chickens of foreign breed, chicks, roosters, geese. Poultry of every kind and colour. It was loud here too, but nothing was selling. The chickens' legs were tied, and they lay fearfully in their baskets. They murmured, blinked, flapped their wings, stretched their necks and looked around with open beaks.
Today the market was sluggish. There were no buyers for the chickens, prices were falling. Suddenly a terrible noise was heard. A woman with a piercing voice was wailing.
"No, no! Oh my God, what am I going to do now?"
She struck her forehead several times, waved her arms vigorously and screamed. As a result, many people soon gathered there. Women formed a circle around her, children came, adults too. Since they could not see anything, the children tried to stand on tiptoe to see what had happened. Some pushed the women aside and pressed into the circle.
The fact that people were gathering around her encouraged the woman to wail all the more. She wiped her nose with the loose end of her sari, and in a mournful tone begged some god or other for help. The onlookers understood nothing. What they saw was a woman who had come to the market from some neighbouring village — Paud, Chande, Nande, Shivapur — and was crying. Then another woman plucked up courage and asked her, "Tell me, auntie, what actually happened?"
She was not really an "auntie" at all — in fact she was a young woman living with her in-laws. She wept and wept. She shook her head and sobbed. Something had gone missing. Beside her lay a bag, in which a new broom could be seen. She had apparently just been shopping.
In front of her lay about six or seven chickens, their legs bound. Seeing so many people, they looked upward, their throats twitching in fear.
The seller, who had just stepped away to wash her hands, came running back. She had no idea why there were suddenly so many customers around her chickens. She pushed people aside like stalks of sugar cane and went into the middle of the circle. She checked that all the chickens were still there, and asked aggressively: "What are you all gawking at? What is there to see here? Eh? Is somebody dancing naked?"
The weeping woman stopped wailing for a moment, wrinkled her nose and called out sharply: "Woman, your hen has swallowed the clasp of my earring."
"Clasp?"
"Yes, yes, it swallowed the gold clasp!"
"Oh, really?"
Now various verbal reactions came from the assembled group. "So that's why this woman was wailing. She couldn't get a single word out."
One woman expressed doubt: "But how could a hen swallow a clasp?" The reaction came at once: "Do you think I'm lying? Can't you see my ear? And look at this stud." Indeed, in her sweaty hand lay a pearl earring stud — without its clasp, though.
The seller was now truly angry. She gestured wildly with her arms and asked, "But why did you throw the clasp down in front of the chickens?"
Just as angrily, the woman in question retorted, "I didn't throw it. It slipped out of my hand."
Then she wanted to explain exactly what had happened to the onlookers — women, children, men.
"Listen. My mother-in-law told me today to buy a hen with twisted wings at the Pune market. She wanted to fulfil her 'Navas'. That's why I've come all this way, from my little settlement beyond Khanapur. I finished my shopping and was looking for chickens. Here I saw these black and dark chickens, and I saw this woman walk away quickly. I thought she'd surely come back, her goods are still here! So I put my bag down on the ground, bent down and looked at the birds. Without thinking I felt my left ear, and found that the clasp wasn't screwed on tight. I tried to tighten it, but unfortunately it fell down. And right then a hen stretched its neck and swallowed it! It happened right before my own eyes!"
Everyone listened intently. No one had ever seen or heard of such a thing. All seven hens sat there quite meekly. None of them looked like a thief or a crook.
Suddenly a boy asked: "Which one swallowed the clasp?"
The woman said: "They all look the same, and they're moving about constantly. One stretched its neck, and right away the others did the same. How am I supposed to know which one it was?"
Then she started wailing again. She said: "My mother-in-law will throw me out. My marriage is falling apart now!"
The listeners felt sorry for her and said so. But the seller showed nothing of the kind. She said: "If you're so afraid of your mother-in-law, you shouldn't have been fiddling with your earrings here. You claim my hen ate the clasp! A clasp isn't a peanut. You're telling tales! Why would a chicken eat a clasp?"
She put this question to everyone, bent down, slapped her thigh, adjusted her sari and squatted on the ground, just like her birds.
The daughter-in-law rolled her eyes repeatedly and said to the other women, "You see, she's accusing me. Would anyone really come here and lie? Do I even know her? Why would I say her hens did something to me? And who cries like this, who wails like this, if it isn't really painful?"
Her speech was so earnest, so convincing, that everyone except the dark-skinned seller with the nose ring believed her. A small, stout woman grew aggressive, stepped forward, and said to the seller, "You there, have you no heart at all? You look like a mother with several children, and you accuse this poor daughter-in-law of lying? Ask properly, think about it!"
Now everyone got worked up. Everyone wanted to defend the daughter-in-law: "Who would lie like that? Is that the kind of story one could just make up?"
Now the seller's voice nearly broke: "How am I supposed to know? Should I kill my hen and check the contents of its stomach? You can try it yourselves. Beat the hen and see if it spits up gold, or give it medicine to make it vomit."
"What a foolish woman you are, talking like that. Can you get things out of a hen's stomach by hitting it on the back?"
"Then why do you tell me to investigate? How am I supposed to do that?"
Because the noise, the crowd and the heated argument went on for so long, a policeman came over from the nearby police post. At first he tried to disperse the people. Some left, others stayed.
The policeman asked sternly, "What happened? Why are you making such a fuss?" The onlookers explained the whole affair to him unbidden, and the policeman too was baffled. Without mediating between the quarrelling parties, he said, "Oh, these chickens! Do they need feed made of gold now?"
"Officer, please tell me, will the gold stay in its stomach, or will it dissolve into lime?"
The policeman had no answer. Someone else replied, "Whatever they eat, they turn it into water. They eat gravel or sand and digest it."
The dispute went on for so long that the onlookers grew bored, just as with an overlong wrestling match. Some yawned, others fetched chewing tobacco. Old onlookers left, new ones arrived. The daughter-in-law bent down, clung to the policeman's shoes and pleaded, "Sir, I just want my clasp back, otherwise I can't go home. My mother-in-law is truly wicked."
The policeman began his questioning.
"What did your clasp cost?" A bystander answered at once: "I'd guess around 40 rupees."
The policeman asked the daughter-in-law again: "Weren't you going to buy a hen anyway? Take the hen that swallowed the clasp, pay for it and go home. Kill it, cook it, let your father-in-law eat the hen and get the clasp out of its stomach. Why are you making such a fuss? It's a trifle, why all this noise over nothing?"
Suddenly a cyclist on the road swerved in front of a truck. The truck driver braked hard, the cyclist fell. A wheel was flat. So the policeman went over there, and most of the onlookers followed him.
Mujawar, who wanted to buy chickens for Mohammadbhai's "Regal Restaurant", had watched the entire dispute. He came up to the seller and asked her, "You there, auntie, what does a hen cost?" At the same time he felt each of the hens.
"Eight rupees apiece."
"Eight? How about 40 for the whole lot?"
The daughter-in-law interrupted impatiently, "And what about my clasp?"
The seller shouted at her, "Shut your mouth, don't ruin my business. All right, Sheth, what do you say? Do you want all of them for 40?"
Mujawar said, "Yes."
He thought, let's see. At the restaurant he'd be preparing the chickens for cooking himself. He was sure to find the gold clasp. That would be a profit of around 40 to 50 rupees! He needed to buy chickens anyway. It wouldn't hurt to buy everything here. The clasp was sure to turn up in the stomach of one of the chickens.
The market had been going on for a long time now. But there were hardly any buyers. It was Shravan, so there were no customers. In this month people eat no meat, no poultry. Business was very sluggish. Nobody was buying the chickens.
While they were haggling, an Iranian came running from the nearby Iranian restaurant. He had narrow eyes and was unshaven.
"You there, I'll buy them all for 50!" he said, already grabbing the first hen and throwing it into his large sack.
He handed the seller five banknotes and walked off. The daughter-in-law started weeping and wailing again. She clung tightly to the loose end of the seller's sari and said, "Give me my clasp back first, only then can you go. This is completely unfair!"
With a jerk the seller freed her sari, gathered up her things and left the market. The onlookers dispersed. The daughter-in-law ran after the seller, scolding her. It was already evening. The bus to Mulshi was overcrowded and set off.
The seller and the woman with the clasp sat next to each other. After the bus had departed and everything was back to normal, the seller took out her purse and gave the other woman a ten-rupee note, which she accepted with thanks. She now had her earrings, clasps and all, in both ears. They talked to each other as if they came from the same village.
The woman with the clasp smiled and said, "Now that fool is going to take apart the guts of every hen looking for the clasp!"
"Yes, I know. Thanks to you I managed to sell my chickens today. Otherwise I'd have had to go home with the whole lot. I wouldn't even have had enough for the bus fare!"
The two of them prepared some chewing tobacco, put it in their mouths and closed their lips. The bus picked up speed!
Notes:
Mother-in-law/daughter-in-law relationship: The typical relationship shows a clear order of rank, a hierarchy in which the daughter-in-law fears her mother-in-law and must obey her. It is customary for the bride to move into the groom's house after the wedding, and she is expected to adapt.
Navas: A vow, a kind of agreement with God, that one will fulfil a promise if God grants a particular wish.
Saheb / Sheth: A form of address for someone of higher rank.
Informal/formal address: It is quite common to address people of the same age or social status informally, even if one does not know them. Officials and the like, however, are addressed formally.
"Auntie" as a form of address: It is customary to address older people one does not know, or whose name one does not know, with kinship terms such as "auntie", "uncle", "big brother", "big sister".
Shravan: A holy month in the Hindu lunar calendar during which Hindus eat only vegetarian food. Some even abstain from onions and garlic. In the story there are Muslim buyers, for whom this custom does not apply.
2. Goshta (The Making of a Bedtime Story)
"Tatya!"
"Yes, Baba?"
"Tell me a story!"
"Which story do you want to hear?"
Five-year-old Baba, lying next to me in bed, thought about it. I said to myself: 'Now I'm being tested! I've written stories all my life, but telling stories to children is actually difficult. You don't know which stories they'll like. You tell one and want to see how it lands. But the reaction is often quite different from what you expect.' Children don't know many words, and their vocabulary is limited. I told Baba stories from the Panchatantra, but they didn't hold his interest. The lion was caught in a trap. What does "trap" mean? (We were born and grew up in a village, so we never had this problem.) The donkey put on a hide. How? He doesn't have any hands! The fox that fell into a pot of dye said to the animals... What? Foxes can't talk! There were many fish in the stream. What's a stream? Conclusion: the Panchatantra doesn't help.
"Could you tell me the story of the calf?"
"Where did you see a calf?"
"At the Jagtaps'. There's a cow there, and a lovely little calf."
Good, so the hero is settled.
"Please, tell the story of the calf!"
The situation was now rather delicate. The story had to be told. Otherwise I'd lose standing with Baba. When he'd found out I wasn't able to attach a string to a paper kite, he'd been shocked. He firmly believes his father knows and can do everything.
"Tell the story of the calf!"
"Once there was a calf. It usually stayed with its mother. But one day it thought, I want to go off on my own for once. The cow and the other cattle were always tied up, but the calf was allowed to run free. It jumped over the fence and ran away."
"Hmm. Where did it go?"
"Around the village there was a jungle. There were also some hills. The jungle was very dense. Big trees, small bushes, thorny shrubs, wild climbing plants, grass. Even adults could only use the footpath, otherwise they'd get lost and would only find their way home again with great difficulty."
"And then?"
"The calf took whatever path it liked. It saw trees, birds, flowers; it jumped about, ate fresh grass and wandered far away."
"Didn't its mummy call for it?"
"Yes, she did. But it had already gone far away. It didn't hear her calling."
I paused, because I didn't know what to say next. I hoped he'd soon fall asleep. A quiet minute passed. But Baba had gone along with the calf into the jungle.
"Did it come back when it wanted to drink milk?"
"No."
Otherwise the story would already be over!
Something had to happen.
A moment of tension had to come from somewhere. What could happen now?
Baba thought of it before I did.
"Aren't there any tigers in the jungle?"
"Oh yes, there was. There was a big tiger. It was sleeping in the shade."
"Hmm."
Now there was tension again. The tiger needed to have a truly dark character. After all, he was the villain.
"This tiger was wicked. It liked to eat little sheep and deer. It was sleeping in a thicket of bushes and suddenly caught the scent of the calf."
There I made a mistake. Tigers don't actually have a good sense of smell.
"Hmm."
With that "Hmm," Baba drew closer to me. He held tightly onto my upper arm. At that moment I thought: now there's a problem! Nothing must happen to the calf. The tiger absolutely must not eat it! I've made a false statement. I mustn't make any more mistakes, but something exciting still has to happen. But what? Sadly there was no time to think it over.
"The tiger opened its eyes just a slit. From a distance it saw a calf approaching with flapping ears."
"But couldn't the calf smell the tiger?"
"How could it?"
Baba wouldn't have understood that the wind was blowing away from the tiger.
"The calf was happy. It knew the smells of flowers and trees. How was it supposed to know the smell of a predator? It had never smelled a tiger before. And it was very happy. It couldn't have guessed that the tiger was sleeping under a tree right on its path. It walked straight toward the tiger."
"Hmm."
The little grip on my upper arm tightened. Now events and dialogue were needed.
The tiger stood up. Big, broad, reddish, with black stripes. The calf was brave. It looked at the tiger. The tiger said, "Wait a moment, I'm very hungry."
Now I expected the question, "How could the tiger talk?"
But it didn't come. In a tense situation, listeners don't have such thoughts.
The predator licked its lips, wagged its tail and said: "I'm going to eat you."
The calf said: "Eat me if you must, but I haven't told my mother I'm leaving. She's probably looking for me. If you could wait a little, I'll let her know and come back."
"Promise?"
"Yes, I promise. God is my witness."
"Okay, go. And come straight back. Do you know the way?"
"Yes, no problem."
So far, so good.
How does it continue? What if the calf is clever and doesn't come back? But it has God as a witness. How could it lie? Lying is a sin.
"Okay, go on?"
"The calf took the same path back. Its mother had of course been worried. She was now relieved."
"Wasn't she angry?"
I'd ignored that aspect. It was only logical that she'd be upset.
"A little bit. She said: 'Please never go off again without asking me. You're still small.'"
The little calf replied: "Never again, I promise. But Mummy, I met a tiger."
"Goodness! And?"
"He said he was hungry. He wanted to eat me. I told him you'd be looking for me. 'I'll ask her, and come back,' I told him."
"Really? You said that to him?"
"Yes. He asked me what would happen if I didn't come back. I told him I'd surely come back, God is my witness."
The mother thought it over. She said: "You stay here. I'll go."
I recognised the direction my story was taking. It was the story of the doe and the hunter from the Shivalilamrut. Now it was easy to tell the story through to the end.
The mother went to the jungle. The tiger had been waiting.
"I've come in my son's place."
"It's all the same to me who I eat. I just want to satisfy my hunger."
But the cow said: "My son's father will come looking for me. I must ask his permission."
My story now took a new turn. The tiger suddenly began to seem sympathetic.
The tiger relented. "Go, ask him and come back."
I couldn't quite remember the story from the Shivalilamrut. The hunter there was probably influenced by God. That wouldn't help here. Now I had to invent a suitable ending for my own story. My tiger, after all, was not subject to God's influence.
The mother returned. The calf's father was there. She told him: "Listen. The tiger said he's hungry. He wanted to eat me. I told him I had to let you know, but that I'd come back."
The father thought it over. "Who will nurse our little calf if you go? It would be better if I went."
And the bull set off.
Baba now thought the calf was saved, and its mother too. Fathers are brave and courageous, after all. They can defeat the tiger.
Now I had a new problem: what does the bull do? A bull can't defeat a tiger.
"Okay, and then?"
The bull walked on, thinking. The tiger had, after all, been waiting impatiently. Then the bull thought, this just won't do. The tiger will be hungry again tomorrow, and the day after that. Every day it eats someone. It needs to be taught a lesson.
Other bulls were grazing in the forest. He went to them, called them together and asked for their help. All the bulls were well-fed and their horns were sharp and hard. They said: "Come, let's attack the tiger." And off they went.
They walked very slowly so the tiger wouldn't hear them. They were even careful that their bells didn't ring.
The tiger waited. By now it was ravenously hungry. It was determined to eat the calf's father the moment he arrived, without so much as talking to him.
I couldn't tell how the listener was reacting. Baba was completely quiet. Perhaps because the situation was so serious. Perhaps because he was sleepy. I deliberately paused.
"Please go on!"
"Now the bulls formed a circle around the tiger. They crowded in on it and wanted to attack. Their horns looked menacing, their eyes were red and their breath was hot."
Again the grip on my upper arm tightened. Crying, he asked, "Did they kill the tiger?"
Again I'd made a mistake. Because I'd given the tiger sympathetic traits, this was the reaction. This story mustn't turn into a tragedy. What now?
"Um, did the bulls kill the tiger?"
"No, no! They didn't kill it. When the tiger saw how many bulls wanted to attack it, it became very frightened."
Baba laughed loudly and heartily. A completely unexpected result!
Laughing, he asked, "Really?"
"Yes, yes, it was afraid. It ran off, tail between its legs, ears hanging down."
Baba hugged me and laughed loudly again.
"Really? It was afraid, and ran away?"
"Yes. The bulls saw that and laughed at it. They all sat down on the ground, looked up at the sky and laughed loudly."
Our laughter was as loud as the bulls' chorus! It simply wouldn't stop.
Then the mother called from the other room, "Baba, that's enough now. Go to sleep. Tai is studying in the other room."
Sudden silence. He seemed to be thinking about the story. I thought he'd fallen asleep.
Then, very quietly, came the question: "So, did the tiger starve?"
Oh no! What could I offer the tiger to eat now, without anyone dying? Whatever happened, the tiger surely wouldn't eat grass or fruit. Nor would it want to drink milk. So what does it eat? It has to eat something. It can't sleep on an empty stomach. A truly tricky question!
What? What? What then?
Two or three minutes of silence. Then something occurred to me. Not exactly normal, but it works in a story.
Quietly I said: "No, it didn't go to sleep without food. It saw a beehive. The bees were out and about, looking for nectar. The tiger helped itself to the honey and ate until it was full."
"Did you hear that, Baba?"
No response! The calf had fallen asleep.
The evening was saved!
Notes:
Tatya means "old man", but here it is used as a form of address — "Daddy".
The Panchatantra (literally "five treatises") is an ancient Indian text in five books. The form known today emerged between the late 3rd and 6th centuries CE. It is a collection of moral tales, fables and animal stories, used in the Indo-Iranian cultural sphere to educate princes at court in the art of governance and worldly wisdom.
Informal/formal address: In India it is quite common for a father or husband to be addressed formally, while a man addresses his son or wife informally. The principle of reciprocity does not apply here.
Shivlilamrut is a devotional poem by the Marathi poet Shridhar Swami Nazarekar. It was composed in 1718 and literally means "The Nectar of Shiva's Play". Religious people read it as a prayer to Shiva. It contains several stories, such as that of a doe and a hunter.
Tai means "big sister".
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