A touch act to follow

ON STAGE

Not surprising then that he had penned around 30 full-length plays, seven collections of one act plays, six of children's plays, four of short stories, three of essays, a novel and 17 film scripts! But it is surprising when you discover that this prolific, pathbreaking writer had not had formal education beyond the age of 14.

 

Coming from a lower middle class background and life in a chawl, he learnt his early lessons in drama from his balcony when he saw, heard and imbibed a rich variety of day-to-day sights and sounds.

The other important lesson probably came through his father who, himself an actor, director and writer, took the four-year-old Vijay with him to his rehearsals and performances.

Formal education never excited him but he was a keen observer of the ever-changing life around him and he happily chucked his studies in 1942 in response to the call by Mahatma Gandhi to join the Quit India movement. This took him into the tumultuous and exciting world of the freedom movement which formed the base of his values as we see in his writings.

The soft-speaking, gentle persona of Vijay Tendulkar could be very deceptive, for his writing was ruthless and exposed a vast and real world of harsh realities and violence.

In his plays like Baby, Sakharam Binder, Ghasiram Kotwal and Gidhade, he broke all norms of middle class propriety by openly depicting sexual deviation and exploitation, using abusive language if the situation demanded it and attacking the Brahmins for their opportunism and hypocrisy, thereby receiving a lot of brickbats from different sections of Maharashtrian society.

But Tendulkar remained unfazed by all the criticism and continued to mirror and comment on the realities of the newly emerging, industrialised, urban society moving towards a materialism that would destroy all human relationships.

Even as he explored and exposed characters from different classes, castes, moralities and motivations, fighting desperately for survival, he communicated to us his concern for humanity, social equality and integrity.

One of his most well-known plays, Shantata Court Chaalu Aahe (Silence