Marathi Literature’s Man for All Seasons

Often unfairly compared to P.G. Wodehouse, PuLa Deshpande was in fact much more than an extraordinary writer. In fact, he has given us more than we can receive!

P.G. Wodehouse said about his stories, ‘I believe there are two ways of writing novels. One is making a sort of musical comedy without music and ignoring real life altogether; the other is going deep down into life and not caring a damn…’

P.L. Deshpande (1919-2000), lovingly called ‘PuLa’ in Maharashtra, is often referred to as the P.G. Wodehouse of Marathi Literature. I strongly object; despite the fact that PuLa himself would visit Dulwich College to pray to the alma mater of his favourite writer. PuLa’s writings, unlike those of Wodehouse, observed the daily and the mundane and made fun of small and often irrelevant things in our life.

His uncanny eye for observation created humour out of situations most ordinary. He had the ability to make us cry with just a line while we were still recovering from the previous paragraph full of wit and humour. It was this ability of P.L. Deshpande to connect with the common man that made him one of the most loved and endeared persons in Maharashtra.

Oscar Wilde, in The Picture of Dorian Gray, says ‘to define is to limit.’ This applies aptly to someone like P.L. Deshpande. Calling him just a writer would be doing injustice to him.

P.L. Deshpande—Purshottam Lakshman Desphande, to use his full name, wore many hats. He was a writer, playwright, actor, director, a fine player of the harmonium, and a singer of classical music. He created a genre of katha kathan, by reading out his short stories, using mimicry to good effect and making the characters come alive on stage.

Very few people would know that the iconic bhajan Indrayani Kathi made immensely popular by Bhimsen Joshi was composed by PuLa. So was the extremely popular children’s dance song Nach re Mora. Both were written by G.D. Madgulkar, one of Maharashtra’s leading poets, popularly known as Ga-di-ma.

PuLa’s travelogues were one of the most widely read. Written in a typical self-deprecating style during his first visit to the USA in the early sixties, it opened up a window for millions of Maharashtrians for whom America was a distant land only to be seen in movies.

Similarly, people at large came to know of personalities like Vinobha Bhave, Hirabai Barodekar and may such great people through the biographies and character sketches which PuLa brought to life.

One of his remarkable books, amongst dozens, is Vyakti ani Valli, which earned him a Sahitya Akademy award, a character sketch of ordinary people we meet in our lives. Like the affable and ever helpful Narayan who is most sought after during the marriage ceremony but forgotten the moment the function is over, or the remarkable Chitale Master, who spent his lifetime teaching.

In the closing lines of Chitale Master, PuLa is asked to go back to the first floor house of his friend where Chitale Master as usual had forgotten his chappals and had walked down barefoot. In his inimical style PuLa says that he did not have to spend even a moment to identify Chitale Master’s pair of chappals from the shoe rack; the one with the most worn soles out were his!

PuLa’s characteristic one-liners are quoted often. For example, ‘In a letter, all we own is the address on the envelope. The contents are a matter of fate,’ or ‘In today’s world, who you are is more important than what you are saying.’

PuLa’s Varya Varchi Varaat, a take on the middle class Maharashtrian life is one of his all-time hit plays. His iconic book Batatyachi Chawl, about life in a Mumbai chawl, is widely read and has also been translated into English. PuLa’s writings are extremely difficult to translate, as he himself had proclaimed. His humour, satire, wit, pun and commentary on the ordinary, is impossible to translate and create in any other language than the original Marathi.

PuLa got Marathi readers to enjoy some of the Western classics like his translation of Sophocles’ play Oedipus the King, while retaining the tenor of the original. His plays included versions of Brecht’s Threepenny Opera and Shaw’s Pygmalion (Tee Phularani). One of his most loved works is a translation of Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea (Eka Koliyane)

If Deshpande’s Mhais, a comic account of a bus being forced to halt when it hits a buffalo crossing the road, staple entertainment in Maharashtra, could cast him as an Indian Woody Allen, his best-selling travelogues could equate him with Bill Bryson.

There was an underlying leitmotif of tragedy and seriousness in his humour. In one of his books Hasavnook (entertainment), punning on the word and calling it phasavnook (entrapment), he says once we realize that nature is playing a game of entrapment with us between the two events viz. birth and death, all one can do is to entertain the people around us.

PuLa supported a range of charities through his unstinted generosity. He probably won every award and honorary degree in Maharashtra but no sooner would he receive a monetary prize than he would hand it away.

In an interview, PuLa had mentioned that he adored Charlie Chaplin and Tagore whom he considered ‘the two sides of a coin that is humanism.’ His love for Tagore took him to Shantiniketan where he learnt Bangla in order to translate Tagore.

Once when asked what message he had for the youth, he said, ‘Learn a trade which will keep your stomach full and work hard towards it. But don’t stop at that. Music, literature, painting, drama, sports; befriend any of them. A trade will teach you to live but friendship with finer things in life will give you the reason to live.’

P.L. Deshpande continues to remain one of the most cherished Maharashtrians. It is a fact that his writings cannot be translated and those who want to enjoy his works have to read it in the original. As is the case with his innumerable videos or cassettes which one can enjoy watching or listening to, provided one has a fine grasp of Marathi. But for those who are familiar with the language, he is someone to be read, adored and enjoyed forever!

PuLa Deshpande has given us more than what we can receive!