Vijay Tendulkar was one of the most important and influential Indian playwrights for six decades. Tendulkar mostly wrote in Marathi. His plays were translated in Hindi and English for pan-India and international audience. He achieved worldwide fame for his daring themes, brilliant writing and strong voice.
Much of his work focuses on violence, both physical and psychological, as a tool of those with power.
He came to prominence in 1972 with two controversial works, Sakharam Binder and the musical Ghashiram Kotwal. Sakharam Binder deals with male dominance and sexual violence. With more than 6,000 performances in India and abroad, Ghashiram Kotwal is a political satire set in 18th-century Pune.
Tendulkar said: “Give me a piece of paper, any paper and a pen and I shall write as naturally as the bird flies or a fish swims. For the last 50 years, I have been writing … at roadside restaurants and on the crowded local trains. I have written on the sick bed in the hospital in spite of the doctor’s advice… It was a great relief. It was joy.”
He has written 28 plays, seven one-act plays, six children’s plays, four collections of short stories, two biographies and 19 films.
source: The Guardian
Life and works of Vijay Tendulkar
“Good-bad,right-wrong,once you tag things like that,you lose the ability to see the complete truth…. A murderer can also be a loving father. Don’t tag things. Words are insufficient to describe the picture in totality. Try not to get trapped in the dictionary meaning of words.”
“I don’t dream but its my wish , my dream, to play a clown. I want to paint myself and act like a mad person.”
“I keep hearing this word again and again. What truth? Whose truth? These are the words that we play with. We wear clothes for others, behave in particular ways for others. And that living is the truth for that particular moment. It changes from time to time and from individual to individual.”
“Justice has a strange way of looking gorgeous when it corks for you. When against you, it resembles a furry cankerous mole.’
