Curtain Down on Vijay Tendulkar!

Vijay Tendulkar no more—An end of an era, said the newspapers last Tuesday.

I first heard of Tendulkar when I watched Sinhasan in school. Today's generation must note that Sinhasan was a classic Marathi movie of the seventies directed by Jabbar Patel. It is probably the finest political drama ever made on cinema. Political dramas can be boring and predictable beyond a point. But not Sinhasan—it was gripping and had a feel of realism around it.

As I grew up, I saw more of Tendulkar's works on cinema—Manthan and Nishant from the Benegal stable, Aakrosh and Ardh Satya from Govind Nihalani, Saamna and Umbartha by Jabbar Patel—each a riveting drama of human conflicts. I have all of them in my DVD collection. Having revisited them again, I dare say that he was India's finest screen writer. In the coming days, I intend to watch Aakrosh and Aakreit and celebrate! I do regret that I have not seen his celebrated plays, barring Kanyadaan, which I thought was decently done by Lilette Dubey's team. I am seriously hunting for those DVDs! Anyone?

There are few things that stand out in memory!

There was liberalism written all over him. This is pretty evident from the way he created situations and characters in his work. I am often disappointed with 'liberals'—most of them are imposters who find it ‘cool’ to be ‘liberal’—that's not the point! What is important is that you need not just listen to Pink Floyd, follow Obama vs. Clinton debates, and profess atheism to be liberal. Tendulkar showed that you could be an iconoclast without having to think in English!

He was a strong personality. Some of the subjects he dealt with in his movies were women empowerment, rural awakening, and political awareness. Remember the last scene in Nishant where the entire village rises in rebellion against their employers, the village landlords, who have nothing but brutality and avarice in their CVs. Remember the female protagonist in Umbartha, who stakes her marriage to an affluent family to work in an asylum. They tell you that his characters were strong people, much like himself!

Can there be another Tendulkar? Rather, is there quality theater happening in India? No. But that discussion is for another day. Not today. Today, we’ll take a bow to someone who rewrote traditional theater in India! Tendulkar, RIP!