Curiosity, Life and Writing

Ranganath Pathare is one of the most original modern Marathi writers. Recipient of numerous awards including the Sahitya Akademi award in 1999, Pathare is known for his robust, diverse and consistent writing in different areas: fiction, criticism and, general writings on society and culture as a thinker. Passionate about writing, Pathare believes that he has been able to live several lives through it. He writes about people and what he has experienced. The human dramas that interest him — stimulate him to build his narratives on — are rooted in constantly evolving human society and its various forms of expressions. His writing has represented, in the eyes of many Marathi readers, a new and exhilarating phase in modern writing by incorporating new ways of writing fiction and blurring the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction.

An explorer of realistic representation, Pathare presents the convincing narratives of human lives, both mundane as well as extraordinary. For him, as he has said in one of his conversations with a well-known Marathi poet and translator, Dilip Chitre, “Writing is a way, one way of understanding life. Everyone, in his own ways, does this. A writer has it as the most convenient way. We have so many concerns in our lives. Some of them bother us a lot and create a number of complexities. I feel, a writer in an attempt of getting away with these complexities tries to develop a structure, build it, and present a moving play of characters and scenes in order to search something that he wants to. At least, this is what happens to me…do we find something out of this search? Perhaps not, because, to find something is a big thing. But, even if we don’t find anything, to get entangled in the complexities is the destiny of a writer. We can’t plan something and do it. It just happens.” (28, Pratyay ani Vyatyay).

One can see three distinctive features in Pathare’s fictional writing. The elegant and elaborate narrative craftsmanship, the self-reflective and emotionally charged characters modelled on the individuals that have impacted his life, and the sense of broad and diverse cultural, intellectual history of nation and society. While eagerly investigating and learning more about complexities in human relationships across different times and locations, Pathare interprets these different facets of realities with empathy. In the creation of an impactful narrative, a skilled storyteller in him, while engrossed in the self, is fully aware of the multiple realities and world-views.

The changing nature of the outer form of reality, primarily of human being, has been a driving force in Pathare’s fictional writing. In one of his interviews, he says, “I don’t think it’s appropriate to think of an individual and events separately. The experiences in real life are at the core of my writing and the beginning trigger point of curiosity is about reality in life only.” (187, Satvachi Bhasha) Also, we can see that Pathare builds his narrative in response to the microcosmic world of human and non-human with their inside and outside within the time which has passed and one which is yet to come. The interlinking of outer and inner is clearly visible from his wide range of forms, be it in a novel or a short story.

Pathare is a prolific writer of more than a dozen novels and hundreds of shorts stories. He treats both these forms of writing with equal importance and different approaches as per the creative need at that time. While acknowledging the limitation of a short story to accommodate a writer’s overall comprehension of life and experiences, Pathare doesn’t deny its significant role when he faces something small in life and feels the urge to address it through a story. The novelist in him does not start to write until there is something that he has ‘found’ and there is something ‘to be found’, for him, it does not happen suddenly or in a spur of the moment.

A writer’s material is what he cares about. In Pathare’s case, his caring is complimented by his curiosity of life. Unlike an ordinary writer who exhibits his curiosity by being cynical and narcissist, Pathare presents his own reflections of life by being empathetic and thoughtful. As a strategic narrator, he chooses what he wants to in his story-telling. He says, “I think we are curious, inquisitive about something or the other. There is so much happening around us that we cannot give everything a meaning. It’s not that everything happening makes you uncomfortable. But there are a few things that concern you and are close to your heart.” (38, Pratyay ani Vyatyay)

Born and brought up in a village in Maharashtra, Pathare retired as a professor of Physics from a college in Sangamner, a tehsil place near Pune. Interestingly, while growing up in a village and working in semi-urban areas of Maharashtra, Pathare was exposed to diverse kinds of narrative traditions through the reading of Gulbakavali, Hatimtai as well as traditional performative forms of bhajan and tamasha. His reading list covers a wide range, starting from Saratchandra Chattopadhyaya, H. N. Apte, V S Khandekar, Shivaji Sawant, Bhalchandra Nemade to Sartre, Camus and Marquez. His diverse readings and life experiences have enabled him to imagine another spectrum to his writing process: the reader. The writer in him “wishes to voice the un-written more powerfully.” He thinks that writing is basically to create an ‘un-written’ world in the reader’s mind. Something that is ‘not-written’ could be different in every reader each time he reads. From this perspective, Pathare acknowledges the power of a good work of art that shows/expresses something different every time we read it. (206, Satvachi Bhasha)

Pathare’s fictional writing responds to ‘present time’. The present time is not only what is happening ‘today’, it is also an extension of the ‘past’ through the eyes of the present. For instance, Chokhobachya Pathi, this story by Pathare displays the fascinating interplay of the collapsing boundaries of time and space. Taking clues from someone called Sa. Bha. Kadam in Mumbai, the narrator ‘I’ of the present time in Chokhobachya Pathi starts following Chokha Mela (also, fondly known as Chokhoba), a well-known medieval Sant-poet and Vitthal Bhakt on his walk to Pandharpur. Here, the writer doesn’t aim to offer an easy solution to why or how Chokhoba and his time, have gained or lost contemporary relevance. Through the journey of the two characters: the narrator and Chokhoba, the story reflects on the changing traditions, human relationships and deviating forms of faith and values in society. Conversations between them is not limited only to the two of them but encompasses institutions that have evolved over time. An easy way of telling a story of Sant Chokha Mela could have been to narrate the triumphant life of Chokhoba and celebrate it. Of course, the writer does it by acknowledging Chokha Mela’s immense contribution for the common people and culture. However, instead of being a mere historian and commentator, the story chooses to remain deeply personal in its narration of the story of the poet-Sant, taking the reader through the daily routine, social interactions, and individual experiences. It does not sing the elegiac story of Chokhoba and his time but critically reflects on the ever-changing values and forms of living. The process of dismantling the medieval time and space through Chokhoba hasn’t been characterized only by narratives of anxiety and decline, but it also functions as a creative anchoring to further develop an imaginative narrative. The past and history become real, changing, flowing without losing their contemporary relevance. 

Ranganath Pathare chooses to create multifaceted, intellectually capable and emotionally strong characters living in a complex web of relationships. At times, the narrative urge in him pours in overtly explicit characters to be informative and explanatory. But, one gets amazed by the sheer range of subjects that he has handled through his narratives. In this regard, Chitre has made an interesting observation in his conversation. He tells: “When one reads your (Pathare) novels carefully, the narrators that you have created in your novels are not you; you are different from them. I can say this from my overall study and also my own experience as a writer. The narrator that I have created is not the same to same as me. There are other people in it. And not that he is the only narrator.” (22, Pratyay ani Vyatyay) Further, Chitre elaborates on the importance of Pathare’s fiction by comparing it with writers like Bhalchandra Nemade. Chitre argues that in Pathare’s writing there is no straightforward, corresponding connection between the novelist and the narrator. Therefore, the study of Pathare’s biographical details wouldn’t help one throw light on his writing. Later in the conversation, Chitre makes an interesting point expressing that people seek witnesses (to establish biographical details). But, they all are outer witnesses. It is difficult to get witnesses for inner biography.    

In such a complex web of time and space in fiction and life, the question is, which critically acclaimed Marathi novelist, Rajan Gavas has asked Pathare: “Considering your power of narrating the present time, do you have to take certain standpoint in your writing?” In response, Pathare takes the nuanced position and proposes that a multidimensional form like novel and the plot in it will always have multiple characters and scenes, and even if it’s true that a writer can be seen through all good/bad characters or scenes that he has created, the character strongly representing the writer’s point of view could always be seen in his novel. Sometimes, it’s invisible. Say, for instance, if the undeclared character in a novel is ‘time’, the writer would express his standpoint clearly through the samskar of the ‘time’ on the socio-cultural space in the novel.  Hence, for him, the question of standpoint is not important. Rather, the writer does have a standpoint even if he doesn’t take it at the surface level of the narrative.” (230, Satvachi Bhasha) Such nuanced position from a major contemporary writer like Ranganath Pathare becomes more important in the time when every other writer is jumping on the bandwagon to be ‘socially alert’ and to establish a straightforward connection between creativity and a writer’s standpoint.