G??G?L, Ga?g?dhar (Gop?l)

Nationality: Indian (Mar??h? language). Born: Bombay, 25 August 1923. Education: Bombay University, M.A. in economics and history. Family: Married Vasant? G??g?l in 1948, two daughters and one son. Career: Professor of Economics, Keekabhai Premchand College, 1946-48, Sydenham College, 1948-59, L.D. Ruparel College, 1959-64, Narsi Monji College, 1964-71, all in Bombay; studied at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachussetts, and Stanford University, California, 1957-58; economic adviser, Apte Group, 1971-76, and Walchand Group, since 1976, both in Bombay. Lives in Bombay. Awards: Abhiruchi award, 1949; Hindustan Times National Contest award, for a story, 1954; New York Herald Tribune prize, for story, 1954; Maharastra State award, for story, 1956, 1957, 1960; Rockfeller Foundation Scholarship, 1957-58; N.C. Kelkar award, 1980; R. S. Jog award, 1982. Honorary professor of Mar??h?, University of Bombay, 1977-80;president, All-India Mar?mbai Mar??h? S?hitya Sa?gh, since 1983; vice-president, Sahitya Academy, 1988-93; vice-president, M?mbai ber: President, M??h? Grantha Sa?grah?lay (Bombay public library), since 1986.

Publications

Short Stories

M?nas-citre [Human Pictures]. 1946.

Ka?? a?? go? [Bitter and Sweet]. 1948.

Navy? v???. [New Paths]. 1950.

Birbhire. 1950.

Sa?s?r [Worldly Life]. 1951

Uddhvasta visva [A World Destroyed]. 1951.

Kabutare [Pigeons]. 1952.

Tal?v?tle c?nda?e [The Moon in the Lake]. 1954.

Khara s?g?yacë mha?je [To Tell the Truth]. 1954.

Var?? [Rain]. 1956.

Ole unh [Wet Sunlight]. 1957.

Ba??? [Ba???]. 1957.

Vegle jag [A Different World]. 1958.

G??g?l?ñcy? kath? [Stories], edited by S.P. Bhagvat. 1958.

Svapnabh?mi [Dreamland]. 1959.

K?jv? [The Firefly]. 1960.

P?l?? [Cradle]. 1961.

Gu??k?r [Multiplication] (includes Navy? v??a and Ole unh). 1965.

Ír?va? [name of a month]. 1977.

Vilakh? [The Tight Embrace]. 1978.

A?hvan [Remembrances]. 1978.

Kh?l? utarlele ?k?? [The Sky Descended]. 1979.

Asa??? tasa? [This Way and That]. 1983.

Khu?va??ry? c?nda?ya [Glittering Stars] (includes Var?? and Ole unh). 1984.

Amrut [Nectar]. 1986

Soneri kava?se [Golden Sunbeam]. 1986.

Ba???ce gupcup [Ba??s Secrets]. 1986.

Naviadak [Selected Stories], edited by Sudha Joshi. 1986.

Ba???ce mokal sutalo [Ba??s Runs Wild]. 1987.

The Woman and Other Stories, translated by G??g?l and Ian Raeside. 1990.

Birav?. 1991.

Vacak Ba??? [Selected Stories about Ba???] edited by G.M. Pawar. 1991.

??? catur bayak [Women so Wiley and Clever]. 1991.

S?hityil r?sik ho. 1991.

Ba??? bilandar tharto. 1992.

Bug?? m?z? sa??al? ga [My Flower-Basket Has Spilled]. 1992.

Selected Short Stories, edited by M. K. Naik. 1994.

Novels

Lil?ce ph?l [Lily Flowers]. 1950.

Durdamya [Indomitable]. 2 vols., 1971.

Fiction for children

?h???? cand? (based on The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain). 1951.

Lakh?c? rojni?? [The Day to Day Diary of Little Lakhu's Exploits]. 1954.

Ratne [Jewels]. 1985.

Pakyac? gang [Pakya's Gang]. 1985.

Plays

Vedyañc? caukon [Fool's Quandrangle]. 1952.

P?c n??ik? [Five One-Act Plays]. 1953.

?mh? ?ple thor puru? ho??r [I Shall Be a Brave Man] (for children). 1957

S?h?n? m?le [Good Children] (for children). 1961.

Ba??? n??ak karto [Ba??? Makes a Play]. 1961.

Ba???, N?n? ??i gul?b? hatti [Ba???, N?n? and the Pink Elephant]. 1962.

Jyotsn? ??i Jyoti [Jyotsn? and Jyoti]. 1964.

B?b?ñc? kali?ga? a?? m?lic? sweater [Father's Watermelon and Daughter's Sweater] (for children). 1979.

Cim?it cima?lel? Ba??? [Ba??? Caught in Tongs]. 1980.

M?le cor pakar [Children Catch a Thief]. 1985.

Other

Gopur?ñcy? Prade?at [The Land of the Gopurams] (travelogue). 1952.

S?t? samudr?pal?ka?e [Beyond the Seven Seas]. 1959.

Kha?ak ? ?i p??? [Rock and Water] (literary essays). 1960.

S?hity?ce m?nda??a [Standards of Literature] (essays). 1962.

M?mbai ??i M?mbai kar [Bombay and Its People]. 1970.

Kha?ilkarañci t?n n??ake [Three Plays by Kha?ilkar] (literary criticism). 1973.

Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme—Two Views. 1975.

Phirky? (humour). 1976.

P??yavarci ak?are [Words on Water] (literary criticism). 1979.

Is Nationalisation of Industries in Public Interest? 1979.

Limits of Public Sector in India. 1979.

The Consumer and the Indian Economic Environment. 1980.

?rthik navalkath? [Wonderous Tales of Economic Folly] (es-says). 1982.

?jk?lce s?hityik [Literary People of Today] (essays). 1980.

?mh??ple ?ha??opanta [My Name is Dha??opanta] (humour). 1982.

Pratibhecy? sah?v?sat (literary criticism). 1985.

?nkh? ?rthik navalkath? [More Wonderous Tales of EconomicFolly]. 1985.

S?hityaprem? r?sik ho! [Ye Discriminating Lovers of Literature!]. 1986.

The Consumer, Business and the Government. 1987.

The Writer and the Contemporary Environment. 1987.

A Consumer Oriented Economic Policy. 1989.

Crazy Bombay (humor), translated by G??g?l. 1991.

Mu?g?ce Mah?bh?rat [An Ant's Mah?bh?rat] (autobiography). 1993.

Editor, Youth and Self-Employment. 1976.

Editor, with Arvind A. Deshpande, Maharashtra: Problems, Potential and Prospects. 1988.

Translator, Sa?gar?, by Henry James. 1965.

*

Critical Study:

"Facets of Human Nature" by M. K. Naik, in Indian Book Chronicle 16, June 1991.

* * *

Ga?g?dhar G??g?l is one of the chief writers of the modern short story in Marathi—the language of the Bombay region of Western India, which has a literature now more than 800 years old. Though the Marathi short story made its first appearance during the 1890s, under the influence of British literature, it came to maturity only during the 1930s and received a distinctly modernist orientation after World War II.

The Marathi short story before G??g?l and his contemporaries tended to be either purely anecdotal, slick and well-made, sentimental, or didactic. The new post-World War II story developed into an art form liberated from conventional structural restrictions, with far wider range of subject, and with greater complexity and subtlety in its presentation of human life and character. In keeping with its varied subject matter, it employed a variety of appropriate formal strategies and styles in narration, dialogue, and description. ?g?l is an apt representative of the modern Marathi short story in that his work illustrates almost all these salient features.

G??g?l's is mostly a middle-class world, though in a story like "A Dying World" he captures the feudal ambience of the vanishing landed aristocracy with equal conviction. A story like "The Coin," which presents a homeless urchin in Bombay, offers a revealing glimpse of low-class urban life. But G??g?l is perhaps at his most characteristic in exposing the limitations of middle-class values and probing the middle-class mind mercilessly as in "The Hollow Men," which is easily one of his most memorable efforts. "Refugee City" is another fine story; it describes a typical day in the life of Bombay with all its hurry and bustle, one-upmanship, and ruthless impersonality.

Memorable as these presentations of segments of society are, G??g?l is perhaps at his best in exposing "freckled human nature." His range is so wide that he has written stories dealing with practically the entire range of human life, from the newborn infant to the old man and woman at the end of their lives. In "A Tale of Toys" the world is seen through the consciousness of an infant; "The Sorrows of Shashi" and "The Class-Teacher Resigns" are studies of schoolboy and schoolgirl psychology respectively; in "The Musical Doorbell" and "By Stealthy Steps" we get glimpses of the world view of a teenage boy and a girl respectively; a young man with a size inferiority complex (of which the outsized briefcase he sports is an apt objective correlative) is the subject of "The Runt" and a sentimental young woman that of "The Dreamworld"; "In Full Sail" and "House of Cards" present the psychology of middle age; and old age "blues" color "Valley of Darkness" and "Leftovers."

Sex at various levels of experience is another recurrent theme: it figures as sheer animal passion in "The Camel and the Pendulum." "The Education of Rose Mathai" shows how sexual awakening transforms a nondescript girl into a self-confident young woman; the evanescent "imitations of maternity" are deftly encapsulated in the story. "How Sweet the Moonlight Sleeps upon the Waters" and "The Sky Stoops to Conquer" are engaging studies in conjugal love. Curiously enough, only romantic, pre-marital love somehow does not seem to interest G??g?l at all.

Noted for his ruthless realism and subtle psychological probing, G??g?l has also written surrealistic fantasies ("The Yakshi and Revolution"), stories of semi-mystical musings ("At the Still Point") and of evanescent moods ("A Rainy Day"), and stories of sheer horse-play and farce (the stories about Bandu, the office-clerk). G??g?l's technique is equally resourceful. He generally adopts an open form, allowing his theme to evolve its own narrative structure. The opening and the ending of his stories therefore exhibit a great deal of variety; the opening is usually brisk, but when a narrative demands an opening description to set the tone, as in "The Hollow Men," he does not shrink from providing it. A clinching comment, an ironic flourish, or a neat summing up are some of the end-strategies adopted. G??g?l's style, both in narration and dialogue, is eminently direct, functional, and unadorned; hence, when he employs an occasional image, the result is startling: "The clerks sitting at rows of tables in the big office looked like glass-beads woven in the string of office-work."

G??g?l's major achievement is that he played a significant role in freeing the Marathi short story from the shackles of conventional plotting, surface realism, and facile romanticism, and he brought to the form a variety and flexibility, a depth of psychological perception, and an openness of structure, which made it truly modern in spirit and form.

—M. K. Naik

See the essay on "The Hollow Men."