The Play That Brought Ideas to the Marathi Stage: Tujhe Ahe Tujpashi at Nearly Seventy
In 1957 the Marathi stage was dominated by sangeet natak, family melodrama and historical subjects. P. L. Deshpande wrote and directed a play with none of those, and it has not left the repertoire since. Two men who cannot agree Tujhe Ahe Tujpashi turns on Kakaji and Acharya. Kakaji is connected to an old princely household in Indore, comfortable, appreciative of good things, living by live and let live. Acharya is his opposite: rigid, austere, an extreme advocate of fasting and self denial. Two of Acharya's young students come into Kakaji's orbit and, having been suffocated by the discipline they grew up under, discover art, music and the idea that living happily is allowed. What made it new There is no accident and no invented family feud. The whole play is an intellectual argument between two ways of living, carried on lightly. That is why it is credited with starting the theatre of ideas in Marathi. Its other weapon is language: Kakaji's Indore Marathi and Urdu shayar...
