Jaywant Dalvi

Jaywant Dalvi was born in the year 1925. He was a Marathi dramatist. He started his literary career as a writer of short stories, but his fame and popularity rests on his novels and plays. His first original drama was Sabhya grihastha ho! i.e. `Dear Gentlemen!` in 1973. The best-known and most successful works comprise Sandhya chhaya i.e. `Evening Shadows` in 1973, Barrister in 1977, filmed by Vijaya Mehta as Rao Saheb in 1986, Suryasta i.e. `Sunset` in 1978, Mahasagar i.e. `Ocean` in 1979, Savitri in 1981, Purush or `Male` in 1982, and Natigoti i.e. `Relationships` in 1989. His last play, Sansargatha i.e. `Song of Life`, appeared the year he died.

Jaywant Dalvi`s male characters suffer from frustrations. When they are not tortured victims of neuroses, they are wise philosophers or rebels against the social order. Dalvi`s drama underlines his belief that at the root of all the problems that hound people lies man`s primeval sexual desire which gives rise to the confusions and pains of human relationships. So sex often obsesses his mentally imbalanced characters. One of the most significant plays in which he explore the link between `lunacy` and desire is Barrister. This was held by many critics to be a fine modern- Indian tragedy. The hero, an England-returned lawyer, gives up all that is good and beautiful in life that comes his way because, along with the old ancestral mansion in which he lives, he might have inherited the madness which forms part of his family history. While his story remorselessly moves toward insanity, the mystery of the mind remains unsolved, leaving one with a sense of unease and suggesting that Dalvi himself was a disturbed philosopher.

He was just as preoccupied by the difficulties of age. Sandhya chhaya, which deals with the loneliness of the old, became one of the most popular dramas in Marathi theatre. Also the Mahasagar reveals the complexities and unknown depths of the human mind. Suryasta and Punish were satirical and violent manifestations respectively of the politics of the 1980s. Unlike most of his other plays, based on his own short stories or novels, these were entirely original. Dalvi`s own politics was of the Seva Dal to which he had belonged. This was a voluntary service wing of the Socialist Party. Jayant Dalvi died in the year of 1994.