Bhalchandra Nemade

Bhalchandra Nemade (born 1938) is a Marathi novelist.

Life

Nemade was born in Sangavi, a small village in Khandesh. After his matriculation, he went to Pune and studied for his degree at Fergusson College. Later on he also earned two master's degrees in English literature and Linguistics. He has been a professor of English throughout his career. No doubt he is not a known public face; he is simply a well-known Marathi novelist. Nemade now lives in Mumbai.

In the sixties, he was involved in the little magazine movement in Marathi and edited little magazines like Vacha.

Kosala

Kosla, his first novel, was published in 1963 when Nemade was barely twenty-five. Kosala is an autobiographical tale of Pandurang Sangavikar, a youth who hails from rural Maharashtra and studies in a Pune college. According to some critics and popular opinion the fictional Sangavikar is more or less based upon Nemade himself. Kosala was, and still remains, a non-mainstream novel in Marathi literature. Sangavikar, the protagonist and the narrator of Kosala, is strange and sublime in many ways. His utter dissatisfaction with the coherent and pleasurable stories leads him to break and bend the Marathi language and thereby the conventional ways of thinking. At the same time his language and his world-view draw upon the natural, native resources of the ordinary, colloquial language and everyday world-view. Though Kosala is a linear, chronological story of the physical and mental events in the life of Sangavikar, it employs certain innovative techniques. For instance, one year is described in terms of a witty diary. Or, Sangavikar and his friend Suresh Bapat often undertake a 'historical' investigation which ultimately uncovers the absurdity and tragedy of their present condition.

After Kosala

During the decade in the wake of the publication and reception of Kosala, Nemade changed. And he changed quite conspicuously. He left Sangavikar behind and presented his entirely different protagonist Changadev Patil through his trilogy: Bidhar, Jarila and Jhool. The differences between them are not confined to superficial aspects such as age, profession, habits and even intellectual and emotional perception. In essence, while Sangavikar at times keeps the world at bay or even rejects the world, Chanagdev is all for the world. He is forever engaged in confronting and understanding the world. To put it rather misleadingly but faithfully, Changadev is more realistic. Sanagvikar is beautifully mercurial but Changadev is authentically real. It is not surprising, then, that critics and readers alike often maintain that the later novels of Nemade do not manifest the Kosala flavour.

Nemade's fans have been eagerly awaiting his next novel Hindu ever since hints of its publication were declared around 1980.

As a Literary Critic

Nemade is also a consistently provocative literary critic. He is famous - or rather notorious - for his two central, baffling claims, namely, that the short story is an inferior genre and that Marathi literature ought to try to be deshi, native. Nativism is the bone of contention of Nemade's critical oeuvre.However unacceptable these claims seem apparently, Nemade's positions are pretty complex and he certainly has something significant to say, which is often overlooked. Nemade has always maintained that the novelist should confine himself or herself to a solitary corner of the world and struggle with the piles of papers and the novel that grows in the head.

As Poet

Nemade has published two collections of poems as well, Meladi and Dekhani (Dekhani includes all the poems in Meladi).