Kosala: Understanding A Marathi Novel psychological point

Kosala: Understanding A Marathi Novel psychological point

Nearly two weeks back, I was reading the book, “On the meaning of life” written by Will Durant. At the time of reading this book, I started remembering one Marathi Novel named as Kosala (Silk-worm) written by Bhalachandra Nemade and tried to understand the life of main character of this novel Pandurang Sangvikar. First time, I read this Novel during my college life. After three decades, I read this novel again to understand the character of this novel i.e. Pandurang Sangvikar from philosophical and\or psychological point of view. This novel was published in 1963. Many scholars and writers in Marathi refused to call this book as novel but well-known multifaceted writer, humourist and beloved personality of Maharashtra, P L Deshpande has said that Bhalchandra Nemade has caught us napping by writing this book.

From Yogesh Gogwekar

It is being said that Kosala is based on existential philosophy. It is definitely exploring the existentialist ideas in limited way and also failed to provide the justification to meaning of life and the value of the existence. Therefore, this novel has to be understood from psychological way and not from philosophical way. If you have read the writing of Alfred Adler and Eric Fromm, we can easily make out the mental functions and behaviours of the main character of this novel Pandurang Sanghvikar. It is an anti-establishment novel which has been written from the perspective of self-destructive protagonist who failed to understand the world around him.  

Pandurang Sangvikar is from well to do family which includes his parents, grandmother and his four sisters and his family is not having any socio-economic inequities and also did not struggle for social injustice. Still Pandurang faces struggle and nature of his struggle and his futile attempt to get rid of his problems by elevating his life above just rebellions. This happened due to the qualities of Sadism, inferiority complex, superiority complex and cynicism and all these qualities are appearing in the Novel Kosala.

According to Alfred Adler, an Austrian physician and psychiatrist, everything within the personality, whether it's thinking, feeling, memory, fantasy, dreams, posture, gestures, handwriting - every expression of the personality - is essentially subordinate to this goal, which gets formulated even without words in early childhood and becomes the childhood prototype. The child imagines sometime in the future when they will grow up, when they will be strong, when they will overcome insecurity or anything else that bothers them. So, if they feel that they are ugly, they will be beautiful. If they feel that they're stupid, they will be brilliant. If they feel that they're weak, they'll be strong. If they're at the bottom, they'll be at the top. All of this is conceived without words as a way of living in the insecurity of the present that may be uncomfortable or unbearable. It would be unbearable to say that these feelings of insecurity or inferiority are a permanent condition for you. So, what the child does, and eventually what the adult does, is they imagine that the future will bring redemption, will bring relief from the inferiority feeling. The future will bring success, significance, a correction - a reversal of everything that's wrong. It's very purposeful. This fictional final goal is an embodiment of their vision of the future. He further said that It is not against instinctual demands that people have to safeguard themselves, it is that their self-esteem is suffering, because they have a feeling that they cannot meet the demands of life that come from the outside and this natural striving for perfection may however be held back if their self-image is degraded by failures in physical, intellectual and social development or of they suffer from the criticisms of parents, teachers and peers. If you read novel carefully, you will realize the theory of Dr Alfred Adler has been applicable to the character of Kosala.

Pandurang Sangvikar came to Pune at the age of 25 from small town Sanghvi in Khandesh to enrol as an undergraduate student. Even though he is from well to do family, his childhood was not good. His relationship with his father was strange and difficult one. He described his father as a harsh and selfish person. He gave one incidence of his childhood in which Pandurang tried to grow some flowers, but his father destroyed the flower bed by saying that instead of flowers, he should have planted bananas, so that he would have earned more money. He also said that his father was well-respected person in Sanghavi town, but he was liar and deceiving others for petty gains. Thus, these incidents depict rage of Pandurang against phoniness, crudeness and insensitivity. Whatever his relationship with his father, he loves his mother and sisters dearly.

After completing his school education, he moves to Pune to join college for further studies. He lives in hostel and becomes secretary of college debating society. He reads lot and also directs plays at the collage Annual day function. He takes responsibility for management of hostel mess and helping one of his poor friends. At the time of doing this, he discovers that his friends were using him. He fails in the exam and his financial position starts deteriorating. His father becomes angry on him and he starts realising that good deeds do not count for much in life.

In Second year of college, Pandurang was totally different person. He feels empathy towards Ramappa who was canteen in charge and misappropriating canteen funds. Pandurang helps him by borrowing fund from his father to pay the bill of grocery shop. He started enjoying long walk with his friends and getting lost in hill surrounding his college. But death incident of his sister was shocked him and started feeling that this is an artificial world made by selfish humans where he is misfit. He started disliking the life of Cities. He fails in his exams. After unsuccessful attempts to find the work in Pune, he returned back to his small town village as a depressed and disillusioned person by shutting himself from the world, as if in Cocoon. Thus, Pandurang Sangvikar did not understand the meaning of life.

In short, Pandurang Sangvikar from a small town came to Pune to get further education but could not get successes and goes back home as a failure and shut himself from the world. This book did not get much important as it was written in three weeks without giving any proper references. Therefore, I read it again from psychological way and found this novel is nothing but anti-establishment novel. This novel shows that Pandurang Sangvikar and his father is victim of Sadism. One of the main incident in the initial section of the book is that Pandurang hunting and killing rats in his attic after some rats kill a baby rabbit that he has brought home as a pet. Pandurang hunts the rats  like a madman. Both these incidences like destroying flowers bed and killing of rats are the examples of the sadism. Not fitting oneself in the city life showing the inferiority complex and trying to consider oneself above everyone was nothing but superiority complex and last blame the world for his failure was cynicism. These qualities have been mentioned by Dr. Alfred Adler in his writing on Individual Psychology.

At last, I quote the words of a renowned writer Italo Calvino who once said that a classic book is a book which, even when being read for the first time, gives the sense of rereading something read earlier. He further said that classics come to us bearing the aura of previous interpretations and trailing behind them the traces they have left in the cultures through which they have passed. I do not think Kosala fits into this.

Mumbai

15/05/2020