The Colossus That Was Bapurao Naik

(Arun Naik, Bapurao Naik's elder son speaks at the Mumbai Marathi Sahitya Sangh kickstarting Bapurao Naik's centenary year celebrations).

In 1956 my father was transferred to Baroda as manager. But we were there only for 18 months. With the reorganisation of states on linguistic principles my father was transferred to Nagpur as manager. Nana Jog was as keen a theatre lover as Dr Bhalerao. My father befriended him and I remember that they went to see Lawrence Olivier's Hamlet (film). Nana Jog later translated Hamlet, and shows of this translation/ adaptation are running today with my daughter Manava as Ophelia. Vidarbha Sahitya Sangh was like Mumbai Marathi Sahitya Sangh. Same aspirations. Even they were planning a new theatre. My father assisted Nana Jog in the planning.

But we were in Nagpur only for a year. It was here that my father first came in touch with textbooks. School textbooks were private in the erstwhile Bombay State. But they were nationalised in Madhya Pradesh of which Nagpur was the capital. The Marathi primer was called Balbharati. That name my father introduced in Maharashtra when school textbooks were nationalised here in 1967.

The Nagpur press was in a mess and my father set it right in a year. So they wanted him back in Mumbai as Deputy Director in charge of all the government presses in Bombay State.

In Mumbai Dr Bhalerao was not there. But Tatya Amonkar was carrying on the good work. The drama wing of Sahitya Sangh was in full swing with grand successes like Marathe's Honaji Bala, a musical, and P.L. Deshpande's Tuze Aahe Tujapashi and Sundar Mi Honar. Deshpande's plays were modern in the true sense, even technically. Now the Sahitya Sangh really needed a permanent theatre. These three plays got us some money. Saraswat Bank was prepared to help. Membership grew. The governments of Morarji Desai and Yashwantrao Chavan were sympa-thetic. Both these chief ministers were keen theatre-goers and frequent visitors to the open-air theatre. Marathi theatre was seeing good days.

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The Colossus That Was Bapurao Naik(Arun Naik, Bapurao Naik's elder son speaks at the Mumbai Marathi Sahitya Sangh kickstarting Bapurao Naik's centenary year celebrations).

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The Colossus That Was Bapurao Naik

(Arun Naik, Bapurao Naik's elder son speaks at the Mumbai Marathi Sahitya Sangh kickstarting Bapurao Naik's centenary year celebrations).