‘No such thing as Mumbai theatre’: Writer Shanta Gokhale on the language divide on the stage

Good evening, friends. I must begin by thanking the committee of the Dr Aroon Tikekar Centre for Advanced Studies at the Asiatic Society of Mumbai for inviting me to be the keynote speaker at this evening’s event. Dr Tikekar was a friend from my Times of India days. He would come up to my cabin once in a while to have a chat, often an angry one. His sudden and unexpected death ended an association that had lasted some 20 years, in the course of which, as editor of Loksatta, Dr Tikekar had persuaded me to write two fortnightly columns for the paper, the first one on culture and the second on good manners.

Turning to the topic of my speech today, I must confess I was at a loss to know how to make it relevant to this year’s research projects, one of which is on Marathi literature and the other on Marathi theatre. Four memories came to my aid in quick succession to give me the title and substance of my talk. Memory number one was a visitor from Chennai, staying with friends in Walkeshwar, assuming that my mother tongue was Gujarati. He seemed surprised to hear it wasn’t. “But isn’t that the...

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