Revisiting Satish Alekar's Deluge (1975)
Deluge is the flow, the flow that takes everything along its course -the good, the bad, pride, hatred, envy, anger, success, failure and what not. Satish Alekar’s play Deluge , translated from the original title Mahapoor is thought provoking, critical and highly engaging. It raises questions that shake the very essence of ideological indoctrination and asks one to revisit one’s decisions which might appear to be idealistic but are in reality shallow. Govinda Raghunath Kavathekar, in this play is a young man of around 25 years whose idealistic view of the world collapses as his expectations and understanding of the promised world fails to meet the world of reality. Govinda is us. We are Govinda. But while in our everyday existence we continue to maintain the garb of sanity, Govinda fails to accept the simulated world of survival and hence faces the ordeal. Govinda 's language is meaningful at one time and fragmented, mismatched at the other. As we read the play we begin to q...