बाई, बायको, कॅलेंडर | Bai Bayko Calendar - V.P. Kale - ★★★.½

AUTHOR: V.P. Kale

GENRE: Short Story Collection

RATING: 3.55 stars.

In a Nutshell: A short story collection that serves as a good introduction to this respected Marathi author’s works. A bit dated in content, but has enough of wit and satire to keep you invested.

Reading Marathi books has not been on my agenda since long. This is mainly because Marathi has been my weakest subject since my school days. I have had the misfortune of having such obnoxious Marathi teachers throughout my school years than instead of developing a passion for the language, all they created in my heart was dread and dislike. The monotonous textbooks, with the focus being more on esoteric content than on contemporary stories more attractive to kids, didn’t help matters. (Hindi, in contrast, was far better handled and taught.) Moreover, I don’t stay in an area with many Marathi speakers. Simply put, my skills in Marathi were and are very rusty.

In the last couple of years though, I have expanded my reading across genres as well as the formats through which I devour books. This, in addition to the fact that we had a quarterly Hindi book discussion in my Facebook group, ensured that Hindi books entered my reading agenda. But a small part of my heart was always keen to explore at least one Marathi book. This was going to be a challenge, keeping in mind that Marathi is my fourth language (after Konkani, English and Hindi, in that order.)

I had always presumed that I would begin with acclaimed humorist P. L. Deshpande’s works – I still hope to read his ‘Batatyachi Chal” someday. But when I saw this pretty cover on Amazon, I knew this would be the perfect maiden attempt for a Marathi work. The appealing artwork on the blue cover felt like the universe was sending me a sign to pick this book up for the challenge.

The fact that the reading challenge I am participating in requires one book with a blue-coloured cover was the icing on the cake.

So, how was my experience?

As a book, it mostly went the way I expected. This is a short story collection with fifteen stories. All the stories are in first person from the point of view of a male narrator. This usually doesn’t make me a happy reader as the stories start blending into each other because of too much of similarity. However, as this collection was in Marathi, I read just one story every day and so was able to keep the tales distinct.

The writing is perfect for a lower-intermediate level reader such as myself as the words are mostly easy. The conversational lines are realistic with a nice interspersing of English and Hindi, but not so much as to overpower the main language. It's exactly how people speak here in real life, and hence adds realism to the dialogues.

The content reflects the simple old-time Mumbai. Most of the stories are slice of life in format, being set around an incident or event. While the author adds his own satirical wit to the tales, what also contributes a layer of wry humour is the representation of money matters. Imagine the thought of going into debt just to pay the car repair cost of Rs.200! Heck - imagine getting a car repaired for Rs.200! Sounds really funny in 2024.

Some stories are sexist in tone. Because of the first person narrator, it becomes tough to understand whether the author is giving voice to his thoughts through his character or if he is presenting the sarcastic and misogynistic views of his character in a true-to-life manner. It is somewhat annoying to see women written in a generalised and inaccurate way, as if the only things that interest us are clothes, makeup and gossip. As this book was written in the early 1970s, I can just assume that the writing reflects the typical thinking of that generation of Indian men. That said, a couple of stories featured women who outsmarted the oversmart men in their lives – these were a balm to my heart.

As a Marathi work, the book did present its challenges to me. It felt nice to read fiction in this language after so many years. ‘Nice’, of course, doesn't equate to ‘comfortable’ or ‘easy’. I found myself mouthing the words for the first few stories. (I never mouth words in English as I find it a distracting habit.) But as I reached the fifth story, I got into the groove and was able to focus without verbalising the words. My reading speed though was horrible! A simple 20-30 page story took me about 45 minutes. But I am still proud that I read this entire work without resorting to an audio version or Google Lens, both of which would have made my progress so much smoother.

As always, I rated the stories individually. Most of the tales came around the 3.5 star mark, which means that I liked them but they didn’t blow my mind away. This is partly due to the dated nature of the stories and partly due to my lack of Marathi processing abilities.

My favourite stories were:

💮 बाई, बायको, कॅलेंडर | Bai Bayko Calendar: A deserving title story. Would have rated this higher had it not been somewhat misogynistic. But keeping in mind the time and trend, it was a funny story. The ending was a masterstroke, saving the whole experience. - 🌟🌟🌟🌟

💮 पैज + धाडस = ब्याद | Bet + Dare = Trouble: Exactly the same feedback as above. Somewhat misogynistic. Somewhat funny. Fab ending. - 🌟🌟🌟🌟

💮 प्रिमियर | Premiere: A story about the ironies of life, and how to know when to give up. Predictable but fun. - 🌟🌟🌟🌟

💮 हम पंछी | Birds of a Feather: Doctors and priests are the same. Don’t believe me? Read this story. - 🌟🌟🌟🌟

💮 एन्ट्री | Entry: A humorous discussion on who should play Draupadi in the Ramlila cast, with the extra-lengthy saree being the main point of contention. - 🌟🌟🌟🌟

तर, हे पुस्तक वाचून मला कसं वाटलं? इतक्या वर्षांनी मराठी वाचून छान वाटलं. भयंकर शिक्षक जवळपास नसल्यामुळे मी आनंदाने मराठी वाचू शकली.

या पेक्षा जास्त मराठीची अपेक्षा करू नका. मला माझ्या मराठी स्पेलिंगवर विश्वास नाही. 😛

Recommended to all interested in trying a simple-enough Marathi collection. Though the stories might be a bit outdated, they are still funny. This is a good option for novice readers in the language.

3.55 stars, based on the average of my ratings for the stories.

The digital version of this book is currently available free to Kindle Unlimited subscribers.