Chakravyuh

Consider Ranganath Pathare’s novel Chakravyuh to occupy a central place in his narrative prose because it is genuinely experimental. It also presents the tragedy of a scientist caught in the contemporary impasse of our culture, examining it in the context of both individual and collective behaviour.

The protagonist of this tragedy, Saxena, is a researcher in nuclear science. The manifestation and disappearance of his energy are as fragile as the very existence of an atom. The tangible world surrounding him consists of our society and its various subsystems. Yet, as an individual, he is a mysterious being moving through the uncertainty of a quantum universe. This metaphor forms the conceptual foundation of the novel.

Many years after writing Chakravyuh, Ranganath Pathare revisited the same concept in a different form in his novel Namushkiche Swagat. A comparative reading of Chakravyuh and Namushkiche Swagat brings into sharp focus the modernity, contemporaneity, and relevance of Pathare’s narrative prose.

I would describe Chakravyuh as a successful example of a “moral mystery novel” and a “cultural tragedy” in Marathi literature.