Writer vs writer: Evening in Paris, days in prison

The flight he was to board was bound for France, where he would have been among the 20 Indian writers invited by the French government to tour the country as part of the ‘Strange Letters’ festival. Kale would have also taken an 11-province lecture tour talking about his turbulent life as a Dalit.

Instead, he finds himself in jail on charges of dowry-related mental and physical harassment, misappropriation of property and jewellery and threats. His wife Sangeeta filed a complaint against Kale, his mother Shantabai and brother Deepak at the Badlapur police station on November 14.

Both Kale and Gaikwad have much in common besides literature. Both come from poor Dalit families and faced similar struggles. And both exploded in Marathi literature with autobiographical works that mirrored the Dalit angst.

Kale — who grew up without a father and used his mother’s name — shot to fame with his first books Kolatyacha Por (Son of a Kolati) and Mi Doctor Kasa Jhalo (How I became a Doctor), both autobiographical accounts.

The Kolatis are a tribe in Maharashtra who have traditionally performed the tamasha folk art form. Gaikwad’s autobiographical work Uchalya won him the Sahitya Akademi award and the SAARC writer’s award in 1987-88.

In the complaint, Sangeeta accuses Kale of financial misappropriation and having illegally mortgaged her gold jewellery to pay loans taken from Badlapur’s two co-operative banks. The loans were taken by Kale to start a health centre at Badlapur.

Kale denies the charges and alleges that the complaint had been lodged with the specific intention of preventing him from attending the literary festival. ‘‘Gaikwad is himself a well-known writer and he wasn’t invited to France. So, he is trying to prevent me from attending the festival. Sangeeta and I have been having clashes since our marriage in 1994. If I was harassing her for dowry, why have they waited for the last eight years’’, asks Kale, who claims to have converted to Buddhism in August 2002.

Gaikwad denied the allegations made by Kale. ‘‘Kale was going to France because I sent his bio-data to the French authorities. Publicity and money have been his weaknesses. He harassed my daughter, but I remained silent hoping things would improve. He used to disappear for days together and had taken loans to the tune of Rs 12-13 lakh. Then he disappeared for six months, leaving my daughter in the lurch. We heard he took to Buddhism, but we failed to trace him. Finally, we decided to lodge a complaint,’’ Gaikwad said.