He had deliberately chosen the medium of novel because of its popularity to express his ideas of a Plato-like Republic, where the privileged have obligations. The Gujarati writer Prabodh Parikh reminds me that Tripathi was a writer first, novelist later. Intimidating size and teachers apart, once I made an effort, I found a complex narrative that was less about what happens to whom and when-and more about the characters’ thoughts.
But it was a metaphorical burden too, for when my essays at our Gujarati-medium school weren’t up to the mark, one of my teachers scolded me: “You are Govardhanram’s descendant-how can your writing be so shabby?" Taken together, the four volumes take up over 2,000 pages, and as my grandfather used to joke, the breadth of its fourth volume was the same as its height. Saraswatichandra became a burden for some of us. It was a difficult film to make-Saraswatichandra is really about a man’s quest to understand his place in society, about challenging orthodox mores, where ideas matter and the plot is secondary-and it isn’t surprising that people know the film more for Kalyanji-Anandji’s music than its story.Ī scene from the movie, ‘Saraswatichandra’. When Govind Saraiya made the eponymous film in 1968, he invited the Tripathi clan to see the film on its opening night, and dozens of us dutifully made our way to the Opera House theatre. But writing was his true calling he wrote Saraswatichandra between 18.
Ltd, in Kalbadevi in Bombay (now Mumbai), which his brother Narbheram managed, and where several of my uncles were to work over the years. Mentored by his uncle Manahsukhram Tripathi (my great-great-grandfather and himself a scholar and writer), Govardhanram was a skilled lawyer who represented Gujarat’s princely states and helped set up the law publisher, NM Tripathi Pvt.
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