Lootaloot review: Marathi writer Baburao Bagul’s stories capture the misery of the marginalised

In his Introduction to Lootaloot (Hachette India), a collection of stories by Baburao Bagul (1930-2008), a pioneer of Marathi Dalit literature, translator Manav Kambli writes: “Bagul takes us viscerally close to the lives of those who society has rendered invisible, inert and mute. His imperfect protagonists trudge through a world where all odds are stacked against them, and the reader is assailed by the feeling of helplessness that the characters experience.” His words certainly match my feelings when I had first read Bagul two years ago. When I Hid My Caste, his seminal collection translated from the Marathi by Jerry Pinto, had an intense and enduring effect on me. That same effect was replicated by Lootaloot in Kambli’s capable translation. It is a natural reaction to reading gritty social realism where the veneer of rose-tinted glasses is abandoned. Caste and its effect on the psychic mindscapes as well as material bodies is rarely so well depicted and rooted in the lived realities of individuals.

‘Lootaloot’ (Plunder) begins this English translation and it really sets the tone for all that comes after it, giving credence to its choice as the new titular story. Set in a brothel, it follows three sex workers who toil there as well as their cruel madam. Gangu Naikin, who runs the brothel, has just gotten news that her brother is finally going to be the father of a son and this news fills her with ecstasy. Her star employee-cum-possession, Vanchala, is livid on the contrary for Gangu is her aunt by blood and her father, this same brother of Gangu, had sold her to the brothel. The other sex workers fall prey to their ire but it’s clear that the villains in this cycle of oppression are the men on the outside, whether it be the strongman, a policeman, or the landlord, who all demand their share of the pie to ensure that things run smoothly as they have so far, when a fight breaks out amongst the women.

How power, privilege dehumanise people

‘Death is Becoming Cheap’, the titular story of the original Marathi collection which came out as Maran Swasta Hot Aahe in 1969, is another one that stands out. Set in a slum, it has an interesting metatextual element as the two main characters are a writer, the first-person narrator, and his poet friend. They are both suffering from writers’ block and trying to work on their short story and poem, respectively. They step out of the house and take a walk around a makeshift, precarious community by the railway tracks. As people come and hail the writer, he explains their tragic backstories to his friend who then recommends ways in which it could be incorporated in the short story, suggesting title changes at every turn which ultimately is the same as the title of the story we are reading. This story highlights how to individuals on the outside, the lived realities of marginalised people are just fodder, a generative catalyst for the imagination which turns them into pristine narratives.

Both these stories outline the general themes of Bagul’s collection, from misogyny to internalised patriarchy, caste discrimination to inter-caste hierarchies, systemic exploitation to large-scale invisibilisation. Bagul is brilliant at showcasing how power and privilege come together to dehumanise individuals. It has to be said though that the capitalist, caste society is largely at the fringes although its devastating effects reverberate throughout the book. The stories themselves focus on marginalised backgrounds and characters, paying heartbreaking attention to how violence is passed from one person to the other, twisting individuals in the process and forcing them to contribute to their own dehumanisation, as well as how at the end of the day, the final victim in the long chain is usually a woman. Yet, the stories do not feel or read the same regardless of common motifs and concerns.

‘Education’ is a story that is more in line with ‘Death is Becoming Cheap’. It starts with an amateur activist from a privileged socio-economic background who participates in the socialist struggle and breaks into a prison where he finds his old classmate from school imprisoned for murder. This classmate was an artistic, well-performing student who quit his studies and became a gangster to protect his family from his abusive brother-in-law who was the reason for his sister’s suicide. He is now doing time for his murder. The affluent activist, on the other hand, seems to be taking it all as one little adventure, bemusedly supported by his parents who treat the whole exercise as a passing fancy.

Misery: A recurring motif

Bagul, time and again, forces us to see things beyond the binary of black and white. In ‘Goon,’ we see a wounded gang leader who abhors violence fight his own gang members to protect a sex worker from being sexually assaulted by them. In “The People in the Field”, it is sort of the opposite. The story follows David, a gangster, who has been beaten up and left to die in a field by the people from whom he used to extort protection money and the police. Around him, in the field, is a microcosm of humanity. These homeless or unhoused people — a person with Tuberculosis, a teenager boy who makes his living from selling scrap, a leper, a pregnant woman giving birth, an old couple — are all trying to survive the biting cold of the night. They are all scared of David, who sees himself as their benefactor of sorts. They are scared of him, until they are not and the night ends in violence.

Misery is a prevailing undercurrent in all of Bagul’s stories. More often than not, they end at a moment of utter agony and fade away. There is no concept of a happy ending. Two stories that best exemplify this aspect of his writing are ‘Hunger’ and ‘Injustice’. In the first one, a mother who has been very sick for a few days, leaving her two young sons to fend for themselves, recovers and spends what turns out to be her last day in the company of her sons and indulges their small wishes. In the second story, misfortune strikes the life of a loving, young couple when the husband is arrested on false murder charges on the instructions of the local gangster who has eyes on his wife and has the police in his pocket. The wife runs from pillar to post to save her husband but salvation is not at hand.

Kambli is quick to point out that Bagul’s stories don’t wallow in dejection and despair by stagnating in the well of negativity or trauma porn: “Even as each story depicts harrowing experiences underscored by unending misery, underneath it all simmers the will to power, to rebellion, silent and futile as it may seem, and to decisive revolution.” With all stories set in the chawls and bastis of Mumbai, Lootaloot also gives the lie to the common assertion that caste is not a problem anymore and that if it still exists, it only exists in rural spaces. It was a problem in his time. It remains a problem today. It needs to be entirely eradicated. Baburao Bagul’s writing continues to be significant in how it looks at the complexities of Dalit life and hopefully more of his work will be translated in the near future.