With this trilogy, Mahesh Elkunchwar achieves a feat unique to playwriting in this country: developing a cycle which moves between many registers to unfold the evolving history of a family in present-day India mirroring the social and cultural shifts and changes that mark the twentieth century. From Old Stone Mansion to The Pool to Apocalypse, we follow the fortunes and struggles of the Deshpandes of Dharangaon, once highly respected and well-off landed gentry, now caught between the memory of their own genteel past and the financial penury of the present. As members of several generations come to terms with their past and future in drastically different ways, we see an image of India negotiating its way through ‘modernity’. This new edition supplements the text with a fresh introduction and an interview with the playwright by scholar and critic Samik Bandyopadhyay. Mahesh Elkunchwar is a veteran Marathi playwright whose plays have been performed in various Indian languages. He has received several prestigious national awards and fellowships including the Homi Bhabha Fellowship (1976–78), the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award (1989), the Sahitya Akademi Award (2002) and the Saraswati Samman (2002). Recently retired as a professor of English Literature, he has also taught at the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune. Shanta Gokhale is a translator, scholar and critic of the arts, and author of Playwright at the Centre: Marathi Drama from 1843 to the Present (Calcutta: Seagull Books, 2000).
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