Vidyasagar Mahajan: An Untamed Maverick

1956 - 2009

( Photo by Mr. Charudatta Vartak, Pune, India)

When majority of activities in this world are carried out as per standard procedures and things are progressed on trodden paths, the Gaussian distribution expects some folks to evolve new pathways and generate new protocols for others to follow.

Vidyasagar couldn’t have been anybody else but an untamed Maverick of art-forms in multilingual arena.


Vidyasagar left this world in early morning hours on 9th June 2009. The blood cancer (AML) showed up in him in April 2008 and after about 14 months of glorious fight, he moved on to carry out different things in different world.

He was born to a fine pair of Freedom fighters in 1956 and was educated in Pune from KG to MA. German language was his passion which he taught for 25 years and Spanish was the second love which he mastered & taught over last 10 years.

Handling different Art forms was his habit and the drama, poetry and translation were the habitats. He never left his ‘addictions’. His every New Year resolution got his students and coworkers addicted to newer forms of theatre & multilingual translations. He had unlearning disability! He seriously played with words. He coined new words in Marathi during his German/Spanish translations.

He was 53ish on the day he expired. He professionally lived and created in the midst of turbulent cultural climate of last 3 decades. Onslaught of electronic media, commercialization of every art-form and de-linking of creativity from expression have been the critical climatic changes.

He founded “Kalasakta” in 1995, an activity centered on presenting foreign literature on Marathi stage. Atul Kulkarni, Ila Bhate contributed to the stage-show: “Tikdun Aanlelya Goshti” as presenters of Marathi translations of Russian, German, Italian, Spanish & French stories. In year 1999 he started publishing a quarterly magazine Kelyane Bhashantar in which direct translations of stories / plays /poems from European languages into Marathi are published.


For such activities, no templates existed. No grant money was “budgeted, sanctioned & available to be spent”. Nevertheless, he attracted enthusiastic support from many persons of repute with honest desire to walk the un-trodden path along side him. His passion for making things work in their finest, perfect form motivated several students, colleagues and even mentors.

If others had any apprehensions about longevity of these activities, he didn’t notice them.

He taught German in National Defense Academy, Pune. He often traveled to Europe to learn nascent trends in Dramatics, Translation & teaching methods. He created viable relationships with reputed European publishing houses in connection with copyright formalities. He has one Marathi book –Dusrya Jodidarachya Shodhat on his name which is a translation of the German Novel by Eva Heller which depicts the moral and social fabric of contemporary Germany. The German title of the original novel means “With the new man, every thing will be different”.

About his “Tikdun Aanlelya Goshti” show, he was never worried about its media coverage on TV or news papers. As and when the art-form shall reach its finest destination, a need shall emerge for its wider publicity – he firmly believed.

The flexibility of presentation and emphasis on creativity attracted talented artists, writers and translators to his activities.

He stayed away from the cheap and sinister facets of performing or presenting the art and hence collected no baggage for which to secretly repent.

He has left behind a legacy of good clean creative expression, a couple of “validated Protocols” for trans-cultural studies and many blueprints on which multi linguistic art forms can be pursued, learnt and presented.

He was hard to tame since no bait worked for him. I wish him a jolly good time wherever he has checked-in now. So long Buddy!