Mumbai LitFest: Shanta Gokhale on Marathi identity and women’s lives

“I eat Marathi, I speak Marathi, I sleep Marathi,” Shanta Gokhale told Sonali Kulkarni at the NCPA while discussing identity and writing in English.

The journalist, playwright, translator and fiction writer spoke at *Booked For Life: The Unbearable Lightness of Reading*, a session at the Mumbai Literature Festival. The conversation covered her fiction, including *The Way Home*, and her non-fiction book *Of Ancestors and Friends*.

Gokhale said English and Hindi sit at the top of a language “power hierarchy” in India. She pointed to the relative absence of Marathi names and characters in films aimed at broad national audiences. “I can’t take the Marathiness out of myself and write in English,” she said.

She also described her work routine: a morning walk, focused writing, an afternoon nap and another spell at the desk before she stops for the evening. Her female characters, she said, draw on women who manage work, homes and family negotiations while making space for their own lives.