Life of an Empty-headed Imbecile

Dattatray Deshmukh lives in Latur, a small town in Maharashtra, India. He is the owner of a coaching class for commerce students. When he was in school one day his teacher called him an IMBECILE. For him, it was a new word. He asks his father what it means. His father looking at its meaning in an English-Marathi dictionary tells him that an imbecile is a CLEVER PERSON. He feels proud upon hearing its meaning. As he grows up several people call him an imbecile including his mother, his first love, his wife, and his extramarital lover, etc. At one point he bursts out in rage because he realises what its real meaning is. He gets frustrated over it but can’t do anything. He never understands why he is an imbecile. Why does everyone call him an imbecile?

In a parallel life, Dattatray lives the life of a pujari, a Hindu Brahmin priest’s son. His father’s connection with an organisation influences him a lot. It eventually embroils him in an embarrassing situation where he has to admit what he thoughts about an incident that happened in his school days. As the bard says to be or not to be, Dattatray feels himself in that situation as like Prince of Denmark did. But he opens his mind to what he thinks about that incident. He feels relieved. He also says the incident doesn’t have meaning to his current life. It’s in the past. It should remain in the past. He decides not to tell his daughters about it.

Living two different lives parallelly Dattatray has to face several consequences being a son, a subordinate, a Brahmin, a husband, and an ex-lover. Still, he doesn’t know how to act in those situations. He is baffled by what life has served him.

Dattatray Deshmukh is telling his forty-year story from 1982-2022.