In my exploration and reading Marathi women authors, I selected Sonali Kulkarni. I knew her as a sensitive and mature actress trained under Satyadev Dubey. Her books So Kul and So Kul take 2, are collections of her weekly articles/essays/diary pages, published earlier in Marathi Daily with some additional chapters that she has written for the book.
I read these two books one after the other in piece-meal, reading 3-5 short essays in a week at leisure. SoKu's sensitivity is reflected in the books including her extreme left leaning along with fairly orthodox upbringing and cultural makeup.
In evaluating the two books candidly, I found that the second book ( So Kul take 2) is written maturely. In reading the two books one after the other, one can easily spot transformation of a sensitive, dreamy and innocent girl into a sensitive , dreamy and mature women. Some of her writings are extremely touching. My biggest takeaways from her writings were some of the words in Marathi that I learnt, some forgotten words and phrases and some words or phrases that I had heard but had never read! I would recommend readers read both the books in order to understand the author (So Ku) better. So Kul take 2 is more readable than So Kul, So Kul needs to be perused at fast speed before starting So Kul take 2.
My biggest takeaway from So Ku's books were:
I decided to read books of Dr Madhuri Vaidya, who in turn inspired me to read other authors like Chin Tryam Khanolkar alias Aarti Prabhu , and Grace. These books definitely exposed me to the richness of Marathi literature ( that was limited to PuLa, VaPu etc in my earlier years).
My liking for Marathi literature has brought me close to Moropant ( who I think is one of the greatest Marathi writers/poets born in last 500 year). More about him later as I explore his writings, Aarya and his life work.
On a final thought, I realized that there can be left leaning, idealistic - socialistic people , who are not liberal , in fact quite orthodox culturally .. SoKu is a glaring example.
