Raigad (Maharashtra), July 16 In a bizarre instance, a burglar sneaked in and emptied the locked home of the legendary Marathi litterateur, Padmashri Narayan Gangaram Surve, recently in Neral town, a police officer said here on Tuesday.
However, after realising that he had robbed the home of an eminent literary personality, the ‘literate’ burglar, who purportedly made multiple nocturnal trips through a broken window, repented and returned everything he had stolen.
Going a step further, the burglar even scrawled a note and stuck it on a wall in the home, near the ‘return goods’ consignment.
The incident came to light after the late Surve's daughter, Sujata G. Ghare and her husband Ganesh Ghare returned home after a nearly three-week outing, said Neral Police Station in-charge Shivaji Dhavale.
“It was only after they returned and saw the whole house in a mess, that they lodged a police complaint on July 15. As per the preliminary probe, we feel that the burglar must have taken advantage of the locked home, and committed the robbery during the period when the house was deserted for several weeks,” Inspector Dhavale told IANS.
Suspecting he could be a local, literate or semi-literate, unemployed youth who decided to ‘clean up’ Surve’s home to sell the stuff for a quick buck, Dhavale said that a police team has been formed to track down the unknown culprit.
Finding no cash in the house, the burglar decided to pounce on other things that included a LED TV, some brass and copper ware, steel kitchen utensils, and even foodgrains stored there.
He inspected the home finally to check if he had ‘missed’ anything - but found the photos, honours and certificates of the great man of letters, Surve, adorning the walls there.
Taken aback, feeling ashamed and sinful over his acts, the thief decided to make up – by returning all that he had taken away.
He came quietly with the stuff and dumped it in one heap in the house, in the ‘return operation’.
He thoughtfully penned a simple, parting, note which said: “I was not aware that this is Narayan Surve’s home, or I would not have burgled it! Please forgive me. Whatever stuff I had stolen, I am returning everything. I had even taken the TV set, but am giving it back. Sorry…”
A literary giant, Surve (1926-2010) was an orphan who grew up on the hard streets of south Mumbai, slept on rough pavements and did odd, menial jobs to survive, while self-learning to make it big in life.
Finally, at the age of 36, he managed to publish his first collection of poems, ‘Aisa Ga Mi Brahma’, and later in 1966 came ‘Majhe Vidyapeeth (My University)’ with which he stormed onto the literary stage.
Though formally educated till barely Class II, it was ‘Majhe Vidyapeeth’ which earned him wide fame, recognition and nearly a dozen awards.
Active among the working class unions, he later was honoured with the coveted Padma Shri (1998) by the BJP government of Prime Minister AB Vajpayee, the Soviet Land Nehru Award (1973) for ‘Majhe Vidyapeeth’, and the Madhya Pradesh Government’s Kabir Samman (1999), among many others.
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