Famous and highly respected Marathi playwright Vijay Tendulkar expired in a Pune hospital on Monday 19 May at the age of 80. For the past several weeks, he had been undergoing treatment for a neuromuscular disease. 

Among the most noted of Vijay Tendulkar's works are plays Ghashiram Kotwal and Sakharam Binder. Multi-talented Vijay Tendulkar was awarded with a number of prestigious awards in his lifetime such as the Padma Bhushan and Sangeet Natak Akademi.

Vijay Tendulkar is credited for penning few of the best screenplays in Hindi cinema such as Ardh Satya, Nishant, Akrosh and Shyam Benegal's Manthan. Vijay Tendulkar also happened to be a prominent political journalist as well as a social commentator though essentially in the Marathi language. His death will be a big loss to the country in general and to Indian literature in particular.