When a family decides to remove its ancestral gods from a deserted village home, it marks more than a physical relocation. It signals the end of a way of life.
After returning to Palasgaon, four brothers confront the slow, irreversible unravelling of the world that shaped them. The house that once held festivals and faith now stands neglected; the village has thinned out; devotion has become impractical, even inconvenient. For some, the gods remain living presences, bound to memory and meaning. For others, they are symbols of obligations that no longer fit a changed social and economic reality. As the family prepares for the final rituals, buried resentments, longings and private griefs rise to the surface.
First published in Marathi in 1961, The Gods Are Leaving is a modern classic—a profound exploration of a society in transition, where inherited faith collides with modern pressures, and tradition yields—uneasily—to new values of mobility, pragmatism, and individual survival. D.B. Mokashi captures the inner lives of his characters with remarkable sensitivity, showing how historical change is experienced not as abstraction, but as emotional loss, confusion and quiet resistance.
Shanta Gokhale’s elegant and nuanced rendering brings this deeply human novel about belief and doubt, continuity and rupture, to a new generation of readers.