Pandurang Sangvikar is the protagonist of the novel, Cocoon. It is a story of an intermediate student upto his graduation. Pandurag‘s life is very eventful and adventurous in its own sense. He is an adventure loving soul right from his early childhood. His father is a typical Maharashtrian farmer with well-to-do background. Like any other father, Pandurang‘s father also expects his son to perform better and do well in life. But the problem of Pandurang is that he doesn‘t know what it exactly means to do great or be great in life. He decided to come to Pune for his further education where he begins his journey of realization of his own self. He fights his own inhibitions as a student at a low level and gets humiliated at times in the presence of advanced boys and girls on the campus of Fergusson College, Pune. After this realization, the protagonist wages a war against his own weaknesses such as his shyness, inhibitions, weak communication skills, wrong Marathi pronunciation and weak knowledge of English language. In these attempts of developing his personality, he makes many friends and tends to be lavish in his life style. He likes giving alms to beggars. More than four rupees a month was the amount he donated amongst the beggars. This lavish life style is one of the reasons why the gap between the father and the son increases. On the contrary, his father suggested him to curtail his expenses many a time, but all in vain.
He recalls an experience when he had planted some vegetables in a corner of his field out of curiosity. But his father destroyed it saying that he would have grown bananas at the place, as it‘d have worth more than Rs 25. This and such other experiences created a considerable communication gap between the son and father.
Another worth mentioning incident which reflects the father son relationship more eloquently is when Pandurang finds himself cocooned in the labyrinth of his own bad financial decisions. He was the secretary of the Annual Cultural Programmes. He happened to spend more money than he was supposed, to ending into financial/ monetary trouble. This was his maiden experience and strange situation where he finds himself alienated and lonely dealing with his own problems. This alienation of the protagonist is misunderstood by many Marathi critics as his existential condition, but it is worth mentioning here that this is the result of his own wrong decisions. He feels like the silk worm which creates its own cocoon around itself only to die down alienated within.
He requests his father to give him Rs. 400 which was considerably more amount for his father. But like a responsible father he sends the money to the son and helps him out. His father writes a strict letter to him along with the money and says that he has purchased Pandurang for Rs. 400. The protagonists dislikes the statement only to experience an increased gap between then two.
It is a sheer case of under communication or weak communication more than a communication gap. This happens mostly when people do not express themselves properly. Just a single sentence with warm regards or love and confession or appreciation and praise from either of the sides would have settled everything all right between them.