Kiran Nagarkar, an Indian writer whose celebrated novels and plays addressed subjects like 16th-century Rajasthani royalty, the life of the working poor in Mumbai and religious fundamentalism, died on Sept. 5 in a hospital in Mumbai. He was 77 .

His longtime partner, Tulsi Vatsal , said the cause was a cerebral hemorrhage.

In both English and his native language, Marathi, Mr. Nagarkar’s wordplay and the colorful characters he created left an indelible impression. His writing was bawdy, irreverent and joyous, but it also held up a mirror to uncomfortable truths . Mumbai, his birthplace, was often the backdrop for his plots, and he was known for capturing that sprawling metropolis’s never-say-die spirit.

His experimental novel “Saat Sakkam Trechalis” (“Seven Times Six Is Forty-Three”) , from 1974 — his only book in Marathi — is considered a landmark in that language, spoken by more than 80 million people in India. It follows the stream of consciousness of a young author waiting to be recognized for his work.

In “ Ravan and Eddie” (1995), his breakout English novel, he took readers into the chawls, Mumbai’s squalid tenements, where his main characters live. That book and two more, “The Extras” (2012) and “Rest in Peace” (2015), form a trilogy that follows two boys — Ravan, who is Hindu, and Eddie, who is Roman Catholic — from childhood to their life in Bollywood.