Asamardhuni Jivayatra (literally: The Life Journey of a Hapless Soul, English title The Bungler) is a 1947 Telugu language novel by Tripuraneni Gopichand.

Though The village elder Ramayya cautions him to be careful with his wealth, Sitaramrao, inspired by lofty ideals, pays for a lavish funeral, and arranges for people with large debts to his family to repay only a small proportion.

He visits a prostitute, then challenges a speaker addressing a meeting and is beaten up, whereupon the wise Ramayya takes him to the shelter of a rain tree, and tries unsuccessfully to reason with him so that he might mend his ways and return home.

[1] One day, sitting alone, Sitaramrao cries out "All is illusion" and walks to the cremation grounds, where he imagines seeing his father rolling his eyes, gnashing his teeth and chastising him as a wastrel.

The following day Ramayya passes by and, on examining the torn bones and scattered flesh there, identifies the mangled body as that of Sitaramrao.

[2] Set in an unstated year during the 1940s, the story occurs in an unnamed village in Andhra Pradesh, on its way to becoming a town.

[2] Lipipuspa Nayak observes, in her review, that "the novel seems to falter in the last chapter that narrates the transition of the protagonist from an incompetent illusionist, unable to overcome the hangover of the family values to a schizophrenic who eventually commits suicide."

She found the progression of protagonist from a romantic rebel to a questioning philosopher and a compulsive campaigner for his views to be "abrupt".