The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : `An author should have the feel of subject'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Apr 18, 2006

Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

`An author should have the feel of subject'

Staff Reporter

Goruru Prathistana Award presented to Geeta Nagabhushan

BANGALORE: An author can come out with a good literary work only if he feels and experiences the problems reflected in the work, literary critic L.S. Seshagiri Rao has said.

Mr. Rao was speaking on "Baduku" (Life), a work of Geeta Nagabhushan, who was presented the Goruru Prathistana Award here on Monday.

Mr. Rao said the book reflects the suffering of women and the downtrodden.

"The work clearly shows that the author has felt the suffering before coming out with a good work. An author should have the feel of the subject," Mr. Seshagiri Rao said.

He said the sensitivity involved in books on real experiences makes the books different from newspapers.

"The newspapers only depict facts by stating about persons and the ways they are affected. In the books the author himself experiences the problem and then narrates it to readers. Ms. Nagabhushan's book is a product of her experiences of problems of women and downtrodden. She has definitely come out of the trend of women writers narrating stories from men's outlook," he said.

Receiving the award, Ms. Nagabhushan said her book was a product of her frustration of writing books on the beaten track. "I thought there was a different way by which I could present the issues and problems faced by women and downtrodden. Women still endure harassment," she said. She lamented that her book was not taken in a proper spirit by the reviewers "as they had fixed notations about society and its working," she said.

Ms. Nagabhushan, who is also the Chairperson of Karnataka Sahitya Academy, said there was a need to encourage more women to take up literary works. She said the Academy would give two honorary awards to women writers from next year.

Writer H.S. Venkatesh Murthy said there were less people who are writing books in Kannada.

The number of people reading Kannada books has also come down he said. Therefore the number of people who fight for the cause of Kannada was less, he said.

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