The Hindu : Karnataka News : I’ve got a little list…

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Dec 11, 2007
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Karnataka

Karnataka

I’ve got a little list…

I used to be transfixed by one of my teachers who lectured on Kannada verse in English

This is the season for lists, though not of the kind that the Lord High Executioner had, but of persons seen as interesting achievers whose opinions are sought on the highpoints of their lives over the past one year. Thus, opinions will be canvassed on the films or TV programmes they enjoyed most, their preferred restaurants and holiday destinations, the “causes” they felt most passionate about and so on. In order to give such inquiries some “intellectual ” depth, there is also the predictable question: Which books did you most enjoy reading during the past one year?

In the first of such lists that I have read this year that appeared in this paper on December 2, 2007, thirteen “prominent authors, artistes and film-makers,” a baker’s dozen for the months of the year, invited to “share and discuss the books they enjoyed reading in 2007,” have spoken briefly about the books that “struck a chord.” All barring one are Indians; even the one who is not an Indian is an Indophile of sorts who has made a home in India.

Barring two, all the persons interviewed, including some who are not writers, have picked up as their memorable read for the year an English book, in one case an English translation of a book. The exceptions are Jogen Choudhury, the painter, whose choice is a collection of Bengali poems by Utpal Kumar Basu; and my old friend from Mumbai and Guwahati, Jahnu Barua, the film-maker, whose choice is an Assamese novel by Arupa Patangia.

It is unlikely that the rest are not literate in any Indian language. What is more likely is that books in Indian languages are simply not read, probably not considered worth reading, by most Indian intellectuals who appear in such lists. However, such is not the case even with the most sophisticated intellectuals from Bengal and Assam. It is therefore not accidental that the two persons who have spoken about books in an Indian language, even if it is from their own language, are from Bengal and Assam.

Indeed, many Bengali and Assamese intellectuals, unlike those who are part of cultural circuits and are into other kinds of profitable literary racketeering, and so pretend to a knowledge of other literatures, are genuinely interested in and familiar with the literature in other Indian languages.

Incidentally, none of the “authors, artists and film-makers” interviewed appears to be a Kannadiga. However, even if a Kannadiga had been canvassed for her or his opinion, one wonders if the choice would have been a Kannada book. If memory serves right, the Kannada writers that one was slightly acquainted with in the late 1950s, especially those of “Old Mysore,” routinely discussed issues of Kannada letters in English, howsoever uncomfortable and gawky they were in the use of the language. I used to be transfixed by one of my teachers who lectured on Kannada verse in English.

It is true that half a century since those days, there are books on literary theory and literary criticism in Kannada, some of them of very high quality, the writing the envy of a plodder in Kannada like me. This emergence of a class (and caste) of writers who have worked hard to distance themselves from the earlier models and their regressive ideological baggage is closely related to the broader socio-cultural transformation in the State. However, casual conversation between two so-called educated Kannada speaking persons is even now peppered with English words and phrases though corresponding Kannada expressions are readily available.

M.S. Prabhakara

kamaroopi@gmail.com

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