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Playwright Prasanna’s novel ‘Balagopala’ released

— Photo: V. Sreenivasa Murthy

All smiles: Writer U.R. Ananthamurthy (left) releasing the novel ‘Balagopala’ written by Prasanna (right) in Bangalore on Sunday. Director-General of Police (CoD) Ajai Kumar Singh is seen.

BANGALORE: At the release of playwright-director-writer Prasanna’s novel “Balagopala” in the city on Sunday, there was one common strain running through every speaker’s presentation: it brought back to them writers and literary texts of the past. There was Shivarama Karanth, Da.Ra. Bendre, Poornachandra Tejaswi, William Blake and W.B. Yeats.

Critic S.R. Vijayshankar, making his observations on the novel, said inter-textuality was one of the main strengths of the novel. This could be in its thematic concerns, its pre-occupations as well as its plot. “The entire text becomes a metaphor which leads you on to an experience, and the experience in turn creates a metaphor,” he explained. However, what to him was a major concern was the engagement that the novel had with the Kannada literary tradition itself. “This is an important question for me. However, I will probably have answers once the novel crystallises in me,” he said.

Writer U.R. Ananthamurthy, who released “Balagopala,” voiced his views on the book beginning with the narration of an incident that took place in the famous writer G.B. Joshi’s “atta” in Dharwad. Maasti had once told Bendre who had passed on his novel to be read by the former: “Even the unsaid has to have a home, address and a pin code.”

Mr. Ananthamurthy said while this is true of Prasanna’s novel — which is a struggle to give voice to the unsaid — realism of his past however kept peeping into his narrative. Intellectually, the novel is an outstanding achievement, but fails artistically, he said. “I look upon with awe Prasanna’s ability to steer two boats at once,” he added.

For M.S. Ashadevi, the novel was a clear shift from Prasanna’s earlier preoccupations. While she wondered if there was an organic relation between the various roles that Prasanna plays and his role as a writer, she felt that the power of the novel was the way in which it seeks to escape from the present.

“The tensions and conflicts of these times are not unknown to us. But what are the tools that we have to rise above this situation?” asked Prasanna, in his talk. “I never set out to make my work aesthetically complete, but the pursuit of an aspiration is what makes a good piece of writing, and I believe I’m on the right track.” The struggles of writers writing now is as genuine as those faced by Mr. Ananthamurthy and Lankesh.

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