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Baduku by Geetha
Nagabhushana
Lohia Prakashana, Rs. 190
THE REALISTIC tradition in Kannada fiction is making an assertive comeback during the last two decades after an interlude of modernistic writing, focussing on the angst of the alienated individual. This is not merely a new incarnation of the very same writers who have had a change of heart. On the contrary, a spectrum of experiences, which is both region specific and community specific, is finding a literary expression perhaps for the first time. It is easy, but improper to dismiss them as anthropological excesses. The fact that many practitioners of this school are women is significant by itself. Writers such as Vaidehi, Nagaveni, Champavathi, Jahnavi et al have broken new grounds by their pioneering work.
Geetha Nagabhushana is yet another member of this exclusive group. She is the first woman from Karnataka and also the first writer from Hyderabad-Karnataka to secure the Kendra Sahitya Academy Award in Kannada.
Baduku, which was published in 2001 and has won the coveted prize (which is what has prompted the review), is her magnum opus, coming after a series of novels and collection of short stories, which were imbued with a spirit of rebellion. It is written in a racy style, charged with emotions. This novel is at once a saga of individuals, communities and societies caught in a flood of historical processes beyond their control. However, the fabric of the novel is made of human relations with all their joys and pains. The large canvass of a novel has made it possible for the writer to delineate the evolution of characters with loving care and provide minute authentic details. The ebbs and flows in the life of Mallappa Jamadar, his wife Mallamma and the next three generations in the family are portrayed in the backdrop of a rural community. However, the protagonists of the novel are Kashamma and Shanamma, the daughters of Mallappa who display lots of tenacity and courage in facing the travails of life.
Kashamma is caught in a vortex of elemental forces such as love and social inhibitors such as caste. But she has the strength of character to tread the path that is dear to her heart even when she is torn asunder between her love for Lingaraja and her concern for Marthanda, her meek but loving husband. Belli, Shanamma's daughter is yet another prototype who is moulded on the twin virtues of love and sacrifice. The novelist has not fallen into the familiar trap of black and white characterisation.
In addition to the major characters, the novel is replete with a number of minor studies, which are remarkable for their authenticity. The inner circle of major characters is surrounded by yet another circle of landless labourers who are dependant on Mallappa and his ilk for their livelihood. Geetha is contemplative and critical of her own community when she writes about marginalised and exploited persona such as Fathroo, Nagammayi and Najmaa. In spite of empathy for people belonging to different levels of social hierarchy, the author is aware of the fact that exploitation is a phenomenon that defies humane concerns. Consequently, she achieves a very fine balance between her rebellious world-view and her essential objectivity.
Baduku celebrates life in an inimitable manner. Primeval forces such as food, sex, motherhood and anger are given their rightful due without any puritanical and judgmental value system.
Geetha makes use of regional and social dialects with supreme confidence and she is not wary of giving details, which acquire symbolic significance every now and then. The style is lyrical, descriptive or contemplative depending on the exigencies of the situation.
It is not possible to do full justice to this mammoth work within the confines of this short review.
But Baduku is undoubtedly one of the classics of Kannada fiction, worthy of all accolades that have come to it.
H.S. RAGHAVENDRA RAO
Nudi Shodha by Krishnamurthy Hanur
Kannada Pustaka Pradhikara, Rs. 80
THE AUTHOR, a Kannada professor at the Mysore University, has an impressive array of works since 1978. His collection of narrative folk songs Kattale Daari Doora (1983), tribal research work Myaasa Bedara Samskrithi (1993), and Budakattu Mattu Janapada Geethegalu (Central Sahitya Akademi) are notable and well known.
Analytical ability coupled with a fine flow of language is the hallmark of his writing. The present volume is a collection of his research articles spread over three decades. From Harihara to Bhyrappa, from Karaga around Bangalore to the tribes of Chitradurga, not just the range, but the depth is also impressive. The style engages even the not so intellectual readers.
Hanur explores some interesting aspects: How Kumaravyasa (Gadugina Naranappa) is famous in South Karnataka? Why has the Virataparva in Kumara Vyasa Bharatha caught the fascination of rural people? And so on.
The author's comparison of the writings of Pampa and Kumaravyasa of yore and Kuvempu and Poornachandra Tejaswi of the present looks fresh. Some may not like his remarks about Pu. Ti. Na (he calls his writing more vakya panditya than pratibhe) and Chaduranga (Vaisakha), but Krishnamurthy has taken care to acknowledge their plus points as well. At times he is formula oriented and indulges in oversimplification (rural folk do not like adhikarashahi, therefore they like Shiva-Ganapa rather than Rama and Krishna). He stretches a bit too far while making his observations about a Bhyrappa novel.
Of the sixteen articles three standout: Kumara Vyasa, Karnataka Bharata Kathamanjari: Janapada Hinnele, Sujana Avara Samvahana, and Chitradurgada Eradu Budakkattu mattu Avara Naduvana Janapada Sahitya. While the pricing of the book can be termed reasonable, quite a few errors (contents sheet on the left, many partly printed letters) make the reading a bit strained.
H.S. MANJUNATHA
Raseedi Tickeetu by Amrita Pritam, translated by Hasan Nayeem Surakoda
Lohia Prakashana, Rs. 100
AMRITA PRITAM is a name that at once spells rebellion and romanticism. Her life and works are packed with the kind of stuff the world, more often than not, frowns upon. Someone once called her the "goddess of defiance". Interesting what Khushwant Singh thought of life lived to the hilt. When Amrita told him she was contemplating an autobiography, he said: "What's there in your life except a couple of incidents? Just enough to fill the back of a revenue stamp."
Amrita Pritam called her autobiography just that, Revenue Stamp — "something to complete the account book of my life and at the end, seal it with this revenue stamp as it were." This was published in 1976 and since then, she has written another autobiography, Shadows of Words. The autobiography translated into Kannada is the first one. The book is at once lyrical and powerful, blunt and heart-warming, like all of Amrita.
In Rasidi Tickeetu we learn how Amrita was a rebel from the very beginning. Among her first quarrels was with her grandmother, who insisted on keeping separate drinking glasses for Muslim visitors.
The free spirit of Amrita found the restrictions intolerable, as she grew older. She writes of her adolescent years: "All that's familiar is growing tight on me like the clothes on my body. My lips are drying, thirsting for life. My heart longs to go and touch the stars, instead of bowing to them as gods from so far... How many restrictions, contradictions all around me... There's fire in my breath."
The book is full of such poetic passages, especially when she talks of her indefinable relationship with poet Sahir Ludhianvi. One is also struck by the openness with which she talks of this relationship even with Imroz, the man she lives with. The book gets a little tedious only when she writes about all those who spewed venom on her life and works.
The tone turns bitter and those lengthy passages fail to hold your attention. You feel the same way when you read about her many trips to East Europe and her association with the late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Despite their length, they don't quite tell you what her equations with the political system of the time were.
Anyway, what really stays in one's mind after closing the book is all the poetry and the indomitable spirit behind it.
BAGESHREE S.
Leafing Through is a monthly column of Kannada Book reviews. You can send in books and responses to Friday Review, The Hindu, 19&21, Bhagwan Mahaveer Road, Bangalore 5600001.
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