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Varanasi
by M.T. Vasudevan Nair,
Translated by
K.S. Karunakaran,
Navakarnataka, Rs. 75
M.T. Vasudevan Nair begins the novel with an excerpt from the Katha Upanishad where Yama is telling Nachiketa not to insist on knowing the secrets around death. He prepares the reader to take the novel not as a guide to Benares, but to take it as a work of art that is searching for the meaning of life. The novel moves through the different corridors of life in India, France and America and takes us back to Vedic and Upanishad times and into the world of Sudhakar, who overhears conversations of people who play important roles in his life.
Varanasi becomes a symbol of the world of Yama into which Sudhakar enters as Nachiketa. His journey, the places he visits and his many encounters remind us of Dante's Inferno and Purgatory. Nachiketa reborn as Sudhakar, is an M.A. in English literature from the Benaras University. He is a research student under Prof. Srinivasan.
There are hundreds of characters and a number of references to Kalidas, Tulsidas, Bharatendu, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Charles Lamb, Mark Twain, Kashmiri poet Damodara Gupta, Victor Hugo, Josh Miliabadi, Faiz and F.H. Bradley. References to literary works Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina, Lady Chaterlee's Lover and Tempest enrich the novel.
What Varanasi means to a Hindu, what role money plays there, and how a cultural mafia controls the city and how beyond all this reality is the mythical, sacred Varanasi reveals the novelist's vision of life. It is an absorbing novel about the East while not being closed to the West.
SUMATEENDRA NADIG
Prachina Bharatadalli Shudraru by
Ramachandra S. Sharma
Translation by Dr. J. Srinivasamurthy, Dr. R. Shobha, Dr. S. Gurudutt and Dr. G. Ramakrishna
Navakarnataka, Rs. 90
This book is based on a rare study by Prof. Ramachandra Sharma about the working class (castes) of ancient India between 1000 BC and 600 AD, identified as shudras by the upper caste.
Translated into Kannada by four Kannada scholars, the book records the life and times of the shudras based on the literary evidences drawn from Buddhist, Jain and Vedic sources.
According to the author, the shudras formed a major chunk of the national populace and performed the duties of water suppliers, dancers, barbers, and beauticians.
The presentation has clarity and is chronologically ordered. The central argument is very difficult to trace, but a close reading reveals that the book tries to construct the increasing oppression and the growth of slavery system in India. It makes a fine distinction between dharma and jaati and the author opines that all efforts made by Jain, Buddhist and Tantric religions for the betterment of shudras, never progressed beyond the religious domain.
What's heartening is that while the work gives a vivid picture of oppression, it also lucidly records the protest and improvement in living conditions after the Mauryan era. The central argument of the book has to be inferred by the reader, having read through the mass of authentic material quoted in the text.
Since the author has a preoccupation with Kautilya's thinking, he finds it difficult to reconcile Kautilya's Arthashastra with other literary sources of the Mauryan period.
This book is valuable mainly for drawing attention to many sources, but the author does not seem to connect the sources to build up a thesis. One of the shortcomings of the book is that it completely neglects the condition of the shudras in South India. Since the issues of the shudras has contemporary relevance and since the book gives a vivid picture of them under various regimes up to the Gupta period in the north, it becomes a major book that helps in an understanding of the socio-cultural history of India.
Dr. G.B. HARISHA
Rangaloka by
H. Parshwanath
H.A.Parshwanath is professor and head of the pathology department in Mysore Medical College and his profession has taken him all over the State. But what makes him different from other medical professionals is his abiding interest in theatre and his propensity to celebrate the theatrical soul of the place that he calls home.
His books reflect a passionate theatre person's engagement with an art form that in turn draws from human nature in a myriad ways. Rangaloka is Dr. Parshwanath's fourth collection of writings on theatre following Rangasanga, Vyakti Shakti, and a biography of H.K.Yoganarasimha.
As H.M. Channiah says in the preface to Rangaloka, the book has sections such as Vichara which describes theatre culture in Bellary, Chitradurga, Tumkur and Mysore.
Kriti Parichaya introduces and analyses plays like Hulishekhara's Aragina Betta in which the dance of the peacock, the oracle, and the fantasy technique take the play into the realm of folklore.
Along with the two other sections Munnudi-Olnudi and Ranga Tandagalu, the 27 chapters of Rangaloka runs through the gamut of theatre and its reach into various fields, be it literacy, social responsibility, experimental theatre, or theatre in urban areas vis-a-vis rural theatre.
Dr. Parshwanath himself regards theatre and drama as an expression of the socio-cultural ethos. Theatre has the felicity to be eternal in its appeal, relevant in its theme and constantly links the past, present and the future, he says.
The purpose of writing on theatre for Dr. Parshwanath is to build a body of contemporary literature on the emerging trends and to celebrate the history of theatre in Karnataka.
Pradhan Gurudatta says in the blurb of the book, that Dr. Parshwanath, who is no mean artiste on the stage himself, excels as a medical professional too.
If he won the Karnataka Nataka Akademi fellowship in 1998, the Indian Medical Association declared him the Best Teacher in 2003.
ALLADI JAYASREE
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