At the centre of his universe
PRAKASH BELAWADI
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It is impossible to separate the artist from the person in K.V. Subbanna, who was honoured with the Ramon Magsaysay award. This visionary, who passed away last week, changed our perceptions of urban-rural divide and led a life that was built on rock-solid conviction
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AN INTEGRATED PERSONALITY K.V. Subbanna was not just a writer or artist or a builder of institutions, he was more than that
Kuntagodu Vibhuti Subbanna (1932-2005)
When he sat on the bench every evening in front of the Ninasam Karyalaya in Heggodu, K.V. Subbanna presided over a real village council. Here the villagers of Heggodu discussed with him the unfaithful monsoon, unscheduled power shutdowns, expected areca yield of the season, declining standards of science journalism, the brilliance of Bendre's poetry, Bergman's Wild Strawberries and Veena Paani Chawla's Brihannala.
Subbanna was a farmer, a social activist, an environmentalist and an awesome builder of institutions: "With financial prudence and a gift for bringing others into leadership, Subbanna has built Ninasam to last..." So notes the citation for him at the Magsaysay award ceremony in Manila, 1991.
It acknowledged in its choice of words the difficulty in isolating from his integrated personality the aspects for recognition. "In electing K.V. Subbanna to receive the 1991 Ramon Magsaysay Award for journalism, literature, and creative communication arts, the Board of Trustees recognises his enriching rural Karnataka with the world's best films and the delight and wonder of the living stage," it concluded.
`He was a town'
To find Subbanna the artist as an entity separate from the person is impossible. To locate him against any backdrop but his village Heggodu is to lose all that he means. Paying his tribute, his close friend of many years and a philosophical colleague, writer U.R. Ananthamurthy says: "Subbanna was not just a theatre person. Avanondu ooru. (He was a town)." What Ananthamurthy means is that Subbanna was an entire community, a way of being.
K.V. Subbanna and his life pose for us a profound challenge: Is there truth in the concept of the "professional artiste?" Subbanna himself did not take the stuff too seriously. When he got the Sahitya Akademi award for his Kaviraja Marga Mattu Kannada Jagattu, he addressed the poser in a television interview: "You know, I gave up being `committed to writing' a long time ago. I know there are many people who probably give a lot more commitment to writing. In the sense, they are writers. Perhaps, they deserve these awards... but then, I cannot deprecate my own self worth as a writer of this work..."
A proud man, Subbanna was not given to self-deprecation at all. He had enough reason to know he was a writer of worth in the huge respect he inspired in his literary friends and followers. The stunning idea is that Subbanna was more than a writer or artiste. Equally amazing is that, though he received the Kalidas Samman in 2001 and the Padmashri, he never offered to anybody his literary worth — or his value as a theatre artiste, educationist and intellectual — for evaluation.
The idea of Subbanna seems to be that every being and person is unique and aspires to be independent, that communities and ecologies evolve with negotiations between individual beings. Nobody or nothing needs to be referred to by terms outside the individual. He took offence whenever anthropologists, observers or foreigners of any nature attempted to interpret "other" civilizations. He believed a Peter Brooks attempting the definitive interpretation of The Mahabharata was a form of cultural piracy. When a geographical location is referred to as the Middle-East or Far-East, the logical question would be: "According to whom?"
He found it hard to accept that Heggodu could be referred to as a village in Sagar taluk, in Shimoga district, of Karnataka state, of India, of the third world... To him, Heggodu was the centre of the universe. All references and distances flowed from there. In a world of negotiations, thoughts and recognitions happen mutually, with consent. The award honours itself by awarding and entities reward themselves by inclusion. The state can be proud it has Heggodu. And Subbanna said: "It is Kannada which makes me grasp the universe."
It could be said that Subbanna's unique self-esteem was possible because of his economic status, born as he was to wealthy areca plantation owners. The explanation would be facile, even absurd. The way of the world is to get into the List: of Whos Who, in the top whatever, the biggest corporate, metropolis, social circle. In Subbanna's world, he was already there.
The Magsaysay citation begins by saying: "In recent years Asia's prosperous urbanites have discovered the rural arts. Handicrafts from villages now adorn their city homes. Meanwhile, polished versions of country dances and plays appear on television and grace official extravaganzas. Yet the finer elements of urban culture are rarely introduced to the village world; its inhabitants are thought too unsophisticated to appreciate them. By introducing modern plays and films to rural folk in southern India, K. V. Subbanna is making a powerful case for the universality of art."
Informed debates
That the less-than-thousand villagers of Heggodu can hold informed debates on Aristotle and Kurosawa is impressive enough. What is immensely moving is their self-esteem, their affection for the place and its ways. To them, Bangalore is no lure and cities of the world are closer to them in the films and plays they see at the Shivarama Karanth Rangamandira. There, at Heggodu, they are equal to the cultures they interpret and admire.
Heggodu is by no means an isolationist paradise. Akshara Prakashana picks new literary works to publish; its Tirugaata theatre repertory tours every district of Karnataka with new productions, every year; Subbanna's son K.V. Akshara writes on issues that profoundly affect our lives and travels widely, furthering a mission that's always in the making.
In Subbanna's passing, the Kannada world is emptied of a singular genius. This lean and small man, with his beard and glasses, forever busy with his bag of areca nuts and betel leaves, searching with his eyes for a new word, to formulate a new idea... his resolute opinion, his impatience, his ready laugh, his wonder, his wholeness of affection... We will miss him. We will grieve. We will never forget.
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