Complex web of class, caste, gender
BAGESHREE S.
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The story staggers under sociological debates and reformist zeal.
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The Edge of Time; Veerappa Moily, Translated by C.N. Ramachandran, Rupa & Co., Rs. 295 (hardcover).
VEERAPPA MOILY, who now heads the Administrative Reforms Commission, is best remembered as the former Chief Minister of Karnataka. His tenure was not free of scandals, the hallmark of realpolitik. But his concern for backward classes and educational reforms far outweigh the blots. Yet another point in his favour is his penchant for creative writing. Moily has many works of fiction and non-fiction to his credit, including the magnum opus Ramayana Mahaaveshanam.
Socio-political concerns
Like many of his earlier works, Moily's social and political concerns take a fictional form in The Edge of Time (Tembare in Kannada). The book, through the story of a lower caste Pambada family, studies the web of caste, class, gender and culture that make up a complex social fabric. The greatest strength of the book is a deep anthropological knowledge of the Tuluva traditions and folklore, especially the unique system of Bhuta or spirit worship, it brings to bear on the story.
Replete with Bhuta myths, pad-danas (songs associated with the rituals), it uncovers the multiple roles Bhuta worship plays in the traditional Tuluva society as a spectacular performing art, a form of worship and a quasi-judicial apparatus.
The novel traces the subtle power hierarchies the system operates through. It carefully unravels how even as the system apparently gives special powers to a chosen member of the lower caste community for a brief period of time when he dons the role of Bhuta, the upper caste power interests constantly manipulate the system from within.
In fact, this brief period of elevation from the far end of the social hierarchy can itself be a psychologically traumatic experience. "A Pambada is required to conduct the ritual and impersonate the Bhuta, but once the ritual is over, the Pambada can neither live in this realm of reality nor in the realm of illusion," says the narrator of the story.
Most convincing moments
The novel's most convincing moments are those that describe the Bhuta worship rituals and the inner turmoil of characters in relation to the system they can neither give up nor embrace without questioning.
At another level, The Edge of Time raises a larger question: how does a centuries-old tradition negotiate modernity? Through the roles of three siblings, it inquires into the divergent reactions to tradition in a modern society.
While the elder brother tries to cleanse it of corrupt practices and retrieve its true spirit, the younger brother walks away from it in an attempt to discover possibilities beyond the confines of a stifling system. The sister adds a gender dimension to the debate. As the three parallel stories unfold, it is clear that there are no easy positions either within or outside the system.
The translation by eminent critic and translator C.N. Ramachandran is lucid. The passages that describe the Bhuta ritual, especially, are remarkable for the way they recreate all the culture-specific details so powerfully in a language so completely alien to that tradition.
If there is one thing that gets in the way of telling an ambitious tale in The Edge of Time, it is the author's dogged insistence on making an ideological position clear at the cost of all artistic considerations. The story, at many points, staggers under the huge load of sociological debates and reformist zeal.
Characters often turn into mere props for holding extended debates on the issues of gender, caste and tradition, making the narration very stilted. The teller would, surely, have done well to have a little more faith in his tale's ability to speak for itself.
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