SIXTY YEARS OF WRITING INDIA...
Kannada: Changing concerns
S. DIWAKAR
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From accommodating nationalist ideals to capturing the globalised experiences of today, the Kannada short story scans a broad spectrum.
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Kannada short story writers belonging to pre-Independence era were imbued with Gandhian ideals, humanistic concerns and an affirmative vision of individual potential in a society which was yet to loose its organic unity. They were writing in a period which the later critics labelled as Navodaya (New Awakening). But when we come to the Navya (Modern) period (1950-1970), we find a picture that is entirely different. Feeling that the past was an oppressive burden, these writers created a fictional representation of the social pressures on individuals, their disillusionment, boredom and impotence.
Indeed, the most prominent writers of this period, Yashwant Chittal, Ramachandra Sharma, U.R. Ananthamurthy, P. Lankesh, and Shantinath Desai, chose to deal with traditional values in conditions where they have been thrown into doubt. For them questions of identity were crucial which fiction needed to address.
U.R. Anathamurthy, one of the greatest short fiction writers in Kannada, attempted to test traditional values in the context of the present. Both Ramachandra Sharma and Shantinath Desai, while refusing to accept old moral attitudes, explored the minds of their characters, laying bare their unconscious desires and motivations. P. Lankesh unmasked the corrupt nature of man and the society he has created.
Yashawant Chittal’s stories have a more positive affirmation. His intricate narrative style reveals a universal significance in what his characters say and do. But in later Chittal, one finds the pressure of the outer world on the individual which not only bewilders, but renders him introspective.
It is interesting to note that some of the Navya writers themselves felt the need for a change. Poornachandra Tejasvi, another prominent writer, believed that “a genuinely new literature can be born only through a total change, political, social and ideological”. With the result that the short story shifted its centre from the individual to the society again.
With the arrival of Devanur Mahadeva on the scene, the story had to transform itself to imbibe the experience of the oppressed. What Mahadeva did was to bring in the Dalit sensibility. He used his dialect in a fluent, confident, unapologetic way. He also showed a path to writers like Mogalli Ganesh, to further explore their reality.
It was during the 1970s that a group of Muslim unfolded their communities in stories. Bolwar Mahammad Kunhi, Sara Abubakar, Fakir Mohammad Katpadi beautifully captured the cadences of small-town Muslim Life. Abdul Rashid’s tender humanity and wonderful ability to describe rural landscape are indeed unique.
Emergence of women
Another important trend is the emergence of women writers. Their sensibilities found new expression. The themes which dominated their short stories — history, social justice, family squabbles, suffering, questions of allegiance — are the same themes that men addressed, although their perspectives were very different. Among them, Vaidehi’s portrayal of the unrevealed selves behind the mask of the public woman is indeed haunting. Mitra Venkatraj and Tulasi Venugopal are other writers who elicit empathetic response.
In my view, the Bandaya (Rebellion) movement of 1980s and 90s could produce only one writer of vitality, Kum. Veerabhadrappa. In order to delineate inequalities of the prevailing social order, he employs satire as a mode of exploration. But Raghavendra Patil, a writer with no affiliation to any movement, brings forth a vibrant cast of colourful and often eccentric characters. His focus is squarely on the ordinary man in the street to whom the post-Independence reality means nothing.
Jayanth Kaikini, a marvellously witty and clever writer, reveals much about class and individual aspirations and despair. He involves the reader with impressionistic detail, with colour, with sensations, setting the scene with an intensity that is unlike anything the later writers have achieved.
If our critics have neglected one unique writer for reasons unknown, he is M.S.K. Prabhu whose third collection came out posthumously. Reminiscent of Kafka and Borges, and firmly rooted in the Kannada fictional tradition, his best stories of pure imagination shine with truths that reveal, within the familiar and the fantastic, a reality unmistakably ours.
Presently the writers of the post-modernist era seem to come to grips with complex realities. Writers like Vivek Shanbhag try to perceive experience in fragments. Though some other young writers — Ashok Hegde, Gopalakrishna Pai, Sridhara Balagar, Nagaraj Vastare — have attempted to capture the essence of present reality which is more global in nature (like the booming IT sector, disintegration of family, migration of rural folk to the cities, degradation of biosphere, new forms of alienation, devastating impact of the media, etc.) and devoid of the values the previous generations cherished, they are yet to exploit the resources of language and metaphor to give shape to this contemporary experience.
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