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In her spiritual home Passing through
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Catherine Ann Jones is drawn to India for many reasons. That she was the late Raja Rao’s former wife is just one
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Photo:H. Vibhu
Indian ties Catherine Ann Jones, former wife of the late Raja Rao, thinks he was complex but original man
Catherine Ann Jones knows how to tell a story, and when she does one can’t help but sit down and listen enraptured. “I believe that the best stories already exist, a writer should become a kind of channel for the story,” she says.
In India on an invitation from the Indian Council of Cultural Research to conduct a workshop at the National School of Drama (NSD), Catherine Jones is no newcomer to India. Hers is a deeper connection that draws her to India often, a relationship born out of another one – with Raja Rao. She is the late Raja Rao’s former wife.
Deep influence
She met the much older Raja Rao in the mid 60s in Texas, when she was an impressionable 19. “I was in college then. I had read up on Buddhism, but there were questions left. Raja was to deliver a lecture in my college. There was a poster of his put up and I just stood there looking at him and felt a deep connection with him. And then I walked barely ten metres and turned, a car was passing by with Raja inside. Our eyes met and held,” she says.
Later on Raja Rao told her that he felt the same connection with her, “you may think it is being very romantic, but that is how it was.” The romantic gets a touch of the magical when Catherine tells a story. They got married in Paris “because my parents were not okay with it.” “He was a mentor to me, not just at one level but on many.”
Her first play, ‘On the Edge’ draws from Virginia Woolf’s fight against madness. This play won the National Endowment of Arts Award, that was just the beginning of the recognition and the writing too. She has written several plays, and the screenplay for television series. Her scripts have been made into films such as the ‘The Christmas Wife,’ ‘Unlikely Angel’ and a series ‘Touched by an Angel,’ besides others.
For her, writing, all kinds of writing, is a mystical experience, she tells of how one of her stories literally played out right in front of her.
“Raja and I were honeymooning in Ireland and we went into this ninth century monastery. While we were there I had visions of Vikings plundering the monastery and killing the monks in the monasteries,” she says. Twenty years later she drew from this very vision and there came ‘Second Chance’, a reincarnation love story for the Hallmark Hall of Fame series.
She has been a teacher for close to 25 years. “Although I have been an academic I do not feel as if I am one.” She taught at the New School University (New York City), besides a number of other places, in the firm belief that writing cannot be taught.
For one with a strong belief that there is no one way to write as there is no one way to live, she has written a book on how to write – ‘The Way of Story – The Craft and Soul of Writing.’ “There are too many books on writing, but most of them are written from the academic point of view. There are very few books on how to write by people who have written books.” It is not a textbook, it is more of a guide to getting in touch with oneself rather than dealing with the superficialities.
Kerala is her spiritual home. Any time she is in India she makes it a point to visit Kerala. Raja Rao had a deep connection with Kerala, for his guru Swami Atmananda was based at Thiruvananthapuram. There was a time when he wanted to settle there; ‘The Cat and Shakespeare’ was the result.
‘Malayalam ariyum’
Catherine has taught at the School of Drama, Thrissur and lived in Kerala, to be able to say “korachu Malayalam ariyum”, because she learnt Malayalam to help her with her Sanskrit and to note down keertanams, “I learnt Carnatic music too. I sang sa, ri, ga ma….”
She remembers how M.S. Subbulakshmi sang ‘Radha Madhavam’ for Swami Atmananda’s birthday. This is when one realises how deeply Kerala is part of Catherine. In fact one of her plays ‘The Hill’ was translated into Malayalam by the late G. Sankara Pillai.
Ask her about being Raja Rao, the legend’s wife, she pauses as if picking up threads of memories and emotions and says, “Legends are not simple people, Raja was a complex man, but what an original!”
SHILPA NAIR ANAND
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Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
Madurai
Mangalore
Puducherry
Tiruchirapalli
Thiruvananthapuram
Vijayawada
Visakhapatnam
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