Kaapichino
By Gowri Ramnarayan DNA, 29 AUGUST 2014
We met once in a while
as interviewee and journalist, ran into each other at literary seminars,
cultural events. Occasionally I consulted him. No, he was not a close friend.
Not even the mentor that I longed for him to be, so invigorating were his words
whenever, whatever he spoke. And yet, when UR Ananthamurthy (1932-2014) passed
away last week, I fearelt a part of me die with him. Is it because he
represented with brilliance and panache, those secular, liberal values now
getting swiftly replaced by regressive ideologies? Because he claimed free
speech as the right to breathe?
A pioneer of the Navya
movement in Kannada literature, Padma Bhushan and Jnanpith awardee
Ananthamurthy was acclaimed widely for his work, made available through
translations in Indian and European languages. He was Vice-Chancellor, Mahatma
Gandhi University, Kottayam, and head of the National Book Trust and the
Sahitya Akademi. A scathing commentator on socio-political and literary issues,
he was a spokesperson for the voiceless, the deprived and the damned. He was
involved in wide-ranging protest movements from eco-conservation to the medium
of instruction in schools.
However, his writings
were not manifestos, but metaphoric expressions of multi-layered realities.
Didn’t he say to his British tutor Malcolm Bradbury, “You have to go to a
library to create classic or medieval times. (As an Indian living
simultaneously in the past and present) I only have to look into myself. A
straight line for you is a coil for me.” The physical and the metaphysical
melded in Ananthamurthy’s vision. He remained a razor-sharp intellectual with a
generous heart.
“He was not
afraid to be unpopular,” said friend GK Govinda Rao. Besides on-and-off spats
with his fellows, Ananthamurthy invited hate-mails for declaring ‘I will leave
India if Modi becomes Prime Minister’. When reminded that no ideological
faction ever acknowledged unreserved kinship with him. Ananthamurthy’s amused
reaction was, “Well, I must have done something right!”
I asked him, “Haven’t
you been trying all your life to expiate the guilt of being Brahmin born?” He
responded with one of his good-humoured, irony-tipped, mischief-spiced
chuckles: “It is a love-hate relationship.”
Ananthamurthy’s
masterpiece Samskara depicts a village Brahmin community, and the
troubled journey of Praneshacharya, perfectly etched by a young Girish Karnad
in the award-winning film. Here “rebel” Brahmin Naranappa spurns his
legitimate uppercaste wife who “smells of lentils”, preferring the prostitute
Chandri, When I disclosed to the author that I was depressed because I
suspected that I too was “tainted” by this vacuous aroma, Ananthamurthy
riposted, “My dear, didn’t you guess? So am I!”
When I moderated a
conversation between Ananthamurthy and BV Karanth, the writer breezed in. The
thespian turned up in a glum mood. Their dialogue had to be heavily trimmed. “I
will send the edited version to you before publishing”, I promised
Ananthamurthy. “Look, I give you full permission to do whatever you like
provided you don’t send it to me!” said he, adding impishly,
“Karanth has become dull after he stopped drinking.”
Once, referring to the
upanishad image of two birds perched on branches high and low -- one a
dispassionate onlooker, the other blindly engaged in action -- I asked, “Are
the birds two wholly separate entities, or are they shifting states of being --
in the same person, but at different times?” He countered gently, “When we
write we are simultaneously passionate and contemplative. Are we then both
birds in one?” Why not? A writer’s job is to sweep cobwebs, sift
contradictions, internalize the eternal, beware of the mirage, connect the
finite with the infinite, and yes, discover paradoxical, even bitter truths. As
Ananthamurthy strove to do, inexorably.
Gowri Ramnarayan
http://epaper.dnaindia.com/story.aspx?id=70090&boxid=20129&ed_date=2014-08-29&ed_code=820009&ed_page=10
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