Engaging with Life
Deepa Ganesh
THE OPENING SCENE: EARLY MEMOIRS OF A DRAMATIST AND A PLAY by Adya Rangacharya Penguin Books, 2008, 186 pp., 200
May 2008, volume 32, No 5

Writers and literary works have never been in isolation to the dominant forces of their times. One of Kannada’s early playwrights, Adya Rangacharya (1904-84, popularly known as Sri Ranga) was no exception to this. The turbulences of a nation (in whatever form it existed then) in the pre-Independence times, the state that was still a nebulous idea, the Marathi-Kannada overlaps, individual vs the nation-state, all this was clearly visible in Sri Ranga’s preoccupation as a playwright, who began his writing in the pre-Independence period. However, during the later years of his writing, with sweeping political transformations, India’s Independence, the Nehruvian era and its promises, and the unification of Karnataka, it is evident that Sri Ranga’s anxieties changed with the altering socio-political ethos. It is also crucial to recognize Sri Ranga as a playwright from North Karnataka, for, the impact and the cultural response of the region to the colonial regime was vastly different from that of the flourishing Mysore region.

For Sri Ranga, and many others like him—who were not part of the Freedom Movement in a direct way—writing became a tool of protest, also an expression of the Gandhian, satwika mode. One can find many instances of this in the Navodaya Movement of Kannada literature too: writers who pitched in their might to the Movement with writings charged with nationalistic emotions. If in the early plays of Sri Ranga one sees the enormous influence of Gandhism in his desire for social change, in the plays that came in the post-Independence period, the disillusionment with the collapse of social responsibilities and individuals rid with hypocrisies and contradictions, is evident.

Opening Scene is a competent translation by Shashi Deshpande of Sri Ranga’s early memoirs published as Aatma Jignaase in 1973. The Kannada original, Saahitiya Aatmajignaase, is a comprehensive text; it contains in it his changed perceptions on the autobiography. The English version however, limits itself to the early memoirs. Read the first few lines of Sri Ranga’s Foreword to Saahitiya Aatmajignaase and you know you have entered a different time and space. You encounter an alert, thinking mind, constantly putting itself through a revaluation. Read these lines: ‘My friends have been insisting that I should write the second part. But I was not ready. I was not in a hurry to speculate my “end” and write about it. In 1979, my views changed. It’s wrong to imagine the “end”. I’m not even writing an autobiography that begins with birth and ends with death; it’s an effort to trace the path of my evolution’. For Sri Ranga, events and episodes in his life were never entirely to mark the route of his success or failure; they worked more as triggers of conscience. And hence, his life with its deep engagement with theatre is inquiry/investigation/exploration/quest (jignaase is all this and more), and not the obscurity to fame trail.

Hence, time, as in 73-79, was not the six-year gap (it is space), but the non-linearity of thought, as it existed in the mind; from what it was to what was realized, in its retractable, circular nature.

Shashi Deshpande (the playwright’s daughter), in her expressive Afterword repeatedly refers to the entries in her father’s dairy. In his very young days, Sri Ranga wrote: ‘I want to live not for myself, but for others.’ This was neither mere rhetoric, nor the fleeting idealism of a young man. He took part in the leading movements of the time including the unification, was part of the general election campaign in the 70s and played an important role in a movement for the primacy of Kannada, but his abiding love was theatre. ‘The medium of self-expression for me would be plays,’ says another entry in his diary. The perfect example of this is how, one of his most celebrated plays, Kelu Janamejaya came into existence. When he was working in the All India Radio, his intense love for theatre and the poor quality of plays that he was recording had left him in deep anguish.

The book is engaging for reasons more than one. It is even possible to look at it as a sociological/period study of Kannada drama and its growth. It could give you leads into the then prevailing opinion about company drama, state of language, bureaucracy, regional histories and the society itself. While this could well be considered its strength, it also quickly shifts from one to the other, without offering you deep insights into any of the issues. For instance, Sri Ranga, speaking of his college days talks of his group of friends and the many Kannadas they spoke. Their language was so different that he says, ‘It was hard to believe that we all spoke Kannada.’ He then makes an important point. ‘The Kannada identity was not strong enough either, to make this thought a matter of regret. In fact, there was no word like Kannadiga then. In truth, I was amused by the thought that though we spoke the same language, we didn’t have words which were common to us all.’

Inspired by this situation, Sri Ranga wrote his first comedy Kannada Shyama. Why didn’t Sri Ranga at this juncture, raise the issue of what constituted Kannada identity, and choose to leave it at making fun of the many Kannadas? For a serious, thinking writer like him, what exactly did ‘Kannadaness’ mean? Did it have geo-political manifestations or was it as it is existed in the mind’s realm? Why does Sri Ranga not return to see dialects and linguistic multiplicities as embodiments of different cultural worldviews? There are many instances, where Sri Ranga raises very important questions but fails to turn them into serious discussions. At this point, when we continue to be riddled by what constitutes ‘Kannada identity’, such debates could have been of great consequence. Nevertheless, one also wonders if language and dialect in identity construction is becoming crucial in postmodern times, and were not the anxieties when Sri Ranga wrote Kannada Shyama, much before unification.

In most of Sri Ranga’s plays, his characters mostly become voices of his ideological-intellectual positions. Therefore, one sees that the characters are under complete intellect-emotion control of the writer himself. Rarely do they transcend Sri Ranga, the writer as well as the individual. This is true of his treatment of women too. He expresses his anger towards a society that ill treats women, but it is seldom an action that is the outcome of experience, but the position of an individual—well within the framework of tradition—who seeks to be politically correct and progressive. Even in the play, ‘The Truth of Their Lives’ (Ena Bedali…), Sri Ranga is convincing in his philosophical positions of marriage as an institution: he however fails to make the distinction between the real and the aspirational, at the emotional level.

You have agreements and disagreements. You also wonder if some of what you see as a problem is inherent to autobiography as a literary form. However, what makes a lasting impact is the writer’s sparkling sincerity. Sri Ranga writes with amazing clarity of the chasms between his self and society, his moral turmoils, and his own failings. He examines this in all the multiple roles that he has to play: as a playwright, as a son, as a householder and others. At his time, and for all times, Sri Ranga is among the tallest figures of Kannada drama, but there is not a single instance where he sounds rigid about his stances. Throughout, you find in him a person deeply troubled by everything around him, even as he constantly puts himself through reflection, contemplation, remorse and review.

Deepa Ganesh is Chief Sub-editor with The Hindu, Bangalore. 

 

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