Book review: K. Shivarama Karanth's 'The Woman of Basrur'

The Woman of BasrurBy K. Shivarama KaranthTranslated By H.Y. Sharada Prasad Ravi DayalPrice: Rs 140When Stephen Dedalus sallies forth into the future in James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, he intends, famously, "to forge, in the smithy of my soul, the uncreated conscience of my race". It is a surprisingly arrogant claim, particularly coming from someone who is aware of the evolved traditions of tragedy and eloquence from which he springs. But then, as Joyce reminds us, he is a young man.Similar young men dominate the modern traditions of any of India's languages - encyclopaedic Renaissance men, towering and formative individuals whose cultural influence goes far beyond their considerable achievements and competencies. Bengal had a whole slew of them, Tagore not least - which might explain a certain excess of "conscience" there! Fakirmohan Senapati and Gopinath Mohanty in Orissa, Subramania Bharati in Tamil Nadu. It is in this exalted company that K. Shivarama Karanth belongs.K. Shivarama Karanth had a vast cultural influenceHis recent death, at 90-plus, released a flurry of obituary notices, all in awe of the myriad achievements of this playful, mischievous man who seemed almost a survivor from an earlier, heroic age.However, it is one of the difficulties of a multilingual country such as ours that readers from other languages had hardly any access to fabled achievements across impassable linguistic borders. Lately however, the Sahitya Akademi seems to have woken up to this necessary cultural responsibility. Macmillan's series of modern Indian fiction in translation augurs well, despite a somewhat shaky start. Ravi Dayal - publishing Nirmal Verma and now Karanth in careful, fluent translation - is adding his stylish mite to this vast cultural process.Karanth's Kannada novel Mai Mangala Suhiyalli has been translated by H.Y. Sharada Prasad, Mrs Gandhi's press adviser and a scholarly presence in his own right. It tells the story of a courtesan - the woman of Basrur - in a small place about a hundred years ago. .preferred-source-banner{ margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom:10px;}It is a first-person memoir, although there is some awkward fictional machinery whereby the existence of the memoir is established: a granddaughter, intriguingly unexplored, discovers the memoir in an attic on page 31 and we return to the granddaughter on page 149, one page before the end. The bulk of the novel presents the voice of the mature courtesan reflecting on her life and love.Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the book is the grown-up and unprurient way in which sexual matters are represented. Thus Manjula, the protagonist, has an open - minded curiosity regarding the nature of sexuality - her own and that of others - as it is revealed to her through her many relationships. But there is never any sense that the author is being cheaply exploitative. The other major theme is music. Manjula is a passionate musician and her love for music goes well beyond the usual cosmetic prelude to sexual gymnastics.Finally, what remains is a sense of having glimpsed and been drawn into a vanished form of life. It is through such proxy experiences that we enter the cultural complexity that is traduced by noisy cultural nationalism. Thus, although Buddha and the Vedanta are an essential part of our cultural heritage, the courtesan is well-positioned to represent the other side of the phenomenon of transience: "The parijata lasts two hours, the jasmine three, the lotus half a day, and you and I a few decades. But ... the very transitoriness of some things enhances their value. Only he who knows how to wait derives bliss from transient beauty ... " This, too, is us.Published By: AtMigration Published On: Jan 12, 1998--- ENDS ---

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Book review: K. Shivarama Karanth's 'The Woman of Basrur'

A mature account of the life of a courtesan from a cultural colossus of our time.

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