ಚಂದ್ರಶೇಖರ ಕಂಬಾರರ ‘ಕರಿಮಾಯಿ’ ಹಾಗೂ ‘ಶಿವನ ಡಂಗುರ’ ಕಾದಂಬರಿಗಳನ್ನು ಇಂಗ್ಲಿಷ್ ಗೆ ಅನುವಾದಿಸಿದವರು ಕೃಷ್ಣ ಮನವಳ್ಳಿ

‘ಕರಿಮಾಯಿ’ ಅನುವಾದಕ್ಕಾಗಿ ಅವರು ಕರ್ನಾಟಕ ಸಾಹಿತ್ಯ ಅಕಾಡೆಮಿಯ ಬಹುಮಾನಕ್ಕೂ ಪಾತ್ರರಾಗಿದ್ದಾರೆ.

ಪ್ರಸ್ತುತ ಕರ್ನಾಟಕ ವಿಶ್ವವಿದ್ಯಾಲಯದ ಇಂಗ್ಲಿಷ್ ವಿಭಾಗದ ಮುಖ್ಯಸ್ಥರಾಗಿರುವ ಕೃಷ್ಣ ಮನವಳ್ಳಿ ಈಗ ಮತ್ತೆ ಕಂಬಾರರ ಎರಡು ನಾಟಕಗಳನ್ನು ಅನುವಾದಿಸಿದ್ದಾರೆ.

ಪೆಂಗ್ವಿನ್ ಪ್ರಕಾಶನ ಈ ಕೃತಿಯನ್ನು ಪ್ರಕಟಿಸಿದೆ.

ಈ ಕೃತಿಯನ್ನು ಕೊಳ್ಳಲು ಇಲ್ಲಿ ಕ್ಲಿಕ್ಕಿಸಿ 

e book ಗಾಗಿ ಇಲ್ಲಿ ಕ್ಲಿಕ್ಕಿಸಿ 

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Chandrasekhar Kambar

I grew up in a small village called Ghodgeri in north Karnataka. Those were the times of the British rule in the 1940s. Some British company had established a huge textile mill in the famous Gokak Falls nearby. We had to pass by the mill wherever we went. As children, we were fascinated by the mill and the houses of the British officers who lived there.

I was a witness to how my villagers would be simultaneously attracted to and alarmed by the lifestyle of these White people. It scared us to think that our village too could one day become like the White settlements. Would our people take to this foreign way of life? Such were our fears. Such too were the aspirations of a few among us.

Then there were the marches and military bands. We were awestruck by the grandeur and the resonating foreign music. We slowly began to incorporate this music into our songs and folk theatre. While the entry of the hero was signalled by Indian music, the entry of the rakshasa or demon was announced with military band music!

This foreign rakshasa had opened his own schools and was trying to colonize our minds. His law was already wreaking havoc in our rural places. At the same time, we had also heard of the freedom movement, of Gandhi and Nehru, and the need to push the foreigner out of our land. True, the British left at the end of that decade. But this childhood experience left a deep impression on my mind which remains to this day.

It is this experience that impelled me to write my long poem Helatini Kela (Listen, I Will Tell You) in the 1960s. There is the story of the demon/tiger, an outsider, penetrating the village disguised as the village chieftain. There is also the story of the demon’s son Balagonda who had had a British education. All these disturbing elements which I brought up in Helatini Kela reflect the personal as well as collective anxieties that my village and I had felt.

Folk culture tries to preserve all its experiences through stories. What inspired my poem, and the later play Rishyashringa, is this vivid experience which my rural community preserved in its oral tradition through generations. Language has memories and dreams. It relives the past even as it gestures towards the new. This folk idiom which I draw upon enriches my writing. Helatini Kela describes the plight of the village being ruled by a usurper.

However, I had this nagging feeling after writing Helatini Kela that despite all the acclaim it won among the Kannada literati of the time, it was not complete. This is what impelled me to write Rishyashringa. The play is in a sense a continuation of Helatini Kela, although it reads as an independent play too. I do not see the play and the poem as different genres. They always coalesce in my creative imagination.

So, Rishyashringa became a sequel to Helatini Kela. In the play, I brought the demon’s son, the English-educated Balagonda, to the centre of the narrative. The sense of failure and desperation Balagonda feels when he comes to know of his origins points to our own predicament in the postcolonial world. However, the play ends with some dreams and hope for a better future.

On the other hand, in my recent play Mahmoud Gawan, I chose the historical mode to reflect the contemporary political turmoil in the country. Thomas Mann has said somewhere that today, politics decides man’s fate. Besides, while the Western ideas of myth and history are different, in the folk vision, they overlap with each other. My Gawan is as much a historical figure as a man of mythical stature.

Then, there is the myth of the Mahar Vitthala which is still celebrated in Bidar. The story of the great Savalagi sage and the legendary Sufi saint Bande Nawaz meeting and swapping robes to mark their mission of bringing in religious harmony is also a part of north Karnataka history. The swami wore the green and Bande Nawaz donned the saffron that day. Today, there are 360 ashrams of this visionary swamiji all over the country.

Thus, Bidar has always hankered for religious unity. And it is this vision of religious harmony that Gawan comes to see in India. An India where there are multiple castes, 33 million gods, and about twelve calendars—this India has survived for 10,000 years!

Gawan too champions religious harmony and promotes education. He builds a madrasa which attracts scholars from all over the world. However, his political career ends in tragedy owing to the power-crazy and violent politics at the Bahamani court. Still, I wanted to show that there is hope. At the end of the play, the voice from the sky urges people to wait for the day when this dream of harmony comes true.

I am particularly happy that this collection is bringing out these two plays in English translation. While Rishyashringa is rooted in the folk and myth world, it also mirrors the crises in the individual and social order brought about by the onslaught of modernity. In contrast, Mahmoud Gawan, which is a historical play, incorporates the myth element to question the Eurocentric notion of history. It problematizes what we have been led to believe is ‘factual’ and ‘realistic’. Thus, among other things, this book will give my English and global readers a sense of how history and myth blend in our Indian folk imagination. In addition, it will highlight how the folk culture that I draw upon is aware of, and responds keenly to, the contemporary happenings in the national as well as international context.