Presenting mythology and history

Kannada writer Chandrashekhar Kambar’s two plays have been translated into English

Krishna Manavalli’s Two Plays, is a welcome translation. It has one of the earliest and the latest plays of Chandrasekhar Kambar, Jnanapith award winning writer of modern Kannada literature. This translation of Rishyashringa and Mahmoud Gawan is important for three reasons. It helps even the Kannada readers to have a new look at Kambar’s plays from the perspective of a non-Kannada reader, raises some important questions of the politics of translation and fulfils the need of a fresh look at our present day problems.

In fact, every translation, more than helping the other readers, compels the so-called native readers to evaluate their own writer by re-examining their own evaluations. One of the earliest translators of Kambar, Rajeev Taranath, in his Foreword to this translation, points out how the themes of sexuality and fertility are interwoven in the works of Kambar that narrates never-never stories from rural lore in vigorous northern Kannada dialect. Reinterpretation of folklore and mythology so as to express modern concerns is a salient feature of Kambar’s works.

In his play Rishyashringa, Kambar continues the story of a village chief and his English educated son that he narrated in in his long poem, Helatini Kela. In the ancient myth, an innocent son of a seer brings rains to the parched land, but here Balagonda is the son of a demon and the play is a comment on the post-colonial predicament of regional and national cultures. The play suggests that the other or the foreigner is within the self and must be destroyed for the well-being of the community. It is indeed a great, even tragic, irony of our times that the story that is about killing the foreigner within one’s self, needs a translation into the foreign tongue to reach the wider audience. If the whole of our country is Kambar’s Shivapura. then isn’t it irony of history that we need another tongue, a third language, to know what our neighbour is saying!

Kambar is a writer for whom mythology and history are not that different. His latest play, Mahmoud Gawan, reflects the contemporary political turmoil in our country by blending the myth of Mahar Vitthala and the historical figure of Mahmud Gawan, a Prime Minister of the Bahamani Sultanate of Deccan. He, well versed in Islamic theology, Persian language, Mathematics and a poet of repute, was also instrumental in building a madrasa in Bidar during the 15th century which attracted scholars from all over the world. He saw India ‘with multiple castes, 33 million gods and about 12 calendars,’ a land of harmony but his life ended in tragedy owing to power-crazy and violent politics. One need not explain the importance of the vision of Gawan in the present-day reality, when extreme nationalism is tearing apart the fabric of life apart.

Krishna Manavalli has translated Kambar’s two novels Karimayi, and Shiva’s Drum and has ably translated two very different plays. One is a re-creation of the world in nuanced poetic dialect of myth and folk narratives,and the other is historical and political comment, what Rajiv Taranath calls in ‘transparent’ language. She has succeeded in producing an eminently readable translation and offers the reader’s glimpses of the nuances of Kannada language. In her Translator’s Note she has raised some important questions on the politics of translation.

In a country with hundreds of languages, without the effort of translators, no writer can hope to find a larger audience. In fact, Kannada is blessed by able translators and that’s why the language has eight Jnanapith awards! And yet, translators, even if their work is invaluable, are doomed to be invisible. A reputed publishing house like Penguin India, which thrives on publishing translations, should think it important to mention the translator’s name on the front page.

The reviewer is a reputed Kannada critic and translator

olnswamy@gmail.com