The Cat and Shakespeare (2 page)

Kanthapura
is a mine of information about the sociocultural life of peasant society in southern India in the twentieth century. This is usually the perspective from which the novel is read in the West—the little tradition pitted against the great tradition, to use the terms proposed by Robert Redfield.
¹⁰
Redfield distinguishes the beliefs and practices of the folk from those of the elite in an agrarian society. The little tradition functions as a symbolic criticism of the great tradition, while at the same time gravitating towards it because of the latter’s institutional charisma. Brahmins, for instance, who sit atop the caste hierarchy, owe their status to the belief that they alone are empowered to perform the
samskaras,
the central rituals of Hinduism. The recognition by the peasants of a great tradition, of which their practices are a variant, implies a stratification of culture. In a complex society such as India, the stratification of culture implies a stratification of power and wealth. The representatives of the great tradition are the gentry, officials and priests who collectively form a ruling as well as a cultural elite. Relations between the little and great traditions are uneasy and fraught with tension as their interests are diametrically opposed. The existing cultural hierarchy relegates the peasantry to a status of permanent inferiority. The little tradition lacks the institutional means for a direct confrontation with the great tradition. Colonialism further increased the distance between the little and great traditions by diluting ethnic identities.

The preface to
Kanthapura
is again a criticism not only of the language of the middle class but also of its ethnic identity and culture, which are fragmented. This is characteristic of societies under exploitative colonial regimes. The condition gives rise to social protest. In
Kanthapura,
under the influence of Gandhi, social protest becomes, on the one hand, a movement to reform the inegalitarian Indian society and, on the other, a movement to end British colonialism. The protest manifests itself as the expression of a critical attitude towards existing institutions and their underlying ethos. Social protest may be initiated by an individual or a community. Individuals, especially charismatic leaders such as Gandhi, play a decisive role in expressing social protest and mobilizing collective support for it.

Space within an Indian village is cut up and allocated to the different castes. Social relationships are interpersonal but hierarchical, with the Brahmin and the pariah at the opposite ends of the spectrum. Into this world steps a young Brahmin, Moorthy, who is educated in the town and is therefore considered modern. He is a figure of authority because he combines in himself upper-caste status and a college education. He is also a Gandhian and committed, like Gandhi, to ending British rule as well as the inequalities within Indian society such as untouchability and the oppression of women. The Gandhian movement was based on
satyagraha
(‘firmness in truth’). Gandhi added an ethical dimension to what was basically a social and political movement. The Gandhian bias is obvious: moral revolution takes precedence over social and political revolutions. It is significant that Moorthy enters the untouchable’s house in his own village first, before his imprisonment as a revolutionary. While the inspiration of the novel is moral and humanistic, its idiom is spiritual and religious. Stress is laid on such values as righteousness, love, non-violence and on ritual beliefs and practices.

Kanthapura
is one long, oral tale told in retrospect. There are other tales, interspersed with the main narrative, that begin with the oral tags, ‘Once upon a time’ and ‘And this is how it all began’, but these are usually digressions. Other characteristics of the oral narrative include the use of songs and prayers, proverbs, mythology, and epic lists and catalogues. In fact, the novel is unthinkable without the oral tradition. The preface itself defines
Kanthapura
as an oral—not written—text.

It may have been told of an evening, when as the dusk falls, and through the sudden quiet, lights leap up in house after house, and stretching her bedding on the veranda, a grandmother might have told you, newcomer, the sad tale of her village. (1963: viii)

It is within the frame of Kannada that the tale is told. English is made to simulate the ‘thought-movement’ and idiom of the old woman, Achakka, who is the narrator. One detects here the notion of linguistic relativity associated with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that one’s conceptualization of the world is partly the product of the form of the language habitually used to describe it and talk about it. Rao’s use of English suggests the appropriation of the structural characteristics of Kannada, as Janet Powers Gemmill shows.
¹¹
Consider the opening sentence as an example of syntactic re-creation:

High on the Ghats is it, high up the steep mountains that face the cool Arabian seas, up the Malabar coast is it, up Mangalore and Puttur and many a centre of cardamom and coffee, rice and sugarcane. (1963: 1)

Gemmill has this translated into Kannada and again retranslated into English as follows:

Upon ghats upon is it, upon steep mountain(s) upon, cool Arabian sea to face making mountain upon, Malabar coast upon is it, Mangalore, Puttur and many cardamom, coffee, rice, sugarcane centre(s) upon is.
¹²

The similarity in the word order is unmistakable, especially the reversal of the word order of subject and verb, and the omission of the verb in the second clause. The deviation is of course kept within the bounds of intelligibility. The embedding of Kannada structure in English is done with such finesse as to be almost unnoticeable.

Parataxis and simple coordination are syntactic features that generally characterize the oral narrative. They dominate
Kanthapura.
One example will suffice—the celebrated description of the Kartik festival.

Kartik has come to Kanthapura, sisters—Kartik has come with the glow of lights and the unpressed footsteps of the wandering gods . . . and gods walked by lighted streets, blue gods and quiet gods and bright-eyed gods, and even as they walk in transparent flesh the dust gently sinks back to the earth, and many a child in Kanthapura sits late into the night to see the crown of this god and that god, and how many a god has chariots with steeds white as foam and queens so bright that the eyes shut themselves in fear lest they be blinded. (1963: 81)

Idioms are a fertile area for nativization, and here, Rao both transplants from Kannada and implants new ones; e.g., ‘To stitch up one’s mouth’ (1963: 58); ‘to tie one’s daughter to the neck of’ (1963: 35); ‘a crow-and-sparrow story’ (1963: 15) (from ‘a cock-and-bull story’); and ‘every squirrel has his day’ (1963: 77) (from ‘every dog has his day’).

Adjuncts are frequently used in oral narratives for highlighting a word or phrase; e.g., ‘And the Swami, who is he?’ (1963: 41); ‘[M]y heart, it beat like a drum’ (1963: 182); ‘She has never failed us, I assure you, our Kenchamma’ (1963: 2); and ‘Our village—Kanthapura is its name’ (1963: 1).

In an Indian village, relationships are interpersonal. Social stratification is along the lines of caste and occupation. Often, idiosyncrasies and physical disabilities attach themselves as sobriquets to the names of individuals. Examples of these abound in the novel: Patel Rangè Gowda, Pariah Sidda, Post-office Suryanarayana, Husking Rangi, Four-beamed-house Chandrasekharayya, One-eyed Linga, and Waterfall Venkamma.

On ceremonial occasions, social relationships are meticulously observed. In a traditional society, certain aspects of conversation are ritualized. Elaborate attention is paid, for example, to modes of address. They reflect the use of language as a means of establishing a friendly rapport between speaker and listener and of reinforcing communal solidarity. For instance, in a host-guest interactional situation, Rao hits upon the exact phrase translated from Kannada to dispel any uneasiness. The guest is coaxed: ‘Take it Bhattarè, only one cup more, just one? Let us not dissatisfy our manes’ (1963: 21). On the anniversary of a death in a Brahmin family, other Brahmins are invited to a feast, and they are expected to indulge their appetites fully, so that the spirits of the dead are pacified. C.D. Narasimhaiah remarks: ‘With a people like us, used to being coaxed, the English form, “Won’t you have a second helping?”, or the mere “Sure you don’t care for more?” will be ineffective, and even considered discourteous.’
¹³
Culture-sensitive situations like these are not always understood.

Through a choice of strategies, skilfully deployed, Rao has been able to reconstruct the performance-oriented discourse of the traditional oral tales of India. Kanthapura is village India in microcosm—the context that has determined and shaped the expressive devices in the novel.

Rao considers his entire work as:

An attempt at purāṇic recreation of Indian storytelling: that is to say, the story, as story, is conveyed through a thin thread to which are attached (or which passes through) many other stories, fables, and philosophical disquisitions, like a
mālā
(garland).
¹⁴

Philosophical debates are a part of both the Upanishads and the Puranas.
The Serpent and the Rope
resembles both. The novel interprets Vedanta in terms of the discourse of fiction. The philosophy is not an interpolation. It is an integral part of the novel, its informing principle.

In the spirit of the Upanishads, the novel attempts to inquire into the nature of the Self and the attainment of Self-Knowledge with the help of the Guru. The protagonist, Ramaswamy, is an aspirant in this spiritual quest. In the process, he has to tear through the veil of ignorance (
avidya
).
He explains the quest with the help of an analogy—that of the serpent and the rope—that Sankara himself uses.

The world is either unreal or real—the serpent or the rope. There is no in-between-the-two—and all that’s in-between is poetry, is sainthood . . . For wheresoever you go, you see only with the serpent’s eyes. Whether you call it duality or modified duality . . . you look at the rope from the posture of the serpent, you feel you are the serpent—you are the rope. But in true fact, with whatever eyes you see there is no serpent, there never was a serpent . . . One—the Guru—brings you the lantern; the road is seen, the long, white road, going with the statutory stars. ‘It’s only the rope.’ He shows it to you. (1960: 333)

A powerful recursive device used throughout the novel is the dash (—) to suggest the to-and-fro movement of a thought, its amplitude and density. And this passage is a good example of it. The dash is used to indicate a break or an interruption in the thought. In between dashes, a thought is often insinuated or slipped under the breath, as it were.

Before Ramaswamy is on the ‘long, white road’ to Travancore that would lead him to the Guru, his life takes many twists and turns. His marriage to Madeleine, whom he meets while a student in France, breaks up, especially after Savithri comes into his life. Savithri is the eldest daughter of Raja Raghubir Singh of Surajpur, and Ramaswamy meets her on a visit to India. Savithri is the woman he has been waiting for; but she is soon to be married to his friend Pratap.

Ramaswamy’s relationship with Savithri is reinforced by the myth of the princess Savithri as told in ‘The Book of the Forest’ (the
Vanaparvan
)
of the Mahabharata. Savithri is a
pativrata,
a woman who observes the vow of devotion to her husband. Indian tradition ascribes extraordinary powers to a chaste wife. Her marriage to Satyavan is doomed from the start. Her husband is to die within a year. Yama, the god of death, arrives at the end of the year to claim Satyavan. Refusing to give up on her husband, Savithri takes on Yama and wins over him by strictly observing her dharma. Through her love and devotion, Savithri rescues Satyavan from Yama himself. In the novel, Savithri likewise rescues Ramaswamy from inertia and puts him on the spiritual path. Alone now, Ramaswamy calls out: ‘Not a God but a Guru is what I need.’ (1960: 400) And the Guru appears in a vision: ‘He called me, and said, “It is so long, so long, my son. I have awaited you. Come, we go . . .” To such a Truth was I taken, and became its servant, I kissed the perfume of its Holy Feet, and called myself a disciple.’ (1960: 401)

If Kannada is the prototype for English in
Kanthapura,
it is Sanskrit in
The Serpent and the Rope.
Sanskrit is the obvious choice, as the novel has a strong metaphysical bias. It was in Sanskrit that the philosophical speculations of the Indians found their profoundest expression. Rao’s Sanskritic English is not unlike Milton’s Latinate English in
Paradise Lost.
The intent is the same: to assimilate into English the qualities and features of a prestigious language the writer admires most. As opposed to the Prakrits, the vernaculars, Sanskrit was the ‘perfected’ language. The Sanskritization of English should be seen as part of a wider sociocultural phenomenon that has historically characterized Indian civilization. Louis Dumont and David Pocock interpret Sanskritization as the ‘acceptance of a more distinguished or prestigious way of saying the same things.’
¹⁵
Quotations in the original, together with English translations from the classical Sanskrit poets—Kalidasa (4th-5th century) and Bhavabhuti (8th century)—and from the devotional hymns of Sankara and Mira (16th century), are skilfully woven into the story and function as a parallel text. Ramaswamy relapses into Sanskrit to tell Madeleine as delicately as possible what he is unable to tell her openly—his feeling of despair as she increasingly withdraws into herself. He finds a parallel in Bhavabhuti’s
Uttararāmacarita
(‘The Later Story of Rama’) to which he draws her attention. The occasion has all the solemnity of a ritual, and it represents his farewell to her.

ekaḥ samprati nāsitapriyatamastāmadye rāmaḥ kathaṃ
|
pāpaḥ pañcavatïṃ vilokayatu vā gacchatvasaṃ bhāvya vā
|| (II. 28) (1960: 326)

Alone, now, after being the cause of the loss of his dear [wife], how should Rama, sinful as he is, visit that very same Panchavati, or how pass on regardless of it?
¹⁶