‘Uttara Kaanda’ book review: Silent voices speak
‘Uttara Kaanda’ book review: Silent voices speak

Express News Service
A story is made up of events, but is both more and less than them. While the events may mean multiple things, the story forces them into specific interpretations and discards the rest. SL Bhyrappa deconstructs the classic Indian epic of the Ramayana into events, and back together into a different story in Uttara Kanda—one that focuses on Sita and the other women.

Bhyrappa is a well-known figure in Indian literature, and has never been one to hew to the mainstream. In his dozens of books written over decades, he has created a very individualistic—yet references-backed—vision of Indian spirituality and culture. It takes someone with a deep understanding of the storyteller’s art to notice the flaws in an epic, which is what Bhyrappa has done here.

The book begins with Sita in exile, struggling to manage her twin toddler sons. Her situation is dire, and were it not for her loyal maid with experience of bringing up children, and her sister Urmila, who sends over supplies, she would be worse off still. As she thinks back to her past days, and how she landed up here, we, the readers, begin a unique unseen narration of the entire Ramayana and beyond.

Unique—because, in addition to this being Sita’s viewpoint, it is also told completely in a limited first person. Epics are made easier to swallow by being, in writing terminology, third-person omniscient—the narrator knows everything happening everywhere—but Bhyrappa brings us the true terrors of Sita’s existence by narrowing the narrative. Information often comes to her days, or months later, through sources with their own bias. When Sita does not know what happened between Kaikeyi and Dasharatha, neither do we, until someone tells us. And when Sita is trapped in Raavana’s Ashok Vana, we have no idea of whether Rama knows about her, or whether he plans to do anything about it. And thence, we see that what sounds fair and just for the men in the story, sounds so unfair to the women. They’re expected to follow the conventions despite the whole picture never being made clear to them.

Indeed, none of the men in the cast come off looking good when examined closer. Whether it is Rama, who uses dharma as a crutch rather than an ideal, Sugreeva who lusts after his brother’s wife, or even Dasharatha who makes rash promises driven by lust again. Even Valmiki is a character here, and Bhyrappa points out how Valmiki, when writing his epic, is inclined to focus on the men’s story and end it at a point when things are looking good, instead of including the depressing aftermath.

Bhyrappa makes the story more believable by removing the traces of the supernatural from the tale. Hanuman, now, is a man named after the mythical Hanuman. The golden deer is just a deer and the disguised voice emanating is never explained. The magical bridge to Lanka is now replaced by rocks that were already there. It has the effect of making us look at the characters as more human and less literal Gods. A God may make his wife miserable to satisfy dharma, but how do we feel when a normal man does it?

The translation of the book by Rashmi Terdal is superb, achieving the twin goals of being fluent, and of bringing the native ethos to life. Rewriting epics has been a popular genre in Indian literature, with the regional influences adding extra colour to the plot. In Marathi retellings, for example, family members get called Dada and Mama—here, this is a Kannada version, so Terdal has retained the Anna, Appa, and Thaatha salutations. Characters eat millets and refer to them by Kannada names—navane, ragi, sajje.

This book is further proof of the riches in Indian literature—writers and books—that translation is bringing to new readers. An absorbing, thought-provoking read!

‘The Bhagavat Gita’ book review: Twin view of a sacred scripture
‘The Bhagavat Gita’ book review: Twin view of a sacred scripture

Express News Service
Let us begin with The Bhagavad Gita translation first. It is a verse-by-verse translation, with the Sanskrit shlokas on one page and the English translation on the facing page. There is no interpretation, no commentary; just a literal translation. With over 2,700 translations of the Gita between 1785 and 1979 in 50 identified languages, why do we need another translation? For several reasons. There is an inevitable loss when translating from Sanskrit to English—a loss of context, exact meanings, and of course, the beauty of the Sanskrit poetry which cannot be reproduced in English, no matter how hard one tries. Some words cannot be translated to English with complete fidelity. For example, ‘duty’ is at best a partial translation of the Sanskrit word ‘dharma’. Given these limitations, it becomes all the more important to not compound this loss by translating words without understanding their context.

Debroy tells us that some less than adequate understanding of Sanskrit leads to ‘Gudakesha’ (another of Arjuna’s names which means one who has conquered sleep, derived from ‘gudaka’—sleep, and ‘isha’—lord) being translated as someone ‘whose hair is in a bun’, which is etymologically possible, but contextually implausible. Then there are problems that arise from an incomplete reading of the Mahabharata itself.

Consider also what is lost in translations that substitute words for convenience or otherwise. For instance, in 1.36, Arjuna laments to Krishna, ‘O Janardana! What pleasure will we derive from killing the sons of Dhritarashtra? Although they are criminals, sin alone will be our lot if we kill them.’ To understand why the Kauravas are criminals, you have to read the footnote that tells us that according to the shastras, ‘there are six types of criminals—arsonists, poisoners, those who bear arms to kill you, those who steal wealth, those who steal and those who steal other people’s wives.’ If you substitute the word criminal with evil, you lose something in the translation.

This translation seeks to avoid all such pitfalls. If you want to appreciate Sanskrit, the shlokas are reproduced in Devanagri. In cases where the Sanskrit sentence flows to the next one, rather than combining the translations across all these shlokas, the translation sticks to a verse-by-verse cadence. That makes the job of a reader trying to match the shloka to the English translation easier. Given all this, this book should become a go-to reference for people wanting a faithful, accurate, and copiously footnoted English translation of the Bhagavad Gita. More than 800 footnotes, spread across 60 pages, provide additional notes and context without interrupting the flow of the translation.

The first book is a faithful, verse-by-verse translation. But a more fundamental question may arise in the mind of the reader: how should I read the Gita? Why should I read it? For that, we should turn to the second book—The Bhagavad Gita for Millennials. It seeks to, and succeeds in, introducing the reader to the world of the Gita in its various dimensions. The book also answers several questions as a typical reader may have about the Mahabharata and the Gita. Like, who composed the Mahabharata, why was Krishna Dvaipayana called Vedvyasa, what is the BORI (Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute) Critical Edition, was the Gita written by one or multiple authors, is the Gita a later interpolation into the Mahabharata, and so on.

Which leads to another natural question—the historicity of the Mahabharata. Or the historicity of the most famous character in the epic—Krishna. Archaeologist BB Lal answered the question on the historicity of the Mahabharata more than half a century ago when he led the excavation and found evidence of several Painted Grey Ware sites dating back to the second millennium BCE. We can rely on the evidence presented by the Chandogya Upanishad that references Krishna, the son of Devaki, the account of the Greek traveler Megasthenes, the Sanskrit grammarian Panini’s 5th or 6th century BCE work, Ashtadhyayi, and so on. The circumstantial evidence points to Krishna as a historical person. It is important to point out that it is the historicity of Krishna that is covered, not his divinity—an important distinction that should not be conflated.

But what makes this book unique is probably the second chapter. The author takes the reader on a whirlwind tour of why there is no substitute to reading the Gita in its original Sanskrit. Because translations cannot be completely recreated, they are often trans-creations, and no translation can capture the beauty of the Sanskrit poetry in the Gita. Having said that, we are told how to break up a Sanskrit shloka to rearrange it in a linear fashion. Several verses are thus subjected to the process of dissection, revealing the order in which the words are to be read, opening a pathway to understanding even seemingly difficult shlokas.

Having introduced the reader to the mechanisms of reading, rearranging, and understanding the shlokas in the Gita, the book then elucidates several shlokas and their concepts by taking the reader on a journey in the form of stories from the texts. Most are from the Mahabharata, for obvious reasons, but several from other texts also such as Upanishads and the Puranas.

What then is the suggested order of reading these books? For me, the answer is obvious—read the Millennials book first, keeping the translation as a handy reference. Start on it, but do not treat it as a weekend read. The translation is for a slower, more careful, more contemplative reading.

The book stops here
The book stops here

Express News Service

MYSURU: Clad in a white banian and a dhoti, holding a broom by its short wooden handle, he sweeps the huge hall filled with books and papers – looking at him, you won’t think he is a possessor of one million books. This has been a routine for Anke Gowda, 72, apart from buying books and magazines over the last five decades.

His Pustaka Mane (literally meaning Book house) boasts of over 10 lakh books of various genres. This book paradise, located at a small village called Haralahalli near Srirangapatna (Mandya district), has not remained a private library of Anke Gowda but a place for research scholars, teachers, writers, critics, competitive exam aspirants and people from all walks of life to refer the books free of cost.

From a tiny book of over 10 pages to those weighing more than 3-4 kg, Anke Gowda has all of them and more. Though Kannada books have a prominent place in his library, there are books in over 20 Indian and foreign languages. Pustaka Mane has books dating back to 1832 to a new book released last month.

A woman browses through books at the Book House

And from novels to  books on literature, science and technology, mythology. critiques, travelogues, research, astrology, women’s and children’s literature etc,  are housed in this huge library. Anke Gowda dusts all the books every day and makes every effort to organise them for the convenience of his visitors.
Born in a family of agriculturists in Mandya to Marigowda and Ningamma, Anke Gowda comes from a poor family, but had a great passion for reading books. An MA in Kannada literature, he worked as a time-keeper at Pandavapura sugar factory for about 30 years during which he spent nearly 80% of his salary on purchasing books.

Anke Gowda says, “When I was in college, I could not get access to books. This made me think and I wanted to have my own collection. I initially started reading and collecting books published by the Ramakrishna Ashram. My professor Anantharamu’s motivational words turned my passion for books into an obsession. Though I worked in a sugar factory, whenever I went out of town, I brought home books.’’
Anke Gowda started collecting books as a small venture when he was 21 years old. By early 2004, his entire house was full with over 2 lakh books.

After learning about Anke Gowda’s collection, Sri Hari Khoday, industrialist, helped him in build a huge building in an area of about 22 guntas, which has now become a must-see on every tourist’s itinerary.
Gowda visits major book sellers in Majestic, MG Road, Avenue Road in Bengaluru to buy books, besides getting those discarded by libraries and households.

Even today, he and his wife Vijayalakshmi, who has been supporting him, live in this book house, sleep on the floor and cook in a corner. “My collection has helped thousands of people, research scholars and PhD students,” he says. Mahadeshwara, a research scholar in history says rare books on history are available at this book house.

NEW BUILDING
Anke Gowda Jnana Pratishthana, the foundation, makes every effort to collect books. A new building is coming up next to his book house where Gowda hopes to make a classification of all the books and keep them in an organized way. As he is unable to employ the required staff for this, even today at the age of 72, he does it single-handedly. This, while more than 250 bags of books are yet to be opened and added to his collection.

10 lakh books of various genres
20 Indian and foreign language titles

‘Kintsugi’ book review: The gleam of a repaired heart
‘Kintsugi’ book review: The gleam of a repaired heart

Express News Service

Kintsugi is a collection of six short stories, all the characters linked to each other, some tenuously, some strongly. We meet Haruko, a jewellery apprentice of Japanese-Korean extraction in a jeweller’s lane in Jaipur, after which we go over to Tokyo, then Kyoto, to meet Meena, Yuri and Hajime.

Then we return to that old Jaipur street to learn what happened to Haruko’s mentor, the kundansaaz’s daughter Leela, who Haruko had tutored in lapidary work for a brief spell;  we also meet Haruko’s friend for a short but intense while, Dr Prakash, again, and then we head to an island in Borneo, finally winding up in Singapore to catch up with Haruko and her current companion, Hajime. 

The stories exist in a quiet zone, there is a beautiful economy of words at work here, yet we are drawn into the lives of these six people almost immediately. These are men and women with secret and not-so-secret desires who yearn to break free of their more prosaic than tormenting shackles, who are ready to take all the risks such actions inevitably hold. Some of them, though, want to play it straight, to settle rather than risk their lives and reputations, want the comfort of steady routine in their lives.

And so we root for those who would break free, like Leela and Meena, even as we understand those who would carry on in their set grooves, like Prakash. And while we definitely bridle at the rampant patriarchy seen at  the gaddis (workshops) in the Jaipur segments of the book, it’s not as if we don’t understand where those characters are coming from.

We are given capsule lessons in the art of making kundan, meena and thewa jewellery, and the author’s attention to detail is charming. We are given glimpses of how complex life can be, both at home and away from home. And we are shown again and again, just how the human heart and its longings remain the same from person to person.

These six people  are not very much out of the ordinary, yet the way the story’s spotlight settles on them for the duration of telling their tale, has us transfixed, entering fully into their lives, needing to know it all ends well for them. There is more unsaid than said, and this reader for one, gives the author profound thanks for that. And just like the art of kintsugi, the Japanese technique of repairing broken pottery using powdered gold, these six characters too, pretty much find grace in the aftermath of heartbreak, and are ready to pick up the pieces and move on into a luminous dawn. 

In a lovely act of subtlety, the title is never explained, except for a  passing reference, and yet it doesn’t take us long to realise the characters are all damaged, all in need of kintsugi. Some are given the benediction of that exquisite repair, some are not, but all survive to face another day. I have no hesitation in saying that this is easily one of the best books I have read in 2020 and that is straight-up praise, given that the pandemic has not put any kind of crimp on some really good books being written or read, in this, the Time of the Virus. 
 

‘The Last Post’ book review: A world long lost
‘The Last Post’ book review: A world long lost

Express News Service

Postage stamps, letter boxes, old post offices… in fact, anything connected with the mail tells a story of its own. They tell you tales  ranging from politics, history, technology, biography, genealogy, economics, geography, disaster and triumph.

Anil Dhir’s The Last Post is an ode to the romance of the post office tinged with nostalgia. He brings to us the human side of the thousands of people who have lived and worked within the system.    

Our tradition of ‘mail-running’ dates back to the 15th century, when the Mughals ruled most of India. Down the ages, the job of a mail-runner was a risky one, and the ‘hirkara’, as he was called, had to protect life and limb with a staff, spear and bell.

At the hour of cow-dust, these khaki-clad runners assisted by torchbearers went through valleys, hills and forests accompanied by dug-dugiwallahs to chase away wild animals. So infested was the countryside with predators that the roads were almost impassable. ‘Day after day, for nearly a fortnight, some of the dak-people were carried off at one or the other passes.’

Today, in our cities perhaps, we take the postman for granted. It’s a courier’s world, zooming from house to house, on two-wheelers making deliveries. Elsewhere, without fuss, our man of letters continues to deliver mail to 90 percent of the countryside, just as he did a 100 years ago, when mail running was fraught with risks. 

Record books have it that in the early days of our hill stations, mail totalled less than a 100 articles a week, which in June 1935 peaked to 1,31,562 articles: all managed by one post master and his two able assistants. An old colonel got a new orderly, whom he instructed to drop the mail ‘into the hole in the red box’ at the post office.

This the orderly did with regularity. Six weeks passed and urgent official letters remained unanswered, the colonel grew anxious. He dragged the servant by the ear (I believe you could do that in those days!) and that is how the twain arrived at the post office. 

Adjoining the office was the post master’s drawing room—neat, clean, and with a fireplace three quarters draped in the summer months with a plush red curtain. Of course the letters had been posted, there they lay, behind the curtains—all 17 of them behind ‘the hole’.   

I guess it’s about time for the post offices to reinvent themselves. Till they do so, they will hardly be capable of withstanding the new challenges thrown up by courier companies, mobiles, SMS and WhatsApp and email.  

A good read for those who love history.