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 BOOKS Glimpses of a Vanished Life A mature account of a courtesan from a cultural colossus of our time. By Alok Rai When 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. His 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. 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 ... " A Shikari turned ecologist's tryst with the Nilgiris. By Tariq Aziz Cheetal Walk is not a thriller on tigers a la Jim Corbett. It is better. It is real. It is the story of a home set deep in the Nilgiri forests along a perennial stream, the Sigurhalla. "The boom of the tribal drum punctuated the stillness of the jungle night. My heart pulsated with the muffled, repetitive rhythm of this primitive musical instrument. I longed to hear more. I sought it over the years and found it in the Sigur Reserve." E.R.C. Davidar's jungle home, Cheetal Walk, in the Sigur Reserve of the Nilgiri mountains, Tamil Nadu, was built in 1964. Davidar, an advocate, was also a shikari associated with the Nilgiri Game Association and then became a conservationist. He and his family lived for many years at Cheetal Walk. The book, a personal story nestled in the forests, describes human life in harmony with nature. Cheetal Walk is the story of wild elephants, the gentle giants of Indian forests. It is the story of tuskers like Bumty, Udayar and Kumariah, regular visitors to the Davidar house. It is the story of their destruction too, by poachers. Other tragedies followed. The Sigurhalla finally stopped flowing perennially. Then came the floods. While the sandalwood smugglers and the opium growers did their worst, Davidar kept on fighting for the forests. He won occasionally. But man was losing the bigger battle. Brandy and arrack shops coupled with government subsidies and loans eroded the character of the tribals -- the Irulas, Kurumbas and the Badagas. It needs a concerted effort to save the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve. Maybe Davidar tried his best. Cheetal Walk handles conservation, a subject not blessed with lucid writing, with rare sensibility and a human touch. With this book Davidar has more than atoned for his earlier life as a shikari.
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