Myths mirroring reality

This translation is a must-read for anyone interested in dipping their toes into the rich diversity of Kannada literature.

Two Plays’, brought out by Penguin Books, is the English translation of Jnanpith award-winning Kannada poet-playwright Chandrasekhar Kambar’s two well-known plays ‘Rishyashringa’ (1970) and ‘Mahmoud Gawan’ (2019). The plays have been translated by Krishna Manavalli, English professor at Karnatak University, Dharwad.

‘Rishyashringa: The Bringer of Rain’ is in continuum with Kambar’s long poem ‘Helatini Kela’ (Listen, I’ll Tell You). Both these works are rooted in north Karnataka mythologies, which Kambar has inherited. The story unfolds in a village afflicted by a fatal famine eagerly awaiting the arrival of the chieftain’s son, whose homecoming promises the return of rain. As the death toll increases in the village, age-old secrets are unravelled and mythical forces step out of hiding. Will the sky relent — this forms the crux of this mesmerising play. Kambar plays with the powerful local and pan-Indian myth of Rishyashringa, the pure and celibate boy-sage who can bring rain. At the same time, he also pulls into the whirl of this troubling narrative some of the major concerns of his times, like the loss of the self, the question of legitimacy and the sterility of land and human life.

‘Mahmoud Gawan’, the latest play by Kambar, deals with the life and times of Mahmoud Gawan, the diwan of the 15th century Bahamani kingdom. Power and bloodshed run parallel in this play. Gawan, inspired by the legendary 14th century Sufi saint Bande Nawaz, comes to India. Kambar delineates his rise and fall very well. Political intrigues and power struggles in the Bahamani court combine with the divisive forces of religion, nationality, caste and class to result in his tragic death. The celebrated myth of Mahar Vitthala appears in the last scene of the play. Lord Vitthala walks into the Bahamani court as a Dalit Mahar (messenger) and gives a bag of gold as tax and payment for grain from the royal granary that the kind Gawan had distributed to his famine-struck village. In this play, Allah and Vitthala fuse together.

Although ‘Rishyashringa’ is rooted in the folk and myth world, it also mirrors the crises in the individual and social order brought about by the invasion of modernity, while in contrast, ‘Mahmoud Gawan’ incorporates the element of myth to question Eurocentric notions of history. For Westerners, the ideas of myth and history are separate. However, if you look at them through the prism of folk, they overlap with each other. Which is why, Kambar’s Gawan is a historical figure as well as a man of mythical stature.

As far as language is concerned, the first play employs the rural dialect of the region while the second one has a neutral tone in the original Kannada version.

Krishna Manavalli’s English translation of these two alluring and sublime plays are smooth and easy to read. This is surely a must-read for anyone hoping to dip their toes into the rich diversity of Kannada literature as well as its folklore and theatre.