<p>S L Bhyrappa's epic Kannada novel "Anchu", which addresses the issues of mental health and suicidal tendencies, has been translated into English.</p>.<p>Translated by R Ranganath Prasad, "Brink" is a love saga between Somashekhar, a widower, and Amrita, an estranged woman. Amrita recurrently suffers from a severe urge to take her own life but Somashekhar anchors her to life each time.</p>.<p>She revolts, and because of her mental condition, she also inflicts pain and torture - emotional and moral - upon him. With great perseverance, personal suffering, and sacrifice, he brings her back to normalcy.</p>.<p>Interestingly, the author draws inference between the names and the actions of the two characters.</p>.<p>The footnotes to the preface say: "Amrita means ambrosia and Somashekhar is a synonym for Lord Shiva, whose anthropomorphic form is adorned in the head (shekhar) by the moon (soma). In a mythological event, Shiva swallowed poison to save the universe."</p>.<p>The narrative thus deliberates on the moral, philosophical, and physical aspects of love between a man and a woman. At the core of the story is compassion, and Somashekhar is the very personification of it.</p>.<p>In relating the thoughts of the characters in this novel, Prasad says, it is typical of Bhyrappa to script contiguously seemingly disparate thoughts within a single sentence as they occur in their minds. Though the constituent parts of this "stream of consciousness" are almost complete semantically, they are mostly incomplete syntactically.</p>.<p>He says while translating, care has been taken to strike a balance with a view to ironing out the impediments to comprehension.</p>.<p>"Anchu" was originally published in 1990. The translation is being brought out by Niyogi Books to coincide with World Mental Health Day on October 10.</p>
<p>S L Bhyrappa's epic Kannada novel "Anchu", which addresses the issues of mental health and suicidal tendencies, has been translated into English.</p>.<p>Translated by R Ranganath Prasad, "Brink" is a love saga between Somashekhar, a widower, and Amrita, an estranged woman. Amrita recurrently suffers from a severe urge to take her own life but Somashekhar anchors her to life each time.</p>.<p>She revolts, and because of her mental condition, she also inflicts pain and torture - emotional and moral - upon him. With great perseverance, personal suffering, and sacrifice, he brings her back to normalcy.</p>.<p>Interestingly, the author draws inference between the names and the actions of the two characters.</p>.<p>The footnotes to the preface say: "Amrita means ambrosia and Somashekhar is a synonym for Lord Shiva, whose anthropomorphic form is adorned in the head (shekhar) by the moon (soma). In a mythological event, Shiva swallowed poison to save the universe."</p>.<p>The narrative thus deliberates on the moral, philosophical, and physical aspects of love between a man and a woman. At the core of the story is compassion, and Somashekhar is the very personification of it.</p>.<p>In relating the thoughts of the characters in this novel, Prasad says, it is typical of Bhyrappa to script contiguously seemingly disparate thoughts within a single sentence as they occur in their minds. Though the constituent parts of this "stream of consciousness" are almost complete semantically, they are mostly incomplete syntactically.</p>.<p>He says while translating, care has been taken to strike a balance with a view to ironing out the impediments to comprehension.</p>.<p>"Anchu" was originally published in 1990. The translation is being brought out by Niyogi Books to coincide with World Mental Health Day on October 10.</p>