Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar for Chamarajanagar teacher

His book ‘Dhoopada Makkalu’ reflects on issues of social backwardness, gender bias and urban isolation

K S Mahadevaswamy of Chamarajanagar district received the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar 2020 in the Kannada category last month. He won the honour for ‘Dhoopada Makkalu’, his book of short stories on social backwardness, gender bias and urban isolation, all inspired by real life.

Mahadevaswamy, 36, is a native of the Ponnachi village of Chamarajanagar and writes under the pen name of Swamy Ponnachi. He lives in Yelandur block in the district, working there as a primary school teacher under a state education project.

His interest in literature set in early on, thanks to his father, who used to direct street plays. “That exposed me to mythological stories like the ‘Ramayana’, ‘Mahabharata’ and ‘Vikram Aur Betaal’,” he recalls.

The interest was fuelled further by the detective books he read at an association’s office in his village, which works for the welfare of Soliga, an indigenous tribe of Karnataka.

Incidentally, the titular story of his book is inspired by the Soliga children who sell dhoop, a pooja item. “There are so many schemes for their welfare yet these children sell dhoop and endure harassment. Why do they choose this when they must go to school?”

He wanted to write this story at the age of 20 when he was studying to be a teacher. But he decided to hone his writing skills first and started devouring the works of Poornachandra Tejaswi, Jnanapith awardee and son of Kannada icon Kuvempu, novelists Devanuru Mahadeva and Srikrishna Alanahalli, and P Lankesh, father of slain journalist Gauri Lankesh.

In 2018, he compiled nine short stories in this 93-pager, which has won him five awards since. Between them, these stories talk of the alienation villagers experiences when they move to cities, how women are judged for their choices, how man-animal conflict is hurting elephants, or what unfolds when an atheist is elected as the head of a religious matha.

‘Dhoopada Makkalu’ is his second book. It was preceded by a book of poems, ‘Saavondannu Bittu’ (‘Instead of death’). Written in 2015, it was again a reflection on society, a theme he wants to continue in his writings.

“The next book is about the (bandit) Veerappan. He used to operate out of the Sathyamangalam forest, which is near my hometown Ponnachi. Unlike what the government tells us about him, the villagers dwelling in and around this forest considered him to be a good man, one who helped them. I want to tell Veerapan’s story through people’s point of view,” he shared.