Scavenger of the World

The Living Stream

Written in his mid-20s, Kuvempu’s first play, Jalagara (The Scavenger, 1928), continues to hold out a special significance. An early enactment of his philosophical ideal that later came to be named as Vishvamanava, the play also reveals the poet’s creative engagement with tradition. But first, a bare outline of Jalagara.

The play opens with Mother Earth ushering in a glorious dawn. An untouchable scavenger is seen at work in a village. His song of admiration for the splendour of the sun quickly reveals a mature, sophisticated mind. A farmer passer-by asks him to accompany him to the fair being held near Shiva’s shrine. The scavenger declines to join him: the priests, he replies, wouldn’t let him anywhere near the shrine. Enchanted by the scavenger’s songs from afar, two learned Brahmin priests withhold their applause, however, after discovering that the voice belonged to a low caste man. Poets, scholars, sculptors, singers and yogis, they contend, can never be born among the Shudras.

In the evening, on his way back from the shrine, the farmer, who was ecstatic about the ritual pomp, has coconuts, flowers, kumkuma and camphor to show from his visit. “Haven’t you brought back Shiva?” The scavenger is unimpressed.

Later, when the scavenger beseeches Shiva to reveal himself, the Lord appears in the guise of a scavenger.

“You look human but seem to be superhuman. Your eyes shine brighter than the stars. Who are you?”

Noticing the scavenger’s bewilderment, Shiva says, “Don’t be afraid, brother. I’m your relative.” He continues, “I’m of your caste (jati). I’m a scavenger. A scavenger of the world. I swallow the sins of the world. Beauty flourishes in the world due to my scavenging work. The radiant moon, the roaring oceans, the clear rivers, the majestic forests, all of them are in my debt. They call me Rudra at times and Shiva at other times, but they are hesitant and afraid to call me a Jalagara.”

“I had never heard this about you. Scholars and learned people describe you in other ways.”

“Their descriptions are imaginary and deceptive. My true form will terrify them. You are the only one to have worshipped me in my true form in your work. My dear brother, I’m not the Shiva found in the shastras and in poetry. I’m not the erotic Shiva who cavorts with Parvati on a silver mountain. I’m the scavenger who climbs the heap of filth built up in the cosmos and dances on it. The true Shiva is a scavenger. I appeared unattractive to the learned scholars and priests. So, they tried to change my looks. The priests don’t let me inside the shrine before placing a moon and Ganga on my head. The real Shiva is never ever inside a shrine!”

“Where else are you then?”

“I reside in the hearts of the poor who keep the streets clean. I move alongside the farmers’ ploughing the land. I hold the hands of the crippled, the blind, the orphans and the suffering people and care for them. Come, my brother. You are my true devotee. You have become me. I have become you. You are Shiva!”

“I’m Shiva! I’m Shiva!”

The village scavenger merges into Shiva’s embrace.

Kuvempu’s distinct invocation of the figure of Shiva in his play does several things. As in the case of his predecessors in the folk tradition, it releases Shiva from the dominant theological imaginations and makes him intimately available to the powerless people. It shakes up the moral stupor of the powerful groups, too, in asking them to shift out of the easy habits of ritual worship and imagine God and their relationship with religion in morally daring and socially sensitive ways. Further, Kuvempu is working within the reality of God. His recomposing of the world picture – in order to both make theology open its eyes to the new demands of social justice and to make the pursuit of God an individual act and not parcelled along caste, religion or any other community lines -- does not proceed therefore in an iconoclastic manner, from a point outside religion or tradition.

Indeed, the rhythmic verse form of Jalagara appears to place immense faith in the capacity of humans to replace an undesirable social order. Minor characters lay out the social complexity: a youth who admires the tireless work of the sweeper, two young men who boldly dismiss religion as originating from an encounter between a thief and a fool, but are lacking in sympathy towards a starving beggar, a few boys who are blissful in their stupidity, among others.

Jalagara belongs to the precious lineage of efforts to get tradition and the present to speak to each other in the noblest ways.