A utobiographies of well-known personalities, particularly if they are of performing artists, make for interesting reading. B.Jayashree -- one of the most respected contemporary theatre personalities -- has come out with her autobiography, Kanna Muchche Kaade Goode .
Jayashree’s book contains all the positive features of a good autobiography. She had the distinct advantage of being born into a theatre family where grandparents, parents, cousins, uncles and her lone sibling were active theatre personalities. Gubbi Veranna, grandfather of Jayashree, founded Gubbi Shree Chennabasaveshwara Nataka Company which was a home for hundreds of theatre people. She was born there when its popularity was at its peak. Gubbi Veeranna ran a huge set up with script writers, actors, actresses, musicians, off-stage workers, and their spouses and children, housed in a single place. And then there were animals like elephants, horses, rabbits brought live on stage. With such a mega set up, they toured all over Karnataka for over six months every year like circus companies!
The autobiography has interesting details: the evening performances, the audience who consisting of mainly villagers, their kitchen run by a Brahmin and Lingayath cook preparing food with garlic and without, respectively, the games children played etc. The other parts of the book deal with the life of Jayashree per se. She has been quite candid about her personal and domestic life. The description of her emotional, domestic, physical and financial distresses and her commitment to the theatre in spite of all these, are touching parts. Her days in National School of Drama marked by her association with eminent theatre personalities like Alkazi, Naseeruddin Shah, Om Puri and others make her a strong individual. The international exposure she gets out of her hard work, her experiences with directors like Prasanna, B.V. Karanth , Shankara Nag and others have been fascinatingly recounted. Her active participation in the theatre groups like Spandana, Benaka, Sanketha are well recorded. She acknowledges the contribution made by almost everyone around her for her huge growth both as an individual and also as a theatre personality. She feels humble by the innumerable awards she gets – particularly the honorary doctorate she is awarded by the Karnataka State Open University.
Preeti Nagaraj has caught the rhythm of Jayshree’s histrionics in her narration: it is simple, intimate and effective. It is fascinating that the narration is developed in terms of experiences rather than reporting of events in terms of chronology. But, there seems to be a few gaps in the narrative here and there. While Jayashree feels grateful for being made the Rajya Sabha member, and is overawed by the eloquence of members of parliament like Arun Jaitley, Manu Singhvi, Seetharam Echuri and others. But there is no mention of her contribution to the theatre world as a Rajya Sabha member. Similarly, a few of her most private problems have been quite explicitly narrated, but what is already available in the public domain like her brief stint as the director of Rangayana, Mysore, hardly gets a mention.
So much so, there are a few very minor errors like the mention of the achievement of Bebanna (Vasudeva Rao), - actually he was awarded National best actor award for his role in “Chomana Dudi”(directed by BV Karantha) but it is reported in the book that he gets the award for his role in “Tabarana Kathe” (directed by Girish Kasaravalli). There are some places where a question mark (?) in the middle of the text which is rather difficult to interpret.
Theatre lovers must get this book.
