Rajani Narahalli has made an earnest attempt to recollect her grandmother in her very first narrative, “Nanna Ajjiya Jagatthu”. Nostalgia is always complex. The pleasantly painful experiences are subjective and selective. While the experiences are of the past, they are observed with a fairly matured, contemporary perspective. Granny (‘Ajji’) is a unique type in Indian culture, very close as an experience, but a non-existent reality now. The attitude towards her is empathetic and to a large extent acceptable too, but pragmatically speaking, she is out of date socially and culturally. Acceptance of this out-datedness of Ajji is a highly emotive experience. Rajani makes use of the creative potential in this abstraction called ‘Ajji’ with the enthusiasm of a young girl. Understandably, there seems to be no ‘story’ here with a beginning, middle and an end. The well-founded admiration for Ajji leads to an exploration of Ajji ’s world which consisted of her village, her home, the flora and the fauna that surround her, her household, her relatives, the villagers, and the issues related to her displacement to a city in the final phase of her life. Like any granddaughter, Rajani is romantic about her long association with her Ajji . But her reminiscences are also marked by a strong sense of irony. That Ajji survived in spite of all her miseries, her poverty and widowhood is an indication of her stoic personality which is quite creditable. Ajji ’s life is indeed a saga of hard work and sacrifice, which are punctuated by her love for her children and grandchildren. But her attitude towards women that they are meant to take care of men and that men deserved a deferential treatment, her meanness while settling family conflicts, lack of sophistication in her domestic chores, her resistance to modernity in her younger days in contrast to her acceptance of modernity during the last phase of her life as fait accompli, and ultimately her loneliness in the midst of present generation – all these make the narrative authentic. While poverty had always been a major problem in her early life, prosperity bestowed on her during the last phase of her life becomes unwanted and distasteful.
There are many good features in this narrative that draws the reader’s attention. It is not just the Ajji that is important here but her changing worlds too. Ajji lives in different locations of space and time – when she is young she lives in her own house in a picturesque village in Kodagu, later after passing away of her husband, she is shifted to her daughter’s place in a Coffee estate and finally she spends her last days in a city – her transformation from an independent, confident and charming personality to a parasitic and helpless life in her urban dwelling is well accounted in the narrative. During her long life, she is a witness to many births and deaths, family quarrels and celebrations. As the time changes, Ajji ’s world also changes. Interestingly, Ajji adapts herself to new environments without much ado. Whether the changes were desirable might be a point to consider, but remains beyond the realm of this narrative.
It is very difficult to believe that this is the first book of the author. Both in terms of style and readability, this narrative seems to have achieved perfection. There is hardly any place where emotions are overplayed amateurishly. The tenderness of the author towards her Ajji is never lowered to the level of tear-jerking sentimentality. However, if the narrative does not excite a reader, the reason lies in the naive representation of Ajji and her world. This Ajji lacks the strength and vigour of the archetypal Ajjis portrayed elsewhere in Kannada literature, (say, by either a Karanth or a Kum.Vi or a Devanuru). Ajji having seen the world for much longer time than the rest of the people in the narrative seem to be a meek spectator of the ways of her limited world. Even her worlds, mostly manifested in her kitchen, her village, or her life with her children, are after all not cruel to her. Ajji ’s problems at best emerge as grumblings of a weak traditional woman rather than a serious articulation of the changing civilization of our times. Though the narrative appears to be genuine and sometimes too precise, without any ideational (not necessarily ideological) framework, the descriptions end up as a record of people, places and events. The wonderful fictional potential of Ajji is thus lost in descriptions.
