Technology has increased connectivity between people and communities like never before. Nevertheless, our experiential world is getting telescopic. In an existence of such glaring ironies, today's man is restless, turbulent and fragmented. He is a fecund source for a writer writing in contemporary times, who is not an excluded entity in this turmoil. Summing up the modern man and the challenging new world before a Kannada writer, renowned short story writer and lyricist Jayant Kaikini, had this to say in a session titled, “New Writing in Kannada”, moderated by writer Vivek Shanbhag, at the city's literary event Lekhana, last week.
Like his writing, Jayant's oratory is also metaphorical. “Writing,” he said, “certainly emerges from a writer's own life, but then you also belong to a larger tradition and you can never lose sight of it. The baton, like in a relay race, is passed on. You take it and run your own race.” It is important to be part of that “flow” and therefore the past becomes as crucial as the present, he said.
“A serious writer is constantly struggling to contextualise his writing, but I have often wondered if this is true of a critic as well. Why has there been no serious critical writing on works of Kannada writers like K.V. Tirumalesh, Poornachandra Tejaswi, Shantinath Desai and others?” Answering Jayant in a rather oblique manner, critic Vijayshankar remembered poet Bendre's phrase about the “vain eye”. “I think we are too caught up noticing things that are obvious,” added Vijayshankar, directing it both at writers and critics. He recalled the arrival of Devanur Mahadeva on the literary scene when critics were challenged to refashion their tools of evaluation. “The challenge before us, in these times, is to establish a relationship between the individual aspiration (Navya) and the community aspiration (Dalit),” he observed.
Journalist Cha. Ha. Raghunath, wondered what “new” constituted. Is it “language” or is it “theme”? In a tradition that is so richly diverse in its use of the Kannada language to capture a range of experiences, what then should be my language? “Films have a contemporariness in language, but can that trickle down to literature? Finding a Kannada that is my own was my greatest challenge as a writer.” In times when we are constantly making ethical compromises, the enormous output in writing can hardly be equated with promise, he felt.
In the discussion “What stops us from saying what we want to say?” the panellists provided several insights into the connotations of freedom of expression. Of course, Jaipur Literature Festival and Salman Rushdie were at its centre.
What constitutes “freedom” in a world that is slowly moving towards new definitions of State and the development of new social structures? Freedom of expression should be unfettered, some said, others spoke of reasonable restrictions on it in societies and countries that have diverse cultural and religious identities. Some argued that ideally an artist or writer should resort to self-restriction.
Sushma Veerappa's films sensitively portray issues of identity even as they speak of dying traditions. “Documentary filmmakers walk a thin line between being agents of social change and storytellers,” she said.
Kaiwan Mehta spoke of how some architects have gone against convention to express their individual selves. “A person may assume many roles as artists, writers and audience. We exist in multiple geographical locations simultaneously and so, one's work in contemporary times has a wider circulation than before and thereby, a greater impact,” said Kaiwan, author of “Alice in Buleshwar”.
Ashutosh Potdar, playwright, poet and translator, spoke eloquently about the subjective nature of reality. “Writing is translating a powerful moment of contemplation or silence, thus expressing the deepest part of the self. Our works explore multiple realties. Reality changes meaning from one place to another, depending on cultural factors. The debate on the freedom of expression is endless.” To a question on what exactly is the role of a writer, Ashutosh replied, “I write for myself, but I am you.”
Are book reviews an art form in themselves? Do they have a literary merit of their own? The session on “Writing about writing” moderated by writer Anjum Hasan, was an attempt at “trying to give shape to these ideas”. Hence, what are the parameters of good and bad literature? What aesthetic, political and literary standards do we adopt?
Samhita Arni, who mostly reviewed mythological fiction, was excited by “new writing” in Indian English. For instance, she sees a “paradigm shift” in writers like Rahul Bhattacharya. “Reviewing has been a learning experience, I am constantly enamoured by the literary techniques and tools, more in terms of structure,” she said. In this session of mixed voices, Anjum was curious to know if the anxiety of an “insular” Indian-Writing-in- English world existed in the Kannada literary world as well. In Kannada, all writing is placed in its historical flow of one thousand years, explained writer Vivek Shanbhag. This, he said, makes it imperative for a critic and writer to engage with the past as well as locate himself in the present. However, he said, the space available for literary criticism was far too small considering the volume of literary output. “I think literature is discussed in greater seriousness in remote pockets of the State, far from mainstream attention.”
The session had a huge canvas; Rahul Soni, editor of the bilingual literary magazine Pratilipi, speaking of translations felt that there was nothing called “timeless translation” and hence many great works have always had a current telling.
Ideas were thrown around – some serious, some known. Bridges are not easily built, not when regional language sessions don't draw big numbers. Like writer Vivek Shanbhag asked in one of the sessions, “Why aren't we reading literatures of the world like writers of our past did?” Those were times without “bridges”. The love of literature existed for its own sake.
