Ananthmurthy spent his childhood in
Brahmin orthodox family. In his childhood he learnt Sanskrit. He learnt
Kalidasa from a Brahmachari, a celibate (An unmarried person). He taught to
keep away from temptation and lead a life of mortification (Strong feelings of
embarrassment). He used to lie on the sand bed of the river and tried hard to
reach the ultimate experience of sin and shame for his unredeemed self. He felt
envious of the healthy cowherd (cowboy) boys, who indulged in an unabashed
love-life that was denied to him. During those days, he was in love with a girl
of the fisherman’s caste who had tattooed her hands and forehead. She appeared
to him like the shakuntala of Kalidasa—the book he was reading with his
Brahmachari teacher. Annanthmurthy dared not talk to that dark- complexioned
girl who adorned her hair with champak flowers and carried fish on her curved
waist in a basket. He even had great admiration for her way of walking. The
other boys of his age talked unashamedly of their discoveries of the hidden
pleasures of their bodies, but Annanthmurthy dared not speak out openly like
them. Being a sensitive child, he wrote down his suppressed emotions in a
diary. For writing, he was in search of words. The words fascinated him, but paradoxically,
they were means of hiding rather than revealing his true self.
Once plague broke out in the town.
The city school was closed, as people began to die in hundreds. The Brahmins
living in agrahara were duly inoculated, but untouchables living on a hillock
began to die and their thatched mud huts were set on fire. The orthodox elders
were of the opinion that it was punishment, because their caste people in other
parts of India had entered temples, instigated (Provoke or stir up) by
Gandhi. But Annanthmurthy thought otherwise. It was clear that they died
because the doctor, an upper cast man, had not gone to their huts to inoculate
them as that would result in touching them. Incidentally the most beautiful
girl among the untouchables suddenly disappeared. Annanthmurthy knew where she
had gone. A young man from an orthodox family who had organized a make-belief
army and taught the boys to parade every morning was her lover. It was this
lover who eloped with this untouchable girl.
These small incidents proved a
turning point in the life of the writer. His outlook broadened when he went to
England and had a close look at the work of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dickens and
Camus. He also studied Marx, freud,
Sarte when he was writing his thesis for his PHD degree. Annanthmurthy who was
deeply rooted in his traditional Kannad and Sanskrit writing skills, later on
realized that for a good writer it was not only essential to stick to one’s
cultural root, but also to be equally exposed to the western civilization and
scientific knowledge.
Annanthmurthy took inspiration from
Mahatma Gandhi who on returning from South Africa chose to change his apparel
and look like a low caste Indian villager. This kind of choice that Gandhi made
amazed Annanthmurthy and he thought that Gandhiji was a truly critical insider.
A critical insider is one who is neither sentimental, a revivalist, backward
looking oriental who would think everything in the past of India, not a
westernized modernizer who likes a rationalist scientist would reject the
entire past of India, in an attempt to combine orientalism with modernization
which was quite futile and gave rise to inauthentic modes of thought and
feeling.
Annanthmurthy has a confirmed
conviction that only truly critical insider, like Mahatma Gandhi, is entitled
to be a good writer, if he has boundless compassion for the poor and
disinherited in India and such a writer should actively and passionately engage
himself with the present in ‘all its confusions of value’. He should use the
rich past of this country with a passion and only then he should aspire for a
creative writer in the present.
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