IN Kannada, Suragi is the name of a quaint and delicate flower which retains its fragrance even after it has wilted. It is significant that U.R. Ananthamurthy (URA) chose this title for his autobiography published in 2012. The book, created in collaboration with J.N. Tejashree, a sensitive poet and a serious student of literature, is an interesting experiment in the genre.

Suragi contains ten chapters starting from the reminiscences of a sensitive young boy from the hilly regions of Karnataka. The autobiography apparently conforms to the conventional pattern of chronological narration. Different facets of his life are delineated in different narrative modes. But the chronological narration is frequently deserted because of the mercurial memory of URA that moves in different directions all at once and the strategies adopted by Tejashree, the narrator-collaborator. These temporal flights have however resulted in a gripping narrative.

Suragi is a creative combination of personal reminiscences and a subjective documentation of the writer’s own times. This is one reason why this work assumes cultural significance. Very few artists get the opportunity of being active participants in moulding the contemporary cultural scenario like URA. Of course, being a public intellectual was a deliberate choice that he made, particularly during the later part of his life. This book is free of self-righteousness even though attempts of self-justification are occasionally present. Overall, it reflects a healthy combination of self-search and self-criticism. This review makes a few observations in capsule form in order to avoid repetition.

Suragi is significant because it deals with issues that are of importance for India. It delineates the confrontations of a creative individual with his personal angst and the problems faced by an emerging modern writer in post-Independence India. It is a unique experiment even in terms of its structure – a non-linear collage of narrative modules contributed by URA and the explicatory remarks provided by Tejashree. It does not become overtly subjective or academically argumentative, the juxtaposition of lyrical and introspective passages lending it a particular charm. While representing the complexities of a regional culture very competently, the problems that it addresses have broader significance.

This book is structured in two seamlessly interconnected layers of narrative. The first layer consists of events and experiences from across a long and multifaceted life. The second is a documentation of the angst and aspirations of the inner being. By and large, the selection and the narrative modes of the first layer are controlled by the second. The narration becomes intense and passionate when these two narratives coalesce. Otherwise, it meanders into a prosaic presentation.

 

A desire to fulfil one’s cultural responsibilities and a need to be true to one’s inner compulsions constitute yet another tension in the book. This comes out when URA talks about friends and acquaintances like K.V. Subbanna, Shanthaveri Gopala Gowda, Rajeev Taranath, P. Lankesh, George Fernandes and many others. For instance, a comparative analysis of his remarks on Gopala Gowda in this book and the fictionalized account of the same person in his novel Avasthe could provide many valuable insights into this issue. Suragi does not become vulgar or scandalous at any point, because the author is aware of the fact that others do not get an opportunity to present their point of view. URA seems to feel that personal and intimate details should not find place in an autobiography, unless they have public significance as well. This awareness saves Suragi from salacious details and unnecessary controversies. The public importance of a private moment is decided in many ways. For URA, it is essentially an act of merging experience with philosophical analysis. For instance, he composed a short rhythmic utterance linking a maid servant Abbakka with a sparrow (Gubbakka in Kannada). URA describes this event and makes use of it to discuss the relation between rhyme and poetry. This book contains quite a few moments of this kind followed by appropriate commentaries.

URA found ample opportunity to visit and live in different parts of India and abroad. Most Kannada writers did not have such exposure. URA has made use of such experiences in his writings. Suragi contains a few chapters devoted to his sojourns in England and Kerala. He went to England in 1964, at the age of thirty two, and obtained a PhD degree from the University of Birmingham. Details about his experiential and intellectual life in England offer a number of brilliant insights. His observations are both self-assertive and self-critical depending on the context. They do not come across as experiences of a single individual. Rather they acquire universal dimensions applicable to lay persons coming from an upper caste, lower middle class background. The clash of cultures and its effect on individual behaviour is brought out effectively. For instance, URA gets an opportunity to teach a group of students from various ethnic and class backgrounds. At first, he was shocked by their behaviour and did not know how to handle the unfamiliar situation. Gradually he came to terms with the students as well as his colleagues.

 

Sensitive readers of his stories are familiar with the shapes acquired by these experiences in an artistic rendering. But Suragi reveals many facets of such life that are not present in his creative work. Some of them are personal while others are possibly too intellectually oriented to be transformed into a story. It is interesting to note that URA published a longish story written during this period a few months before his death. The decisions about what to publish were probably a result of his perceptions about these genres.

The portrayal of his childhood and adolescence spent in Karnataka are authentic and evocative. But Suragi has quite a few problems in the depiction of his life between the ages of thirty and eighty. URA’s life during this period has become an integral part of the cultural-social history of Karnataka. Here the narrative reminds one of tightrope walking. This was a period of introspection, self-criticism and self-justification for artists from the Brahmin community. It was an ordeal by fire. It was very difficult to differentiate between masks and faces in general. Quite often literary movements and social movements were at loggerheads with one another.

 

For instance, the modernist literary movement was at its peak when the backward caste movement was gathering momentum during the regime of Devaraj Urs. The modernist movement contained germs of traditionalism and regionalism. Ideas inspired by Lohia on the one hand and existentialist thinkers such as Sartre and Camus on the other created rifts and resulted in different paths of evolution. It was difficult to distinguish between genuine opinions and politically correct postures during that period. It was very challenging to strike a balance between social justice and secularism.

URA was at the receiving end of stringent criticism for a long time for both his ideas as well as actions. He had to defend himself every now and then. In such situations writing often becomes an exercise in self-justification. This happens more frequently if others do not rush to your support and if those who do are accused of belonging to your coterie. Readers arrive at their conclusions by reading the accounts rendered by other participants of the events. These conclusions are again based on their personal bias. Who knows the truth and who is bothered about knowing it? Ultimately, one writes about oneself even when writing about others. In that sense all writing is self-revelatory. Of course, the converse of this statement is also true. We realize our true selves only in relationship with others. That is why one should not look for someone else’s biography in works like Suragi.

 

Autobiographies have the advantages of hindsight. Earlier opinions and actions are replaced by those that mirror the contemporary, often at considerable variance from those of the past. This is true of political events, social movements and even interpersonal relationships. For instance, both URA and Lankesh took more than two decades to understand that Congress politics had many positive aspects which were totally absent in the political practices of either the Janata Dal or Jan Sangh. In itself there is nothing wrong in such reappraisal. But then, they started announcing it from the rooftops as messiahs. There are quite a few such ‘being wise after the event’ instances in Suragi. It is beyond doubt that many events of this period are written with lots of hesitation and an adequate dose of cleverness. In reality, all autobiographies (Atma Kathaanaka) are half-narrated tales (Ardha Kathaanaka). The un-narrated half is definitely not unimportant.

The chapter titled, ‘The Ups and Downs of Creativity’ is one of the seminal parts of this book. URA was adept in making use of his creativity in many areas such as journalism, politics, oratory and public life. Consequently, he kept himself active even while going through troughs of literary creativity. He always thought that living itself was a creative act. This section contains many valuable insights about his creative processes as also the act of creation in general. However, this chapter could have been more elaborate. He could have attempted to delineate an ‘author specific’ poetics. Bendre, one of our eminent poets, has done it wonderfully. URA was one of the few modernist writers who went beyond the confines of that movement. It would be very interesting to learn whether this transcending was confined to his world view or whether it also permeated into his concept of literature. I have a feeling that he was more creatively experimental in his poetry rather than in his fiction. It is difficult to find radical departures in the evolution of form in his fiction. He used poetry to formulate and state his intellectual and metaphysical positions. Usually, he accomplished this through anecdotes and metaphors. He was fond of lyrical discourses even in his fiction. But his later poetry was less lyrical and made use of the prose style. Suragi could have thrown more light on issues like this.

 

The ‘Inner Life’ was more important than the ‘Public Life’ for URA throughout his life. This truth is made very clear in Suragi also. But a disproportionate desire for media publicity and an uncontrollable urge to express his opinion on all topics gained ascendency throughout his life. The subtle and nuanced realities of his inner self have not been expressed in detail anywhere in this book. Even those that have found vent are not sufficiently emphasized. He probably felt that the ‘personal’ which does not merge with the ‘social’ would not have much significance with the passage of time. He was not particularly fond of perceiving and presenting truth through other fictional characters during his last few years. That is why he did not venture into fiction during this period. Curiously though, he made cursory attempts of this kind in the poems that he translated.

URA’s intellectual writing too suffers from a relative absence of musings about his inner life. He is more interested in documenting his ideas about social, political and cultural issues. He wrote more about public life than private dilemmas. Probably, since his achievements in various walks of life are not recorded properly by his contemporaries, it became necessary for Suragi to delineate such details. For instance, the yeoman work turned out by him in Kerala as the vice chancellor of the Mahatma Gandhi University and its philosophical background are documented here in detail. But unfortunately, in this context it becomes self-congratulatory. This is a real impasse. Similarly, he is forced to explain and substantiate and justify many of his external actions and inner turmoil. This is also due to the fact that most people who surrounded him were there to feather their nests. Actually, I have a feeling that URA learnt more from his enemies and dissenters than his friends and admirers. He had an innate ability to absorb criticism, mull over and use them for his growth.

A person who believes that truth is linear, sticks to it and acts upon it faces fewer problems. Even those who know the plurality of truth and choose to stay mum and inactive escape serious predicaments. The real conflicts begin when one is aware of the pluralities of a situation and still want to be an activist. URA was one such person. This reality created problems for him in action as well as speech. In addition, like many of us, he too was fond of success and praise. This makes us incapable of hurting others by being ruthlessly objective. Numerous placatory sentences are found in Suragi.

 

I have learnt several lessons from this book. The first is about the nature of cruelty that could be present in leftist regimes also. Of course, I am fully aware of the fact that capitalist democracies and dictatorships too harbour cruelty which is ten times more intense. The mockery of democracy that prevails in India and the USA is no solution whatsoever. But communism created dreams of liberation and then gagged all voices of protest. URA was haunted by these feelings throughout his life. His liking for the tenets of Marxism did not make him change his disbelief in leftist regimes. Suragi makes it abundantly clear.

Second, many parts of Suragi stress the necessity of re-examining the concept of morality and ethics. Being untrue to one’s own self can also be immoral. Even an ‘ultra-moralist’ like Gandhi was exploitative in many of his practices. There was an autocratic lack of understanding of others in his interpersonal dealings. Ends were quite often more important than means for Gandhi. URA is very clear about this in Suragi as well as his other writings. Third, Suragi tells a number of unpalatable truths in a muted and detached manner. Most of them are valid both generally and contextually. He is never hesitant about mentioning small defects in himself and others including his own family. Even his mother and wife are not spared from this treatment. Such comments are, however, without hatred or contempt.

 

A few words about the structuring and narration of this book. This is a non-linear and complex work in spite of its chronological narration. Suragi is the fruit of a meaningful collaboration of two creative minds. URA moves in various paths, led by his memories as the mood strikes. Both Tejashree and he have adapted the method of expanding and explaining some chapters and incidents in detail and truncating certain other phases, thereby, signalling the relative importance of things. Some passages are very lyrical and charged with emotion; some others are linear and prosaic. They are retained only because of logical compulsions. Actually these tonal variations have nothing to do with the stylistic competence of the narrators. The method of juxtaposing the current narrations with selections from the diaries written long ago has helped in tracing URAs evolution. They also help the reader in viewing the same incident from two different perspectives separated in time.

 

A few observations about the mode in which this book took shape are necessary. It is not a straightforward narration written by the protagonist. It is not even a continuous text dictated by the protagonist to a passive scribe. It is a jungle of memories, dreams, pages culled from diaries, selections from creative and not so creative writings, electronically recorded material and telephonic conversations. It is easy to lose one’s way in this kind of abundance. Tejashree has undertaken this adventure with total commitment and succeeded eminently.

One faces a number of problems while converting a ‘spoken text’ into a ‘written narrative’. A verbatim presentation of hundreds of pages of spoken material would have been monotonous. It is an achievement of the narrator that Suragi has retained the nuances and subtleties of a written text. Occasionally she has helped URA delve deep into his memories by asking appropriate questions. She says that the inner core of the book belongs to URA and that the external format is an outcome of their combined labour. This is indeed true, and she deserves to be complimented for her labour of love and diligence. URA has given us the fruits of his probe into the mysteries of life and society. It is but natural that many probes end without resolution and many truths are too bitter to admit.

Suragi is undoubtedly one of the better autobiographies in Kannada. Many of its facets are equally relevant in a pan-Indian context. One looks forward to a competent translation of this book into English and other Indian languages.