Though the Goddess Lakshmi was very generous to us in Hyderabad and the school kind (for the children of Hyderabad Nawabs were well groomed and intriguing, but not really interested in studies — there was too much palace gossip to be serious with books and teachers), I developed some chest trouble, and the doctors asked me to go back to my home-mountains, where I went, and this time to my sister, to that hallowed place of pilgrimage, Nanjangud, on the river Kapila — I lived just behind the temple, among priestly-Brahmins, I a student of Durand (who taught us Prisoner of Zenda) and Burnet, who, later, taught us Aristotle. And such the play of karma that in the Mysore city library, which still stands there, yellow, bright yellow and long — I discovered (in the Indian Who’s Who) the address of an English friend of our families, Eric Dickinson, a minor poet, and from Oxford, who taught English at Aligarh, and had come to India because he was a good friend of my cousin Shama Rao (a theosophical discovery of Mrs Annie Besant, this cousin an adept for the apostle to be) — Shama Rao went to Oxford to study, but died there of the Spanish flu. Thus from Oxford, Dickinson, in memory of Shama Rao, came a pilgrim to India and I having started to write, naturally, to him I sent my first piece. But since the doctor again advised I should go as far away as possible from the sea, and also because I was interested in writing — my karma, or certainly more august forces, took me to Aligarh and to the Muslim University. There I was once more a student in an Islamic institution (my karma had certainly something to do with my Muslim connections), and here it was from Dickinson I first heard of Aries and Avignon, of Michelangelo and of Santayana. Poor Mr Burnet must have known only Kent (from where he came, I think) and Oxford, and maybe he’d seen Flanders during those terrible War Years (1914–1918) though I never really knew. Jack Hill from Oxford taught me French in Aligarh — we were both staying with Dickinson — and later when I went back to Hyderabad, I continued to be involved with literature till one day, a letter came in a blue envelope (I still remember) from Sir Patrick Geddes, who said he had established an international college at Montpellier, and since he liked what little he’d seen of my writing, ‘So why not come.’ The Government of Hyderabad and good Burnet were duly impressed with this exalted invitation, and as such with their blessings and money, straight I went to Montpellier, that ancient Greek and Saracenic town, so close to Sète where Valéry was born, and Beziers where there are still charred walls (so they said) at the place the Albigensians were burnt by the Pope’s helots.
These stories were written mainly in France, and at the time when Valéry and Gide dominated the literary universe. A south-Indian Brahmin, nineteen, spoon-fed on English, with just enough Sanskrit to know I knew so little, with an indiscrete education in Kannada, my mother-tongue, the French literary scene overpowered me. If I wanted to write, the problem was, what should be the appropriate language of expression, and what my structural models — Sanskrit contained the vastest riches of any, both in terms of style and word-wealth, and the most natural to my needs, yet it was beyond my competence to use. To marry Sanskrit and Gide in Kannada, and go further, would have demanded an immense stretch of time, and I was despairingly impatient. French, only next to Sanskrit, seemed the language most befitting my demands, but then it’s like a harp (or vina); its delicacy needed an excellence of instinct and knowledge that seemed well-nigh terrifying. English remained the one language, with its great tradition (if only of Shakespeare) and its unexplored riches, capable of catalysing my impulses, and giving them a near native sound and structure. ‘I will not write like the English,’ I was to write in an introduction to Kanthapura, ‘I can only write as an Indian.’ I will have to write my English, yet English after all — and how soon we forget this — is an Indo-Aryan tongue. Thus to stretch the English idiom to suit my needs seemed heroic enough for my urgentmost demands. The Irish, remember, had done it, not only with Yeats, but again with Frank O’Connor and Sean O’Faolain. Further, Joyce had broken in, as it were, from the side-wings, giving us sound and symbol structures that seemed made for almost the unsayable. So why not Sanskritic (or if you will, Indian) English?
In such a world of linguistic ferment, at that time there were also going on experiments with form. Kafka had broken the crust of realism and given fabled meanings to man’s fears. The Surrealists having abolished the natural as the concrete gave earth wings upwards, and even more, bore blindfold downwards into subterranean fires. And suddenly Malraux burst in on the scene, upsetting all intellectual stratagems, and giving the world an international dialect of, as it were, pure gesture and metaphysic meaning. For an Indian therefore who wanted to forget Tagore (but not Gandhi) to integrate the Sanskrit tradition with contemporary intellectual heroism seemed a noble experiment to undertake.
Thus both in terms of language and of structure, I had to find my way, whatever the results. And I continued the adventure in lone desperation. These stories therefore have to be taken as the fruits of such an experiment stretching over almost three decades, their main interest being the intellectual excitement it all gave me, and which, I am told, it has given a few others. As such this selection I have made of these stories old and new.
Raja Rao
THE TRUE STORY OF KANAKAPALA, PROTECTOR OF GOLD
The serpent is a friend or an enemy. If he is a friend, he lives with you, guarding your riches, protecting your health, and making you holy, and if he is an enemy, he slips through the kitchen gutter or through the granary tiles, or better still through the byre’s eaves, and rushing towards you, he spreads his hood and bhoos, he flings himself at you and if he is a quarter-of-an-hour one you die in a quarter of an hour, a three-fourths-of-an-hour one, you die in three-fourths of an hour, and you may know it by the number of stripes he has on his hood, for one means a quarter of an hour, two half an hour, and three three-fourths, but beyond that you can never live; unless of course there is a barber in the village who is so learned in the mysteries of animal wisdom that he stands near, a jug of water in one hand and a cup of milk in the other, chanting weird things in hoarse voices, with strange contortions of the face, and then Lord Naga slips through the gutter, tiles or eaves, exactly as he went out, and coming near the barber like a whining dog before its frenzied master, touches the wounded man at exactly the spot where he has injected his venom, and sucking back the poison, spits it into the milk-cup, and like a dog too, slowly first, timidly, hushed, he creeps over the floor, and the further he goes the greater he takes strength, and when he is near the door, suddenly doubles his speed, and slips away — never to be seen again. The barber is paid three rupees, a shawl, and coconut with betel-leaves, and, for you, a happy life with your wife and children, not to speak of the studied care of an attentive mother-in-law, and the fitful grumblings of that widow of a sister who does not show even a wink of gratitude for all your kindness. But, never mind, for the important thing is that you are alive. May you live a thousand years!
But the story I’m going to tell you is the story of a serpent when he is a friend. It was recounted to me one monsoon evening last June, by Old Venkamma, Plantation Subbayya’s mother. May those who read this be beloved of Naga, King of Serpents, Destroyer of Ills.
Vision Rangappa, the first member of the family, belonged to Hosur near Mysore, and was of humble parents. His father and mother had died when he was hardly a boy of eighteen, and being left alone he accepted to be a pontifical Brahmin— the only job for one in his condition. People liked his simple nature, the deference in his movements, and the deep gravity of his voice; and whenever there were festivals or obsequies to be performed, they invited him to dinner. And when he had duly honoured them with his Brahmanic presence, and partaken of the holy meal, they gave him half an anna and a coconut, for his pontifical services. But nobody ever suspected that the money was never used, and that it went straight into a sacred copper pot, sealed with wax at the top, and with a slit in the lid. Six pies a week, or sometimes one anna a week, could become a large amount some day. For he secretly hoped that one auspicious morning he would leave this village and start towards Kashi, on pilgrimage. That was the reason why he had refused bride after bride, some beautiful as new-opened guavas, and others tender as April mangoes, and some too with dowries that could buy over a kingdom. ‘No,’ he would tell himself, ‘not till I have seen the beautiful Kashi-Vishweshwara with my own eyes. Once I have had that vision, I will wed a holy wife and live among my children and children’s children.’ Thus resolved, every day he calculated how much money there would be in the holy pot — it would be a sin to open it! — and every day he said to himself that in one year, in nine months, six months, in three months, or maybe in two fortnights, he would leave this little village and start off on his great pilgrimage.