I will never build a house three storeys high. Have you ever seen a house so high? No, not in Trivandrum. In Trivandrum, the best houses, those of P. Govardhan Nair or of Jagadish Iyer, retired High Court judge, or even of Raja Raja Rajendra Varma, His Highness’s first cousin, are but two storeys high. You can make nice curved stairways. You could make one in marble, or in polished wood (like in the Royal Guest House at Kanyakumari), but you must always have the terrace open. That is what one calls the third floor. A house always opens into openness. Has anybody seen a house shut out?
I have been made Secretary of the Temple Grants Department at the Revenue Board. From five Secretaries they increased to eight, because of the serious strain of war work. I never see my son Vithal — his mother keeps him away so that her lands will not become mine. Shantha never grumbles and says, I want to marry you. How could one not be married in marriage when you move where there is no movement, you sleep where there is but light? Marriage is not a fact, it is a state. You marry because you see.
Author’s Note
‘Two plus two makes four’ is commonplace arithmetic. ‘When you take away plentitude (purnasya) from plentitude, what remains over is plentitude’ is an ancient Upanishadic saying. The problem of meaning is not what you say but from where you say it. Man-centered explications at best end in dithyrambic numbers, in sociological aesthetics, and Truth-turned discourse leads one to silence and so to meaning. The two seem complimentary but in fact the first is exclusive of the second, whereas, not so the second of the first. My friend Govindan Nair (whom you will soon meet) is no enemy of Kirillov (whom you all know) but Govindan Nair is, alas, good Kirillov’s. It is a pity, therefore, that Govindan Nair did not meet Kirillov. It would have been such fun, and — who knows — Govindan Nair might yet have charmed Kirillov into his unbeginning game.
Plentitude has no quarrel with two, but two is the enemy of plentitude. And so of Shakespeare. The not-two alone is meaning in any meaning: ‘Truth is the meaning of the lie for meaning is Truth,’ etc., etc. Truth alone is position-less, so you play. The two (plus two) ends in suicide. I like play. So let us play. Come, Kirillov, let us play chess, you and I.
Introduction: Notes
1 Raja Rao, The Policeman and the Rose: Stories. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1978, p. xiv.
2 Raja Rao, The Chessmaster and His Moves. New Delhi: Vision Books, 1988, p. 1.
3 R. Parthasarathy, ‘The Future World Is Being Made in America: An Interview with Raja Rao’, Span (September 1977): 30.
4 Braj B. Kachru, The Indianization of English: The English Language in India. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983.
5 Raja Rao, Kanthapura. London: Allen and Unwin, 1938. Reprinted 1963, New York: New Directions. Subsequent citations from the American edition are indicated in the text parenthetically by page number.
6 Raja Rao, The Serpent and the Rope. London: John Murray, 1960. Subsequent citations from this edition are indicated in the text parenthetically by page number.
7 I have not been able to trace the source of this quotation.
8 Chāndogya Upaniṣad, VI.8.7, in The Principal Upaniṣads, ed. and trans. S. Radhakrishnan. London: Allen and Unwin, 1953, p. 458.
9 Raja Rao, ‘The Writer and the Word’, The Literary Criterion 7.1 (Winter 1965): 231.
10 Robert Redfield, Peasant Society and Culture: An Anthropological Approach to Civilization. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956, pp. 67-104.
11 Janet Powers Gemmill, ‘The Transcreation of Spoken Kannada in Raja Rao’s Kanthapura’, Literature East and West 18.2–4 (1974): 191–202.
12 Gemmill, ‘The Transcreation of Spoken Kannada in Raja Rao’s Kanthapura’, p. 194.
13 C.D. Narasimhaiah, ‘Indian Writing in English: An Introduction’, The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 5 (1968): 14.
14 Quoted in M.K. Naik, Raja Rao. Twayne World Authors Series. New York: Twayne, 1972, p. 106.
15 Louis Dumont and David Pocock, ‘On the Different Aspects or Levels in Hinduism’, Contributions to Indian Sociology 3 (July 1959): 45.
16 Bhavabhuti, Rama’s Later History (Uttararāmacarita), part 1: Introduction and Translation by Shripad Krishna Belvalkar. Harvard Oriental Series, 21. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1915, p. 39.
17 Raja Rao, The Cat and Shakespeare. New York: Macmillan, 1965, pp. 8-10. Subsequent citations from this edition are indicated in the text parenthetically by page number.
18 Arthur Avalon, ed. Kulacūḍāmaṇi Nigama, with an introduction and translation by A.K. Maitra. Madras: Ganesh & Co., 1956, ch. 1, verses 25–26.
19 Raja Rao, The Policeman and the Rose: Stories. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1978, p. 88. Subsequent citations from this edition are indicated in the text parenthetically by page number.
20 Rabindranath Tagore, Stories from Tagore. New York: Macmillan, 1918, p. 122. Subsequent citations from this edition are indicated in the text parenthetically by page number.
21 Integral Yoga Institute, ed. Dictionary of Sanskrit Names. Yogaville, Buckingham, VA: Integral Yoga Publications, 1989, p. 57.
22 Sushil Kumar De, ed., and Rev. V. Raghavan, The Meghadūta of Kālidāsa, 3rd ed. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1982, verse 11.
23 Raja Rao, On the Ganga Ghat. Delhi: Orient Paperbacks, 1993, p. 112. Subsequent citations from this edition are indicated in the text parenthetically by page number.
24 Sankara, Ātmabodhaḥ: Self-Knowledge, trans. Swami Nikhilananda. Madras: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 1967, p. 261, verse 11.
Notes
1
1 Wife of Shiva and daughter of Himalaya.
2 Brahmins who fled, so it is believed, from persecution in Kashmir during the early years of Muslim conquest. In Travancore, they are mostly engaged in business. Their language is Konkani, which is akin to Hindi.
3 The recitation of sacred syllables.
4 The lunar month that falls in December — January.
5 Doctors who practise the ancient Indian system of medicine, Ayurveda.
6 Jhatka is a horse carriage and a bandi is a cart drawn by bullocks.
7 A well-known story in a dance drama. Bhima, a hero of the Mahabharata, is helped by Hanuman, a figure in the Ramayana, to find the flower of paradise.
8 A famous text on pure Vedanta.
9 ‘Wonderful am I! Adoration to myself who love nothing.’
10 Sacred marks.
11 Eletchan wrote the famous Ramayana in Malayalam.
12 Dussera is perhaps the most important festival of India. It takes place after the rains and lasts for ten days, during which worship is made to the elephant, horse, armour, books and the pipal tree.
13 A legendary cow that gave one everything one wished for.