Triveni Journal

1927 | 11,233,916 words

Triveni is a journal dedicated to ancient Indian culture, history, philosophy, art, spirituality, music and all sorts of literature. Triveni was founded at Madras in 1927 and since that time various authors have donated their creativity in the form of articles, covering many aspects of public life....

Review

Burra V. Subrahmanyam

TELUGU

Yuga Sandhi, a novel, by Sri Bhaskarabhatla Krishnarao. Published by the Adarsa Grandha Mandali, Vijayawada. Price. Rs. 4.

This interesting novel was published more than a year ago, and, as the title page tells us, it is woven around the socio-political situation in Telangana before and after the grand strategy of Sardar Patel in the erstwhile dominion of the Nizam. It was a meeting point of widely–differing eras. It richly deserved proclamation in a tale.

The tale is itself well told. Most of the characterisation is real and powerful, but some of it (judged by modern standards) is unreal and immature. Rukmini, the forlorn young woman of an orthodox Hindu household, who elopes with Visweswararao, is seduced by Ramanadham, and takes Rashid as her lover, is neatly depicted and is real to the readers. Not so real is Padma whom the hero, Raghu, marries. She and her great home, her opulence and generosity, look like Dickens and the Brothers Cheeryble. The characterisation of Ramana whom the hero loves (to begin with) and who has not lost her charm to him (even to end with) is a beautiful but not too successful attempt to reveal the shades of a difficult and complex type of person. Rashid in love or in lust with a Hindu, and therefore in grief with the Razakars, is limned and touched with just enough care and grace to make him possible. But Visweswararao and Ramanadham are far too much the conventional type to be quite real in an artistic way. The characters of Suman and Ayesha, the Maharashtrian and Muslim girl friends in a Cosmopolitan Hyderabad, appear and disappear in the novel with a casualness which leaves the reader with a regret that the novelist did not care enough for them to show more of them and to show them better. The incidents round the Police Action are mingled with the story and narrated with commendable reality. But chapter 19, a mere ten pages no doubt, stands outside the story as a mere combine of news items.

Modern world fiction is Freudian, and takes us into the dark labyrinths of complicated human nature, and except with gifted writers; fails often. Yuga Sandhi is not quite modern in that sense. And it is not quite a failure. It is a simple tale, and mostly tells us about elementary human nature in the unvarnished manner of earlier centuries. It lacks complication, and avoids sophistry. It is a neat story, told with ease by a novelist who definitely has the gift of conjuring up characters and situations.

The writer’s ease was what I liked most about the novel.

–BURRA V. SUBRAHMANYAM

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