Masti Darsana

The ‘World of Srinivasa: The Grandsire
of Kannada Letters

The Kannada-speaking people proudly proclaim: Masti is our Aasti(heritage). Indeed, this laureate of Universal Man is not bounded by linguistic or even national barriers; he is verily the treasure-house of the undying Indian spirit, but ever new in seeking fresh adventures in consciousness while being firmly rooted in Sanatana Dharma as exemplified by Valmiki and Vyasa. A legend in his own lifetime, it has been but pure joy for his numberless admirers that the grandsire who has given us a short story like “Acharyara Hendati” and a novel like Chikkaveera Rajendra (1956) has just been awarded the Vagdevi Prize. That the Award could have been made any time during the last 20 years with equal justification is no reason, however, why it shouldn’t be applauded unreservedly today. Though the above historical novel (no mean achievement by any, standard) is cited for the Vagdevi presentation, the Award is actually more of a salutation to one who has been a tireless votary of the Goddess of Speech for nearly the last three quarters of a century.

            Rajasevaprasakta Masti Venkatesa Iyengar, popularly known by his pen-name “Srinivasa”, was born on 6 June 1891 at the village Masti in Mysore. While his home-tongue is Tamil, his native speech is Kannada. He had a brilliant scholastic career, graduated from the Madras University and entered the Mysore Administrative Service. With his intelligence, application and attention to detail, he was to prove both an efficient and a humane officer..

In the course of his official duties, he came into close contact with the mass of humanity, a circumstance that enriched his natural flair for folklore and interest in the rural scene. Just as the daily encounters with the patients in his surgery helped William Carlos Williams to gain an uncanny insight into the ways of thinking, feeling and speaking of the “common” people, Masti’s encounters with the so-called “unlettered” were to make him a percipient reader of the human heart in its convulsions as well as its exultations. Masti opted for premature retirement when his claims for appointment as Minister were overlooked, and he plunged into a full-time career of service to the cause of Kannada letters. This was in the early ’Forties. He toured Karnataka extensively and generated widespread enthusiasm among the elite as also the common people. With the increased pace of literary activity in all fields and in varied forms, the modern age of Kannada literature was taken to almost the apex of manifold fulfilment. In the ’Forties and ‘Fifties and after, nearly every literary meet found Masti present as its president or mentor or well-wisher, and not unoften as its subject as well.

For Masti was a tireless writer and evangelist of letters then as now. Known for many decades as the ‘Father’ of the Kannada short story, he blazed a brilliant trail by himself inditing several collections of short stories in prose and verse, beginning with the unforgettable “Stalagala Hesarugalu” (Names of Places). A short tale like “Rama Navami” is a typical poetic Masti-darsana, for the story is cast in such a way that the aspiring human heart from below and the answering Grace from above are brought together in a moment of stilled silence. The story of “Rama Navami” could be the folk-belief of Rama, Sita and Lakshmana taking a brief rest under the tree in this village, the home of Javare Gowda. But the “blind” faith is also an existential truth as far as Gowda’s son and daughter-in-law are concerned. Reality is what we see around; wisdom lies in seeing the supreme Truth within the arc of this reality. Such wisdom keeps us to the right, safe path in our life-crossing. That this wisdom comes from culture and not literacy is amply borne out by Javare Gowda and the old lady of the Biligiri forests.

Another aspect of Masti’s art is his fine and inspiring cele­bration of woman: as wife, as beloved, as daughter, as mother. Even Malli, who guards the Gowda’s fields at night and becomes his “flame”, is depicted with compassionate understanding in “Gowdara Malli.” “Mookana Makkalu” is a paean to Motherhood while “Acharyara Hendati” is a melting reconstruction of Ramanuja’s wife. Tradition has handed down to us a Xanthippe in her. But can that be the whole truth? The girl had been brought up in a tradition-bound household; she was justly proud of her “Status” as the celebrated Ramanuja’s wife. Her attitude could have been rectified with a little patience, perhaps; how­ever, that was not to be. After a long, long time she manages to reach the place in Mysore State where Ramanuja has taken his residence. She knows it is too late; she cannot, will not, reveal herself. But the accumulated pressures of culture handed down to the Indian woman by Savitri, Sita, Anasuya, Arundhati and Ahalya bring forth the incandescent transformation. Her sacri­fice perhaps saved Ramanuja, and hence his Darsana too for all time to come. Who but a creative and compassionate artist like Masti, lit within by the living tradition, could have thus recorded the silent heroism of Mother India’s daughters? And :Mosarina Mangamma” is the apotheosis of village life.

There is, then, the immortal story, “Masumatti”, exquisitely rendered into Tamil by Rajaji as “Venuganam.” It explores the endless search for perfection in art, signified by Perialwar in his pasuramabout the sublimity of Krishna’s flute-­music which makes even animals forget their feed and stand as painted pictures. Masti’s involvement with this theme is also seen to great advantage in “Kaviya Konaya Dine” based on Goethe’s life, and the novelette “Subbanna,” distantly paralleled by Romain Rolland’s Jean Christophe.

Masti’s Navaratricontains nineteen stories in verse. A group of friends who come together during Dasara begin to tell a story each. The stories are as varied as the story-tellers, and are not bound by barriers of time, language and geography. Heroism (Jeanne D’Arc), Self-sacrifice (Musilamma), Folklore (Sojigada Holalu) and Satire (Samadiya Sattva) are some of the motifs in this collection which takes us to the Canterbury Tales of Geoffrey Chaucer.

The narrative poetry of Navaratriis of course, a natural extension of Masti’s gentle lyricism in Aruna, Sunita and Cheluva Devi. Bhinnala and Manavistand witness to his devotional stance, the sincerity of a soul deep-drenched in seeing the divine as ubiquitously present in the life around us. His genius for minting titles that tug at your heart-string can be seen in “Muridu Bidda Veerakallu.” Malaracontains more than eighty lyrics based on the sonnet form (ashta-sasti) of English prosody, and are all of them the sensitive ruminations of a pilgrim of eternity.

One of Masti’s earliest dramas was Yasodhara(1933), which tells us of Buddha’s compassion and his wife’s serene acceptance of the situation when the former returns to Kapilavastu. Masti’s Talikota, a historical playlet, was staged by the Karnatak Sangh, Bombay, on 27 March 1938. In another play, “Kakana Kota” (The Fort of Kaka), the celebrated Ruler of Mysore, Ranadhira Kantirava, appears as one of the characters. Kaka is a shepherd-hero whose imaginative boldness makes him the much-awaited deliverer for the innocent tribal people. Masati(The Great Lady) is a tragedy flowing from the practice of suttee. His most recent play is Kalidasa (1980), a rasika’s attempt to reconstruct the probable life-history of the Prince of Poets, weaving a web of relationships between the man and his work, or Life and Letters.

Masti has gifted Kannada literature with two of its best historical novels, Channa Basava Nayaka (1950) and Chikkaveera Rajendra (1956), the former located in Bidanur which was over­run by Hyder Ali, and the latter located in Coorg, which was taken over by the British. He is not interested in the mere glorification or desecration of the historical past. For Masti, whether drawn from life or history (which is “life” too, yesterday’s life, recorded or reconstructed life), once he started writing about certain people, they became his characters, they grew as he wrote, they acquired a new individuality and reality of their own. In both the novels the theme is inner decay and disintegration, and the external force – Hyder Ali in Bidanur, the British in Coorg – at once accelerates and completes the collapse and also initiates the process of reconstruction. And alas! the law of Karma operates as much in individuals’ lives as in the destinies of nations. In L. S. Seshagiri Rao’s words, “Masti; shows how the very institutions devised to maintain stability and act as brakes on tyranny only accelerate the process of decay, when the human agents fail, either because they are too weak or because they mistake the priorities.” Although, as “case studies,” the two novels concentrate on small nation-states, they embody also a philosophy of history applicable to the decline and fall of India as a whole during the 18th century. And there is a lesson for the future too, which we should not miss.

A creative artist, yes. Also an intellectual giant. Masti’s Poetry of Valmiki (1941) remains a classic of intuitive criticism. Exhorting his readers to peruse the Ramayana as a masterpiece of literature, Masti compares it with the world’s greatest epics like The Divine Comedy, the Aeneidand Paradise Lost, and hopes that the Ramayana’s message may yet redeem mankind. His “K. Balasubramania Iyer Lectures” on the Mahabharata are stimulating. One may not agree with him all the time. But one cannot escape the Masti spell when he utters great truths in simple words:

“Kunti is a great mother of great children and one of the ideals pictured by Vyasa. The centuries gave her a unique place in the popular Imagination as mother. Places in a number of localities are believed by our people to be the spot where she lived with her children; in one place she cooked for them; in another she pounded grain; in still another she carried water; in a fourth, Bhima made a well with a blow from his mace for her use, when she needed water for cooking. Kunti is also the mother in popular imagination of sons, who, happen what may, cannot have a kingdom. They may be kings or not, but she is the mother of kings. And woman’s fortune in the long run is to be a great mother.”

Valmiki and Vyasa have been the perennial sources of Masti’s inspiration, as of most writers in India. Kalidasa has been another constant inspiration, and Masti has acknowledged the influence of Shakespeare. Wordsworth and Scott, of Bankim Chandra and Tagore, and of Tolstoy and the other great Russian novelists. Masti’s monograph on Tagore is the tribute of one great writer to another and an elder, and is marked by enthusiasm as well as critical divination. His debt to Kannada literature is incommensurable, and his Popular Culture in Karnataka has a ready appeal.

Masti’s Convocation Addresses, Presidential pronouncements and seminar-papers contain nuggets of wisdom and are of much contemporaneous relevance. A labour of love, his Rajaji: A Study of his Personality (1976) is an unconventional biography which eminently succeeds in bringing to life the greatness and manifoldness of Rajaji’s personality. In the course of the telling, the entire spectrum of the glory and the good of the Independence Movement, the slippery pathways of political life, the Damocles’ Sword of the nuclear threat and the beautiful private garden of Rajaji’s friendships which cultivated with love, courtesy and humour, all spring to life. And the Divine has given us the Grace of having Masti still with us, active as ever, contemplative, weaving through his pen a magic mantle of safety for us in terms of Bhakti, literary beauty and the joy of life.

It was not that Masti was self-absorbed all the time with his writing alone. He is a widely loved writer today because, even a half-century earlier, he was equally interested in encouraging the younger generation of writers. Unveiling his portrait on 20 January 1940 for the Kannada Authors’ Associa­tion, Sri B. M. Srikantia referred to Masti as “the idol of the Kannada country” and a source of inspiration to young writers renowned authors like D. R. Bendre, V. Sitaramaiah, P. T. Nara­simhachar and K. V. Puttappa spoke on Masti’s achievements as a short story-writer, poet, playwright, critic and conversation­alist. His 61st birthday was celebrated on 18 and 19 June 1951 at Bangalore’s Shri Krishnaraja Parishanmandira under the presidentship of Navaratna Rama Rao. Masti’s untiring efforts to make the Kannadigas feel proud of their heritage was the subject of many a speech, while everyone agreed that he was a colossus in the scene of the Kannada renaissance. Three years later, when Masti became the President of the Kannada Sahitya Parishat, Prof. S. S. Hoskot was to write in The Times of India:

“A sensitive and refined lyric and devotional poet, a dramatist of distinction, a critic of refreshing charm and above all, the first as well as the best of short story-tellers ­the sixty-three-year-old Masti Venkatesa Iyengar holds a unique place among the Kannada men of letters writing today...The number of artists whom he has encouraged and assisted by example and precept, to discover their own talents, is perhaps greater than that of his own works. That indeed is the least of tributes that can be paid to him; it is the greatest that can be paid to him; it is the greatest that can be paid to any man.”

As for “honours”, the Sahitya Akademi Award came to Masti in 1968 for his Sanna Kathegalu 12-13. The present Vagdevi Award is for Chikkaveera Rajendra. He has been for the last so many years the widely respected National President of the P. E. N. All-India Centre. And he is one of the immortals of the Sahitya Akademi, having been elected to its Fellowship a decade ago. But the man and his message are something apart from such honours and awards. Masti’s life is an exemplary one, that of the hero as a writer. What does he think of this long life, what are his views on the problems of the litterateur in India? Has it been worth it, the struggle, the bearing of the cross, the exposing of one’s creative faculty to the gaze of the multitude? He has himself given the answer recently in the course of an interview:

“I come to our ancient ideal:
the writer is alma-deep (the Soul’s Light).
What’s our vocation but to speak boldly
to the people of our time
and help them move from Darkness to Light.
and leave the terrors behind?
Perhaps, it’s hardly more than a candle,
aye, with a flickering flame
it may yet mean much to the wayfarer
trapped in the encircling gloom.”