Kanyaulkam, the un aging Play

Kanakalingeswararao Badiganti
Yesterday at 5:17 PM ·
“Kanyasulkam,the unaging Play”
……………………..part 3……………………
(This is the concluding part of the article )
It is rightly said that the classical
Greek drama , Russian fiction and French poetry stand supreme in world literature .Among the dramas ” Oedipus ,the King” of Sophocles ,” ” Shakespeare’s ” Hamlet”
and Samuel Beckett’s ” Waiting for Godot ” are considered to be masterpieces.The Sophoclean drama based on a Greek myth has proved to be as strong and ageless as it’s immortal Olympian god’s .
The myth of Oedipus known for its tragic intensity is not the horror it arouses of patricide
and incest but the sense of the blindness and and helplessness of mankind . Shakespeare’s
“Hamlet” , in the words of TS Eliot, is the ” Monalisa ” of literature. Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot ” is universally recognised as a contemporary classic .This play is based on antirealism . A group of dramatists like Samuel Beckett and Ionesco employed the forms of comedy to convey the vision of an exhausted civilization and a chaotic world . Their philosophical foundation is existentialism .Man is lonely in a meaningless world .The irrationality of our life is transferred to the stage .Absurd theatre is timeless , universal and philosophical .Absurd theatre does not argue, it presents .Subjectivism , despair and deliberate distortion of truths or rejection of the external world of objective reality are some of its characteristics.As Lukàcs points out it presents an image of man , not as a social being ,but as by nature solitary , asocial , unable to enter into relationships with other human beings .More than thirty directors had turned down ” Godot” calling it incomprehensible and boring .
Sri Velcheru Narayana Rao, who translated “Kanyasulkam” into English with the title “Girls for sale” ,in his article “A Second look at Apparao’s “Kanyasulkam ” says that critics who have written about this play consistently maintained that it was written in strong support of social reform against a number of evils ……
and hailed Apparao as the harbinger of a cultural renaissance in Telugu following Bengali social reformers.He contests this position and says that the critics have misread
the play .He furnishes four chief reasons .
1)The contex of the production of its first version .
2)The literary and political atmosphere in the South Indian colonial metropolis of Madras .
3) The influence of Tagore on the Telugu literati
4) The later co- option of the play by Marxists who wanted to advance their own socio- political agenda .
The veracity of these theories is not infallible .
When I was a student of PUC class in Sir CR Reddy college, Eluru ( “Empty Bottles” Ismail was my classmate )Sri Velcheru was our tutor in Telugu .It was believed that he was a communist or a sympathiser.After landing in America ,he got disilulsioned with communism
like Howard Fast .From the tenor of his language one can easily see the metamorphosis. The matter is that every one knows that “Kanyasulkam ” can survive even without the propaganda and the ideological support of the Communists . Another remarkable assertion of Sri VNR is that in their grand agenda for revolution ,Marxists assumed that the working class did not enjoy sex .This is nothing but mud slinging and academic perversion .
Our perception of the play will be different if we read the words of Gurajada .In the “Dedication” he says that he has made feeble attempt to arouse the public opinion on the subject of exposing the evil in a popular drama.
In the preface to the first edition ,he says that acceptance of bride- money is a scandalous practice and to counter it he composed ” Kanyasulkam” . He also says that he clothed the play in the spoken dialect as it is better intelligible to the public than the literary dialect, but also from a conviction that it is proper comic diction for Telugu .In the preface to the second edition he says ,”I wrote it to advance he cause of social reform and to combat a popular prejudice that the Telugu language was unsuited to the stage .But Sri Velcheru says that Gurajada hides more than what he reveals .
It is up to the literary detectives to find out the reasons for the misreading or proper reading of the play .Let the critics wrestle with literary , linguistic, cultural , social and reformistic problems and interpretations.The common man without ever delving deep into these aspects ,will enjoy the drama because of the interesting story ,verbal and situational humour and comedy and the portrayal of characters . Vibrant and Vivacious Madhurawani , Falstaff cum Casanova like Girisam , fire – emitting Agnihotravadhanulu ,. miserly Lubdhavadhanulu, knavish Ramappantulu , benign Sowjanyarao ,prudent Karnataka sastry ,the spiritual liar Byragi and a host of others .I feel like reading Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales” and Boccaccio’s ” Decameron” .Gurajada’ s sense of humour is very subtle .In the ping-pong of English dialogues between Girisam and Venkatesam , Girisam recites the opening line of “Paradise Lost of Milton “Of man’s first disobedience and the fruit of that forbidden tree ” .He replace the word “forbidden “tree ” with our “mango tree ” .In the grand epic the divine muse sings .In the play Venkatesam assumes the role of the
Muse .
The literary genre drama is unique .
Samuel Beckett’s play ” Waiting for Godot ” was
performed by a group of worried actors before an audience consisting of fourteen hundred prisoners at the San Quentin prison in 1957 .The play was chosen because no woman appeared in it The actors and the directors were worried .How were they to face one of the toughest audiences in y world when a highly obscure, intellectual playthat had confused even sophisticated audience in Western Europe? The director stepped on the stage to prepare the audience .A sea of flickering matches that the convicts tossed over their shoulders after lighting their cigarettes greeted him .The curtain parted and the play began.The prisoners waited for the girls and funny stuff. This did not happen The were angry and decided to wait until the house
lights dimmed before escaping They made one error .They listened and looked for two minutes.They were glued to their seats They left at the end. Why did the play make so deep an impression on them ? They witnessed the drama without any preconceived notions .This play has no plot, no development , no characterization ,no suspense .
In the same way,an audience who do not know anything about the theories of colonialism, modernity ,renaissance , literary conventions ,social and moral reforms and socio- political agendas etc can enjoy the play” Kanyasulkam” as it enthralls the audience or the readies . Enjoying the play is not an intellectual exercise . This unaging drama is true to life .
Like Sudraka’s ” Mricchakatika ” ( the clay cart )
“Kanyasulkam” is an outstanding social drama , clothed in the spoken dialect ,meant for social reform, condemning social evils.It deserves a place by the side of UR Anantamurty’s controversial novel “Samskara ” This novel is an allegory .It is rich in realistic detail .Praneshacharya is the central figure.He is the spiritual head of the Brahmin community .The theme of the novel is about caste , pollution, karma , the agony of the central character at the loss of caste – identity
The mind of Praneshacharya becomes a battle ground of conflicts ,doubts and dilemmas . He is a lonely man. Neither his own community nor God comes to his rescue .He has to find out his own path. Samskara is a metaphorical novel.Gurajada’s is a social drama .He not only criticizes but also ridicules and satirizes the community of the twice- born .Both the writers are against tradition which proves a dead weight on our society which is in transition.