Scripts Apart

Shriranga cleared the path for Kannada playwrights like Karnad and Karanth

Before the iconoclasts come the icons. In the context of modern Indian theatre, especially Kannada theatre, there is no doubt about the position occupied by Adya Rangacharya, christened R V Jagirdar, better known as Shriranga, his pen-name. When he was born and for a couple of decades after that, drama translated into humble all-night enactments of familiar myths and legends. By the time he died, in 1984, Kannada theatre had acquired an intellectual edge and a respectability that gave subsequent generations8212;including stalwarts such as Girish Karnad and B V Karanth8212;new boundaries to push.

Given the expanse of his work, this slim autobiography is remarkable as much for what it does not say as what it does. Austere, not dispassionate, self-deprecatory or obsequious, Opening Scene carefully circumvents specifics to focus on the evolution of one of the most important literary imaginations of 20th century India.

As Shriranga records it, the first exposure to a secondary world came from witnessing aatas8212;performances, as distinct from drama8212;put up by villagers. Writing these memoirs at the age of 55, he recalls them as 8220;distant and vague, as if I8217;m seeing them through a dark curtain8221;.

Theatre wasn8217;t considered an appropriate pastime for a member of a Brahmin jagirdar family in the early 1900s. But a series of happy accidents ensured the curtain continued to inch up through Shriranga8217;s teenage years. Acceptance, though, was still some time away: A three-year stay in England for a degree in linguistics was followed by a soul-destroying search for employment in Bombay; only after repeated failure there did he picked up the pen again. Recognition came swiftly, with the acknowledgement that Kannada theatre was finally throwing off its traditional chains to acquire a new, contemporary language and vision.

None of this, of course, should be read independent of the realities of the time. Though society intrudes but rarely into this graph of the self, a couple of passing references indicate that Shriranga8217;s emancipated ideas went beyond his art. One is to a Muslim servant8212;this, in small-town Dharwad in the 1930s8212;and the other to conviction that woman actors, and not men, should play female characters on stage.

The interface between a passionate creativity and a passive society is necessarily a fraught area but, in the best Brahminical manner, Shriranga refrains from both excuses and blame games. It is left to his daughter Shashi Deshpande8217;s excellent afterward to put the dramatist8217;s life in perspective.

Deshpande photograph, above also does a brilliant job of translating the main text as well as the accompanying play The Truth of Their Lives, never once letting her relationship with the subject intrude on the material. She retains the sly humour, the occasionally quaint digressions especially on gender issues, even the understated style without sacrificing any of the autobiography8217;s significance.