Karimayi

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When you see the village from a distance, it is a speck in the middle of an intensely coloured expanse of lake and jungle. At night, it is like a lone flaming torch, and in the day, a dark spot. Because of the highland with its thick forests in the west, the sun sets here before it does in the other villages. And the darkness, when it falls, is more dense.... There are fields and knolls in the east and south. There is a lake in the north. There are hundreds of byways to reach the village, but the main road is to the east.. At the end of it is Karimayi's temple. We begin our description of the village here because those who are leaving, or those who are entering, will always prostrate and salute the goddess before they proceed further.

When I look at my writing through all these years, I realize how much my 'place' has meant to me. As a writer who has embraced the folk mode of writing, I find that this place is at the creative centre of my being. In essence, my writing is linked to the markedly spatial paradigm of myth-making. I identify strongly with my little village in Southern India. This folk community, its stories, people and the structures of life lived in this little region-these are what gave me a nearness to my land. I made a conscious choice of telling the story of my place and its people in my writings. My friend and critic Rajeev Taranath makes a fine case for my way of writing when he says, in his introduction to my play Jokumaraswami (1972): 'In this country, with its variety of social and intellectual structures, ranging from the heavily abstracting Sanatana to the non-reducing sensibility of [the indigenous and) the oppressed, it is possible to relate to one's environment with a power and variety that is unthinkable... elsewhere,' and therefore, 'a mythical episteme is still valid, natural and real here.' It is this mythical episteme that keeps me connected to my region and language. It gives me my sense of belonging. I see the whole world mirrored in my Shivapura. This is not to say that the microcosmic 'Shivapura' that I create in my writings is cut off from all the changes happening in the world around it. This Shivapura too is aware of, and is affected by, such national and global changes.

Many years ago, I tried my hand at translation with Kambar's play Jokumaraswami. And the quiddity of that experience is what I am trying to reach back to, and connect with, in Krishna's translation of Karimayi. I record now, somewhat haphazardly, bits of that experience, the satisfactions 1 received, the problems I needed to deal with, and the questions I raised as a close reader of the Kannada matter in front of me. Let me begin with a persistent wish of mine whenever I look at a translation, I desire a seamless read. That being the given, I begin to perceive the seams, so to say, especially with Kambar's kind of writing. What can I say about Kambar? In my reading of literature, Kambar is a massive presence. Kambar, as I have said elsewhere, is a master at handling the South Indian non-brahmin myth. The myth is the only lens he uses to look at life and arrange his perceptions. In work after work, he projects, extends and polishes his own understanding of the myth. A translator dealing with Kambar's creativity must necessarily deal with the heavily figurated kind of language/perception that is Kambar's main mode.