Indian authors have never enjoyed world fame – Not many have been lucky in getting their work across the globe and show to people what fine writers India possesses. While most good authors have been vernacular authors in India, their works are rarely translated in put forward on the globe – While Bhyrappa was not as lucky as Marquez to get his work One Hundred Years Of Solitude to world and eventually win a nobel prize for that, Bhrappa’s most works evoke similar respect – For example, there is no better deserving book than Parva to literally sweep any kind of awards that exist in literary world, however, the lack of outreach has prevented this. For a long time I was in complete awe of Parva and though One Hundred years of Solitude did bring me out of that hang over, it required another of the same author’s work VamshaVriksha, translated The Uprooted (not quite literal translation, but very appropriate to the content), to bring me out of the magic of Parva. Incredibly simple and incredibly complex at the same time, this is a book that leaves its readers so drained, so full, so many answers, and so many questions, that in the end, a reader is bound by the duality of nature of the book.
”Who are you? What are you? Where are you going? Ask these questions to yourself and watch these answers change…”
— Richard Bach, Illusions
While Richard Bach merely chose to pose the questions and leave it to the reader, Bhyrappa asks the very same questions and more in the book. Its not the questions that enthrall the reader, it’s the justification to the answers that enthrall you. What is your purpose in life? Can faith be guided by greed? Do you love a person so much that you did give up your own child to be with him? Do you love your work so much that you did give up on your wife and family to pursue your goals? Are you strong enough to shed any kind of hatred towards another person? How much do you know about your child, and more importantly, yourself? Does your past make a difference to who you are? Does your past influence your future? Is devotion love? Is love devotion? Whose sorrow is great – a mother who lost her child or a child who lost her mother? Do you think you are firmly rooted in this circle of life?
Probably that is half the thinking a reader will do in reading this book. This is a book about 2 families, and yet the complexities of each character touch upon almost everything in life. This is a story about a mother who lost her son to floods and feels the sorrow of it. It’s a story about a woman who lost her husband and her sorrow at becoming a widow so early in life. It’s a story of progressive thinking of the widow wishing to be happier in life. It’s a story of commitment to one’s dharma and karma by a person. Its also a story of man who is so passionate about his work that he forgets his wife in it. It’s a story about a man who marries another lady out of pure love and greed of common goal. It’s a story of woman’s undivided love for her husband and her loneliness. It’s a story about a child loving impotent man, and his introspection of the various aspects of life that he has changed his opinion on. But ultimately it’s a story of a woman, a widow who mourns her husband, loves another man so much she wants to marry him. Yet she is also in the duality of her love to a man and duty of a widow, her unquestioning quest for the path that leads to mental peace.
Bhyrappa weaves his story around such principles and is able to bring about a justification which you cannot just help nodding with – Every character justifies his or her actions throughout their life, to the point, that their duality becomes an issue you think off, and not the characters. You cannot help sympathizing the wife who longs for her husband, but you cannot help agreeing to the justification of the husband in leaving his wife. Such is the beauty of book – along with every character and their metamorphosis, you think the same way they do – to the point you ask the same questions to yourself. It’s a book that just doesn’t go by characters, but it’s a study of human nature and its desires, the norms of the society, the regulations of an Arya life. At the very core lies in a story about 2 families, orthodox Hindu Brahmin families, trying to make sense of their duties as Brahmin, and at the same time find themselves uprooted of the very foundation of their life. Or like the author best describes in a passage – like a branch which fell from the tree as if the tree had no longer the use of that branch.
Prakirthi and Purusha, (Nature and Man) give this book an absolute meta physical look to the book – while every event in the book derives an relation between nature and man in form of woman and man, it also derives beautifully the meaning of being uprooted on the nature (woman) and Purusha (man). To really grasp the meaning of this metaphysical line, its best left to the reader to understand it.
Fortunately, the translation is again by my related grand-father Dr. K. Raghavendra Rao, and he doesn’t fail to deliver. This is a joint effort by him and his wife (who by the way is a very nice lady, and I shall always miss her tea that she used to prepare when I got home from college), and the effort shows. A translated version never really tells you the magic of author’s real wordings, but a great translation will captivate you in any language by the way it has been translated – same is with this book – the translation itself captivates you so much that you did desire to read the original too.
In the end, you must have made out how much I have loved reading this book. If Parva is possibly the best book I have read in my life, then The Uprooted comes a close second. Not a book to be missed at any cost in life.