Masti Venkatesa Iyengar - “Srinivasa”

By NAVARATNA RAMA RAO

Rajasevaprasakta Masti Venkatesa Iyengar will, I trust, permit me to claim to be one of his intimate friends. His acquaintance with me goes farther back than mine with him, for as a boy often he must have been in the group of merry urchins that watched me ride in state along the narrow streets of Krishnarajpet to take charge of first taluk as Amildar–now forty-seven years ago. I first heard of him as the bridegroom elect, who was shortly to receive the hand of my friend the late Mr. Krishnaswamy Iyengar’s daugnter–God’s blessing on the day–and as one who expected to stand first in the competitive examination for the Mysore Civil Service for which he had sat recently. Both events came off happily. I was not present at the marriage, but a friend of mine who attended, described the bridegroom as a brilliant young man, who had a good deal to say for himself, from which I gathered that Masti was impressively clever in a stentorian way, for my friend as a “below-Ghats” man was chary of praise to Mysoreans, and was also rather hard of hearing.

I first met Masti when he reported himself for duty as Assistant Commissioner in the General and Revenue Secretariat at Bangalore when I was working as an Assistant Secretary, I was attracted him at once, for he was overflowing with piquant good nature–and I was not deaf, he did not have to shout at me. We were a good deal together, and discovered we had much in common, in taste, outlook, ideals, and achievement. We had sat at the feet of the same beloved master, and learnt from him reverenae for great and mobile things in life and literature. We became great friends–and speaking for myself I can say I never read a good book or saw anything which pleased or uplifted me but I thought of him and wished to share my joy with him.

I well remember the occasion when first I knew how dear Kannada and Kannada literature were to him. He had left the secretariat and had been posted to some charge in Kolar District, but we had met occasionally–and this time we were spending a day together in travellers’ Bunglow at Srinivaspur. He gave me a paper he had composed in English reviewing a Kannada work Ramasvamedha by a poor genius who wrote under the pen-name of Muddana, because his own was too obscure to get a public, and to whom recognition came as a tear offering for a sad and early death. I am no great judge of archaic Kannada, but Ramasvamedha was a thing of beauty in the kindly light that Masti’s tender appreciation cast on it, and the English essay itself was a masterly piece of prose and criticism.

Our mutual regard grew and refined with the passing of the years–a matter of less interest to the world than ourselves, and I shall skip over a few years and come to the rather dramatic revelation to me of Masti as one of the masters of Kannada and explorers of new ways in literature.

We were travelling together from Kadur to Chikmagalur, and had halted for food and rest at Sakkarepatna. We whiled away the hot noonday hours in carefree talk about men and books–conversation with Masti was never far from the men and books he loved–and presently I made a remark about the poverty of Kannada in Short Stories–which had become quite a feature of recent literature in Bengali and Marathi, Masti looked thoughtful for a moment, then said it was true and it was a pity–but had I seen some work of the kind in Kannada which had come out quite recently? No? He was glad he bad the book with him, if I would care to let it lighten the tedium of waiting till we started on our way. I accepted the book–a slim well got-up volume modestly entitled some Short Stories by “Srinivasa.” I opened the book at random and happened on the story “Indira?”- which is the gem of the collection, and in my opinion unsurpassed for a tenderness and as remembered kisses after death. I read it aloud, for the sweet Kannada of it was honey on my tongue, and I wished to share my enjoyment with Masti–but the pathos of the tale drowned my voice and I could read no more. I asked Masti who Srinivasa was. He said he knew, but was under a promise not to reveal. I borrowed the book and read it that night, and the stories charmed me and the characters haunted me, till in the small hours of the morning, it was irresistibly borne in on me that it was Masti himself and none other that was the sorcerer. When I met him later in the day I charged him with the wizardry which had robbed me first of tears and then of sleep–and he pleaded guilty, without any expression of regret. That was how I discovered that Srinivasa was Masti, and I should not wonder if the future remembers Masti chiefly as Srinivasa.

It is a joy given to few to watch the gradual unfolding of genius and the growth of recognition–and this joy has been mine. I do not here propose to give a list or critical estimate of my friend’s works, or an analysis of his gifts or character, but I am sure that a few slight reminiscences may not only interest his public, but throw a passing light on certain phases of his personality.

One night, we were resting after a journey in bad weather, in a road-side Travellers’ Bangulow at Nelligere and, after a sketchy meal, we lay awake listening to the mosquitoes on the hard ribbed rest-house beds. After some desultory talk, and a brief silence in vain wooing of sleep, Masti started up and whimsically asked me to tell him a story. I said story-telling was his gift and not mine; however, I would essay it for once, and hoped it would be sleep-compelling unlike his. I then concocted a ghost-story from scraps of remembered tales which had thrilled my childhood–I put the scene in the Malnad, no doubt under the suggestion of the weather outside–and even in the telling of it, I succumbed to its soporific effect. Masti however had no such luck, for he told me next morning that my story had made such an impression on him that it had hagridden that night, and his sensibility was still on edge with the weirdness of it. I was reminded of the reaction of Burns to some pretty but commonplace lines of Verse–there was not much in them but they had struck some sensitive chord in his heart. So with Masti my hotchpotch of a ghost story had chanced on some responsive sensibility, and it later on inspired one of his finest short stories.

At another time, I told him the life story of a rather rare old gentleman from whom I had taken lessons in playing on the Violin. Masti was greatly touched by its sadness, and humble heroism, and asked me to make a story of it. While I was wondering if I could, and how I should set about it, Masti solved my problem by taking it from me, and gave to Kannada literature his Subbanna, which is one of the most moving long-short stories I have read.

Masti has written a good deal of both poetry and prose, songs, ballads, sonnets, narrative poems in the manner of Chaucer and Wordsworth, a grammar of criticism, and a historical novel. I am not a competent critic of Kannada poetry, but I like Masti’s verse, and I think his prose some of the best I have read. His short stories are some of them as good as any in literature. I translated one of them–Masumatti–for our master Mr. Tait, who was inclined to think my praise of Masti more affection than judgment. Mr. Tait admired the story–he said it had features which always moved men strongly–love of country, reverence for its past, and hope for its future; and would hardly believe that the original had lost and not gained in the translation. The story in its English guise ¹ so won Sri Rajaji’s heart that he did it into Tamil for South Indian readers.

Masti, for all his mastery of English, and love for its literature, strongly–almost fanatically–holds a view from which I–with perhaps equal strength and fanaticism–disagree. He believes that no enduring or even very good work can be done by an Indian in English because–if I understand Masti rightly–the structure of one’s thought is based on one’s mother-tongue, and English is to us a foreign language learnt mostly from books. I do not agree that our knowledge of English is so wooden as that argument assumes. It is a living language, and has permeated our lives and culture. We have thought some of our best thoughts, learnt some of our best learning, in it; we have used it in our most intimate intercourse with our friends in joy and sorrow. It has been so long with us now that it has become an Indian language by naturalisation. It has of course acquired certain characteristics from the environment here as it has in America and Australia–peculiarities of idiom which are racy of the Indian soil, and which make it different from the King’s English or the dialects of England, or Scotland or Ireland–but it is English, and very live English at that. I am convinced that if an Indian has in him things worth saying and has adequate command of Indian English, it would be folly for him not to employ that vehicle. He would in fact reach more people that way than by any other.

I must refer to one great quality of Masti’s outlook on life–his intense love for his fellowmen, which gives him at once insight and tenderness. He laughs at human weaknesses, but not in scorn. His smile is kindly–like the smile of an indulgent uncle at erring children. I have been irresistibly put in mind of Thackeray when reading Masti–both for his charm of style, and his kindly cynicism.

¹ Published in Triveni.

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