RAJA RAO
Dr.
L. S. R. KRISHNA SASTRY
The
publication of The Serpent and the Rope in 1960 brought world
recognition for Raja Rao (a British Professor once mentioned publicly that the
novel was even considered for the Nobel Prize) and ensured his place among the
masters of Indo-Anglian fiction. Although a
contemporary of Mulk Raj Anand and R. K. Narayan and
a product of the India of Gandhi and Nehru, Raja Rao is a class by himself in
technique and vision. Hailing from Hassan in the
An
attempt is made here to deal with three of Raja Rao’s
works–Kanthapura (1938), a novel, The Cow
of the Barricades (1947), a collection of short stories, and The Serpent
and the Rope (1960), a novel again. To take the short stories first, The
Cow of the Barricades contains nine of them, composed during 1933-47. Only
one of them, A Client is translated from the
Kannada original, while three others first appeared in their French versions.
Slight changes are said to have been made in all the stories for the collected
edition. Many of them are sketches rather than stories, like the fine free
strokes of an adept painter, and vivify to us scenes of contemporary
Javni,
the first story, is the portrait of a female domestic
servant, to whom love and loyalty are second nature. She is simple and pure,
happy and uncomplaining, and instinctively offers love from an
abundance. She is freshly employed in the household of Ramappa’s sister–Ramappa is the
narrator–and is past forty and wrinkled, but remins a
rapture in her eyes. Ramappa’s brother-in-law is a
Revenue Inspector and Javni has been serving only
Revenue Inspectors all her life. She is sure that Ramappa
too, whom she looks upon as a god, would one day become one, with his learning
and beauty. She is good like a cow according to anybody in the town of
I
heard an owl hoot somewhere, and far, far away, somewhere too far and too
distant for my rude ears to hear, the world wept its silent suffering plaints.
Had not the Lord said: ‘Whenever there is misery and
ignorance, I come’? Oh, when will that day come, and when will the Conch of
Knowledge blow?
I
had nothing to say. My heart beat fast. And closing my eyes, I sank into the
primal flood, the moving fount of Being. Man, I love
thee.
Javni sat and ate. The mechanical mastication
of the rice seemed to represent her life, her whole existence.
It
is not Ramappa but Raja Rao pouring forth his
helpless misery at the sad lot of the common people in the
society, and the sense of misery grows into boundless love for all humanity,
which alone can end the evil. There is also a faint yet
unmistakable insinuation against the malady of the caste system. Javni narrates her woeful tale to Ramappa
in composed acceptance–her marriage with the Maharaja’s washerman,
his tragic death, the constant protection of the ‘Great Goddess Talakkamma’, to whom she prays for Ramappa’s
prosperity also. After sometime, however, Ramappa’s brother-in-law
has to leave the place and Ramappa and his sister
have to part from Javni. It is a tearful adieu on
both the sides. Ramappa sums up Javni
when he tells her:
‘No,
Javni. In Contact With a heart like
yours who will not bloom into a god?’
Javni is indeed a typical
character of the Indian village. What is it that makes the poor people happy
and fills them with endless reserves of patience and love? Is it their faith,
which we call superstition? Is faith a way of escape or a means of happiness?
One faces these questions in Javni and
Raja Rao, also suggests the truth that God has his abode in pure and innocent
hearts that know not to demand but to offer.
Akkayya
is a moving story of the pathetic life of an old widow, who
is also, like Javni, a part of most Indian homes. She
is service personified. She cooks for the family, discusses Vedanta with
the elders and brings up the children. But, alas, her service is un-recognised and she dies like an unhonoured
soldier. In fact, the story is perhaps her only funeral ceremony. Narsiga is a powerful account of a pure and
simple shepherd boy, who gives his own version of the Gandhian
revolution and its impact on the rural world. In Khandesh
is a vivid picture of the village Khandesh, whose
elders are loyal and faithful to the Crown and know nothing of the ‘city
news’–riots and protests, arrests and shootings–that the younger generation
indulged in. They are elaborately exhorted and authoritatively herded by the
Patel, the local symbol of the Crown for them, to line up near the railway
track to have a glimpse, although imaginary, of the Maharaja, who would pass
along the route accompanied by the ‘Representative and Relation of Most High
Majesty across the sea’. When they gather at last, there is a terrific storm,
and a heavy downpour imprisons them, as it were. Sheets of rain like walls of
curtain tear them and the trees before them look like policemen. The story
depicts the transition between the era of unquestioning loyalty to the British
and the beginning of organised opposition to the
alien rule, and the picturesque concluding passage describing the climax has a
double suggestiveness–the havoc of the British rule and also the beginning of
the end of loyalty to it are alike suggested in terms of nature’s fury. The
pattern of broken and unconnected lines adds a visual dimension to the
description of the confusion of the storm.
The
title-story, The Cow of the Barricades, is a poetic recordation
of the Gandhian phenomenon, with Gauri
the cow-mother as the central character. The Mahatma preaches the message of
non-violence and the Master transmits it to the people, because he is their
President. But the workmen maintain: “It is not with ‘I love you, I love you’
that you can change the grinding heart of this Government.” The people
know that the Master is right and that the workmen too are right in their own
way, and await the outbreak of violence with anguished hearts. Gauri, the cow, is the divine ambassador of peace. The
workmen who find her proceeding towards the barricades want to shoot her but
soon throw down their arms and salute her. Even the red man’s army, which after
all consists of Indians, is transformed by her, because she appeared to them
like a drop of the
What
is obvious in contemporary
Raja
Rao’s first novel, Kanthapura,
describes the whole gamut of the Gandhian
revolution in a microscopic way. Kanthapura, a south
Indian village, is the scene of action and the narrator is an elderly woman of
the Village. She is herself a participant in the action and one sees things as
she saw them. The novel is a mixture of fact and fiction, myth and history, as
is seen in the short stories also. Raja Rao had already tried to impart
something of the Indian idiom to the English prose style, and in Kanthapura he writes a foreword to justify
the choice of his rather peculiar idiom which includes the rhythm and the
raciness, the vigour and the spontaneity of the
vernacular speech. He says:
“The
telling has not been easy. One has to convey in a language that is not one’s
own the spirit that is one’s own. One has to convey the various shades and
omissions of a certain thought-movement that looks maltreated in an alien
language to us. It is the language of our intellectual make-up–like Sanskrit or
Persian was before–but not of our emotional make-up. We are all instinctively
bilingual, many of us writing in our own language and in English. We cannot
write like the English. We should not. We can write only as Indians. We have
grown to look at the world as part of us. Our method of expression therefore
has to be a dialect which will some day prove to be as distinctive and colourful as the Irish or the American. Time alone will
justify it.”
Raja
Rao has probably provided in these lines a justification for all Indo-Anglian writing. If there can be American English or
Australian English, why not Indian English, which will of course be basically
related to the central ‘English’ English? Indian English, however, is not bad
or ‘Baboo’ English. As regards the problem of style,
Raja Rao says:
“The
tempo of Indian life must be infused into our English expression, even as the
tempo of American or Irish life has gone into the making of theirs. We, in
India, think quickly, we talk quickly, and when we move, we move quickly. There
must be something in the sun of India that makes us rush and tumble and run on.
And our paths are paths interminable...We have neither punctuation nor the
treacherous ‘ats’ and ‘ons’
to bother us –we tell one interminable tale. Episode follows episode, and when
our thoughts stop our breath stops, and we move on to another thought. This was
and still is the ordinary style of our story-telling. I have tried to follow it
myself in this story.”
The
effect of the rather peculiar colloquial style is that the book reads more like
a rhythmically recited ballad than like a mere novel.
Gandhi
and Gandhism had their impact on almost every aspect of our national life
–economics and education, politics and religion and even literature richly
absorbed the influence. Several Indo-Anglian writers
essayed to project the tremors and stirrings of the Gandhian
India in their works. Gandhian politics and economics
respectively form the themes of K. S. Venkataramani’s
Kandan the Patriot and Murugan the Tailter. In
Wailing for the Mahatma R. K. Narayan projects
Gandhi himself and adds a new strength to the plot, even like Mulk Raj Anand in
Untouchable and The Sword and the Sickle.
It
is said that Gandhi made heroes out of clay, and, like the ubiquitous Krishna,
proliferated himself in a way. Every village had its own local avatar of
Gandhi, like Moorthy in Kanthapura,
and its own share of the Gandhian revolution. In Kanthapura the political struggle with the
British is often raised to the mythological level–as in the short story Narsiga–and the red men’s rule is regarded as
the rule of the asuras. The Satyagrahis are the devas,
who for the nonce suffer discomfiture but will ultimately emerge
victorious. There are other interesting polarisations:
Superstitious orthodoxy and progressivist reform,
exploitation by the master and the helplessness of the coolie, the corruption
of the official and the misery of the villager. All these minor conflicts and
the major confrontation between the British bureaucracy and the Gandhian Satyagrahis
unconsciously and interestingly mingle and jumble, and the book mirrors the
India of the 1930 in all its confusion and intensity.
Gandhi
preached the gospel of non-violent non-co-operation, and there was response
like an upsurge. Every village and every town and every city had its Congress
Committee and everywhere there was the stir of awakening life, the acceptance
of a challenge, the preparation for a struggle. The Salt and Forest Laws were
broken and toddy shops picketed. Social barriers like untouchability
were sought to be removed and a common purpose united the people. All these
phases we see in Kanthapura.
Kanthapura is calm enough
to begin with like any other village, with its usual activities and innocent
pleasures. The people too are seen performing their normal functions, listening
to harikathas, etc. Then suddenly the
city invades the village and the Congress work is started by Moorthappa, ‘the learned one’, because one day he had a
vision wherein he heard a message within himself–the prompting of an ‘inner
voice’–after a face-to-face experience of the Mahatma: “There is but one force
in life and that is Truth, and there is but one love in life and that is
the love of mankind, and there is but one God in life and that is the
God of all.” He falls at the feet of the Mahatma calling himself his slave:
“What
can I do for you, my son?” and Moorthy said, like
Hanuman to Rama, “Any command,” and the Mahatma said, “I give no commands save
to seek Truth,” and Moorthy said, “I am ignorant, how
can I seek Truth?”, and the people around him were trying to hush him and to
take him away, but the Mahatma said, “You wear foreign cloth, my son.”–“It will
go, Mahatmaji.” –“You can help your country by going
and working among the dumb millions of the villages.”–“So be it, Mahatmaji.”
From
that very moment Moorthy rises a different man, and,
like Ekalavya, shapes himself as a disciple of
Gandhi. He gives up foreign cloth and foreign education, and returns to his
village. His mother Narsamma finds all her hopes
shattered. Bhatta, the custodian of orthodox
religion, dislikes Moorthy’s attempts to rehabilitate
the Harijans and, with the help of the Swami, the
religious head, secures his excommunication. Narsamma
is unable to bear the shock and dies. From that time onwards Moorthy lives in Rangamma’s
house. He perseveres in his charkha and
untouchability campaigns. Rangamrna also is no
village simpleton. She gets quite a few newspapers from the city and acquires
general education. The villagers hear her with wonder and fear when she
describes the curious things that she reads about:
And
she told us, too, how in the far-off countries there were air vehicles that
move, that veritably move in the air, and how men sit in them and go from town
to town; and she spoke to us, too, of the speech that goes across the air; and
she told us, mind you, she assured us–you could sit here and listen to what
they are saying in every house in London and Bombay and Burma.
She
also tells them a great deal about the wonder of the country of the ‘hammer and
sickle and electricity’. Pariah Ramakka, one of the
listeners asks innocently, “So in that country pariahs and brahmins
are the same, and there are no people to give paddy to be husked and no people
to do it–strange country, mother.” Equally innocent is Rangamma’s
reply, “My paper says nothing about that.” Rangamma
is the leader of the women Satyagrahis.
During
one of his visits to the workers in the Skeffington
Coffee Estate there is an encounter between Moorthy
and Bade Khan, the policeman, who symbolises the
British authority. It is night time and Moorthy is
asked by Bade Khan not to enter the estate. Moorthy
tries to force his way and Bade Khan hits him on his head with the lathi. Immediately the workers–Rachanna
Madanna and others–rush forward, fall on Bade Khan
and hit him back. The women tear his hair. Moorthy
cries out for peace. The next day he announces a three-day fast because
violence has been committed. He sits near the central pillar of the mandap and goes on meditating. Neither Rangamma with her pleadings that he should give up the fast
nor waterfall Venkamma with her threat of a welcome
with the broomstick at the end of the ‘counting of beads’ really disturbs Moorthy and he goes on to burn the dross of the flesh and
purify the body. A new divine strength descends into him and love, unqualified
and universal, gushes forth from his heart.
I
shall love even my enemies. The Mahatma says “We should love even our enemies”,
and closing his eyes tighter, he slips back into the foldless
sheath of the Soul, and sends out rays of love to the east, rays of love to the
west, rays of love to the north, rays of love to the south, and love to the
earth below and the sky above.
When
love thus fills him, he feels a new exaltation coming to his limbs and his
whole being beats out a rhythm, a song of Kabir:
The
road to the City of Love is hard, brother,
It
shard,
Take
care, take care, as you walk along it.
When
he opens his tearful eyes, he sees a blue radiance filling the whole earth and
dazzled, he rises and prostrates before the god, chanting Sankara’s
‘Sivoham, Sivoham.
I am siva. I am Siva. Siva am I.” On the night of the
third day of the fast, there is a bhajan and people
gather from the Potters’ Street and the Brahmins’ street, the Weavers’ street
and the Pariah street, for the love of Moorthy has
already communicated itself to the village. Even Bade Khan is there to join
them. Misery needs the healing touch of compassion, and hatred is exceeded by
love. At the end of the fast Moorthy emerges a
different man, the man of peace and love and the instrument of Gandhi. He walks
out to preach the ‘Don’t-touch-the-Government campaign.’
Very
soon, with the help of Range Gowda, the man of
action, Moorthy starts the Congress group in Kanthapura, affiliated to the Congress of All India, and
‘one cannot become a member of the Congress if one will not promise to practise Ahimsa, and to speak Truth and to spin at
least two thousand yards of yarn per year.’ There is a god’s procession and a bhajan after which the Committee is elected. Moorthy and Range Gowda and Rangamma and Rachanna and Seenu constitute the Congress Panchayat
Committee of Kanthapura. Twenty-three members are
listed after two days and an amount of five rupees and twelve annas is sent to the Provincial Congress Committee. Soon
afterwards the police come and arrest seventeen men of Kanthapura.
All except Moorthy are finally let off.
We
wept and we prayed, and we vowed and we fasted, and may be the gods would hear
our feeble voices. Who would hear us, if not they?
Many
advocates offer to defend Moortby. The students
formed a Defence Committee and collected copper and
silver. But Moorthy says, “That is not for me.
Between Truth and me none shall come.” For, Gandhism implies implicit and
unswerving faith in Truth. Advocate Ranganna and even
Sadhu Narayan fail in
trying to make him accept defence. At last the Sadhu leaves, giving Moorthy his
blessings. A public meeting is organised at which the
work of Gandhi and his followers is praised and orthodox religion with its
threats of ex-communication is condemned. There is a big procession which cries
aloud, Mahatma Gandhi ki Jai.
The people of Kanthapura see the news in the papers next day and feel relieved and happy that ‘there is still many a good heart in this world, else the sun would not rise as he does nor the Himavathy flow by the Kanchamma Hill’. The red man’s judges give three months’ rigorous imprisonment to Moorthy. On hearing the news all the Satyagrahis undertake a token fast.
Moorthy returns from
prison after the passage of three months. It is on the eve of the launching of
the Dandi Salt March by the Mahatma. The people of Kanthapura get ready for the event under Moorthy’s leadership. They think of the Mahatma not as a
man or a god but as a Big Mountain–blue and high and wide and catching the
light of the setting sun like the Sahyadri mountains.
Moorthy is of course the Small Mountain. The Salt
March, however, is a little delayed, and presently one sees the picketing of Boranna’s toddy grove. The melee of the advancing crowds
and the furious red man’s police is indeed dramatised
by Raja Rao:
Then
Moorthy says, “Squat down before the toddy booth”,
and we rush and we stumble, and we rise and we duck, and we all go squatting
before the toddy booth, and the coolies are marching behind us and the
policemen tighten round the booth, and then quick and strong, the rain patters
on the leaves and the thatch and the earth. May be that’s the blessing of the
gods!
The
rain reminds one of the downpour in In Khandesh. Soon the idea of picketing
catches like wild fire and it is done here, there, everywhere.
Events
move on to the no-tax campaign and the orgy of violence unleashed by it. The
flood of fury takes its toll. After prolonged peregrination some of the people
eventually settle down in Kashipura. Moorthy is set free. He writes to his companion, “Ratna, things must change. The youths here say they will
change it. Jawaharlal will change it. You know Jawaharlal is like a Bharata to the Mahatma, and he, too, is for non-violence
and he, too, is a Satyagrahi, but he says in Swaraj there shall be neither the rich nor the poor. And he
calls himself an ‘equal-distributionist’, and I am
with him and his men.
The
Round Table Conference, which held out the promise of freedom, is described
thus in mythological terms:
They
say the Mahatma will go to the red man’s country and he will get us Swaraj. He will bring us Swaraj,
the Mahatma. And we shall all be happy. And Rama will come back from exile, and
Sita will be with him, for Ravana will be slain and
Sita freed, and he will come back with Sita on his right in a chariot in the
air, and brother Bharata will go to meet them with
the worshipped sandal of the Master on his head. And as they enter Ayodhya there will be a rain of flowers.
Range
Gowda is the only one of the fighters to return to Kanthapura and the narrator herself takes leave of the
village after praying to Mother Kenchamma and Father
Siva. This brings the story to a close.
There
are passages in the novel which are showers of lyrical poetry. Words tumble as
in a quick succession and a picture of pulsating life is created. The coming of
rains in Vaisakha, for example, is described thus:
The
rains have come, the fine, first-footing rains that skip over the bronze
mountains, tiptoe the crags, and leaping into the valleys, go splashing and wind-swung,
a winnowed pour, and the coconuts and the betel-nuts and the cardamom plants
choke with it and hiss back. And there,
there it comes over the Bebbur Hill and the Kanthur Hill and begins to paw upon the tiles, and the
cattle come running home, their ears stretched back, and the drover lurches
behind some bel-tree or pipal-tree,
and people leave their querns and rush to the courtyard, and turning towards Kenchamma temple, send forth a prayer, saying “There,
there, the rains have come, Kenchamma; may our house
be white as silver,” and the lightning flashes and the thunder stirs the tiles,
and children rush to the gutter-slabs to sail paper boats down to Kashi.
One
almost feels the rain and is drenched by the poetic prose. A slice of
reality is forcefully presented and all the details are seen as in a slow
motion film.
The
novel portrays in this way the whole drama of the Gandhian
revolution as enacted in a village in all its frenzy and fury. It might have
been any village and the narrator could simply have been anybody’s grandmother.
The typical features of rural life–its mixture of politics and mythology, its
seraphic freedom from the taint of science and technology, its ruggedness and
even its vulgarity–are faithfully reproduced in terms of art. Even the language
is creatively moulded by Raja Rao to distil the
raciness and the rhythm of the vernacular into English, and the poetic non-stop
narration creates at once a sense of dramatic immediacy and personal intimacy.
The novel is, in short, a unique fictional experiment in Gandhian
politics.
After
Kanthapura in 1938, the collection of
short stories, The Cow of the Barricades, came out in 1947, but after
that there was a spell of silence for nearly thirteen years. The Serpent and
the Rope come out in 1960 and justified the long incubation. The novel is
at once intriguing with its wide canvas and multiple vision of France, England
and India. The response was rather one of mingled feelings, and an American
reviewer, Charles W. Mann, says that “the reader must face a flood of learned
allusion and often annoying garrulity in this complex, yet poetic work.” He
further accuses Raja Rao of producing one of the most ‘difficult and
circuitous’ novels of recent years, although he recommends it for all libraries
concerned with serious modern fiction! The reviewer finally says that the try
of Raja Rao is worthy of respect and much more subtle than can adequately be
expressed in a review, and one would agree with Mr. Mann’s conclusion. The
reviewer of the TLS, however, calls it another ‘leisurely novel’ and sums up
the plot as a series of ‘difficulties attendant upon a marriage between a young
Indian, Rama, and a French intellectual, Madeline. Naturally considerable
adjustment of values and ideals must take place if such a union is to be
satisfactory.’ Professor K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar says
in his book that it is perhaps the most impressive novel yet written by an
Indian in English. It might even be said that it is the most inclusive novel
to be written in English by an Indian. One might turn to it for the ineluctable
‘Englishing’ of the Sanskrit verse, or one might
witness in it endless debates of teasing philosophical systems, or one might
gather from it pithy pronouncements and intriguing epigrams. The total comprehension
of the book certainly calls for a variety of insights and hence the despair of
the critic. The complexity in structure is the obvious result of Raja Rao’s unique personality–his rich and versatile scholarship
and the highly metaphysical bent of his mind, which is amazingly mercurial in
its movement. He cannot for this reason, conform to any formal ceiling, and
this is true of all his work.
The
plot is concerned with the life of a South Indian youth by name K. R. Ramaswamy. He goes to France to work on a thesis connected
with the Cathar heresy. He is a Smartha
and his lineage goes back to Vidyaranya and even the Upanishadic Yajnavalkya. He had
been initiated into the Upanishads at the age of four and is a master of his
mother-tongue and Sanskrit. He quotes from French and Italian too with
facility. He is firmly rooted in the Indian Vedantic
tradition, but is at once at home in France or England and achieves communion
with its living spirit. He is wise in himself and is the cause of wisdom in
others, like the Ganges whose waters purify and whose purity does not diminish.He is the modern embodiment of Tristan,
Krishna and Satyavan.
It
is at the University of Caen that Ramaswamy
or Rama comes in contact with Madeline and they marry On 10th February 1949. A
child is born who is called Krishna and later Pierre, but the child dies of broncho-pneumonia within a year of Its birth. Hearing of
his father’s illness, Rama returns to India in 1951. This is the starting point
of the story and the happenings till 1954 are included in the novel.
Retrospective narration, jottings from diary, descriptions and dialogues, and
sheer poetic thapsodies sometimes–all these fill the
wide scope of the book and make it difficult to read, though perhaps doubly
rewarding.
The
action of the novel is the physical basis for the spiritual evolution of Rama.
Apparently Rama travels widely in India, France and England. He visits India in
1951 for his fathter’s obsequies, in 1952 for his
sister Saroja’s marriage, and at the end of 1954, he
proposes to return to India and spend his life in Travancore
to seek his fulfilment in solitude. Having seen and
experienced enough of the world and men at the physical and intellectual
levels, he now qualifies for the quest and fulfilment
of the spirit. In fact, this urge flows as an undercurrent throughout, because
whatever the experience he is able to detach himself from its involvement, and
even sensuality is but a necessary passage to the higher realms. Through a long
process, he hues his way through the winding paths of Becoming to the goal of
Being.
Madeline,
his wife, is vividly created and her life too passes through the most
breath-taking vicissitudes. From French Catholicism she drifts to Hinduism and
from Hinduism finds her way to Buddhism. The process is however convincing and
natural. The two children she bears do not survive and she realises
that her life would acquire a meaning and a fullness only if she rises from
limited love to unlimited love. Thus she naturally takes to Buddhism after
Georges has initiated her into it. Through a process of struggle and hardship,
she ascends to the highest spiritual levels and reduces the body to
nothingness–a mere assemblage of the eighteen aggregates.
Savitri too–the
Cambridge returned Raiput princess–discovers the full
meaning of her life through Rama’s association. There
is mutual attraction between them, and while Rama sees himself in Savitri, Savitri feels he is her Satyavan. He is Tristan and she
is Iseult, he Krishna and she Radha.
Even the toe-rings given by Little Mother, Rama’s
second step-mother, seem to fit her. They also marry, in a symbolic way, in
England, but soon she returns to India to marry the bridegroom of her parents’
choice–Pratap, a jagirdar.
Both Rama and Savitri realise
ultimately that their ‘marriage’ is only spiritual and should never be
corrupted by physical desire. He reveals to her the true nature of
love–rejoicing in the rejoicing of the other. He accepts her as his principle,
his Queen. Savitri achieves her happiness in life as
a true wife.
Rama
also plays the peace-giver to Saroja, his step sister
and to Little Mother herself. He is the wise Vedantin
who is always ready with a treat of wisdom to Georges and Lezo.
Even Catherine, the cousin of Madeline and the daughter of uncle Charles, is
helped by him to secure her happiness. She even has a feeling that she must
have been his wife in the previous birth.
In
this way almost all the characters in the truly cosmopolitan gathering share
the influence of Rama and work out their realisation of peace and happiness. He
himself finds that he is unable to bridge a gap, fill a void. The physical
operation of thoracoplasty makes him lighter and
takes away his disease and sorrow, and the climatic stage of his evolution
starts. As Rama says once to Madeline:
The
world is either unreal or real–the serpent or the rope. There is no
in-between-the-two and all that’s in-between is poetry, is sainthood...And
looking at the rope from the serpent is to see paradise, saints, avataras, gods, heroes, universes. For wherever you go, you
see only with the serpent’s eyes. Whether you call it duality or modified
duality you invent a belvedere to heaven, you look at the rope from the posture
of the serpent, you feel you are the serpent–you are–the rope is. But in true
fact, with whatever eyes you see there is no serpent, there never was a
serpent. You gave your own eyes to the falling evening and cried, ‘Ayyo!’ ‘Oh! It’s the serpent! You run and roll and lament,
and have compassion for fear of pain, others’ and your own. You see the serpent
and in fear you feel you are it, the serpent, the saint. One–The Guru–brings
you the lantern; the road is seen, the long, white road, going with the
statutory stars. ‘It is only the rope’. He shows it to you. And you touch your
eyes and know there never was a serpent...
Here
perhaps is a clue to the crucial philosophical problem of the novel. The Rajju is mistaken for the Sarpa,
and the confusion brings about a chain reaction, which only strengthens the
initial confusion or illusion and imparts to it the look of reality. All action
in terms of duality and relativity seems to be within the purview of the
operation of this illusion. But the illusion is itself the inevitable process
of reaching the Reality. The forbidden apple has to be eaten and the
consequences exceeded. The many have to coalesce into the One and the multiple
vision has ultimately to transform into the integral vision.
Rama’s quest is thus over
and he knows his destiny. As he says, “Man is born in pain. His rebirth is
solitude, his song is himself.” The key lies in looking within or antardrishti. It is then that Rama says, even
like Moorthy in Kanthapura,
“Siva am I.”
There
are, of course, more things in the book. The concept Rajju
Sarpa Bhranti or
Illusion and Reality needs a scaffolding, even as the spirit needs the sheath
of the mind and the mind itself the frame of the body. There are beautiful
descriptions of nature and penetrating probes into human nature. The fun and
frolic of a Hindu marriage, the pomp and ravelry of
an English coronation, the campus of Cambridge and the life of Paris–all these
and many more perceptions on a global scale are granted flesh and blood in
memorable prose. There are philosophical conundrums which can exhaust the most
tireless mind and expositions of serious thought which are a source of
sweetness and light. One has the feeling, finally, that the novel is perhaps an
inverted autobiography of Raja Rao and that Ramaswamy
is a projection of the author himself in a large measure.
While
Kanthapura is a novel of action, The
Serpent and the Rope is essentially one of recollection. Both are authentic
testaments of Indian life, but, while the one tries to capture the exciting
drama on the surface, the other is concerned with the deeper verities
comprehended in an epic sweep. While the one, in fine, is an experiment in
language, the other is the language of the experiment that is life.