BENGALURU: It was sometime in the late 90s. When I met Chandrashekhar Kambar in Bangalore, I asked: “What are you writing now?” After a longish pause, he replied: “There is an image that keeps haunting me these days. This man, Shivapada—sage, guru, social reformer—not sure what he is. But he enters into my imagination. Have I heard of someone like this before? A figure that springs to mind is Pandit Taranath (father of the illustrious sarod maestro, Rajeev Taranath).
The legendary Pandit Taranath’s name is on everybody’s lips in my part of North Karnataka. My father told me stories of this charismatic ‘Renaissance-type’ man—doctor, musician, thinker, and modern saint. He must be my model for Shivapada. And this is the image which looms over my mind—when Shivapada walks, you see only one footprint on the ground. The other is imprinted on the Sky. I find myself weaving and unweaving several strands of narratives around this image. Maybe, a novel is waiting to be born.”
Shikharasoorya, written years after this conversation, in 2006, is a brilliant medley of myth, history, politics, economic war-fare, and clash of human value systems. Kambar writes this as a sequel to the novella, Chakori (1996). But it can also be read as an independent work. Some of the main characters in Chakori resurface in the latter novel. Chakori’s protagonist, the dreamer-musician, Chandamutta, is born as Ninnadi here. The celestial Yakhsi, his mentor-lover, turns into Gowri. Chinnamuttha, Chandamutta’s evil opponent who attempts suicide at the end of Chakori, wakes up in Shivapura at the beginning of Shikharasoorya. While Chakori is narrated by ‘dreams’, Shikharasoorya is recounted by ‘historians’.
Kambar says that he was inspired by the figure of the musical genius and incurable idealist, Rajeev Taranath, in creating Chandamutta. He explains: “Rajeev and his father are the kind of tall people who sometimes walk among us. These larger than life-size figures stand for everything that is magnificent and human. They become a part of our folklore. Their contemporaneity is fused with something that is beyond time. They inhabit ‘myth-space’ and ‘myth-time’.”
Kambar often plays with the notions of myth and history. In his folk vision, history is antithetical to myth. Myth is creative and life-giving. History signifies perishing time. The narrator of Shikharasoorya claims, tongue-in-cheek, that he employs the historical narrative. He unravels how this ‘historical time’ is linked to Eurocentric, colonial, and capitalist ideologies. This narrator is also aware of history as a contested site. He asserts that folk tales and songs provide historical insights which the official documents fail to do. He highlights the idea of history from bottom up. Arguing that history is a ‘narrative’ constructed by those in power, he questions the singular ‘truth’ of history. There are as many truths as there are eyes.
Another important way in which Kambar interrupts the dominant discourse of history is by cheerfully incorporating stories circulating in the popular cultural imaginary about the historical times. Scandals and gossip—palace intrigues, fierce loyalties, and secret romances—all find their way into this Kanakapuri chronicle. We read of scheming ministers who employ the vishakanye to seduce and kill their opponents, or hear adventure tales of hidden treasures and golden mountains. Kambar’s rich and layered text challenges a linear and elitist view of history.
Kambar juxtaposes two ‘place’ images. Kanakapuri, the allegorical world city of gold, represents colonialism and conquest. It is full of markets and trades in gold and arms, even with faraway nations. It uses its military power to establish control over foreign markets. In contrast, Shivapura stands for the values of love, sharing, and the connectedness of both human and non-human worlds.
The centre of this small rural Shivapura community is the Mother goddess, Amma. Guru Shivapada is the custodian of her Hill. Shivapada passes on his immense knowledge to his spiritual heir, Ninnadi. Soorya too becomes Shivapada’s disciple and secretly masters certain ‘inferior’ knowledges like turning food grains into gold, or creating soldiers out of blades of grass. He kills the man who saved his life, attempts to rape his saviour’s wife, and then runs away to Kanakapuri.
Shikharasoorya portrays an epic battle between the community values of Shivapura, and the individualistic mercenary ideologies of Kanakapuri. Soorya’s fascinating rise as an Emperor is a tale of betrayals and blood-shed. He comes to conquer Shivapura. Ninnadi defeats the forces of consumerism and military power which threaten to engulf Shivapura.
At the end, we see the epiphanic scene of a community celebration. Ninnadi plays the flute on that moon-lit night. The Shivapura folk listen to this music as time stands still on the Hill. In this moment of fullness, the whole web of life—people, trees, hill and forest—gets mirrored in the lake. Myth springs from the world of relationships.
For Kambar, myth is the primary mode of looking at life and arranging his perceptions about the past and the contemporary, the local and the global. As Rajeev Taranath rightly argues: “[the] mythical episteme is still valid, natural, and real [in this country]. To say this is to point out the core of Kambar’s importance to [Indian] literature.” (Jokumaraswami. Seagull, Calcutta: 1989. pg. ix)
The translation of Shikharasoorya by Laxmi Chandrashekhar will be released shortly (The Central Sahitya Academy, New Delhi).