There is an unusual spectacle in Hyderabad these days. One of the main cultural centres in the middle of the city is throbbing with literary activity. Well, put like that, it may not seem too strange, since many literary activities take place every day in most cities. But the unique aspect of this is that it’s a month-long festival of Telugu language and literature. It has been taken up by a private organisation, probably with a smidgeon of assistance from the Department of Culture.
It is unusual because in this state it’s only film personalities or political leaders who draw crowds at any meeting. It is a known fact that for many years these filmy people have been part of book release functions, where they gleefully admit that they have never opened the pages of any book. With such a cultural background, it is astonishing to see a regular cultural organisation (which has hitherto conducted dance and music shows) take up this extraordinary mission.
Inaugurated in the third week of November, this literary festival will go on up to the third week of December. It is a veritable treat for the ordinary viewer, with every genre and movement of the past thousand and odd years of Telugu literature being discussed by eminent scholars every evening. The format too is quite attractive, with an hour of speeches and presentations followed by a performance of a literary nature (the poetic feat called Ashtavadhanam being the most recurrent performance, apart from poetry reading, plays, etc) and felicitations each day to one scholar who has made a significant contribution to Telugu literature.
It is heartening to note that things are looking up for Telugu literature, with private organisations like the Kinnera Art Theatres taking up the daunting task of promoting it. One would have expected a university or the Telugu Akademi or some other governmental organisation to take up such celebrations. The best part of it is that people who generally attend only cultural shows are turning up in large numbers to listen to literature.
The past few weeks have been truly unusual for Telugu literature, in more ways than one. The general tendency for Telugu critics is to concentrate on poetry; sometimes, they may condescend to discuss a short story. But seldom do we see a novel being taken seriously. After a long interval, one novel has been discussed at great length in newspaper supplements, with two diametrically opposed viewpoints emerging. The novel in question is titled Munemma and it is the story of a rural woman, her husband’s murder and her association with the bull reared at home.
The writer, Dr Kesava Reddy, claims this is his best work yet and the female protagonist Munemma is the best character ever created by him (he is a highly respected novelist of the present times for his authentic portrayal of rural life and extraordinary narrative skills). But some female critics have gone hammer and tongs at the novel, claiming that it more than hints at woman-beast conjugal relationship. They have torn apart the novel, saying it implies that after the death of her husband, the protagonist replaces him with the beast. In fact, lots of medical terminology has gone into the discussion, with both the novelist and one of the critics being professional doctors.
The novelist and his fans condemn the reading ability (or lack of it) of these critics while the critics blast the novelist for his “pretence and clever manipulation of readers” in the name of “magical realism” (this phrase, of course, needs a separate discussion altogether). Though the discussion has come to an end in the papers, it augurs well for fiction and literary criticism. This particular novel has shown an extraordinary quality. It has an openness that calls for different interpretations that can go on forever. It is not often that we come across a complex text in present-day Telugu literature. In most cases, there is no subtlety in either the text or the writer.
