The Cat and Shakespeare

by Rao, Raja

  Kanthapura is one long, oral tale told in retrospect. There are other tales, interspersed with the main narrative, that begin with the oral tags, ‘Once upon a time’ and ‘And this is how it all began’, but these are usually digressions. Other characteristics of the oral narrative include the use of songs and prayers, proverbs, mythology, and epic lists and catalogues. In fact, the novel is unthinkable without the oral tradition. The preface itself defines Kanthapura as an oral—not written—text.

  It may have been told of an evening, when as the dusk falls, and through the sudden quiet, lights leap up in house after house, and stretching her bedding on the veranda, a grandmother might have told you, newcomer, the sad tale of her village. (1963: viii)

  It is within the frame of Kannada that the tale is told. English is made to simulate the ‘thought-movement’ and idiom of the old woman, Achakka, who is the narrator. One detects here the notion of linguistic relativity associated with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that one’s conceptualization of the world is partly the product of the form of the language habitually used to describe it and talk about it. Rao’s use of English suggests the appropriation of the structural characteristics of Kannada, as Janet Powers Gemmill shows.11 Consider the opening sentence as an example of syntactic re-creation:

  High on the Ghats is it, high up the steep mountains that face the cool Arabian seas, up the Malabar coast is it, up Mangalore and Puttur and many a centre of cardamom and coffee, rice and sugarcane. (1963: 1)

  Gemmill has this translated into Kannada and again retranslated into English as follows:

  Upon ghats upon is it, upon steep mountain(s) upon, cool Arabian sea to face making mountain upon, Malabar coast upon is it, Mangalore, Puttur and many cardamom, coffee, rice, sugarcane centre(s) upon is.12

  The similarity in the word order is unmistakable, especially the reversal of the word order of subject and verb, and the omission of the verb in the second clause. The deviation is of course kept within the bounds of intelligibility. The embedding of Kannada structure in English is done with such finesse as to be almost unnoticeable.

  Parataxis and simple coordination are syntactic features that generally characterize the oral narrative. They dominate Kanthapura. One example will suffice—the celebrated description of the Kartik festival.

  Kartik has come to Kanthapura, sisters—Kartik has come with the glow of lights and the unpressed footsteps of the wandering gods . . . and gods walked by lighted streets, blue gods and quiet gods and bright-eyed gods, and even as they walk in transparent flesh the dust gently sinks back to the earth, and many a child in Kanthapura sits late into the night to see the crown of this god and that god, and how many a god has chariots with steeds white as foam and queens so bright that the eyes shut themselves in fear lest they be blinded. (1963: 81)

  Idioms are a fertile area for nativization, and here, Rao both transplants from Kannada and implants new ones; e.g., ‘To stitch up one’s mouth’ (1963: 58); ‘to tie one’s daughter to the neck of’ (1963: 35); ‘a crow-and-sparrow story’ (1963: 15) (from ‘a cock-and-bull story’); and ‘every squirrel has his day’ (1963: 77) (from ‘every dog has his day’).

  Adjuncts are frequently used in oral narratives for highlighting a word or phrase; e.g., ‘And the Swami, who is he?’ (1963: 41); ‘[M]y heart, it beat like a drum’ (1963: 182); ‘She has never failed us, I assure you, our Kenchamma’ (1963: 2); and ‘Our village—Kanthapura is its name’ (1963: 1).

  In an Indian village, relationships are interpersonal. Social stratification is along the lines of caste and occupation. Often, idiosyncrasies and physical disabilities attach themselves as sobriquets to the names of individuals. Examples of these abound in the novel: Patel Rangè Gowda, Pariah Sidda, Post-office Suryanarayana, Husking Rangi, Four-beamed-house Chandrasekharayya, One-eyed Linga, and Waterfall Venkamma.

  On ceremonial occasions, social relationships are meticulously observed. In a traditional society, certain aspects of conversation are ritualized. Elaborate attention is paid, for example, to modes of address. They reflect the use of language as a means of establishing a friendly rapport between speaker and listener and of reinforcing communal solidarity. For instance, in a host-guest interactional situation, Rao hits upon the exact phrase translated from Kannada to dispel any uneasiness. The guest is coaxed: ‘Take it Bhattarè, only one cup more, just one? Let us not dissatisfy our manes’ (1963: 21). On the anniversary of a death in a Brahmin family, other Brahmins are invited to a feast, and they are expected to indulge their appetites fully, so that the spirits of the dead are pacified. C.D. Narasimhaiah remarks: ‘With a people like us, used to being coaxed, the English form, “Won’t you have a second helping?”, or the mere “Sure you don’t care for more?” will be ineffective, and even considered discourteous.’13 Culture-sensitive situations like these are not always understood.

  Through a choice of strategies, skilfully deployed, Rao has been able to reconstruct the performance-oriented discourse of the traditional oral tales of India. Kanthapura is village India in microcosm—the context that has determined and shaped the expressive devices in the novel.

  Rao considers his entire work as:

  An attempt at purāṇic recreation of Indian storytelling: that is to say, the story, as story, is conveyed through a thin thread to which are attached (or which passes through) many other stories, fables, and philosophical disquisitions, like a mālā (garland).14

  Philosophical debates are a part of both the Upanishads and the Puranas. The Serpent and the Rope resembles both. The novel interprets Vedanta in terms of the discourse of fiction. The philosophy is not an interpolation. It is an integral part of the novel, its informing principle.

  In the spirit of the Upanishads, the novel attempts to inquire into the nature of the Self and the attainment of Self-Knowledge with the help of the Guru. The protagonist, Ramaswamy, is an aspirant in this spiritual quest. In the process, he has to tear through the veil of ignorance (avidya). He explains the quest with the help of an analogy—that of the serpent and the rope—that Sankara himself uses.

  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 . . . For wheresoever you go, you see only with the serpent’s eyes. Whether you call it duality or modified duality . . . you look at the rope from the posture of the serpent, you feel you are the serpent—you are the rope. But in true fact, with whatever eyes you see there is no serpent, there never was a serpent . . . One—the Guru—brings you the lantern; the road is seen, the long, white road, going with the statutory stars. ‘It’s only the rope.’ He shows it to you. (1960: 333)

  A powerful recursive device used throughout the novel is the dash (—) to suggest the to-and-fro movement of a thought, its amplitude and density. And this passage is a good example of it. The dash is used to indicate a break or an interruption in the thought. In between dashes, a thought is often insinuated or slipped under the breath, as it were.

  Before Ramaswamy is on the ‘long, white road’ to Travancore that would lead him to the Guru, his life takes many twists and turns. His marriage to Madeleine, whom he meets while a student in France, breaks up, especially after Savithri comes into his life. Savithri is the eldest daughter of Raja Raghubir Singh of Surajpur, and Ramaswamy meets her on a visit to India. Savithri is the woman he has been waiting for; but she is soon to be married to his friend Pratap.

  Ramaswamy’s relationship with Savithri is reinforced by the myth of the princess Savithri as told in ‘The Book of the Forest’ (the Vanaparvan) of the Mahabharata. Savithri is a pativrata, a woman who observes the vow of devotion to her husband. Indian tradition ascribes extraordinary powers to a chaste wife. Her marriage to Satyavan is doomed from the start. Her husband is to die within a year. Yama, the god of death, arrives at the end of the year to claim Satyavan. Refusing to give up on her husband, Savithri takes on Yama and wins over him by strictly observing her dharma. Through her love and devotion, Sa
vithri rescues Satyavan from Yama himself. In the novel, Savithri likewise rescues Ramaswamy from inertia and puts him on the spiritual path. Alone now, Ramaswamy calls out: ‘Not a God but a Guru is what I need.’ (1960: 400) And the Guru appears in a vision: ‘He called me, and said, “It is so long, so long, my son. I have awaited you. Come, we go . . .” To such a Truth was I taken, and became its servant, I kissed the perfume of its Holy Feet, and called myself a disciple.’ (1960: 401)

  If Kannada is the prototype for English in Kanthapura, it is Sanskrit in The Serpent and the Rope. Sanskrit is the obvious choice, as the novel has a strong metaphysical bias. It was in Sanskrit that the philosophical speculations of the Indians found their profoundest expression. Rao’s Sanskritic English is not unlike Milton’s Latinate English in Paradise Lost. The intent is the same: to assimilate into English the qualities and features of a prestigious language the writer admires most. As opposed to the Prakrits, the vernaculars, Sanskrit was the ‘perfected’ language. The Sanskritization of English should be seen as part of a wider sociocultural phenomenon that has historically characterized Indian civilization. Louis Dumont and David Pocock interpret Sanskritization as the ‘acceptance of a more distinguished or prestigious way of saying the same things.’15 Quotations in the original, together with English translations from the classical Sanskrit poets—Kalidasa (4th-5th century) and Bhavabhuti (8th century)—and from the devotional hymns of Sankara and Mira (16th century), are skilfully woven into the story and function as a parallel text. Ramaswamy relapses into Sanskrit to tell Madeleine as delicately as possible what he is unable to tell her openly—his feeling of despair as she increasingly withdraws into herself. He finds a parallel in Bhavabhuti’s Uttararāmacarita (‘The Later Story of Rama’) to which he draws her attention. The occasion has all the solemnity of a ritual, and it represents his farewell to her.

  ekaḥ samprati nāsitapriyatamastāmadye rāmaḥ kathaṃ |

  pāpaḥ pañcavatïṃ vilokayatu vā gacchatvasaṃ bhāvya vā || (II. 28) (1960: 326)

  Alone, now, after being the cause of the loss of his dear [wife], how should Rama, sinful as he is, visit that very same Panchavati, or how pass on regardless of it?16

  The philosophical bias is even more pronounced in The Cat and Shakespeare. Rao exploits the Advaita Vedantic idea of the world being a play (lila) of the Absolute, and the result is an exhilarating comedy. However, it is the Vishishta Advaita (‘qualified monism’) Vedanta of Ramanuja (11th-12th century) that informs the novel. Ramanuja emphasizes the way of devotion (bhakti-marga) to God in which the seeker surrenders himself to His grace to achieve salvation. This is seen in the two schools that developed after Ramanuja: the ‘Northern School’ (Vadagalai) and the ‘Southern School’ (Tengalai). According to the first, salvation is achieved by following the ‘analogy of the monkey’ (markata-nyaya). Just as the young one of a monkey feels safe when it holds on to its mother’s body, so does God save those who make an effort to reach Him. According to the second, salvation is achieved by following the ‘analogy of the cat’ (marjara-nyaya). Just as a kitten is carried by a cat in its teeth, so does God save those who do not even make an effort to reach Him.

  It is Govindan Nair, the protagonist Ramakrishna Pai’s neighbour, who best exemplifies the ‘analogy of the cat’ in the novel. Both Nair and Pai are civil servants in the former princely state of Travancore in south-western India in the early 1940s. The Second World War is on.

  The kitten is being carried by the cat. We would all be kittens carried by the cat. Some, who are lucky . . . will one day know it . . . Ah, the kitten when its neck is held by its mother, does it know anything else but the joy of being held by its mother? You see the elongated thin hairy thing dangling, and you think, poor kid, it must suffer to be so held. But I say the kitten is the safest thing in the world, the kitten held in the mouth of the mother cat. Could one have been born without a mother? . . . But a mother—I tell you, without Mother the world is not. So allow her to fondle you and to hold you.17

  As a clerk in Ration Office No. 66 in Trivandrum, Nair earns forty-five rupees a month. He has little or no prospect of becoming rich. His son, Shridhar, dies from pneumonia, and he has a brush with the law that lands him in prison. But none of this affects Nair. He remains his usual optimistic self, with a firm belief in the mother cat. His faith saves him in the end.

  Pai, as a clerk in the Revenue Board, dreams of building a three-storeyed house. A Saraswat Brahmin, he enters into a relationship with a Nair woman, Shantha, a schoolteacher. This is a social custom known as sambandham (‘relationship’) that was once prevalent in Kerala among the Nairs. Pai’s wife, Saroja, has no say in the matter. She removes herself to her ancestral home, Kartikura House, in Alwaye with her son, Vithal. ‘What is woman, you may ask. Well, woman is Shantha,’ says Pai, and goes on, ‘Shantha also loves . . . she is so exquisite in her love play. She is shy like a peahen. Her giving is complete.’ (1965: 20-21) But the ‘dearest thing’ in Pai’s life is his five-year-old daughter, Usha. Both Shantha and Usha embody the feminine principle as does the Mother Cat (a symbol for the compassionate Guru). They are the instruments of divine grace (krpa). For, in the Kulacūḍāmaṇi Nigama (‘The Crest-Jewel of the Kula Doctrine’), a tantric text in praise of the goddess Shakti, we learn that even Shiva cannot become the supreme Lord unless Shakti unites with Him. And from Their union, all things arise. Shakti in fact says, ‘I manifest Myself as woman which is My own Self and the very essence of creation in order to know You, Shiva, the Guru, who are united with Me.’18

  Like Govindan Nair, Pai too has his moment of illumination.

  I saw truth not as fact but as ignition. I could walk into fire and be cool, I could sing and be silent, I could hold myself and yet not be there . . . I smelled a breath that was of nowhere but rising in my nostrils sank back into me, and found death was at my door. I woke up and found death had passed by, telling me I had no business to be there. Then where was I? Death said it had died. I had killed death. When you see death as death, you kill it. (1965: 113-14)

  Again, the British presence in India is inescapable; it is reinforced by the ubiquitous presence of the English language. And what better representative of English can there be than Shakespeare himself? Rao’s coupling of Shakespeare and the cat in the title is ironic. Both Sankara and Ramanuja wrote their influential works in Sanskrit, the deva-vani, ‘the language of the gods’. Now, English, the new deva-vani, has replaced Sanskrit as the lingua franca. And Rao himself, unable to write in Sanskrit, writes in English. The irony is directed at himself. In the novel, Nair revels in Shakespearean locutions. Unable to rid themselves of the British, Indians retreat into the past, finding solace in religion and philosophy. Rao’s ‘Tale of India’ could not have been more timely. It points to India’s impoverishment as an enslaved nation.

  The Cat and Shakespeare exhibits none of the communicative strategies of Kanthapura or The Serpent and the Rope. Unlike the highly individual and expressive idiolects of the earlier novels, that of The Cat and Shakespeare is deliberately ordinary, since the intent is to express traditional lore. In this process, Rao has pitted the symmetry of language against the asymmetry of thought with its indirections and paradoxes. The highly reductive style of The Cat and Shakespeare is in strong contrast to the expansiveness of the other novels.

  Raja Rao’s short stories reveal him as a master who extended the possibilities of the genre. In his hands, the form becomes an instrument of metaphysical inquiry that transforms the language into true poetry.

  First published in 1933 in Asia (New York) when Rao was only twenty-five, ‘Javni’ has attained the status of a classic. The epigraph from Kanakadasa, a sixteenth-century Kannada devotional poet, suggests the theme of the story: the relationship between an English-educated boy, Ramu, a Brahmin, and a low-caste servant, Javni, a widow, who works for his married sister, Sita. The story is a plea for woman’s emancipation and the abolition of the caste system. Ramu and Javni share the same religious
nature, his at the level of metaphysics, and hers in a belief in spirits and simple devotion to the goddess Talakamma. Ramu sees himself as an instrument of social change that breaks down the barriers of caste. Talking to Javni, Ramu experiences a kind of epiphany in which he sees her as a divine being, a great soul. This mood, of course, does not last, and Ramu accepts the distinctions of caste between them as the family moves away two years later. He accepts the fact that Javni is but a servant who must be left behind. He universalizes her and sees her as one with the sky and the river. His mental act is in keeping with Indian metaphysics: man is seen to be one with nature, his apparent separateness being nothing but an illusion.

  Ramu’s initial indignation at Sita’s treatment of Javni is replaced by admiration and later by acceptance of the social demands of caste. Javni’s eating in the byre is the source of conflict between Ramu and Sita. Sita sees the mixing of castes as irreligious, while Ramu sees putting Javni with the cows as inhuman. Sita cannot transcend her caste.

  Time and again I had quarrelled with my sister about it all. But she would not argue with me. ‘They are of the lower class, and you cannot ask them to sit and eat with you,’ she would say.19

  Throughout the story, Javni is identified with the cow; for example, ‘Javni, she is good like a cow’ (1978: 86). Later, the identification between Javni and the cow is complete when we are told that ‘Javni sat in the dark, swallowing mouthfuls of rice that sounded like a cow chewing the cud’ (1978: 88). In her cow-like way, Javni accepts the teaching of the dominant caste and learns to live with the discomfort imposed by caste distinctions. Ramu recognizes in her the greatness that knows no caste and yet accepts the caste system. The cow functions as an expanding symbol that points to India’s survival as a civilization, to Hinduism and its reverence for life (ahimsa), and to the transcendentalism of a world where the sacred is mixed with the profane. Ramu’s awareness at the metaphysical level that there is no caste coexists with his social acceptance that such distinctions do exist. ‘No, Javni. In contact with a heart like yours, who will not bloom into a god?’ (1978: 96)