Brand Gurajada Best Blend of old and new

In literature, there is nothing as old and new, there is only the distinction of being fine and coarse. The question is of quality of work and talent. Everything that happens will join the tradition, in the three tenses of time. If it is already a tradition, then it was a splendid work of the past. Some contemporary classics reserve their seat in the hall of fame. These works of both past and present, give birth to the works yet to come, tucked in the womb of mother time, destined to be delivered by coming generations, in the time to be unfolded.

Gurajada, one of the first Indian English poets in his youth was an Arts graduate with Philosophy, Greek Roman literature, and English as the subjects. His long poem Sarangadhara attracted the wise man of Bengal, Sambhuchandra Mukherjee, who republished the poem in his magazine “Rees and Ryot”. He is the one who exhorted Gurajada Apparao, to write in his own language.

Hence, while writing ‘Kanyasulkam’ in the years 1889- 1892, Gurajada with roughly nine centuries of literature in Telugu and two thousand years of Sanskrit literature behind him, undoubtedly had a resourceful backdrop, containing many vital elements in the works of art. Added to this in the 19th century second half, he was one of the few well-read persons in western literature. The field was fertile and it just needed an original writer. In Telugu literature, Gurajada rose and answered the call.

Brand Gurajada, best blend of old and new, took shape, right from his first page of the 1892 ‘Kanyasulkam’. Here, he liberally uses the poetic stanzas from Eastern and Western literature, and peppers the character of Gireesam, to a presentable height. While the play ‘Kanyasulkam’ is heavily founded on the foundational pillars of the Indian drama that of ‘Mruchchakatikam’, (a joint effort by two great writers of lore unknown to each other, separated by time - Bhasa Mahakavi, and Sudraka Mahakavi, the Mruchchakatikam, is the co-production of these great stalwart poets). The significance of the play is that it is based on the lives of common folks.

In the regal times, where only kings and royal lineage, or persons with might had some right to have some literature written in their honor, or dedicated to them even if it is written about some divine epics, then, the very idea of making the commoners the central characters of a majestic work is something beyond imagination. Well Mruchchakatikam, (The clay cart) came into being, and stood as a robust example of the sweep and summary of the Bharateeya Theatre.

This two-thousand-year-old seed of a plot initiated by Bhasa, the first playwright of India, and perfected by Sudraka, MruchchaKatika or the clay cart is the vehicle for Kanyasulkam to march ahead in cultural odyssey. The play is now one hundred and twenty-five years old and in modern literature of India still holds a strong presence, be it as a body of literature, or as a script of a play to be performed and interpreted by the theatre artistes.

The thirty-year youth Gurajada Apparao, writing this play in Vizianagaram, readying it for its first performance in Vizianagaram on August 13, 1892, made the play only to speak about child marriages. Even if he had an idea about the plight of women as more wider and on many traditional platforms the women are exploited and oppressed, his first version of the play did not have the scope or space for such depiction and artistic detail.

Compared to the second edition, in his first edition, Madhurvani, is a Nautch woman, and a plain flesh trade woman. But this very entertaining and engaging play in script or in production contained vernacular language, love for modern ideas, and gained reputation as the first complete play in Telugu vernacular.

The closer scrutiny and examination of both editions of Kanyasulkam, which had seventeen years of gap between them, made the playwright a more deep thinker, profound observer and master craftsman. Thereby, the second Kanyasulkam rose to such eminence that, in the own words of the author, he fell in love with his characters.

This became possible only because as an artist, Gurajada was always open to introspection, revision, edition, enrichment, alteration, elimination and ensuring a total presentation of emotions in the service of social progress. Very few writers in the world have left their work to be examined so precisely on the critic’s table.

For Gurajada himself remained always a critic, and a friend of people with such critical minds, he had the capacity to immediately disconnect with his work, and was the first man to subject it to more transformational labour, provided the intellectual in him is not satisfied with the performance of the writer in him. Gurajada had always had this struggle within himself facing the intellectual in him as a writer, and often the writer heeded the words of intellect, and further laboured to make the work of art, more acceptable and universal. There remains the secret of success of Guajardo.

This reveals that transformation to modernity is not a sudden manifestation to Gurajada, but the leaps and measures, or doses of inputs came gradually, and the seventeen-year gap had helped the author to produce a more time-tested text with many nuances, and characters receiving a robust treatment. This retouching is a special art of Gurajada, or the dilemma of his times which he experienced, and every time such exercise took place he revalidated the text with innovations, and for doing so as a conscious artiste, Gurajada was rather proud, and he never held a haughty stance, that once written his words are final and have the epigraphic status.

Therefore, his beginnings, be it in the earlier versions of the Play, his story the correction, his song ‘Patriotism’ (where he deletes one stanza in the process of review), and their blossoming to be the eternal flowers on the time tree are signs that we have witnessed a down to earth, great writer, for whom literary expression is an artistic duty and a towering responsibility. This was succinctly stated by Gurajada in one letter not available in full that he wrote in 1912 from 15, Beliaghat, Calcutta on January 29.

“I am the first poet in Telugu who endeavored to establish new standards. My work of Art is modern. The themes are of Bharateeya origins. In poetry, I have set my eyes on noble benefits. I have observed life with a novel perspective and tried to apply its quintessence in the genres of story and poetry. About those arts, and life, I have some ideals. Only cultural elite can understand them and have some appreciation. Rest of them, bland in approach, will only observe the narrative techniques, and comic tones and remain satisfied at that level”

His Kanyasulkam play from a prim rose position rose to the status of a prime star, with the treatment and creative expansions he effected in the second edition that appeared in 1909. The secret of its success is that in its transformational phase, it emerged as a shorthand to the tradition and a long hand for the future needs of mankind, in the fields of language renovation, women empowerment, education to all, opposition to age old shackles and blind beliefs, social egalitarian promotion, and had set an agenda for Millennium Development Goals of the society. He advised his young friend Ongole Munisybrahmanyam not to “blink at facts. Take the lancet, cut deep and analyse”.

In this second preface, one of his many insights is not surprisingly, about the language evolution. He contributed a new spelling to the language, the way it is spoken. “I had to contend with one difficulty in printing this book. There are many sounds in the spoken dialect which are not represented in the Telugu Alphabet. In the present state of Telugu phonetics, I had to content myself with indicating such sounds by a horizontal line placed over the nearest symbols, and I employed the Ardhanusvara after a nasal. The creation of new symbols and their adoption into type can be effected only after a more widespread recognition of the spoken dialect”.

Very prophetically, the cause the Kanyasulkam play took up in 1892, after the rejection of the private Bill introduced by Ananda Gajapathi as the Member of the Madras Provincial assembly a few years before, evolved into artistic efflorescence, as a modern play was redeemed before 1909 itself with Gurajada noting the Government position about child marriages. “The cause of social reform has received strong support from a recent decision of the Madras High Court in which a full bench consisting of Justice Sri Arnold White, and Justice Miller and Munro ruled - That a contract to make payment to a father in consideration of his giving his daughter in marriage is immoral and opposed to public policy within the meaning of the Section 23 of the Indian Contract Act”.

The close comparative scrutiny and analysis of both the texts of Kanyasulkam is like conducting a bodily examination of live specimens from an art- physician point of view. This being an exhaustive process, we the Telugu people are yet to conduct it, though in bits and pieces, the work has been already attempted by the Gurajada scholars of different generations. Both the editions of Kanyasulkam need a special touch of bringing out a Variorum edition, and in the spirit of the Kanyasulkam 125 years National Festival, this project is coming on to the fast track, now.

Gurajada, a most unassuming artist, who remains elusive in the corridors of his creation, had said this about the play on May 7, 1909. “though modesty prevents me I feel that I have developed Kanyasulkam as a great work of art. After reading the play, I myself got charmed. That is the hallmark of the play. Than the first edition, the present one is expressing my ideas, and imagination in a more comprehensive manner. Unlike the present one, the earlier work has only reflected the exterior glitz”. This he was recording after he wrote his foreword to the second edition on May 1, 1909.

In yet another letter on May 21, 1909 he stated, “Kanyasulkam Play is not didactic, with overbearing presence of an uninvited Guest, resorting to sermonizing, but it has a significant moral purpose. And I have not played pranks with the human life. This you will come to know once you read the play. I have taken human life, as the theme, without prejudice to any, and without rejection of any element, as a serious subject. It is not easy to manage a serious theme with a comic flavor from the start to finish”.

Every famous writer worth his salt has stated his view of the un-put-downable nature of Kanyasulkam, about Brand Gurajada – best blend of old and new in their own way.

By: Rama Teertha
The writer is a poet, translator, critic and an orator