సాహిత్య నేత్రం

A discourse analysis of “Inupa gajjela thalli”
- Chandra Latha

Natural calamities often leave with unnatural human experiences. Telugu writers narrated their experiences of prolonged drought that adversely affected Ananthapur, in the form of stories and published an anthology “Inupa gajjela thalli” (Mother of Iron anklets)
Effects of Drought descend on everything related to life… from human condition, cattle population to ecological disturbances and socio – economic breakdowns. Struggle for survival brings in inevitable migration of homeland. A sudden turmoil in intrapersonal relations, loneliness, loss of family members and kinship, depression, anxiety, fear, disruption of social networks, increased crime and violence. Girl children and women are sold or sent to work as far as the gulf. Women who are left alone often become preys for the living men in the village like money lenders, middle men.
No experience is pleasant. This is drought. And, this is the back drop for the reflections and recreations of fiction writers in the anthology.
“.but, It is not a story!” writes A.Jaya Laxmi Raju in idi katha kadu <This is not a story>
And, the Editors write, “… these 18 stories are the anthology of live witness”, emphasizing that these are “the true to life experiences and reflections of the social reality”.
The other way, Writers and Editors emphasize clearly that this is not just fiction but, reality, We can say, fiction of reality and realist fiction. This is Drought in narration. The narrated drought.

Form:
All these stories are in different narrative forms like epistolary (karuvu peelchina manushulu), authorial (moya leni nijalu), molologue, moving freely between interior and dramatic (valaselli paathaandaa), Personal (nerlu, cheta peyya), impersonal (sonterlu, konda siluva, vyasanam).
Chilukuri Devaputhra, Nirmala Rani and Hidayathulla wrote with minimal or no authorial intervention. Their narrative is simple and lucid. Their narrative expression and authoritative usage of dialect completes the narration with perfection.
Narrations of Singamaneni, Chilukuri Deevena and Shanthi Narayana invite the reader to join them in a small journey. They talk, discuss, debate and feel with the people in the story and people who are reading it…
The writers have not restricted to the form in the conventional sense. The adversity and the perplexity of the drought – must be disturbing their artistic sensitivity, intellectual sensibility and authorial discipline. The disturbance within the author is visible in their narrative. At times, the narrative uniformity is disturbed. We can observe this in the following sentences.
“Suri asks me to write a story ` I don’t know how and where to start a story…”
“Too many stories, Suri, how can any single story sticks on? I could not write even one story…”
These two discourses are from the same story, moya leni nijalu, that narrates mostly in the form of an anecdote, a descriptive narrative of “too many” events, thoughts, emotions, feelings crossing one over the other. The tone is switched over to and fro. The addressee changes quickly, as in the first quotation is the reader and the second, Suri and also, both the reader and Suri simultaneously.
This is not the conventional form of story consisting of plot, people and narrative development. This is a collage of incidents and their consequences. The narrative has frequent pauses and breaks as if the pathos of the subject is echoing in the narrative style.
“The most basic problem raised by realist fiction is that of language rather than form”. Roland Barthes points out “Since form is unavoidable in any kind of writing, the discourse, or the complex of the word superior to the phrase, has its forms of classification and a classification which signifies”.
Let us examine this further.

Language:
“What pennaiah bava, No rain. No where. By this time, the sun might have heated up the clouds to bloom and shower raindrops. But, they shower flames on earth. But this time, crop would have been in hand, but fields swallowed the crop like snakes. What a drought it is!” said Thimmayya approaching him. – - <konda siluva, The Python, Sadlapalle Chidambara Reddy>
***
“This time, there were heavy rains, in our village. Water, Every where. Water in the stream. Water in the tank…” “Valaselli paathaandaa, <Off to Migrate, Damugatla Hidayathulla>
We know, the anthology has something in common, the subject, Drought. The above two quotations are the “beginnings” of two stories with different narrative styles. The first one introduces and takes the reader directly into the subject and takes away along with it. But, the second one puzzles and raises a bit of confusion whether it is a story out of the topic and then, raises curiosity about what kind of narrative it is going to be.
The narrative techniques opted by these two writers is uniquely distinctive.
The first narrator addresses some one whose name is synonymous with river Penna. Thimmayya is approaching… none other than the river it self. But, the addressee is his fellow farmer.
The methaphor used for fields is “snake” the little of the story being, The Python and a clever indication of the status of agriculture that swallowed many farmers. A word that sounds vicious, poisonous, hidden.
The casual idiomatic expression used for indicating drought is amazing. The writer imagines the sun heating up the cloud to Bloom and that is showers flowers of rain drops. On the contrary, it rained flames. This is expressed in colloquial Telugu. Plurality and implicit nature of words are cleverly exploited. A beautiful expression and very poetic to start with. Ends with a plain statement, “What a drought it is!”.
The second beginning, is a very intelligent start. In this anthology of drought.. most of the stories begin with the indication of the drought. This different beginning makes it a special one. In a deeper sense, the writer crafted an ironic opening for the worst situation he is going to narrate later.
This creates the reader a kind of alternative world the narrator dreaming of.. water and water and water. The repeated usage of one word, water, emphasis the solace the narrator expecting. and the “beginning” is the clear indication of the “End”. This usage strengthens his sensible and deep narrative style.
The above two beginnings are not just ‘real’ expressions. They are figuratives, poetic and polyphonic.
But, the Realist illusionists… see language simply as the medium of thought. One of their arguments is, in search of “proper language of story telling”, “What realistic fiction does threw for is to bring ground less novelty into social world”. <Barthes>
Let us examine this further.
***
“We sold fields. Sold our homes. Sold away cattle. What else is left with us, to sell? Sold everything!” her heavy words suppressed her heartfelt pain, deep into her heart. (G.Nirmala Rani, katesina karuvu).
***
What kind of a life we lived, now we are left in such wrecked condition! “Nagappa’s eyes filled with tears “I Couldn’t die, to fill my stomach, become a petty thief. Any one may do the same! If one hangs on rules, how to fill the stomach? How can people like us survive? Selling her body… how desperate must be life thoughts taken over. (G.Nirmala Devi, katesina karuvu)
Those discourse extracts are from the same story in different situations. First one is a dialogues. As we can understand she is speaking to somebody. And second is a monologue, thinking or brooding over. In fact, the later monologue is the reaction of the first dialogue.
In the first narration the writer uses the word “sold’ repeatedly and one last word “sold everything”, emphasis being on everything.. the reader understands clearly the “real” meaning with elaborated or descriptive language.
And, heart… is used twice. This is a very clever usage of words. Very few words can narrate an entire story. This clearly shatters Nagappa whose elaborate monologue speaks the change taking in his perspective.
“The process is not a pure repetition there fore but, rather, a limited expression of exploitation of plurality of language, through a controlled process of echoing, recalling”… <Coward and Ellis>
***
Let us now examine the realistic nature of these discourses.
We understand that in fiction, it is not possible to narrate the reality as in formal or scientific language. The language used in the narrative is not transparent that can carry a single meaning, as compared to that of scientific discourse. In the other words, language used in reality fiction is not neutral but polyphonic. This plurality helps both writer and the reader for whom language is more than ‘just a medium of thought’.
Story is art of fiction. Art of narration.
Can the reality fiction over come the hyperbole of the creativity? Can transparent language make fiction into reality? Can we agree that the narrative, with usage of plural, complex and aesthetic language or simply, literary language, be classified as reality fiction?
This has been discussed in detail by literary critics.
“It does not mean the all writing is absolutely transparent, but rather that the narration, the dominant discourse, is able to establish itself as a truth. The narration does not appear to be the voice of an author, its source appears to be a true reality which speaks”. P5<Coward and Bell..>
***
Rearing until now, unable to foster further, my mother earth asks to leave the village… asks to migrate… the town invites to join. (valaselli paathaandaa, Damugatla Hidayathulla)
***
“Have you ever seen death in a lap? Look at Jahanara’s lap. Perhaps it may tell you something!” (moya leni nijalu, Nalluri Rukmini)
***
Both narrators are describing the adverse situation of drought.
The first narrator used a Telugu proverb “The village asks to leave. The cemetery invites to join”.
The second narrator drags the readers with one simple question. And showing something real, Jahanara’s lap.
The inevitable exodus or migration after the catastrophe of natural calamity, is brought in one clever mimic – usage of proverb. The reader knows, the town is synonymous with “cemetery.” Mother earth is the field and the a burial ground. Either way the narrator is in trouble. The village is a death bed. And the destination is a burial ground. He is migrating like a corpse because his life is his mother earth, his field. His helpless mother asks him to leave her, like a motherless child, moving away.
Nalluri Rukmini strengthens her narrative description by showing the real Jahanara’s lap who has six children and hunger succumbed one by one, Right now, her dead child is lying before her. With a dying child in her lap, she is waiting to see the child pass away. So that, she can bury both children together.
These writers recreated the reality. Real people, plot, theme, incidents, experiences, discourse, language… everything that they can recreate. This recreation is strengthened by their reactions and reflections.
“Realism is a “Copy of copy” supported by connotation, a perspective of citations It’s a silent quotation without inverted comas, with no precise source”..<Coward and Ellis>
“For realism is not just a matter of reality form, it is the common sense expression in aesthetic terms of an ideology in which the unified individual human subject makes sense of his/ her world by negotiation with eternal forces – nature, society etc which presupposes a universe the can be made sense of and always potentially self determining human subject”.
G.Nirmala Rani writes about an young man in similar situation in her story, Bite of Drought.
Lost in a city in his struggle of drought, Nagappa, returns home after a decade and finds his mother and sister are alone as his father passed away.
He laments his father’s death wondering how women could survive without a man at home. He regrets his prolonged absence and wants to take charge of the family immediately. Soon he realizes the situation is out of hand and the women “survived” the drought with their own solutions. Drought succumbed their family values and unspoken exploitation taken over them.
As himself returned home faceless as thief, his sister elopes with a man she confides and thus escapes from brothel hood… only to be filled by none other than, his mother…!
Here, the writer captured the realistic development in the people of the story and the narration takes its own “natural” way. Beginning to the end, the narrative is woven so casually that, the reader takes the writers argument, as naturally as her narration. The presumptions and perspectives shatter down. At the end, reader is prepared to face the anti -climax. The true life.
If the writer has given a different END the story would not be this effective.
“If it is a movie, one can take revenge at the climax. If it was a story, I would have given a solution to save Muthyalamma… but, it is not a story!…” another writer A.Jaya Laxmi Raju ends her story about woman in a similar situation.
Why do we feel them true to life?
Montrose explains, “The behaviour of the characters manifests certain general and universal realism. As begin to identify the general and universal human nature, we identify ourselves with the text, characters and story.
This identification involves readers in certain kind of realistic participation in the real text. The other way, “by representing the world in discourse, texts are engaged in construction the world and in accommodating the writers, performers, readers and audiences to positions within it”.
Literary language can never be totally mimetic. In apparently claiming to capture reality in language, the realist fiction fundamentally differed. The plurality of language and aesthetic expression are inevitable rather, unconscious effort from any fiction writer.
The language used by the writers of this anthology, is not glossy, dull or neutral, but the literary language. The narrators understood the nature of words and exploited their textual diversity. The natural and casual usage of dialect grounds the text to reality.
George Eliot, opined, “that since form was unavoidable, one might as well foreground it in fiction and thus exploit it aesthetically rather than trying to pretend that the realist fiction could do with out it”.
And fiction writers of Inupa gajjela thalli did foreground and experimented with their form, language and sensible reality all in a compassionate expression.
Right from the title, that says the realistic nature of the stories, the mother of iron anklets, and the narrative haunts all the way.
The End : Everybody here is kshaamam
- Title of the Fore word, Singamaneni Narayana
There is only one alphabet difference in the Telugu word, kshemam and kshamam.
The first word conveys “well being, safe and happiness”.
On the contrary the second means, drought.
In the common letter writing practice of Telugu, the letter starts with the line, “Every body here is ksheman”, safe.
And this one difference of alphabet used by the editor, speaks enough about the pathetic human situation, true to life.
***
Acknowledgements
My sincere thanks to Sri Singamaneni Narayana garu and Sri Shanthi Narayana garu, Editors and all the writers of inupa gajjela thalli.
References
1. Inupa gajjela thalli, (Mother of iron anklets) An anthology of Telugu stories edited by Singamaneni Narayana, Santhi Narayana (2004).
2. Peter Widdowson, “Hardy and History : A case study in the sociology of literature, literature and history” (1983).
3. Louis Montrose, ‘renaissance literary studies and the subject of history’, ‘English literary and the theory of the subject’ (1977)
4. Rosaland Coward and John ELLIS, language and Materialism: Developments in semiology and the theory of the subject (1977).
5. Barthes, “Science versus Literature”.