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| Untouchable Spring (2000) by Kalyana Rao |
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| Map of Andhra Pradesh |
-Brian Mendonca
Untouchable Spring (2000) by Kalyana Rao is included in a course titled Modern Indian Writing in English Translation. The novel is a valuable addition in terms of understanding the Dalit psyche and the ignominies they faced. It is dedicated to his parents and four of his associates who were killed by Andhra police in an encounter in the Koyyuru forests in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh on 1 December 1999. (vi)
Reading the novel was like returning to a part of my life when I spent my years doing my research in Hyderabad (1993-98). Capital of Telangana state founded in 2014, Hyderabad continues to be the epicentre of events which rock the state vis a vis its other half described as coastal Andhra as it skirts the Bay of Bengal.
As the names of places in the novel tumbled across the pages I was transported to the mess table where sites like Machilipatnam, Sirsailam, Nallamalai and Nalgonda were bandied about in Telugu. Yet under this levity was the grim reality of the consciousness of a people, many of whose aspirations had been spurned.
The suicide of Rohit Vemula in Hyderabad in 2016 brought to the fore the discrimination allegedly rampant in institutions of higher learning. His suicide note emerges out of the fact that his mother was a mala and was ill treated by the upper castes when he was young.
Kalyana Rao weaves a compelling story around six generations of malas in his story Antarini Vasantam [Silent Spring]. Powered by the central figure of the travelling bard Yellana, - mala bairagi (97) - the story documents the idiom of resistance from song and dance to armed struggle.
Yellana and his wife Subhadra are the epitome of an ideal couple. Even when Yellana leaves his wife and son - like Sidhartha - the good wife takes it all in her stride. It is only in their final scene that they are finally united through their son Sivaiah. (134)
The women characters are portrayed as being with great courage. From the childless Boodevi who lends a hand to Lingalu (Yellana's mother and Yerrenkadu's wife) to Mary who waits for her husband Emmanuel (Reuben's son), women are a constant support, intervening like Subhadra when fear paralyses their menfolk. Subhadra is seen akin to a goddess when she diverts the water to the fields of the untouchables. (116) It is the women who form a human hut to protect the woman Sendri who is giving birth to a child. (226)
The story is told in flashback by Ruth, from the fourth generation, who memorializes her husband Reuben (Sivaiah's son) by recalling the stories he told her, the way he laughed and the way he came silently into her life and left silently.
When Jessie tells his mother Mary and his wife Ruby that he must leave them and and fight for the cause of the Dalits, they do not stop him as he goes in the rain and melts in the night. Ruby expresses her longing in a beautiful poem:
He'll come
Like the seed embedded deep within the earth
The one who doesn't care for death for the sake of life,
My beloved, he'll come.
Though he didn't say he'll come.
He'll come. (253)
The story is set in Yennela Dinni, the place Yennala comes from. When the elder karanam misbehaves the madiga Mataiah chops his head off with an axe. (54)
At every stage the novel provides a critique of received wisdom. Retelling the incident of the hungry child Krishna and Yashoda, the novel tells us Yasodattha would beat her child and hide him in her hungry stomach, 'asking him to search for grains of food if only he could find them.' (65)
Due to extreme poverty Sivaiah converts to Christianity becoming Simon. He encounters Martin of the American Baptist Mission at Nellore. (145) In an ironic twist, the stars which were used to inspire the chukkala muggukara - patterns on the courtyard - are now seen as the stars of Bethlehem.
Questing for a better tomorrow the Dalits become communists and face the ire of the police. In the Avalapadu incident the upper caste Choudhary rats on the Dalits and helps the police create the FIRs implicating the mala caste with communism. (222)
Kalyana Rao describes the scene of the return of Emmanuel with great tenderness through the eyes of his mother, 'The child she thought would return did not return alone. He brought along hundreds of men. He did not speak, He used hundreds of voices to make him speak. She could not believe her child was dead. (243)
Actual incidents in the armed struggle are fictionalized in the novel. The attack on the Dalits in Karamchedu madigapalli on 17 July 1985 is one. (255) The second part of the novel dwells on social reform. Gandhiji (1869-1948) visits Andhra. He travels past Bitragunta. (200) The concept of 'Hari-jan' is debated. (192) The efforts of reformers like Periyar (1879-1973) and Phule (1827-1890) are mentioned. (200-01)
Ruth begins the novel and ends the novel. Situated as she is with three generations before her and three after, she has the last word. She has lost so much. With her husband Reuben gone and her son Emmanuel martyred she writes to her grandson Jessie who has left to meet with the same fate.
She addresses him as the bird ponnangi pitta.
In the garden of graves, your grandfather sleeps on that side of your father. I too feel like that. There's enough space on this side . . .
When your father left home and went away, our lives were overwhelmed with sorrow. But when we saw his life leaving his body and becoming one with the people, pride peeped out of us in all that sorrow . . .
Beneath my grave, the words below, just these few words are enough. Make sure they are written.
'Her memory rested in the on-going war.' (262-64)
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Untouchable Spring by G. Kalyana Rao. Translated from the Telugu Antarani Vasantam by Alladi Uma and M. Sridhar. Hyderabad, Telangana: Orient Blackswan, 2010. For 'Life and Struggle of the Dalits in Kalyan Rao's Untouchable Spring' see Souda 2019 and for 'Portrayal of Dalit Women in Untouchable Spring' see Kishore 2018. Updated 12/11/22.
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