A Siddalingaiah omnibus

His life story

. Seen God?

. I saw an intriguing advertisement in the paper. It said those who did not believe in God could meet a holy man who would show God to them. My friend Devarajappa and I went to the given address. We met the holy man and paid our respects. I appealed to him to show us god. He rambled about this and that. Not satisfied, we rained questions on him. He eventually said, ‘Why are you trying so hard? I am God myself.’ I then said, ‘Swami, there are millions of gods. Which of them are you?’ He replied, ‘I am Shiva.’ With a serious face, I said, ‘Sir, in that case you have committed a murder.’ He was rattled. ‘What murder? I haven’t murdered anyone,’ he shot back. ‘Didn’t you burn Manmatha to death with your third eye when he ruined your penance?’ I said. The holy man gathered his wits and said, ‘Oh? That fellow was acting smart with me. That’s why I burnt him to ashes.’ ‘Swami, where do you live?’ was our next question. ‘Kailasa,’ he said. I persisted, ‘Swami, you shot an arrow of flowers and killed Manmatha. But in 1962, the Chinese bombed your Kailasa and entered India. What were you doing then?’ Not in the least ruffled now, he replied, ‘The Indians weren’t showing enough devotion towards me. That is why I set the Chinese on them.’ By then, devotees who had gathered around him were planning to beat us up. We escaped.

. Oleander tree

. An oleander tree stood near our hostel. If you climbed atop, you could look into the bedroom of a house nearby. As soon as it was 10 at night, the couple living there would take off their clothes and start making love. Sitting on the tree, we got a good view. Some would climb the tree promptly at 10. Others would hang their towels on the branches to book their places in advance. The couple were oblivious to all this. They were experts and made love in a variety of postures. For the boys on the tree, watching was pleasure enough. Word got around, and more people than the tree could bear started climbing it. One day, as lots of people sat watching the love sport, the tree came crashing down. The spectators fell to the ground. Their wailing reached the couple’s ears. With no tree the next day, the students felt helpless. The couple got curtains for their windows.

. Call from Doordarshan

. I received a letter from Doordarshan, inviting me to read my poems, and promising me a suitable honorarium. On the appointed day, I presented myself at the TV station. I went to the room of the official who had written to me. He took me to the green room, saying the make-up artist would smarten me up. The artist there was applying creams and powders on the face of an elderly man. It slowly dawned on me that it was the Kannada poet Dr Ramachandra Sharma. He looked so different. It was my turn next.

. After the make-up artist was done with me, I took a close look at the mirror. His skill was such that I had been transformed into a Tamil film comedian. I glanced at Sharma. He looked like a European who had just landed there. The crew took us to the studio, but felt it wasn’t the right place for us to read our poems. They then took us outside, and decided to shoot us standing by a tree next to the studio building. It was a short tree, and since I am short, it looked fine. But since Sharma was tall, it looked disproportionate. An assistant plucked some branches from other trees and made it look taller. The producer was not impressed. An idea occurred to him and he ran amok like Archimedes just out of his bathtub.

. “Why are you acting crazy? How much longer?” Sharma said. He then told us his idea: we had to go to Cubbon Park, choose one rock each near the bandstand, and begin rehearsing. His team would follow us with the equipment. We did as told, and sat waiting on a rock for the crew to arrive. Nothing happened for 45 minutes, and Sharma was furious. “Sir, I am okay, but they shouldn’t insult a senior poet like you. Let’s go away,” I said. We sat in his foreign car, and he drove towards M G Road. He stopped at an expensive bar, and we went inside. He ordered good whiskey. It was approaching 1 pm, and we had downed a peg each. He continued ordering more. I was overjoyed, but maintained my dignified exterior and said, “Sir, I came to read poetry, but you are something that inspires poetry. I don’t know how to thank you.” He laughed and said, “Have another peg.” I must say I drank too much under the encouragement of the senior poet. One part of my brain said he was Sharma, and another said he was Varma from north India.

. And then, things took a bizarre turn. Three men raided the bar and started darting around. I assumed they were detectives. The only thing that wasn’t in the picture was a dog. They looked in every nook and cranny. We sat watching them curiously. Suddenly, one of them spotted us and yelled, “The poets are here!” The other customers in the bar were flabbergasted to know the men were looking for poets, not criminals. The detectives told us the cameras were ready, and implored us to go to Cubbon Park. Sharma refused point blank. “How did you know we were here? Do you think poets are drunks?” he said. The men explained they had looked everywhere at the park, and in every bar in the vicinity, and had found us by luck. By then, I was in no position even to stand. I refused to go. The crew eventually convinced us to return to the park.

. Sharma emerged from behind a rock, and impressed all of us with his dramatic reading. I managed to limp in, took missteps up the rock, and read out my poems, flailing my hands and vigorously bobbing my head. Sharma approved of my reading with a ‘V’ sign. The crew enjoyed it too, and thanked us. When the programme was telecast, hundreds of viewers praised us, saying they had never seen such a reading. I never told anyone about the state we were in when we recited our poems.

. King’s story

. C Narayana Reddy was then a member of the legislative council. He had published a weekly for a while. A follower of Sanjay Gandhi during the Emergency, he had launched the Sanjay Vichar Manch. He was reserved, and spoke little. He would make an occasional speech in the council and go away. He usually sat all alone near the entrance to the lounge, lost in thought. Not many knew about his background and so wouldn’t bother about him. Since I was familiar with his past, I greeted him a couple of times. He grew fond of me and began to call me for tea whenever he spotted me.

. One day, I praised the Meenakshi temple he had built on Bannerghatta Road. He was delighted. He put a hand on my shoulder and said, “Siddalingaiah, I have built it like a replica of the Meenakshi temple in Madurai. Do you know who built the temple in Madurai?” I said I had no idea. “You are right, not many know about it. I will tell you something because you are a good man,” he said.

. He asked me again if I knew who had built it. I sat looking at his face, as I had already displayed my ignorance. “It is me,” he said. I was taken aback. “How is that possible, sir? It was built so many centuries ago,” I said. “That is the mystery, and only I can talk about it. I was a king in my previous birth, and ruled the Madurai province. I was Raja Kulashekara Pandian, and I built the Madurai Meenakshi temple because of my devotion. Even now, when I go to Madurai, I am flooded with memories and I shed tears of joy,” he said.

. The astrologer who had told him about his past life had suggested, “You then built the Madurai temple and gained fame. Why don’t you build a temple in Bengaluru and make this life worthwhile?” Narayana Reddy had accepted his advice and built the temple. Then someone said, “The mother has found a place to stay. What about the father and son?” And so, he said, he had built temples for Shiva and Ganesha as well. My curiosity aroused, I asked him about the wars he had fought. He started talking about how he had killed hundreds of enemy soldiers, decapitating them and playing ball with their heads. I was distressed and changed the subject. I asked him, not without trepidation, about his harem. “Frankly, I have no idea how many queens I had. And I have lost count of the number of the princes I sired.” “Sir, how many in this life?” I said. “I will have to be behind bars if I try to do what I did in my previous life,” he said.

. I had seen the temple. Although I had no belief in God, I had meditated in the shade of its compound. I suggested to Narayana Reddy that he should get all members of the legislative council to visit his temple. I signed a request for a bus, got other legislators to add their signatures, and handed it to the speaker. On the appointed day, a bus took us to the temple. The legislators enjoyed seeing it. Narayana Reddy hosted a lunch at a choultry he had built next to the temple. When we went there, he was sitting with a regal demeanour on a throne. He had perhaps forgotten to wear his crown. A huge gold pendant adorned his neck. He walked down and took care of his guests. I told a couple of close friends that he was the one who had built the Meenakshi temple in Madurai. They looked at me as though I had lost my mind. Disappointed, I did not speak about this past-life secret any more.

. (Excerpts from Ooru Keri, Siddalingaiah’s autobiography in Kannada, published in three volumes. The last two episodes here appear in print for the first time in English translation. Volume I and II are available in English translation as ‘A Word With You, World,’ published by Navayana)

. His poetry

. Sock it to them, kick them

. Dig in and rip out the bastards’ skins.

. They say God is one

. and build a different temple

. on each lane.

. They say we are all God’s children

. and act like they see snakes

. when they see Holeyas.

. They don’t let us in anywhere —

. at the hotels, wells and their houses,

. but they let into their rooms

. the dogs that eat our shit.

. They eat what we grow,

. they take our toil,

. it is us they don’t want.

. They call us Harijans,

. and not Holeyas and Madigas,

. only to mock us.

. They hold meetings about us,

. they make laws for us.

. In our name, they garland others

. and get garlanded.

. In the newspapers

. and on loudspeakers,

. they shout they are making our lot better.

. But we can’t go to school,

. we must slave away.

. We can’t look up,

. we must keep our heads bowed.

. These bastards are playing games.

. That’s why you should

. sock it to them, kick them,

. break the bastards’ bones.

. (Holemadigara Haadu, 1975)

. Thousands of Rivers

. Yesterday, my people

. advanced like mountains.

. Their faces dark, beards white,

. and eyes burning, they tore asunder

. night and day and kicked aside their sleep.

. The blankets groaned to see them rise.

. The earth shook under their dancing frenzy.

. They marched on like ants,

. roaring like lions and tigers.

. Down down inequality,

. Down down the arrogance of the rich.

. Like a million cobras coming out of hiding,

. they crawled all over town,

. they descended into the depths,

. they leaped up to the skies.

. On the streets and in the lanes,

. in the shadows of the bamboo groves,

. in their masters’ houses,

. and on the bosses’ chairs,

. my people were a deluge.

. The moment they spoke,

. the others shut up.

. The moment their voice emerged,

. the others fell silent.

. My people swung their arms

. in the storm of revolution,

. and held by the neck

. the ones who had whipped them.

. Police batons, agents’ knives,

. the Vedas, shastras, puranas,

. the armouries and their guns

. fell like twigs and dry leaves

. to drift away on the waters.

. A thousand rivers flow

. into the ocean of struggle.

. (From Saaviraaru Nadigalu, 1979)

. What academia says

. D R Nagaraj, culture critic and longtime friend

. This age has celebrated, through many ideologies, the rebellious and revolutionary nature of the poor. Socialism and communism are perhaps names given to the aspirations of the poor. But the more this age contemplated the poor, the more it diminished them. The more hunger was regarded as the centre of human life, the more the other dimensions of the poor shrank… Sidddalingaiah’s autobiography contains elements that we may expect in a Dalit writer’s work: poverty, rage, and humiliation. But we also find something fresh and unexpected throughout the work: the absence of any fear in relation to poverty and violence. A Dalit story without poverty and caste humiliation would be false. But that this writer triumphs over them in his imagination is equally true. By slightly distorting the hunger and humiliation in his life, poet Siddalingaiah points to ways in which they can be overcome.

. (From his afterword to ‘Ooru Keri.’)

. Vijeta Kumar Assistant professor, St Joseph’s College (Autonomous), Bengaluru

. I read Siddalingaiah’s autobiography to my students, all the way from undergraduate to postgraduate classes. Many are from the northern states, and fluent only in English — they are astonished to read about Siddalingaiah’s experiences. For one, they discover a totally new way of being political. His writing has a therapeutic effect on students from less affluent backgrounds: they are no longer ashamed of their childhood and growing-up experiences. I teach a paper called ‘Resisting caste,’ and Siddalingaiah’s writing provides the basis for animated debates.

. Nataraj Huliyar Poet, novelist and playwright

. Siddalingaiah was the most influential Kannada poet in the last couple of decades of the 20th century. He directly connected with the masses through his poetry and speeches. His active involvement in Dalit and leftist movements made him a people’s poet. His songs instilled new confidence among young Dalits. His poetry shaped the tone of Dalit and Bandaya poetry. With its tragicomic mode, his autobiography created a new tone for the genre, and his comic essays on Gods demystified them. An MLC for 12 years, he demonstrated how an activist-intellectual could make a difference to the suffering masses. His writings have the potential to inspire and influence generations to come.

. Chandan Gowda Professor and columnist

. The philosophical implications of this autobiography are profound. Frantz Fanon, the famous Algerian psychiatrist, argued that only a violent engagement would set the dominated free. Siddalingaiah offers a powerful, alternative perspective. He affirms his selfhood without a trace of resentment towards vicious social games, while also doubting the value of the very things prized in those games. A philosophy for a liberation of the self without violence is present in the book in unarticulated form; it requires careful excavation.

A Siddalingaiah omnibus

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