“ And when they ask us what we’re doing, you can say, we’re remembering.”— Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
Talking to journalists after winning the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature in 2019, Jayant Kaikini ( No Presents Please: Mumbai Stories) said he was influenced by many experiences of his childhood, not least the Yakshagana tradition famous in the coastal region of Karnataka. A liberating art form, which opened up multiple windows, he said Yakshagana “groomed the sensibility of each mind in coastal Karnataka, with its reinterpretation of the classics through the use of music, dance and visual aesthetics.” He was taken in particularly by the transformation of ordinary citizens like a teacher or vegetable vendor into magical larger-than-life characters like Arjuna, for example.
Kaikini’s book of short stories, written in Kannada, was translated into English by Tejwaswini Niranjana; and growing up with a sensibility of being open to the world, it’s not a surprise that Kaikini himself has translated many English stories and plays into Kannada. Last fortnight, it must have come as a shock to him when Bajrang Dal activists in Shimoga disrupted a performance of Fiddler on the Roof, the musical he had translated into Kannada ( Jathegiruvanu Chandira), the Jewish family in the story replaced by Muslim characters, with one of the characters falling in love with a Hindu boy. But why should a play that celebrates interfaith amity upset anyone?
