Celebrating renewal, rebirth

Da Ra Bendre

Channaveera Kanavi

K S Narasimhaswamy

Gopala Krishna Adiga

Most Kannada cultural programmes on Ugadi invariably begin with the renowned Kannada poet Da Ra Bendre’s eponymous poem. Originally published in the epoch-making collection Gari (1932), Ugadi was adapted into the soundtrack of the Kannada film Kulavadhu (1963). It was so mellifluously rendered by S Janaki, that no household in Karnataka celebrates Ugadi without evoking the memory of this poem.

Ugadi is a festival associated with the renewal of nature as a cyclical process and resembles the fertility myths shared by a majority of cultures across the world. Bendre’s poem, complex in its exploration of the difference between the human world and that of nature, went on to be interpreted as a sentimental celebration of the cyclical processes of the natural world. The poem strides two worlds — that of nature, with its inexhaustible potential for renewal and rebirth and the evanescence of the human world.

“Why can’t every sleep be a death and awakening, a rebirth...” the poem asks.

And now, with the advent of new media, all celebrations of Ugadi invariably host a rendition of the poem.

Healthy scepticism

Gopala Krishna Adiga, who ushered in the navya (modernist) poetry in Kannada, featured poems on Ugadi in almost every collection of his poems.

The first of these, written under the influence of the progressive phase in Kannada literature, and later poems from the modernist phase express a healthy scepticism about observing a festival that celebrates rejuvenation innocently. Several of Adiga’s poems on Ugadi are about the impossibility of such regeneration.

The ambiguity in his approach probably stems from an insecurity created by a newly emerging social world. In the poem, he pessimistically declares that the Ugadi new year brings no solace to the socially underprivileged.

In his later poems, he sees Ugadi as a possibility of renewal but only when every individual takes on the responsibility to refashion themselves.

In Kannada poetry, Ugadi is a metaphor for the possibility of renewal and also a sad reminder of the inability of the human world to emulate the endless cycle of nature. K S Narasimha Swamy, known for his celebration of the quotidian aspects of life, writes that Ugadi reminds us that time has neither a beginning nor an end — but in the brief interregnum of life given to us, the festival brings joy and the world looks like a street decorated with festoons.

But in another poem, he describes how the cuckoo, the herald of the new year’s spring, “sings of hunger — sitting on a tree in the concrete jungle of Bengaluru.”

In another poem on Ugadi, he says:

Though the heart burns
The song shall never end
That which ends is not a song.

Cultural memories

Channaveera Kanavi’s poetry too is strewn with images of Ugadi. In a charming poem, Ugadi has arrived in the guise of an old village elder but goes unnoticed in a modern world that has lost its cultural memories. This is a world that has twisted the traditional Ugadi wish into “the bitter neem for you and the sweet jaggery for me.”

Kanavi with his unshakeable faith in the essential goodness of life welcomes the new year by saying, “the cuckoo has issued its advertisement. The poem is printed on the first page of the special issue of the spring season, let us see what is predicted in the almanac of the new year.”

In yet another poem, he celebrates the return of the ‘Chaitra Purusha’ because his coming is an affirmation of the rejuvenation of humanity. Remembering one such event in history — the enlightenment achieved by the Buddha — he says, “the Bodhi tree spreads its shade on the road which all ages have to traverse. Sometimes, under its shade sit peace and compassion. Somewhere in the cave of the human heart burns the lamp lit in Kalyana.”

The Bodhi tree and the Kalyana of the 12th century vachanakaras are metaphors of renewals in human history and Ugadi is a symbol of the many beginnings that make life meaningful. This faith is echoed in K S Narasimhaswamy’s poem in which man is a traveller on a road with no end. Somewhere from afar, the joy beyond suffering continues to beckon to him. So, he welcomes Ugadi by offering both neem and jaggery.

Masti Venkatesh Iyengar wrote ‘Ugrappana Ugadi,’ a charming story about a utopian rural world of harmony and mutually dependent co-existence of all communities. Ugrappa, the Patel or village headman, is a generous, tolerant and wise man for whom the honour and wellbeing of the village mean everything.

On Ugadi day, he attends tirelessly to the several problems of the village — from a predatory cheetah to disputes about water sharing. Masti reconstructs the organic society of the past. In this nostalgic vision, Ugadi becomes an unobtrusive symbol of a lost world.

With all our scepticism about the past, Kannada literature has stored such cultural memories around Ugadi, transforming a festival into a metaphor.

And Kannada poetry has employed this metaphor not sentimentally but for serious reflection on the dualities of life — neem and jaggery.

What does all this mean to a society now disconnected from both cultural and literary memories? One which speaks the language of hate, with each community turned into an island. Where then, are the possibilities of renewal?

In a very different tone, Bendre’s poem had asked why humans are denied the gift of cyclical birth and death. K S Narasimhaswamy believed that even now, “every step can herald a new Ugadi” if we retain our humanity. Let us see what answer we give ourselves during the new year.

(The writer is a literary and cultural critic based in Shivamogga)