There's something for every reader in ‘A Teashop in Kamalapura and Other Classic Kannada Stories'

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17-05-2025

In the stories in A Teashop in Kamalapura and Other Classic Kannada Stories, a tea-seller's lies spiral out of control, a banana sapling becomes the joy and terror of children, and two lovers meet in London. The stories vary in texture and topics, bound together by the sole thread of having been originally crafted by Kannada writers between 1900 and 1995.
Mini Krishnan serves as the collection's editor, plucking the stories from bygone magazines and journals, while Susheela Punitha translated them with a mission to 'transport the spirit of the story'. The stories span across the three phases of modern Kannada literature: Navodaya or Renaissance, like the titular 'A Teashop in Kamalapura', Pragatishila or Progressive, marked by the growing translations of stories beyond English, particularly from Russia and China, and finally, Navya or Modernism where form becomes a playground for experimentation, as in the dramatised and dialogue-centric 'A Gift for the Festival'. As with the Odia and Malayalam editions of Krishnan's series, A Teashop in Kamalapura and Other Classic Kannada Stories is a mixture of being dazzlingly historically significant while also providing an enjoyable reading experience.
Removing the shroud
Many of the collection's strongest stories are preoccupied with the disintegrating image of institutional religion in the eyes of the general public. From the justifications of wealth disparity to the systemic subjugation of women, something about traditional Hinduism isn't sitting well with the people of Karnataka, and the stories reflect this. In Saraswathibai Rajawade's 'The Battered Heart', the guru of a monastery dies – repeatedly stabbed in the chest and back – by a woman who used to worship him. As detectives swarm the monastery, the woman emerges, blood-soaked and giddy, proclaiming that she is solely responsible for the murder. As the rest of the group hurls abuses at her, she slowly reveals her reasons. The guru had approached her years ago, claiming they had been married in a past life and now must serve each other as a married couple, hidden under the shroud of secrecy. Grateful for being noticed by the guru and honoured to be his karmic wife, he kept her shut away in a secret room, drugging her with poisoned milk so that she quickly slept after their nights together.
Meanwhile, the guru would venture into other secret rooms – each filled with another unknowing and tricked woman – and perform the same process. She found out; she sought revenge. The guru's coercion spanned years and affected multiple women, yet the monastery, shattered in their faith, labelled her as mentally unstable. The fate of the rest of the freed women remains unwritten. The story is punchy, powerful, and remarkably contemporary, for one written in 1939.
Local flavours
On a softer note, HV Savithramma's 'An Episode' is another highlight of the collection. Where 'The Battered Heart' leans toward spectacle and plot, 'An Episode' is subtle and atmospheric, painting the picture of two lovers who lose each other not through a dramatic break-up but through circumstance. Maadhu is in London for a year when he meets Grace. Unlike his wife back in India, Grace is working, is family-less, and is introverted in the same way Maadhu is. They quickly move in together and spend their time walking in parks and watching movies in the cinema. Yet Maadhu's return to India, and to his wife, is fast approaching. The two separate amicably, each too distraught to process their emotions. Grace contents herself with the residual smell of Maadhu's hair oil on her pillow while Maadhu busies himself with his hectic life in India, thinking of Grace often but having no one to share these thoughts with. Their longing grows, as do their lives apart. 'An Episode' is reminiscent of Graham Greene's The End of an Affair, mixed in with flavours that are so wholly Indian that the whole is more touching than any comparison could do justice to. The stories of Maadhu and Grace live on in the reader long after the tale has ended – a remarkable feat for Savithramma in a short story collection with so many moods and characters packed in.
Krishnan's series – including the Kannada collection – holds a treasured spot on my bookshelves, and I suspect that this will be true for any reader who finds themselves lost in her carefully curated stories of the past. The series – apart from their beauty and insight – serves as emphatic evidence to publishers that more Indian stories must be translated, not only for their significance but for the sheer pleasure of reading them.