TELUGU SHORT STORY: Perceptions, Perspectives and Performance
V.V.B. Rama Rao
Perceptions:
What sustained the story down the centuries has been the ‘what next’ motif. It has been a source of entertainment for man right from early childhood. It
came to be an anodyne for boredom and/ or exhaustion – for relaxation, sometimes for even edification by being thought provoking.
Short story in Telugu began in the first decade of the 20th century. Gurajada’s “Diddubaatu”, some claim was the first. Achanta Sankhyayana Sarma was
also claimed to be the pioneer in the genre. It is interesting that both hailed from the erstwhile Visahkhapatnam District under the composite Madras Presidency and
both came from the creamy layer of that society, Niyogi Brahmins. In the beginning, story was used as a device for moral edification. During the pre-
Independence period, it did not have the wider sociological thrust, which came to be an essential requisite in later years. After Independence, with political equality
assured, new vistas opened up. Socialism came to be recognized as essential for national progress and social harmony. Leftist thinking made this imperative.
Literature in its important genres came to be used as a device for awakening social awareness, by driving home with a fine thrust, the heartlessness of
hegemony and human inequity. Saamajikaspruha lay in a sociological preoccupation in a writer to expose exploitation, discrimination and pitiless domination. Near
accomplishment of political equality led to democratization in the filed of literary activity. Literature was the first to be liberated being brought into the midst of the
generality of people. Films contributed to the flowering of thought in people. Writers began to emerge from all sections of society. Women began to find their
voices kept stifled for long.
After the fifties in the last century of the previous millennium the print media played a big role in promoting enthusiastic newcomers in fiction, long and
short. Films needed good themes and stories. Many novels were made into films and very successful ones at that. A number of journals and even some daily
newspapers began to use stories and long fiction as serials. Telugu did not lag behind. The realization of the inadequacy of the vote as an equalizing force resulted
in powerful voices demanding an opportunity for power sharing, hungering for social equality in real life situation. Reservations have been found to be inadequate,
and for that reason, not the complete answer for social justice. Short story thrived. There was a boom of long fiction, especially by the fair sex, who instinctively
know how to drive home their point in myriad ways. They won the hearts of the readers and their point. They came to be heard; their voice was persuasive,
convincing and logical.
Education spread, making more and more come forward with their writing. Short story enjoyed great demand. Regional linguistic variations also began
demanding space for the hitherto marginalized. The idea of a standard language was seen as a constricting force for those yearning to express themselves in their
own variant of a big language community. This necessitated the emergence of an almost new literature (with gumption underlining human truth, laying bare the
human condition and exposing the tears in the nature of things all the time) showcasing regional, local varieties of expression in the same language system. The
short story and free verse came to gain wide publicity for, influenced by writers, people began to look both around and into themselves.
The brightest side of the picture shows the emerging trend of following the basic trend of Nativism (‘our’ tribulations, ‘our’ problems, ‘our’ professions,
‘our’ people, and ‘our’ own spoken language) as seen in the brand new writers. Though it remains to be seen as to how long it continues with verve to crystallize
into a movement, there has been a prolific production of short fiction along with free verse. Register-wise, profession-wise, even caste-wise writing to highlight
social problems faithfully and realistically acquired a good ‘space’. Telangana writing, Rayalaseema writing, came to attract wide reader attention. Fiction like
khakee batukulu dealing with experiences of working in the police dept, or ramesam revenue udyogam describing the experiences of working in the revenue
department too, have come up.
Things have come to such a pass that some saw ‘fragmentation’ of literature. Seminars were conducted on the subject. “Fragmentation of Literature” is
possibly an attitudinal misnomer for ‘diversification’ and ‘democratization’ of creative writing. It is a fear that literature is being broken to cater to particular
peoples in a language community. In the Indian context, the depressed classes, the hitherto neglected, are writing for a clientele, which is very limited. Yearning for
identity, personal or group related and individual insights are basic to creative expression. Diversity is not fragmentation.
New Perspectives:
With the perceptions of literature thus undergoing some kind of expansion, new perspectives opened up. Earlier the target readers for the writers have been
all Telugu-speaking people. The attention and the purview of the writer is focussed sharply on people speaking a particular regional variety and describing a
particular strata or class of people with a sense of social reality tempered with sociological consciousness, saamajika spruha. With this, the short story began to
come up powerfully in regional varieties of expression, focussing on the downtrodden, the oppressed and the neglected and those from the lowest of the low
occupations.
In the hands of some writers, as a genre, short story went on expanding the techniques in narration, description and the handling of dialogue, exploring the
charm of ‘categories’ and ‘labels’ from other languages and cultures. The influences have not been only from other countries but also from other regions in our
own country. There has been a slowly growing demand for fiction translated from our bhasha (Indian languages) short stories. KATHA has come up as a hard
working non-commercial voluntary organization. The attitudes of writers from bhashas, the points of their focus, their empathy for the weak are shaping the story
in Telugu. The enormous popularity of a monthly like VIPULA is a case in point. Even other Telugu periodicals are including translated stories in their wares.
(Some may even see a signal of the waning of talent inside the state but this is stretching the argument untenably far.)
Performance:
For the last two decades, Telugu short story has been forging ahead with rapid strides. Writers writing in a ‘variety’ of regional language have come into
deserved prominence. Among the many a few could be easily cited readily: besides the already prominent like Naveen, Mudiganti Sujata Reddy, Yashoda Reddy and
Kasula Pratapa Reddy (CHAURASTA), several others made very singificant contributions. They are Dr Chandrasekhara Rao, Kaluva Mallayya, Peddinti Ashok
Kumar, Aitha Chandrayya to name some. These writers have brought into the fore the agony of the neglected region and the neglected among the pitiably poor in
the rural areas of Telangana. The media justifiably promoted the new writers with zeal and verve. Some writers went beyond writing stories, which riveted the
attention of the complacent rest of the Andhra Pradesh. There was a demand to recognize their language as Telanganam with status equivalent to that of Telugu.
Their question: ‘If they (those in Telangana) could understand Telugu, why the rest in the state cannot understand theirs – Telanganam?’
A daily newspaper in Telugu held a colloquium on the subject “Is Regional Awareness essential in Literature?” (Saahityam lo praanteeya spruha avasaramaa?
AndhraBhoomi Sahiti, June 17, 2002). “What is a Telugu story?” asked Kaluva Mallayya and answered the question himself in the newspaper article. “A Telugu
story must represent the concerns of the people of the region they live in. A Telugu story should have telugudanam, the quality of being Telugu.” It is relevant to
recall here that in the good old world Andhra Patrika, while announcing the Deepavali Story Contest would lay down that the entries of the stories should reflect
this telugudanam in character, incident as well as the culture , life style etc. This is fair enough. But what if the language ‘deliberately’ and ‘thoughtlessly’
becomes incomprehensible when used for all characters and descriptions just to make it correspond to a particular variety of language? Readers would not be able
to understand such writing and there would be near breakdown of communication.
Against the background of a demand for a separate state for the people of Telangana, the vociferous demands of people are understandable. Any writing
should be reader-friendly. Some storywriters question, among other things, the invention of some comic characters using only a kind of the spoken language of
that particular region in a very denigrating way.
A newspaper item written by one from Telangana writer was: “Are language battles inevitable?” Telugu has only one word yuddham for both war and battle,
said Choppadandi Sudhakar. S. Shoba Devi pleaded for a language movement. These ideas are nor really irrelevant in the discussion of short story in Telugu.
People began to point out that Telugu story began with Gunadhya and Hala and the modern short story began with Madapati Hanumantha Rao and Suravarapu
Pratapa Reddy. One writer vociferously held that it was sheer injustice that Gurajada and his Vizianagaram should be given the credit or to somebody else, since it
was Karimnagar, which produced the first short story. Another person wrote that Siddipuram (today’s Siddipet) as the birthplace and location of a mine of stories.
All these are mentioned only to highlight the bubbling enthusiasm of the writers to go beyond the realm of the story and project their yearning for a separate
state for their region, among other things, on that count too. The achievement of the Telanagana writers is distinct and distinctive. They claim (rightly to some
extent) that the lowest of the low attracted the attention of their storywriters when others in Telugu went on writing about the middle class.
A committed writer, B.S.Ramulu, came up with a very helpful suggestion that writers explain some words (in footnotes or some other way), which readers
outside their Telangana region find hard to understand. A commitment to ideology in creative writing is laudable but artistic execution in a work of art is as
important.
Recent Publications – Points of particular Reference
Regional and even varieties of social class levels have come up in recent years. This is widening the horizons of the short story from the point of language
and expression and different styles and preoccupations. Chaurasta, already referred to, Ootabaayi (Peddinti Ashok Kumar) and Jeevani (Dr V.Chandrasekhara
Rao) hold the mirror upto a specific regional reality. Mittoorodikathalu (Naamini Subrahmanyam Naidu), written in the language of Rayalaseema, is a class by
itself. Munipalle Raju’s Astitwaaniki aavala, purported to be in the genre of magical realism, drew praise as well as hard criticism. There is evidently a risk of
labelling one’s own writing with terms and categories perfected by outsiders. If labels are a must we have to evolve them ourselves with enough theoretical
buttressing. Somasunder, a reputed poet, provocatively titled his critique on Munipalle’s book Rokali thalaku chuttukunna kathakudu, the storywriter, who tied
the tall wooden pestle round his head. These stories are philosophical in a sense but surely readable for the complexity and newness they have. Somaraju Suseela’s
Illeramma kathalu (Brahmin, ‘Familectic”) are also novel with fresh insights, observation and the truth of life. These stories opened up a new vista of life. Quite a
few years ago, I chanced upon a volume of stories, Crossfire, by Sadashiva Rao. They are refreshing with a touch of complexity, which according to a friend of
mine, the Telugu short story generally lacks. (Many took long time to appreciate this quality in the presentation of the story line in the excellent film Saagara
Sangamam.) The stories of L.R.Swamy, not confined to a region, are full of aardrata, the most valuable aspect of literary creation. His stories in the collection
Godavari station are replete with a subtle denunciation of human ingratitude and heartlessness.
There is more to short story than mere reform or search for identity after fifty and odd years of self-government. To say this is no denigration of either
samajika spruha or astitwa aakaanksha. As a genre of imaginative literature and creative self-expression, it has other functions too – like charting the unmapped
regions of the mind with insight and imagination. Social realism is fine but there is a more vital kind of realism, which is the psychological. With the same Nativist
touch and social awareness individual psyches too could be explored against the Telugu background in a suitable artistic form. When this is accomplished, Telugu
story can aspire to reach a wider readership enlarging its clientele by exploring fresh regions of the mind and new areas hitherto unnoticed.
There appears now an urgent need today for short story writers for a widely intelligible variety of Telugu with mutual intelligibility in different areas. Effort
must be made to evolve to the extent possible and necessary dialectically neutral, ‘standard’ language. Reviewing a book of Telugu stories in English translation,
Akkiraju Ramapati Rao wrote: “Writing can and shall be in regional varieties. But if the meaning is unintelligible who can one approach? Our dictionaries have not
gone that high. Isn’t it difficult if the story is incomprehensible? Is it not a barrier for the joy of reading?”
In an essay in Katha Varshini 2002, Vallampati Venkata Subbaiah wrote, “It is inevitable that a slice of life from a region can be presented only in a language
of that region. But we are forgetting as to how this ‘mandalization’ (the regional variations) could be taken.(Kathaasaahityacharcha goshti Andhra Jyoti Feb 23,
2003)
Translation of Telugu stories of the recent years with stress on densely regional varieties of our language is beset with all kinds of difficulties and handicaps.
When rendered into a kind of ‘neutral’ English, the lack of newness with the same burden of injustice and exploitation, they run the risk of creating a none-too-
complimentary impression on the story itself for the non-Telugu reader.
Literature has always been a cementing, unifying force. I feel that the responsibility of writers to grow as a compact unified community – but this may
appear like asking for the moon. Surely, we cannot help organizations having different leanings and stances but above these, there should unity to preserve and
promote literary/artistic values too. There are no easy ways to remove the helplessness, couldn’t-care-less attitude of either individuals or the government. But it
cannot be denied that we have pinned our hopes high on literature down the ages as a device for ennoblement and enlarging horizons. In the age of oracy, oral
communication, the bond between the speaker and the listener was stronger. At its best it had always been establishing and strengthening the contact between the
two with what our ancestors shared in plenty, sahridaya. Never has literature let us down. The relation between the writer and the reader is very sensitive,
delicate and far-reaching. Literature is an activity of the people, by the people and for the people. The goal is BRINGING TOGETHER MEN AND MINDS. Our
diversity is not difference, ‘manyness’ is not exclusion. We are many but we always remain one. Short story cannot be an exception to the general goals of good
literature.
Incentives, Motivations, and Adjudication:
For the last several decades there have been contests in short story writing held by periodicals in Telugu. Andhra Patrika (now no longer in publication) used
to hold Deepavali contest where entries were adjudicated by their team first, and next, from among the prize winning entries a further adjudication by the readers.
This was an excellent system. Andhra Prabha Weekly too used to hold this contest. Many other periodicals particularly widely circulated weeklies used to do this
where every writer, old or young, established or up and coming stood a fair chance. Writing is done basically to begin with, for the writer’s own joy of creation
and when he/she goes into print it is the readers who are the judges. Not every bright writer may be a prizewinner but there is a system in place to spot out and
reward good writing. A new trend emerged with the publication of annual KATHA VARSHIKA where the best (in the editorial team’s judgement) stories are
brought out in a volume. KATHA holds contests and, what is more, the best short story in each language is published in English translation in a volume every year.
Potti Sreeramulu Telugu University encourages collections of short stories not merely by providing financial assistance for self-publication but by a reward for the
best collection every year as well. Over the last few years, 2000-2004, the following have been the winners for the best short-story collections: Singamaneni
Narayana (2000) V.Raja Ramamohana Rao (2001), B.S.Ramulu (2002), Gundu Subrahmanya Deekshitulu (2003), and Munipalle Raju (2004). All of them have
been in the field for quite long and each of them has his own distinction.
Now to a little mulling and something sotto voce:
A decade ago in 1996, in New Delhi, Andhra Association held a “Kathaasadassu”, for a couple of days, if I remember right. After listening to the various
aspects thrown open to discussion, one thought-provoking idea came up from a distinguished participant, not a writer but an avid reader of our stories working on
a classified mission in the national security wing. (He said he was going to retire soon). I tend to agree with him that Telugu short story lacks the complexity,
artistic/imaginative eminence leading the reader with sharpened perception. I agreed with him totally then, and now, looking back I feel that we still could not
produce much with that intriguing, challenging, thought-provoking complexity. Sloganeering and excessive thrust on saamaajika spruha seems to have blunted the
edge of an equally if not more important perception of art for its own sake. When fine and subtle artistic sensibility takes the upper hand, creative writing could be
effectively purposeful. Akkineni Nageswara Rao, a renowned film actor, still going strong at nearly eighty, once said in a television interview that people do not
change by viewing films and still less by reading stories. Excessive ‘messaging’ would only lead to ignoring the need for artistic rendering of perceived reality.
Telugu story somehow still needs to grow further in that direction to attain real (not hyped) eminence and international recognition. Art requires sensibility – the
zing thing that can transform a routine photograph into a painting, which lasts as a work of imaginative art.
***
(Dr V.V.B.Rama Rao, a retired ELT expert, is a prolific writer in English and Telugu. He has several Translations to his credit. He has published thirty-seven books
and articles and reviews by the hundred. Email: vvbramarao@yahoo.com.)