Last month, Vinod Kumar Shukla was selected for the Jnanpith award. This makes him the 12th Hindi author and the only one from Chhattisgarh to win this award. As tributes to Shukla and assessments of his work pour in, it is perhaps odd to compare his approach to writing to the vocal style of a musician who is relatively unknown outside the Carnatic world: MD Ramanathan – MDR.
On the face of it, it may appear as if they have nothing in common. Shukla was born in Rajnandgaon, Chhattisgarh, Ramanathan in Palakkad, Kerala. Shukla was trained in agriculture, Ramanathan in physics. One is a writer of Hindi literature, the other a Carnatic vocalist who sang compositions in Sanskrit, Tamil and Telugu. Even as far as recognition and awards are concerned Shukla is a much-decorated and celebrated author, while Ramanathan’s lifetime was spent on the margins of fame. He also missed out on the Sangeeta Kalanidhi – the highest honour in Carnatic music.
Their biographical dissimilarities and trajectories apart, Ramanathan and Shukla belong to two different life-worlds and few would argue for any similarity between the world of Hindi literature and that of South Indian classical music. Apart from the difference in language, it can’t be denied that music and writing constitute two different aesthetic universes, each with its own grammar. Why then compare a contemporary Hindi writer to a 20th-century Carnatic musician?
To suggest a possible answer, I would like to draw on my aesthetic experience of being a reader of Shukla and a listener of Ramanathan’s music and reflect on the affinities between the two in terms of their aesthetic impact.
The idea of slowness and of pause(s) is central to both Shukla and Ramanathan’s oeuvre. Shukla’s imagination turns ordinary characters from small towns into reflective beings, investing them with the ability to pause and reflect on mundane occurrences as the ordinary is transformed into something surreal, almost magical.
For instance, in Shukla’s short story Bojh (The Burden), a dry neem leaf falls inside the protagonist’s shirt pocket while he is cycling to his office, making him feel uneasy. The simple act of a leaf falling from a tree becomes a point of reflection for the protagonist and triggers his anxiety about monthly expenses and salary; kept inside another shirt pocket in a trunk at his home.
An ordinary occurrence thus becomes pregnant with meaning as the evanescent becomes intertwined with the ever present. Shukla gently disturbs the readerly equilibrium creating a sense of unease with the ease of his writing.
Ramanathan, on the other hand, was known for his slow (vilambita kala) or rather extra-slow (chowka kala) tempo of singing, as he paused and lingered on notes and phrases, his deep and rich voice transforming the listener’s experience of a particular composition.
Take, for example, his rendition of the famous Dikshitar krithi, Vatapi Ganapatim Bhaje. Ramanathan’s slow and unorthodox rendition makes for a more meditative listening experience. He ingeniously makes use of pauses as he elongates some lyrical and musical phrases while his voice trails others. The composition gradually picks up pace to reveal unfamiliar aspects of a familiar raga like Hamsadhwani.
Ramanathan invites the listener to be more attentive to the composition’s sahitya (lyrics) and the different shades of the raga but also throws one a little off balance with his unusual elaboration of the raga and the composition.
In both Shukla’s imaginative landscape and the aural landscape created by Ramanathan’s voice, slowness reigns supreme, and the pause is employed to great effect, one in a literary/figurative sense and the other as an aural device. Shukla’s poetic and unhurried prose transports one to a different temporality and Ramanathan’s deep meditative voice in a slow tempo has a magical quality similar to Shukla’s prose.
Beneath Shukla’s magical world and Ramanathan’s magical voice lies a kinship of two unassuming personalities. Ramanathan’s marginalisation apart, he never sought the limelight himself. When asked why there were only two records of him, he said, “They only came for two.”
Shukla, despite his many accolades, has remained rooted in his native Rajnandgaon. Unfazed by the publicity and attention he has received, he quipped, “I never pay attention to awards, others draw my attention to them.”
In Shukla and Ramanathan’s attitude towards creativity is the rare ability of not drawing attention towards themselves but rather speaking through their writing and music, they combine an unobtrusive presence with a powerful voice and articulate a gentle radicalism through the grammar of silence.
The art of both these artists exudes a sense of contentment and suggests that they never competed with anyone nor felt that they had to prove a point. Their art is so secure in itself and its moorings that it unsettles the reader/listener while also making one’s experience a different kind of freedom – a freedom that enables us to pause and reflect in the case of Shukla’s prose and appreciate and savour each note in the case of Ramanathan’s music. Both the prose and the voice linger long in the reader/listener’s mind and they nudge one to think of two disparate yet analogous aesthetic worlds united by Shukla’s simplicity and Ramanathan’s sensitivity.
The author is a freelance writer who previously worked as an archivist with Ashoka University. He can be reached at madhavnayar@gmail.com.
