18 CITIZEN MATTERS 22 Oct-4 Nov 2011 VOL-3 ISSUE-19

Abbakka, Gubbakka
Tere was a woman called Abbakka-
-literally, sister Abba--who came to
our tile-roofed large house in the
midst of a jungle. Each large house
like ours, a kilometer apart at least,
had the name of a village and it had
a few thatched huts in the vicinity
where the peasants who worked for
the land-owners lived. One of them
was Abbakka and I remember she had
twins whom she carried in both her
arms tucked in her arm-pits. Tey
clung to her neck. Abbakka had jas-
mine fowers in her oiled and tightly-
plaited hair and a large kumkum on
her forehead and turmeric powder on
her cheeks. I think I remember her
kind and mischievously smiling face
and the fragrance of the jasmine fow-
ers in her hair and the tobacco she
shared secretly with my mother.
She was familiar and yet mysteri-
ous to me. Tis ordinarily smiling
friendly domestic help who gossiped
endlessly with my mother about her
well-to-do and not so well-to-do rela-
tives, broken marriages and miscar-
riages, her waywardly yet fond hus-
band, her twins who clung to her
always and didnt let her cook, was
transformed on some nights, once
a week. She would turn into a Devi
whom the neighbours came to propi-
tiate. She would then hold bunches of
areca fowers, and wave them in the
air with her eyes closed or staring into
empty space and her freshly washed
wet, dark hair gleamed over her shoul-
ders in the light of burning torches
respectfully held in front of her. Her
forehead was covered in kumkum and
the whole face in safron. Her whole
body swayed rhythmically and she
made an ecstatic moan as she swayed.
People fell at her feet as if she was not
the everyday Abbakka. She was no
longer a low caste woman but a Devi.
who advised you where to look for
your lost cow, where to get medicine
for your child, how to set right the
young daughter-in-law who strayed
away from the path of wifely duties.
My grandfather, himself a priest who
consulted the almanac and cowries
shells and found the right star and
date for auspicious occasions, would
be a witness of this Abbakka with me
on his shoulders. Abbakka has power
when the Devi possesses her which I
dont have, he would tell me.
After one such night Abbakka came
home to work, as usual, for Mother in
the morning. Tis is how my mother
used to tell me the story of my gift
with words. Abbakka stands there
with her twins tucked in her armpits
under a pomegranate tree in the back
of our house and I, standing beside
the well, cry out this sentence: b-
bakkanna gubbakka kachchikondu
hoythu. It appears Abbakka was so
delighted with my gibberish that she
went near a drain and emptied her
full mouth of half-chewed tobacco--a
real sacrifce--for, she wanted to hug
and kiss me. What had I said after all?
It was just a silly rhyme of Abbakka
and Gubbakka. Gubbakka is an ex-
U R Ananthamurthy, 79, is Jnanapith award winning Kannada writer and critic. He was
born in Melige village, Shimoga district. He has been awarded with Padma Bhushan and
Rajyotsava awards. His prominent works include short story collection Ghata shraddha,
Mouni, Prashne, novels Samskara, Avasthe, Bharathipura and essays Prajne mattu
parisara and Poorvapara. He now lives in Bangalore.
This is an extract of the speech Five decades of my writing he delivered at Sahitya Aka-
demi in 2007.
U. R. ANANTHAMURTHY
Continued on Page 22
One day, when we were fshing near the pond, San-
tosh found a grasshopper.
Its a girl
No its boy.
How do you know?
Only a boy knows when its another boy.
He put the grasshopper in a matchbox and showed
him to everybody. Te grasshopper was even given a
special place under Santoshs bed.
I am going to look after him till he becomes a big
boy.
Te grasshopper was named Fighter. Santosh put
soft grass in his box and he fed him rice from his
lunch plate.
Two days later, when Santosh opened his matchbox,
Fighter was dead. We remembered the Doctor who
came home when I had measles.
Mummy, can we take Fighter to a Grasshopper
Doctor?
Tere are no Grasshopper Doctors.
But, what happens to Grasshoppers who fall sick?
No one was sure about that.
We had a Funeral for Fighter. We carried him in his
matchbox and dug a hole for him in the park.
Fighter was a good grasshopper. We will miss him
very much.
We wrote his name on a piece of paper and stuck it
on a stick over his grave. Ten, we all went home.
When Santosh came back to the Park the next morn-
ing, the stick was missing. None of us could remem-
ber the exact spot where we had buried Fighter. We
searched till late in the evening before we gave up.
Why dont you get another grasshopper?
Never.
I do not know whether Santosh loved Fighter. But
he had lost something that he owned. He was sad
about that.
I knew then that we owned nothing. We lost noth-
ing. Only life continued.
In the background was the sunset. It was just an-
other day for the universe.
This is an excerpt from Ginger Soda
Lemon Pop by Christina Daniels, a
novella that looks at growing up
through the perspective of a fve-
year-old child.
Christina Daniels is a
writer, photographer and
communications professional. In
2010, she also co-authored Mind
Blogs 1.0, a book of contemporary
conversations, with Bangalore as its landscape. Her
flmography Ill do it my way, studying the cinema of
the actor Aamir Khan, will also be published shortly.
pression of fondness for the bird
gubbi, a swallow--a small bird.
Abbakka was large and gubbakka
was small but I had ventured to
imagine that the big Abbakka
was carried of by gubbakka in
her small beak which picked up
seeds and worms. Had I tried
to match a supernatural sight of
our Abbakka becoming a Devi
with another fantastic happen-
ing of a small bird carrying her
away? I must have done this not
as an idea but as a sheer delight in
rhyming a word.
I remember this, thanks to the
love and pride of my mother, and
I wonder: dont I work even now
to balance a sentence and get the
right kind of rhythm in my prose
and thereby admit into my writ-
ing, from an unknown source,
meanings that I did not con-
sciously or deliberately pursue? It
is like a sudden gift when you get
it in your language. Only in your
language spoken by your people,
can you do this. Tis is indeed
a primitive kind of source, and,
however intelligent and sophisti-
cated you are in your meaning, if
you lose this primitive magical gift
you cant be a poet. You can only
be a theoretician. Our great po-
ets-- Bendre, Adiga and Kambar--
have this gift of making a play of
words, a leela of shabd, create
great meanings. But as a writer I
am aware it cant be done deliber-
ately and self-consciously.
U R ANANTHAMURTHY
Continued from Page 18
*Deepavali Special*
Te Parking Life
CHRISTINA DANIELS