The Calf Became an Orphan: A Study in Contemporary Kannada Fiction.

• Author: RAO, B. DAMODAR
• Position: Review

The Calf Became an Orphan: A Study in Contemporary Kannada Fiction. By ROBERT J. ZYDENBOS, Publications du Departement d'indologie, hors serie. Pondichery: INSTITUT FRANCAIS De PONDICHERY and ECOLE FRANCAISE D'EXTREME-ORIENT, 1996. Pp. 301.

Robert J. Zydenbos continues the tradition of research on Kannada by continental scholars, which dates back to the mid-nineteenth century. The Calf Became an Orphan, a revised version of his doctoral dissertation has the strengths and disabilities such publications generally have. There is no dearth of documentation. A number of short stories and novels have been analyzed to show how a society in transition has been portrayed in post-Independence Kannada fiction. Through elaborate summaries, culture-specific questions central to the works are presented: the plight of women, especially widows; the uneasy relationship between the Hindus and the other minorities, Muslims and Christians; the caste hierarchy, from which most problems emanate; and the impact of the West, as well as the challenges that follow, are among the questions discussed.

A neatly structured study, repetitive as published dissertations tend to be, The Calf Became an Orphan is of considerable utility, especially to those who need synopses by way of introduction to an unfamiliar literature or unfamiliar works. Zydenbos' is a painstaking effort, as one would expect of a research scholar. Though he has been a resident of Karnataka for more than two decades and has married a Kannada girl, he is at best an insider-outsider. The difficulties he faces in his critical encounter with fiction produced in a culture and language not native to him have to be sorted out through hard study and with the help of informants. The footnotes testify to the effort. The insider-outsider position perhaps also accounts for his reluctance to attempt close readings of the passages he quotes. The comments on the passages, which are minimal, generally reinforce an argument. Despite this linguistic disability, Zydenbos comes out with occasional insights, as when he characterizes, for instance, Devanura Mah adeva's style as "fragmented but not incoherent" (p. 178), a characterization that suggests how Mahadeva is able to essay multiple layers of reality. On the other hand, when Zydenbos dismisses Kuvempu's "archalc novels" (p. 218), there is a nearly total failure of insight, for the two novels of Kuvempu are usually judged among the very best in Kannada.

Historically...