Rodda Vyasarao Venkatarao's "Chandramukhiya Ghatavu"

Chandramukhiya Ghatavu written by Rodda Vyasarao Venkatarao was published in 1900.  Though the novel does not have the overarching reformist agendas that Indirabai and Bhagirathi had, but it highlights the position of women in a hierarchical society. In terms of ‘giving a message,’ this novel is similar to most of the early realist novels.  Chandramukhiya Ghatavu disappeared from public and literary view almost immediately and was discovered by Dr D. A. Shankar in the British Museum, London. This novel was edited by Shankar and republished in 1998.

The main crux of this novel is the blind beliefs and superstitions that afflict Hindu society, and how women are made to suffer to uphold these dubious beliefs.  Briefly, the plot is of how an unemployed Brahmin youth, Haradatta, feels burdened by his wife and three children.  He is forced to work as a watchman in a factory and the meagre salary is not enough to feed his family and his vices.  Haradatta resorts to manipulating some accounts at his disposal, is discovered and thrown out of his job. In revenge, he forges some papers and decamps with three thousand rupees.  He resurfaces in the garb of a holy man as that costume would help him evade the police looking for him and also as a lucrative profession to lure superstitious and gullible people.  Some convincing tricks later, the husband of a childless couple goads his wife, Chandramukhi, to serve the fake swami, so that he may grant them a child.  Haradatta gives her an intoxicant mixed in milk which she drinks and dies soon after.  The police who were on his trail finally catch up with him and he is sentenced to seven years rigorous imprisonment for his misdeeds.

This novel is only of 28 pages, but as only the second realist novel in Kannada, Chandramukhiya Ghatavu is remarkable for its narrative technique.  The novel opens with a first-person narrator, Kalicharan, a reporter for the daily Pioneer in Bhagalpur.  Almost like the beginning of a detective novel, Kalicharan receives a terse mysterious telegraphic message from his friend Dhirendra, a police inspector in Alipore, asking him to reach Alipore the next day.  The mystery continues as Dhirendra receives Kalicharan without giving him even a hint of the purpose of his urgent message, and at the dead of night, gives him a package and asks him to leave Alipore immediately.  Kalicharan opens the package upon reaching Bhagalpur and discovers a manuscript of an autobiographical account of a life of a ‘sanyasi’/‘swami’ with Dhirendra’s comments, and a request to publish the account after deleting irrelevant details.  From the second chapter onwards, it is the purported autobiography of the ‘sanyasi’/ ‘swami,’ published and presented by Kalicharan.  Haradatta turns out to be the ‘sanyasi’ and the second first-person narrator.  The novel is constructed as an autobiographical/confessional account of a ‘sanyasi’ discovered and presented by Kalicharan.

The novel is set in Eastern India, in Bihar and Bengal, and the names of places and of people suggest a different kind of setting for a Kannada novel. Chandramukhiya Ghatavu which began as an English novel with a Hindi name (Aysa Kysa Hua) serialized in The Indian Social Reformer written by a Kannadiga that ended abruptly finally reemerges as a Kannada novel set outside the Kannada speaking areas, the present day Karnataka.