Remembering Subbanna

A year since Subbanna died; a year that saw Ninasam, his brain child, relocate itself and find its new bearings without his phenomenal presence felt ubiquitously yet unobtrusively for more than four decades; a year that witnessed a sudden spurt of activities as if to challenge death’s inevitability with human sagacity. It was also a year of unemotional obsequiousness offered to a great man who in his life time was able to transform a dithering village community into a group of connoisseurs of art and culture.

Subbanna now conjures up before us only an image – of a fragile frame with a conflation of dark and white beard dotted on a rugged texture of a face. A tiny ‘pan’ bag tucked precariously in the arm pit would necessarily draw people to him for a ‘pan’ and a discussion on issues ranging from the price of areca to literature and to politics and decentralization that saw his reddish lips quiver beneath a pair of glossy eyes hidden behind his fat framed spectacles. Subbanna would as animatedly talk to younger souls as he did to scholars from world over who converged at Heggodu making it a confluence of literary and cultural terms.

The same grace and warmth may be missing now. But then the legacy he has left behind will for sure enliven this tiny village ambience that would remain incorruptible despite a global and corporate bonhomie trying to dislodge it. Subbanna’s absence would be all the more conspicuous.

Back in Heggodu, after finishing his honours degree, Subbanna had a mission to perform. The British had not left India. The freedom struggle was at its peak. As Subbanna himself would say, there was an upsurge of energy waiting to be translated into a zeal, an urge to do something. Alongside an embittered mass trying to drive the British out, there existed an unimaginably insouciant people tethered to a traditional hook-up.

Subbanna had to respond to both kinds of people - the surged up as also those in stupor. He channeled the excess energy along the road of culture and woke up the slumbered lot to the realities of time. Subbanna improvised his traditional wisdom lacing it with lores of modernism on his way to morphing an endangered consciousness into a repertoire of literature and culture. Only Gandhi knew, a village had so much to offer. The result - Ninasam was born.

In cultural terms, Subbanna was a true Gandhian. Politically, he was a socialist who contributed immensely to the movement that offered a counter discourse to the land owning patriarchy. He answered with his concept of a village many of his adversaries, Marx, for instance, who spoke of ‘village idiocy’ privileging economic development alone over other values. He thought big! But Subbanna like Gandhi focused on the very mundane and ordinary.

Subbanna was not an aesthete in the true sense as he strongly felt his cultural and literary preoccupations had to be tempered with the politics of time. Subbanna was a rigid practitioner of an art that always made a political statement. As a socialist, he thought the sound of a bullock cart was as important. At the same time he wanted politics to be rid of its insidious communal appeal. He was equally distrustful of violence of any kind which he felt would overwhelmingly strengthen the state and ultimately pronounce doom on democratic institutions.
Subbanna’s discourses on art and literature as also on culture and society project him as an avid reader of contemporary politics who situated himself very strongly in democratic foundations.

Subbanna’s philosophy of getting attuned to a work force had always hinged on community participation. He never claimed Ninasam was only his and made possible only by his efforts. He made people believe Ninasam was their’s too. Any institution should endure only with people participating in it and as long as they want it. He was therefore against state funding of cultural projects. He rejected the Ford grant when offered the second time as it would deviate Ninasam from the people.

Till the end Subbanna insisted, many places like Heggodu should blossom and operate as a cultural alternative to globalisation – not through state funding but through people’s will. At a time when culture is commodified and multinational agencies are very keen on opening cultural centres of excellence in cities and metropolises, Subbanna remains as a guiding spirit, a beacon whose inveterate ideological indebtedness to democracy as a people’s governance would for a long time keep at bay global operators of culture and art.

‘Excellence’ is a word too often heard. For Subbanna, excellence of any kind was only a pathological obsession which derailed the very idea of progress. By progress, he did not mean development through dams and bombs. But it had a spiritual and metaphysical oeuvre making one at the same time look inwards. Art experience was never apolitical for him. But then it was neither too political to erase our social and cultural memories. On the other hand, it would take us beyond categories of time into the metaphysics of being. He was equally disdainful of politics that refused to allow itself a space beyond its delimited scope of the mundane and ordinary. At the highest level, the experiences of art and politics coalesce at the same point and space. If Subbanna had a specific aesthetics in mind, it was to achieve this space!

A day long function was held to mark the first death anniversary of Subbanna ( July 16 ). A seminar on ‘Crisis in contemporary culture and politics’ was held in the morning followed in the evening by a production of a Shakespeare’s play ‘Measure for Measure’ translated and directed by Subbanna’s son Akshara.

A great play which addresses issues of religion and politics at one end and sex and morality at another, ‘Measure for Measure’ has had a powerful contemporary appeal too. The cast included amateurs from Ninasam who regaled the audience as much as any professionals would. Staid and pedantic while communicating the serious, the play became alive at points where kingship was a butt of ridicule and gossip.

A fine tribute to Subbanna in the end.

RUSTIC CRICKET AND AFTER

Retrieving memories of my cricket of yesteryears and relishing them brings me more joy than a live cricket match of today does. What with globalization contemporary cricket has assumed a different connotation with an image of money spinning endeavour. For me, a school going boy of 8 or 10, cricket was a passion, a genuinely felt feeling of nationality and oneness.

I played as much cricket as I listened to its description over AIR of national or international matches. I listened to cricket with the same zeal I played it. My heroes were not just cricketers, but commentators too. One cricket commentator I mimicked made me an instant hero on the college corridors. English through cricket had become a passion too. I learnt to speak English eloquently while my friends mumbled for words.

At home being alone, I would play cricket with the wall or the compound. I would gently dab the ball against the wall and keep dabbing it each time it ricocheted. My parents frowned, but I cared little. Those days cricket was a panacea for escaping the quotidian boredom of class room learning. A feigned neck sprain or a muscle cramp would do the magic and I sat glued to the radio hearing my heroes on and off the field! Growing up to be a college boy, I would take the transistor to the college. Gathering my friends I would impress on them to bunk a class or two of uninspiring lecture. A nearby banyan tree was our abode. The transistor in the middle, we would sit in a ring away from the watchful eye of our college Principal beneath the dark green shade of banyan. (The tree has since been cut to make way for a building). There was never a dull moment though only test matches were played then. Back in class rooms we would while away an hour or two more teasing a newly appointed lady teacher or ridiculing the Victorian style of a soon-to-retire English professor. With our uncanny being in the class, we had earned friends and foes alike among the teaching fraternity. My impregnable interest in cricket had made me distinctly alert at times and indifferently cheeky in a class room situation. Teachers I patronized thought I was a cut above all and those I didn’t as much wished me a place in the hell! I dare sometimes think cricket was a culprit in me.

We played cricket without any paraphernalia associated with the game now. We didn’t have bats made by big companies with logos of equally big firms stitched on the shoulder! Leather balls, we couldn’t afford for we had to play with bare feet, knees and arms. To have stumps and bails couldn’t even be dreamt. Cricket was very dear, yet could not be made more dear!

We couldn’t even have a level playing field, let alone getting green turfs or grassy surfaces. Somebody’s land sometimes was our territory so long as we played cricket if we were fortunate or till we were chased by yelping dogs being trespassers. The land meant for grazing or growing one thing or another could not be outsourced for cricket! Easily outsourcable was a burial ground. It was our Lords many a time.

Bats, we did improvise using areca nut planks. An axe or a sickle would help us make conjointly a thing that resembled a bat. The bats invariably had flat keys. While playing a shot, the edge would pierce into the flesh of the palm causing it to bleed. A great batsman was one who withstood the pain and persevered unlike a modern cricketer whose injury too would be phenomenal even if it means sitting out of a match or two.

We made use of sponge balls. They had a very tenuous layer of rubber as outer cover. After a couple of overs, the layer would give in displaying a brown soft inner surface. This would keep skinning off with every over bowled. The ball would then spin both ways putting to shame Murali’s doosra or that irrepressible ad of Mak lubricants! We would not roll our wrists because of flat keys and playing straight meant negotiating the spin. We didn’t mind which way the ball went once it left the bat.

The ground we had to prepare afresh each day we went to play cricket. Someone would have dug the wicket prepared by us the previous day or the grazing cattle would have defecated close in catching positions. We would clean the ground, roll the wicket with the bat and gently dab the surface to nudge the loose soil in. Most crucial was to make the stumps stand on end. A bucket of water brought from a neighbour who grudged us inwardly would do the trick. This water we preserved till the end for each time a batsman was bowled, the stumps were needed to be put in place. We would have to use a spell so that they remained till at least a ball was bowled. We were on cloud nine when cricket at last got under way.

The number of players really didn’t matter. Only two would suffice to see off the preliminaries and begin the game. Late comers would be soundly admonished. The black sheep even here couldn’t be avoided.

The off side was always a problem. A small stretch of land we most frequently used which was sliced out of a burial ground had a big tamarind tree that stood exactly at extra cover considering the direction of the wicket. Bowling and batting ends were eternally fixed. We would rule the batsman hitting on the off side out for fear that the ball would get stuck in the tree. We were predominantly on side strikers hence. We played till after the sunset or as long as the ball was visible. The sun would smile on us wryly with a red glow on his face.

Cricket has paradigmatically changed since. Cricket was a ritual for us as it involved a laborious preparatory schedule. These days, things are kept tailor made for cricketers. One would just walk in and play. Modern cricket has lost its ritualistic grandeur. Technology has ebbed its once cherished aura. MNC’s have hegemonised it. Cricket is shown with so much of commentating that it takes away the mystery behind a Dravid’s cover drive or a Tendulkar’s short arm pull. Cricket has become less sporting and more academic. It is as much impoverished as it has become richer by being popular with and getting overwhelming support from the masses.

I play no cricket now. My life is a different ball game all together. None the less, memories of the kind of cricket I once played are strong enough to demythify the modern halo of the game. We should save cricket from cricketers and cricketers from too much of cricket, I think. This is neither atavistic urge nor a revivalist’s candour but a feeble and timid plea to sustain the game’s enigma.