09 June 2016

Kannada Books: Bettada Jeeva by Shivarama Karanth

This is honestly a re-read. But the first time I read this book, I was just a teenager, highly impressionable, so I wasn't sure I even remembered the parts correctly and, if I was right about being impressed by the book.
Contrary to my earlier, somewhat faulty belief, this is a very small book. But I was relieved to find out that I wasn't wrong at all, in assessing this book. I absolutely loved the book, all over again.

The story is about a young wanderer who happens to lose his way during one of his travels and lands up in a farmer's house on the foothills of Kumaradhara mountains. The story revolves, slowly, around the life and times of the old couple living there, and their yearning for their lost son who abandoned them for a city life.  This place is not fictitious. The experiences to a large extent is also based out of the then young author's travels.

To me this holds a very very special place because I always felt this book had the capacity to transport us to the 1930's (the period when it was written) and to the wild foothills and to the small villages that barely can be called villages with three or four families settled looking after their paddy fields, areca-nut plantations. The human emotions captured across the story are relevant even today.

I would like to call this as one of my comfort books in Kannada. (The English one being 'The Adventures of Sally by P.G. Wodehouse)

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