Avaeana book also gives us great insights into avqrana that existed in the times of Mughals, the eunuchs of the time and the way people were made into eunuchs to serve some specific needs of the kings. One detailed review and discussion is here: I have to warn, the above mentioned symptoms relate only to an Indian reader though it might as well apply to others. This book is a must must read. Bhyrappa is a litterateur kannasa excellence.
No trivia or quizzes yet. There are many historical facts that are intentionally suppressed and distorted in our history textbooks. One ought read the book for this. I am fed up with debates and discussions on Aavarana. Hello World, this is a test. Comics And General Novels. This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website.
Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are as essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. Aavarana is a Kannada novel by novelist S. This novel deals with the historical character like Mogul Emperor Aurangazeb. Aavarana was sold out even before its release in February The novel went on to create a record in the Indian literary world by witnessing 10 reprints within five months of its release.
Like most of Bhyrappa's novels, Aavarana too generated tremendous debate and discussion. We are not responsible for the mistakes committed by our previous generations. However, if we equate ourselves with them and regard ourselves as their heirs, we must then be ready to also share the responsibility for their mistakes.
If learning lessons from history is a mark of enlightenment, so is breaking free from it. This applies equally to every religion, caste, creed and group. Perhaps the breeze had drowned his voice, or she was just in one of her moods. He was familiar with her sudden, inexplicable silences.
She was, like him, an artist, entitled to her quirks. But now the sight of the river undulating to the caress of the sundown breeze was markedly romantic.
He had to talk. You should have dyed it. The glow would be even lovelier! She did not reply. A jet-black maulana beard would have posed no problem but his was the Marxist-intellectual variety, which needed weekly trimming at the hands of an expert. The hairstylist would anyway shear the dyed portion. On a man, white hair was a sign of attractiveness and accomplishment, even wisdom, but on women, it only meant old age.
Well, it was pointless to add anything further and risk raking up that old argument again. The waiter who brought tea and biscuits awaited their order for dinner. She mumbled that she would be okay with whatever Amir ordered and stood up, teacup in hand, returning to the window, once again lost in her thoughts. This was completely unlike her. Whenever they went out, Razia typically took charge of the menu, carefully selecting the items to order. How hard is it for you to understand when I tell you that I need non-vegetarian at least once a day?
How am I supposed to function normally without some meat in my stomach? Do you want me to complain to your bosses about the quality of food here? Even he knew that Amir was aware how government guest houses functioned. But I insist on having omelettes for breakfast tomorrow! A little later, he was under the shower, enjoying the water cascading down his body. He walked slowly, inhaling the cool air. It felt good. The entire region except this dam was a bloody furnace, he thought.
Hampi especially was jahannam, a blazing hell. Why did they choose this as their capital? Because it was safe? Was it because they were intimately familiar with the place? This explanation seemed more plausible. She was in charge of the research, script and narration. But why was she so intensely moody ever since they had returned to the guest house in the evening? Actually, it had begun sometime in the afternoon.
Now it began to nag him. He recalled that they had fought over this point several times in the past. Luckily, Razia had almost no part in the shooting. Even then, as Amir recalled rather petulantly, her record of delivering the script within the deadline was consistently poor. He wondered if she would adhere to her unpunctuality for the Hampi project as well. It worried him. It was ambitious in intent, massive in its scope and urgent in its need for execution. The initiative involved making documentaries on all the major heritage sites in India.
He had been entrusted with Hampi. Of late, Hindu fundamentalism had increased in intensity. It was true, he thought, no tyranny is worse than the tyranny of the majority. If the majority eventually turned completely fundamentalist, there was no hope for the nation to remain united.
About a month back, the frightening evidence of increase in Hindu fanaticism had revealed itself. Exactly a month and eight days ago. The day of horror. The hour when the blanket of security that minorities had felt since Independence was shattered. That moment when the entire nation had shivered in fear. The place is completely cordoned off to everybody, with round-the-clock police protection and patrolling.
A month and eight days and everything changed. But mere policing—or force—would not prevent similar incidents from occurring in the future. It looked like the government had realized that inculcating tolerance for different religions in the hearts of citizens was the urgent need of the day. The documentaries on heritage sites were part of its larger objective of propagating a series of foundational programmes to instil and foster societal and religious tolerance.
Equally, the other immediate need was to reassure the minorities that they were safe from the fundamentalism of the majority. The ruling party, the secularists and the Left parties were united in their support for all measures initiated to achieve this goal—education, media propaganda and greater representation and visibility for minorities in all fields.
More importantly, severely punishing anybody who spoke negatively about them. This is not a project an inferior film- maker can handle. But the bigger challenge was the long-term promise. The government had already hinted at the possibility that he could bag the remaining projects if he delivered Hampi in time and according to their expectations. That meant revenues in tens of millions. His thoughts reverted to Hampi, a place he had visited many times in the past.
Only this time he had to look at it from a different perspective. She would read expert literature, make notes, prepare the script and the narration for the voice-over. As director, I will instruct the still photographer to take pictures, collate them according to the script and shoot the actual documentary. Her input had proven valuable 90 per cent of the time, her mood notwithstanding.
And then he suddenly realized that she was not merely moody today. She seemed depressed, almost melancholic… Maybe she was just worn out. It struck in waves from all directions, emanating with great intensity from massive boulders.
She stopped at every ruin and examined it in minute detail. He pondered—I shower fastidiously, and take long walks every day. He smiled conceitedly. Whatever the noise over gender equality, nobody can really alter the fundamentals: a woman is always the weaker one, physically and intellectually. Razia seemed to have turned inwards, withdrawn even, during dinner.
We have the whole day to relax tomorrow and board the train at night. You anyway have more research work on your hands, or you can start working on the outline of the narration. Can you prepare the narration from memory? If you need more material, we can hire a good local guide to give us the relevant historical information for each item we show.
Her latest bout of unresponsiveness left nothing for him to say, and any further attempt to make conversation would only wound his self-respect. Neither was this the first instance where his pride risked injury at her hands in their long years of marriage. But he had borne them all with grace, accepting ego clashes as an inseparable part of married life. He shifted his focus to the cool wind drifting inside the room through the open windows and the sound of the river waves ceaselessly breaking over the wall of the dam.
He thought of standing by the window to watch the river flow, but realized it would be a futile attempt. It was impossible to see anything in the dark. Razia finally broke the silence and spoke at last. We need to provide the accurate historical backdrop for each image and artefact that we show the audience.
Pictures and words should say the same story. And I agree! But give me examples of what you mean. An artist is definitely much better equipped than most people to overcome artificial notions of embarrassment and shame and has no fear of showing the truth to the world!
Enough to transport you to a higher plane just by looking at it! And who demolished the Vijaya Vittala temple? Originally, the Narasimha idol was inside a temple complex of the same size as Vijaya Vittala. Piles of large wooden logs were stuffed inside the temple and they were set afire. The fire gradually burned the hard stone until it cracked. And then the arms and legs of the Narasimha idol were broken with large iron crowbars.
Most temples here received similar treatment. For instance, even an untrained eye can easily detect that the Vijaya Vittala temple suffered the same two-phased demolition, because the burnt remains of the stones of these destroyed temples are still visible there, around the site. The audience needs to know the true history of the medieval feudal society and the forces of feudalism that led to the destruction of Hampi!
The Vijayanagar Empire was incomparably the wealthiest empire in its time, where gold, diamonds, pearls and gems were measured in Ballas. While this definitely shows a highly refined form of centralized economy, we must not be blind to the other, darker reality: how could it manage to accumulate such staggering wealth?
In a feudal society, this was possible only by brutally exploiting the working classes. Rebellion naturally simmered within the working classes. In the battle, they sided with the enemy and finally vanquished the unjust capitalistic rule that had oppressed them for so long.
What do you think of this interpretation? Her silence was enough to puncture the feverish excitement he felt at unearthing a revolutionary interpretation. She spoke after several minutes. The class rebellion that you speak of occurred after the industrial revolution, while the destruction of the Vijayanagar Empire occurred in a purely agrarian society.
Their profession was not divorced from their religion; temple-building was an expression of their devotion to a faith they deeply revered. It is unthinkable that these people would actually embark on such a systematic, elaborate temple destruction, and burn and smash the idols of their own gods with hammers and crowbars. Compare them to the artisans who built the Taj Mahal. They used their skills just as a means to earn a living. My village, Narasapura, and the neighbouring village, Kalenahalli, were bound by hatred.
Because my village was located at a higher altitude, all the rainwater from the hill surrounding it would flow down and collect in the lake in our village. But because Kalenahalli was located much lower, it received just a trickle and its reservoir was always empty.
The Kalenahalli reservoir filled up only when a particularly severe rain breached the dam of our reservoir, and it overflowed into theirs. That year, the whole region, including Narasapura, suffered a bad drought. All water sources had dried up. But the Kalenahalli people concluded that we had purposely refused to give them water. One night, a bunch of young men from that village dug up the small outlet coming out of our reservoir and detonated a massive quantity of dynamite. The embankment was shattered and the reservoir was empty in no time.
The next morning when our folks realized what had happened, they declared war on Kalenahalli. All of Narasapura poured into Kalenahalli armed with huge wooden clubs and sticks, and a major fight ensued.
Both sides were wounded. Kalenahalli had to eventually admit defeat because we thoroughly outnumbered them. The fight culminated with the death of two people and the wounded were left to nurse their injuries. I was an eyewitness to the battle. But on their way back home, my victorious village folk stopped at the temple of Kalamma, the village deity of Kalenahalli, set down their weapons, prostrated before the temple and prayed for her blessings before resuming their journey. The Kalenahalli folks were no different.
Each time they passed through Narasapura on a journey to some other place, they offered prayers to our village deity—Gadde Kempamma—sat for sometime in the temple courtyard and then moved on. This time-honoured tradition applied to all villages in the region. With this background, given this experience, I find it impossible to interpret the destruction of the idols at Hampi as an episode of class rebellion.
But they were arguments she was familiar with, ones they had passionately discussed over a period of many years. One of them had to only begin and the other would start off as well. So many years of shared intellectual stimulation!
But now he felt she was slowly pulling at the strand that bound them together and moving in a different direction. Anything he said now would start a debate, he felt. Silence was the best recourse. Razia closed her eyes and lay on her back in the darkness, unable to make out whether Amir was really asleep. There was no pattern to his breathing that she could detect.
Perhaps that was because their thoughts now belonged to entirely different worlds. Ever since she had seen it, her vision was filled with the gigantic idol of Narasimha, so horribly dismembered. She thought hard. The answer finally emerged slowly from her memory, from the village she was born in. The Narasimha temple was one of the main temples of Narasapura and its idol resembled the one in Hampi. This god was her family diety. Both her grandfather and father were named after this god—Narasappa Gowda and Narasimhe Gowda.
But why did one mutilated idol of Narasimha rekindle these memories, which belonged twenty-eight years in the past when she had cut them off, forsaking her birthplace, her father, her gods and an entire way of life?
Slowly she let herself dwell in the past. She recalled what her father had told her when she stubbornly insisted that she would marry no one but Amir. Your child, or the child or children of your child, or someone in some future generation that you both will give birth to will someday destroy our temples.
Do you still believe in this nonsense? Yet, both of them destroyed Hindu temples when they ascended the throne.
A staunch, chakra-spinning Gandhian; like Mahatama Gandhi himself, he believed that chakra-spinning was a penance. Every morning he awoke early and spun the chakra for two hours with devoted focus—spinning was merely symbolic, it was really a kind of meditation and he believed that its goal was to remove impurities of the mind and eliminate negative passions such as anger and hatred, and achieve a state where one could love everybody equally.
I was only three when Mother died and Father was left a widower at thirty-three. At some point in his youth, Father had vowed to remain celibate so that he could fully dedicate his life to serve the rural masses, according to the path laid down by Mahatma Gandhi. However, the priest of the Narasimha temple, Shesha Sastri, older to him by four years, had convinced him otherwise.
However, you also need to fulfil your duties as a householder—get married and offer meals to the needy every day in your own home, apart from serving the society. Beget at least two children to fulfil the debt that you owe your ancestors. Get married. Frantic with worry, I had rushed to Bangalore to seek clarification. This is a standard line quoted by communalists to blacken the name of Muslims and Islam. At best, it is fiction. When you are in love, one word of the beloved outweighs the conclusion of thousands of years of research.
Father was wrong, of course. Their world was vested in meaningless worship and antiquated ideas of duty. Love was the only reality. He demolished my doubts with just one confident line. His confidence had won me over…right from when we met each other as students studying together at the Pune film institute.
We became close when we learned that we were both from Karnataka, and began to share anecdotes about Bangalore with each other.
We spent our evenings sitting atop Fergusson Hill watching the sunset as young college couples snuggled behind the large boulders. We sang romantic Hindi film songs to each other, whispered poetry and swore everlasting love, the kind that shattered barriers of religion, family and society. Amir was such a passionate pleader! And I finally submitted to his worshipful entreaties.
On Sundays and holidays, we made love in nameless lodges in Pune. He refused to let me pay the bill on every occasion. What did I care, when my sole focus back then was on looking forward to the next opportunity of savouring his intoxicating proximity, the thrill of being in his arms?
With time, this difference became a reality that hardened year after year. Back then, I truly believed that I was progressive; I had risen above self-deluding and man-made bonds like religion and caste and creed. But why was I so fiercely adamant on marrying Amir? Thirty years ago. You will have my blessings. I will officiate the marriage according to traditional Hindu rites. I pressed him.
If they even try, they are killed. They also kill the person responsible for providing such a motivation. Listen carefully: your conversion is merely circumstantial and strategic. Remember, our marriage is also an effort at achieving a larger purpose—to build a society shorn of religion, the opium of the masses.
That day is not too far. But till then, we need this strategy. Years of intimate acquaintance with his breathing told her that Amir was fully asleep now. She got up noiselessly and went to the lounge, closing the bedroom door behind her. She pulled the recliner towards the large window and sat looking outside the window.
I became pregnant six months after my nikah to Amir after converting to Islam. The tug that slowly began in my heart only intensified as my pregnancy advanced. The longing to return to my roots, to at least visit the home I was born in and grew up in tormented me. But I could do little. You mean nothing to me from now on. He insisted on the need to live a humble life and conquer anger under any circumstance. He was wanted by everybody—he solved the most violent village disputes and ensured that the warring parties settled their problems and parted as brothers.
It was his efforts, not the fear of the law or government, that led restaurants, temples and community wells to allow entry to Harijans. Because I was about to convert to Islam? Because somebody, somewhere in the deep recesses of history had destroyed a few temples?
Was that reason enough for him to kill his love for his own daughter? I feel like seeing you. I want to become your little child once again. I was sure his heart would soften when he saw my full-blown, pregnant belly. Would Mother have remained this hard-hearted if she were alive? Would she have allowed Father to persist in his hard-heartedness? For all his social service, Father was a man of stern convictions. He had but to make up his mind—nothing could make him move a millimetre.
There was no way I could muster the courage to even look at his face. I doubted whether Father even knew that I was pregnant. How could he when there was no one to tell him, except perhaps Professor Sastri, the only link?
That man had guts. He knew what he was in for, and he had wisely gotten married to a white British woman before bringing her to meet his parents. His father Shesha Sastri and mother Acchamma were strict, orthodox Brahmins who would never approve the marriage. His mother, though, eventually accepted the new daughter-in-law.
Then there was the problem of the cheap, gossipy villagers. But Professor Sastri oozed charm naturally. He would walk up to the elders and the socially important people of Narasapura who disapproved of the marriage and inflict a special kind of smile, which embarrassed them. He visited Narasapura at least once a year, and would never fail to throw those guilt-inducing smiles.
In no time, the catastrophic event of his marriage to a foreigner became a non-event. Unreasonable cravings; disjointed, answerless questions. She recalled how one single thought had held her by the gut throughout her pregnancy: if Mother were alive, would she be as stubborn as Father?
Had she married a Hindu, regardless of caste, would Father have fussed over her? Yes, he would have ensured that she was pampered to the hilt—the house maid, Ningavva would always be by her side, attending to even her most trivial need post-delivery.
As a very devout Muslim wife and mother, my mother-in-law initially used to command me—offer namaz five times daily and do it in the room meant for it. I married Amir because our love was built and grew on a foundation of a shared conviction in the Progressive movement. I had abandoned the religion of my birth because I genuinely believed that all religions were meaningless nonsense designed by capitalists to exploit people.
Moreover, the religion of my birth had none of the restrictions that my adopted religion had—nobody really cared if I visited the Narasimha temple everyday. But the astonishing range of restrictions in Islam stifled me—the strict insistence on offering namaz five times every single day, the compulsory namaz on Fridays and the forced fasting from dawn to dusk in the month of Ramzan. What had amazed me was how the Jamat clerics intruded into our lives. These folks actually visited our house—mostly impromptu—to check if we really followed the pure Tablighi mores of Islam!
And then there was the compulsory animal sacrifice on festivals. As far as I could recall, I had never been comfortable with animal sacrifice. During childhood, I had seen sheep and goats being sacrificed to our village goddess, Kempamma, as part of the annual chariot festival. But my adopted religion was different. I am most certain that my namaz, my sacrifices, my life, my death and everything that belongs to me belongs to Him who rules and protects all the worlds.
It belongs to nobody else but Him alone. This has been commanded to me and I surrender to Him completely, and I am a Muslim.
Oh Allah! Here, this, which you have given us, belongs to You! This akik is an offering from Nazir. I remember reading pages and pages about the Delhi Sultanate and Mughal Empire but I read only a few paragraphs about the heroes like Sivaji. It has list of reference which run Aavarana is a fictional novel, creative work by Bhyrappa taking into considerations of historical fact of India over past few centuries. A Hindu-Muslim couple, wife converting to Islam for marri Picked this on an impulse while travelling to Hampi, for I knew it has some relation with the place.
Loved the narration and therefore I believe the translation must be top class. This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are as essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website.
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