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by: Siddharth Katragadda
Publisher: Publish America, 2002
Reviewed by: Rajeshwari Kantamneni Gopal is the only one left in the Kachiguda house. In its dark rooms, once filled with a great family legacy, his legendary father’s intellectual whispers and the cries of six children, he looks back on a generation gone wrong. San Diego based writer, Siddharth Katragadda’s, has written a collection of poetry that more than being a collection of poetry is a story a series of poems that unfold the drama of family struggling to stay afloat in the early post-independence era of India. The book looks back on a family of six children born into a famous literary family to a writer, an icon of Telugu literature. The book tries to unravel the reason for them failing in life and in living up to the reputation of their esteemed father, who dies when they are still very young. How each one slips further away from the greatness of their father, getting sucked into the mundane lives of survival in a changing country. How each one of those dark rooms in which they grew up in was to blame for the outcome. In the end, we are left with questions. Do you think the family failed or was it inevitable fate that could not be avoided. Do you think the family could have avoided this decadence had it not lived off the pride of their famous father. Do you think their famous father is to blame for instilling pride in his childrens´ minds. The book focuses mainly on one of the children, Gopal, the biggest failure, whose wife Kaveri leaves him and moves to America, and who turns into a Devdas-like poet thereafter. In his poems, sleeping for hours under an old creaking fan, he reminisces the shallow joys of his life that are burnt into deep agonies. There are other characters in the book. Yadagiri, a dancer who hates the Muslims of Hyderabad. And Surya, an artist who draws cartoons for local periodicals. All artists who, like Gopal, feel that they are waste products of society. Then, there is the Author himself, Gopal’s nephew. He is the second eye of the book, exploring, interrogating each one of those six children. Later in life, when he is in a dilemma of whether to go to America for his higher studies, it is Gopal, though a person rooted in his ground and who detests the fact that Kaveri left him to go to America, who influences him to go. The Author goes to America but does not find true happiness there. Part of the book deals with this ‘immigrant-out-of-water’ syndrome. The poems are arranged in three parts the “Birth of Kaveri”, the “Monsoon of Kaveri” and the “Death of Kaveri”. These parts describe respectively the meeting of Gopal and Kaveri, their marriage and the inevitable separation, and finally the arrival of the news of the death of Kaveri as Gopal awaits her return, sitting in those very dark rooms. There is a hidden metaphorical symbolism of Kaveri’s character to the river. When the news of Kaveri’s death comes to Gopal, he thinks that Kaveri, the river, always dried up in summer. She would swell again when the monsoons came. This is the central power in the story. How hope and pride can end up sucking the life out of a person, how pride prevents a person to go look for help, prevents a person from living, and how hope prevents a person from dying. About how a life could exists, barely twitching, in this fine equilibrium. In those dark rooms. Siddharth Katragadda’s poems speak with a new voice that is unique, yet familiar, depressing at times but at the same time, makes you laugh at the ironies of life. |
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