“That which comes into being ceases to be (Yat janyam Tat nasyam)”
But that does not alter the fact that the principle of Being is a self existent entity, unaffected by the process of its becoming something and then eventually disappearing into nothingness.
The life that exists between birth and death is different from the living matter that ultimately ends up in extinction. The human being, as an expression of pervasive pure consciousness, partake of the everlasting life that is behind the evolution (ombes ex ovo) of the creature that is born only to die.
This everlasting life is beyond the reach of psychoanalysis, which is the favourite science of the critics who evaluate Butchi Babu’s novel “Chivaraku Migileydi” from that angle. This ever-living principle of life is also unconnected with the social existence of man, which gives rise to the popular saying, “no man is an island.” The novelist has well realised the reality that every man is an island surrounded by the ocean of his society.
The talker G.Saraswathi (“Naaku nachchina navala”, Yuva Vani, November 28), fortunately avoided the psychological jargon and stuck to the original intent of the author, who was his own best interpreter. Although she articulated the words which in effect maintain that ‘life is meaningless’, she had not attempted to read that concept of existentialism into the novel – which attempt is another popular approach of the run-of-the-mill criticism. Except that she did not quite justify the title of her talk, by specifying “why she liked the novel”, she had along remained faithful to the author in her narration of the story and her interpretation of the attitudes of the characters. Her enunciation too was better than the Yuva Vani average.
We shall now take the cue from her concluding words and try to “discover the humanity hidden in us” – as indeed did Butchi Babu himself.
‘Beata Solitudo, Sola Beatitudo’ (Beatific solitude, the only Beatitude) is an axiom that should convince even the most gregarious of extroverts, because, as long as man depends on anything or anyone outside of himself he can never be free from disappointment and distress. It is not only the saints and seers that have realised the truth of self-fulfillment and self-knowledge and self-reliance, but even the atheistic existentialists like Sartre declared. “Man can achieve nothing unless he first understood that he must count on no one but himself.”
As a matter of fact, “Chivaraku Migileydi” was at first titled “Ekaantam” (solitude). Butchi Babu admits an autobiographical impulsion in the composition of his masterwork. Yet, it is not the revelation of ‘human bondage’ (one more ‘discovery’ of our fashionable critics who like to parade their knowledge of foreign literature) but that of ‘human self-response’ that prompts writers like Butchi Babu who prefer coming to the accommodation with social exigencies.
The hero Dayanidhi on the one hand loved his mother, his cousin Amritam and himself, and on the other, wanted to seek that felicitous self-abnegation wherein there would be no Mothers, no Amritams, no Dayanidhis. Oddly enough, or appropriately enough, it was not the ‘love’ of these three figures but the libidinous motive force which drove Dayanidhi to the amoral Komali, that enables him to realise himself and the meaning of existence – an existence which is admittedly meaningless, so far as it is perceived from the societal standpoint.
‘The best way to resist temptation is to yield to it’ is the Wildean witticism which is philosophically facetious but practically advantageous for men like Dayanidhi who like to imagine themselves in the mould of a self-realisation comes of his final self discipline which enabled him to resist temptation: Komali, the woman of the world who is a vicarious incarnation of his own socially ostracised erring mother, does not so much liberate him from his libido (any more than did Amritam from his Oedipus Complex) as from his self-unimportance as a human being.
‘Man is born free but everywhere he is in chains’, observed Rousseau. These chains are not imposed by ‘society’, as the French thinker suggests, but by the individual man himself. Only as long as you seek your happiness and fulfilment through the medium of society do you open yourself to its chains.
Butchi Babu wanted to delve into the human potential that transcends the economic, sociological and historical barriers of Hamlet. Actually, Dayanidhi’s that separated man from man. He asseverated that this transcendence could only be accomplished by means of a non-dual self-awareness. Aptly, he added that this experience – like the ‘anubhavaika-vedyam’ and ‘aparoksha-anubhooti’ of metaphysics – could only be internally felt but cannot be externally defined in words.
The critics see neurosis in Dayanidhi’s struggle with himself, his ‘girls’ and his surroundings. Nevertheless, it was an active, unromantic, non-neurotic struggle which Butchi Babu’s hero launches against his ‘other ego’ in order to find his real self. His mother might have been a sullied woman, and yet no mother could be a ‘kumaataa’ therefore his love for her memory was to absolve himself of the self-accusation of ‘kuputrah’. Amritam might have been an adulterous woman in the eyes of society, but to the extent she led him ‘back to nature’ she was ambrosially pure. Komali might have been a sinner: all the same, she goaded the saint in Dayanidhi to come to the surface.
“What remains at last?” was the query Dayanidhi puts himself. The answer is “one’s coming to terms with oneself.” But you cannot be at peace with yourself until you understand the meaning of the Life beyond life, the Self above self.
All that remains of Butchi Babu’s bodily life and self is unknown and unseen. Still, all that remains of his conscious Life and Self visibly and Knowingly moves his reader to discover the humanity hidden in the human being – by comprehending that man is his own master and slave.
No man who masters himself can be society’s slave.
