Foreword To Kanthapura (1938)

Foreword to Kanthapura (1938)
My publishers have asked me to say a word of explanation.
There is no village in India, however mean, that has not a rich sthala-purana, or legendary
history, of its own. Some god or godlike hero has passed by the village – Rama might have
rested under this papal-tree, Sita might have dried her clothes, after her bath, on this yellow-
stone, or the Mahatma himself, on one of his many pilgrimages through the country, might have
slept in this hut, the low one, by the village gate. In this way the past mingles with the present,
and the gods mingle with men to make the repertory of your grandmother always bright. One
such story from the contemporary annals of my village I have tried to tell.
The telling has not been easy. One has to convey in a language that is not one’s own; the spirit
that is one’s own. One has to convey the various shades and omissions of a certain thought-
movement that looks maltreated in an alien language. I use the word ‘alien’, yet English is not
really an alien language to us. It is the language of our intellectual make-up, like Sanskrit or
Persian was before, but not of our emotional make-up. We are all instinctively bilingual, many of
us writing in our own language and in English. We cannot write like the English. We should not.
We cannot write only as Indians. We have grown to look at the large world as part of us. Our
method of expression therefore has to be a dialect which will some day prove to be as distinctive
and colorful as the Irish or the American. Time alone will justify it.
After language the next problem is that of style. The tempo of Indian life must be infused into
our English expression, even as the tempo of American or Irish life has gone into the making of
theirs. We, in India, think quickly, we talk quickly, and when we move we move quickly. There
must be something in the sun of India that makes us rush and tumble and run on. And our paths
are paths interminable. The Mahabharatha has 214778 verses and the Ramayana 48000. Puranas
there are endless and innumerable. We have neither punctuation nor the treacherous ‘ats’ and
‘ons’ to bother us – we tell one interminable tale. Episode follows episode, and when our
thoughts stop our breath stops, and we move on to another thought. This was and still is the
ordinary style of our story-telling. I have tried to follow it myself in this story.
It may have been told of an evening, when as the dusk falls and through the sudden quiet, lights
leap up in house after house, and stretching her bedding on the veranda, a grandmother might
have told you, newcomer, the sad tale of her village.
Raja Rao
Telephone Conversation (1962)
The price seemed reasonable, location

Indifferent. The landlady swore she lived
Off premises. Nothing remained
But self-confession. “Madam,” I warned,
5 “I hate a wasted journey—I am African.”
Silence. Silenced transmission of
Pressurized good-breeding. Voice, when it came,
Lipstick coated, long gold-rolled
Cigarette-holder pipped. Caught I was, foully.
10 “HOW DARK?” . . . I had not misheard . . . “ARE YOU LIGHT

OR VERY DARK?” Button B. Button A. Stench
Of rancid breath of public hide-and-speak.
Red booth. Red pillar-box. Red double-tiered
Omnibus squelching tar. It was real! Shamed
15 By ill-mannered silence, surrender
Pushed dumbfoundment to beg simplification.
Considerate she was, varying the emphasis—
“ARE YOU DARK? OR VERY LIGHT?” Revelation came.

“You mean—like plain or milk chocolate?”
20 Her assent was clinical, crushing in its light
Impersonality. Rapidly, wavelength adjusted,
I chose. “West African sepia”—and as an afterthought,
“Down in my passport.” Silence for spectroscopic
Flight of fancy, till truthfulness clanged her accent
25 Hard on the mouthpiece. “WHAT’S THAT?” conceding,
“DON’T KNOW WHAT THAT IS.” “Like brunette.”
“THAT’S DARK, ISN’T IT?” “Not altogether.

Facially, I am brunette, but madam, you should see
The rest of me. Palm of my hand, soles of my feet
30 Are a peroxide blonde. Friction, caused—
Foolishly, madam—by sitting down, has turned
My bottom raven black—One moment madam!”—sensing
Her receiver rearing on the thunderclap
About my ears—“Madam,” I pleaded, “wouldn’t you rather
35 See for yourself?”
Wole Soyinka

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Foreword to Kanthapura (1938)

My publishers have asked me to say a word of explanation.

The price seemed reasonable, location

10 “HOW DARK?” . . . I had not misheard . . . “ARE YOU LIGHT

“ARE YOU DARK? OR VERY LIGHT?” Revelation came.

“THAT’S DARK, ISN’T IT?” “Not altogether.

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