A Pioneer Passes Away

Courtesy: The Hindu

Pattabhi Rama Reddy, who died recently, was the pioneer of parallel cinema in Kannada. Though his more recent films failed to enthuse even that class of audience who adored him in the Seventies, his Samskara remains a masterpiece to this day.

Recalling his contribution to the cultural scene, acclaimed writer, U.R. Ananthamurthy, based on whose novel he made the landmark film Samskara, said: “Though greatly inspired by Rabindranath Tagore in his initial days, Pattabhi got liberated from his influences very early in his life, compared to writers of his period. Pattabhi had an attractive personality. His simplicity and ability to give a hearing to one and all were his characteristic traits.” Reddy’s Samskara is a landmark film in more than one sense: all the people who were part of the film’s production have made a name for themselves, either in theatre or in films.

National Impact

Tracing the genesis of the experimental film movement in Kannada, noted critic and writer, the late T.G. Vaidyanathan had said: “The first Kannada film to make an impact nationally is undoubtedly Samskara, which won the national award for the Best Feature film in 1971. A medley of talents came together to make this masterpiece. As coincidence would have it, all those who were involved with the film were either trained in the West or came from the West itself.

The director Pattabhi was trained in Columbia, barely familiar with Kannada, writer-actor Girish ‘Karnad was Oxford-educated, the cameraman was an obscure Australian named Tom Cowan, the editor was an equally obscure Englishman Stevan Cartaw, the story was by U.R. Ananthamurthy, professor of English literature, the music director Rajeev Taranath was also a professor of English, who had spent six years learning from the legendary sarod maestro Ali Akbar Khan.”

The film faced stiff opposition from the Madhwa community and also met with resistance from the Censors. But it triumphed all odds to win critical and popular favour. It won the President’s gold medal for the Best Feature Film in the same year that the late Satyajit Ray’s Pratidwandi was in competition. It also won numerous international awards including the Bronze Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival.

Pattabhi Rama Reddy also directed Chandamarutha, which is about inner forces, working at both the personal as well as social level; rebelling against authoritarianism. He made Shrungara Masa and Devarakadu in Kannada, Pellanati Pramanlu, Bhagyachakram and Krishna Arjuna Yuddham in Telugu.

Reddy was interested in a whole lot of things. In fact, he was greatly interested in poetry, and was influenced by Rabindranath Tagore in Shanitniketan, where he studied for two years.

He joined Calcutta University for his master’s degree in English literature and later went to study Mathematics in the University of Columbia.

The gathering war clouds in Europe, completely shattered the misty moonlight influence of Tagore, in the year 1938. All the thousand metaphors I had read in the Bhava Kavitam (romantic poetry) in Prabandhams’ and in Tagore songs, suddenly lost all their meaning.

It was at that time I found the point of view, rather, the angle of attack which later formed the basis of my verses. I distinctly felt sick inside me. My heart was indeed an Ashanthiniketan. I could no longer continue my studies in Calcutta and returned to Nellore, my home town in Andhra Pradesh.”

With great reluctance, Pattabhi Rama Reddy entered his family business of Mica export at Gudur. Whenever he went to Madras, he used to meet Sri Sri and Mallavarapu Visweswara Rao (two revolutionary poets). It was then that he wrote Ragala Dozen. “With the basic experience of Calcutta, providing my view point, I indented on my observations in Madras and Nellore to cull the material necessary for my first book of poems.”

“The authors, who influenced me most were Sri Sri and Chalam. I read and re-read the prose, poems of Walt Whitman, Oscar Wilde’s Ballads of Reading Jail haunted me constantly. The writing of Freud interested me a great deal. Above all, the negative influence of Tagore had a great deal to do with the pattern I envisaged for my book. I consciously tried to break away his imagery. Another person who made a powerful impression on me was Albert Einstein, both as a man and a mathematician. I was amazed by his daring original thinking. Earlier, while in Shantiniketan, I experimented a great deal with end rhymes. I was in search of a new sound. Tagore had discarded the Sanskrit metres with end rhymes in Bengali. But this was a singularly difficult task in Telugu. The experiments I made did bear fruit; a considerable body of end rhyme poetry has now come in to pass.”

By becoming member of Madras Players Amateur Theatres, he produced and directed many plays. He founded Jayanthi Pictures in association with K.V. Reddy and P.N. Reddy and produced the Telugu film, Pellinaati Pramanulu, which bagged National Award.

Government Interference

The makers of Samskara were harassed rather cruelly by the Congress Government during the Emergency. Snehalatha Reddy, the actress who later married Pattabhi, (Pattabhi married Snehalata much against the wishes of his father and rebelled constantly against feudal and patriarchal values) was accused of concealing information about the whereabouts of George Fernandes (who later became union minister in successive governments), a trade union leader whose arrest had been ordered in the Emergency roundup.

She was jailed and interrogated for eight months. An asthmatic, deprived of medicine, she fell seriously ill and was released just before her death. She died in January 1977, five weeks after her release.

Besides being a filmmaker, Pattabhi was much concerned about political and civil liberties issues.

He was the founder of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) and was active in the human rights movement. He was also one of the founding directors of Concerned for Working Children (CWC).

Pattabhi was a supporter of Socialist Party of India and he shared the ideology of Ram Manohar Lohia, Gopala Gowda and Jayaprakash Narayan.

This apart, Reddy lived till his end as a poet. All Reddy’s friends who were used to his largesse and his stimulating company will miss him sorely.

(Courtesy: The Hindu, May 12, 2006)