Land of Lime

1. What would make an author choose Kamsa as his pen name?

When Samsa wrote his best play, Vigada Vikramaraya, it was published in 1925 in Mysore University’s new and prestigious journal, Prabuddha Karnataka. It was a major honor for a ‘matric fail’, who had educated himself and come to hate passionately university scholars and palace pundits, to be published in this journal. A. R. Krishna Shastri, the editor and a friend of Samsa’s, refused to use Samsa’s then chosen pen name, Kamsa and the play was printed with the author remaining unnamed. Apparently, shortly thereafter, his name was misprinted as Samsa and that name stuck.

2. After a failed suicide attempt, Samsa visited his elder brother in Mysore. When asked what drove him to atttempt suicide, Samsa apparently quoted Keats and said: I have been half in love with easeful death. One wouldn’t expect someone who hadn’t passed highschool to quote from Ode to a nightingale but Samsa is also an author of unusual sensibility. He also belonged to an era when it was not unusual for authors to be open to multiple traditions and influences. Thus Takazi Shivashankara Pillai would list Dostoevsky as a major influence on him whereas Kuvempu would write his two classic regional novels Kanuru Heggadati and Malegalalli Madumagalu, inspired by Thomas Hardy’s novels.

3. Samsa eventually committed suicide in 1939. He was 41. I will post a separate entry on his fascinating life and plays but here is an excerpt from his suicide note.

I (Sami Venkatadri Iyer) am swallowing …… because it has become impossible for me to drag on this miserable existence of mine - persistently slandered, libelled, and persecuted as I had been, have been, am still and will ever be by the most underground, cowardly, mischeavous and malevolent (Mysore) police mad dogs.

.. may the British Empire in India endure until the very end of eternity! And may every one of the Mysore Police rats be rewarded (for their foulmouthed falsehoods and calumnies and diligent deliveries against me) - with dukedoms (if not with thrones) by the unspeakable British Conspirators against Mysore’s King and against the Mysore State!

4. I have been thinking about Samsa’s life, obsession with death and creativity for a few months now. Note that Samsa once wrote a 183 page complaint against his tormenters to the Inspector General of Police, outlining the misdeeds of his tormenters. His plays on the history of Mysore intensly focus on palace intrigues and conspiracies, lack of loyalty and an unstable state. Both his own inner psychological battles as well as the status of a colonized India play out on the pages of his plays. More on that soon.

In the meanwhile, read a nice SALON essay entitled A brief history of Western death by Gary Kamiya.