Kuvempu

The year was 1938 and the place Maharaja's College, Mysore. A first year student of B A Kannada Honours course, D Javare Gowda was looking forward to lectures by well known professors like Venkannayya, Teenamshree and Kuvempu. He was panick-stricken by his professor's question, if he had read the novels of Thomas Hardy and Leo Tolstoy, and wondered, why he discussed English literature in a Kannada class. He didn't know that Hardy's Return of the native in English was prescribed for Kannada honours students. "Would it not have been better if you had simply read Hardy's work before the classes actually commenced?" the teacher asked him and explained the novel's first chapter. D Javare Gowda and others listened attentively as if they were learning from an audio-visual medium! After an hour of listening, the students were so impressed that they politely told him they would read the Kannada text and requested him for more lectures and analysis. The professor who kept his students spell bound by his unimpeded analysis of Thomas Hardy's novel was none other than 'KUVEMPU'! D Javare Gowda (DejaGou), well known litterateur and former vice-chancellor of Mysore University, recalls emotionally, "Kuvempu became my 'Guru' even before I actually became his student during my B A, Honours. My teacher Venkataramappa who was his classmate used to narrate to us the contents of Kuvempu's work on Shree Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and Swami Vivekananda, which taught me the significance of a secular outlook. I had seen a photograph of Kuvempu in 'Prabuddha Karnataka', a publication from Maharaja's College, which I had framed. As I went on to read Kuvempu's other works, I became his admirer and worshipper!" Kuvempu (Kuppali Venkatappa Puttappa) was born on 29th of December 1904, at Kuppali in Teerthahalli District. As a primary school student at Teerthahalli, he loved Mother Nature. Even before entering high school at Hardwicke, Mysore, he had read Jaimini Bharata. In his early college days, Kuvempu read the works of Wordsworth, Milton, Kelly, Tolstoy and Hardy, along with Vivekananda's selected lectures and Rabindra Nath Tagore's 'Geetanjali'. So fascinated was he by Robert Browning's Pied Piper of Hamlin that, he recreated it in Kannada as The Kindari jogi of Bommanahalli. DejaGou who has recently written a book on the poet titled 'Soundarya Yogi Kuvempu', says, "In nature, Kuvempu used to search God's beauty and kindness. He can be called the gifted child of Mother Nature or The Prakrutimata. The inspiration for the flow of his beautiful poems at such a younger age was definitely the serene nature of Malenadu, the hilly district of Teerthahalli and its surroundings.� Kuvempu could understand the true philosophy reflected by Mother Nature's divine spectrum. Each of his poems on a flower or a tree mirrors a unique tenderness. DejaGou points at his first Kannada poem, 'Poovu' or 'The Flower' as the evidence. Munjane Manjinolu Pasuralli nadevaaga Anjisuva Sanjeyolu Usirannu yelevaaga Yele poove aalisuve