While reading our Editor's article on Girish Karnad and UR Ananthamurthy, I remembered reading URA's Samskara a long time ago. I was at an impressionable age and was awed by all the books I read. Even then, Samskara failed to impress me; in fact, it was like swallowing a mouthful of bad smell suddenly. I regretted reading it after managing to finish it somehow, because I never left even a bad book unfinished. This is my personal opinion and it was not because of caste reasons. I do not know the criteria for Jnanpith, but his other works may have been the reason for the award.
'Caught in a strange land in a net with other butterflies, I'm a caterpillar yet undecided to remain a caterpillar and perish or turn into a beautiful butterfly and live a life full of joy.' Readers don't laugh. But I came up with this one night recently when I was travelling in a train. I tossed and turned, not being able to sleep, upset over unexplainable things and frustrated over events not in my control. Then it occurred to me that our life and its usefulness depends on our decisions -- whether to remain a crawling caterpillar whose existence otherwise is either ignored by all and sundry or who is cursed for just being there and thrown out with a stick, or to develop wings of life and metamorphose into a beautiful butterfly whom everybody adores for its beauty and colour, for its flitting liveliness, for its service to the flower's pollination... I thought that I should be a butterfly, of service to others, but then again I thought, anyway, who really cares?
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