Karna and Kannada
A personal essay on my relationship with my third language and raging in it
I had dropped my mother off and was returning home when two guys on a two-wheeler behind me started honking incessantly even though there was nowhere I could go. Here’s the thing, if I had to paste one sticker on my car, it would be that honkers are fuckers. The only way I am able to process my rage at this epidemic in India is to imagine smashing the vehicle with a rod while watching the honker’s face. By the time my imagined sadism plays out, the honker is either out of sight or I am able to take a deep breath. This time, I snapped. Before my sadism had time to distract my anger, I had shown him the finger. Twice. Felt good. I was in my city and in my neighbourhood. If not here then where?
Screaming, they overtook me and stopped their bike right in front of my car forcing me to slam the brakes. They got off their bike and as they approached me, I could feel my heart rate rise. For a fleeting moment I wanted my anger to run wild and I was about to get out of the car when prudence finally appeared. It informed me that stupid-rage is what had got me in this mess in the first place. Besides, they were two of them. So I stayed put in the car. My window was partially lowered and through it they embarked on a barrage of abuse in Kannada. In these situations, if you don’t know Kannada, you are screwed. Not only do you lose the support of the crowd that assembles, but you also declare your outsider status to the other party who hone in on that. Not knowing Kannada means you probably don’t know anyone of consequence here if things escalate and the police are not likely to take your side either. English and Hindi, the two languages I was most fluent in were not options.
But I knew Kannada. I was born and brought up in the city and it was my third language. With that in mind I let fly a couple of well-constructed sentences to the effect of ‘where the hell did you expect me to go’, ‘just because you have a horn, that doesn’t mean you keep honking; use your brains’ and finally ‘just get lost’. So far so good. I had established myself as a Bengalurean. The outsider card wouldn’t work against me. But then something odd happened. When the tempo increased and our anger grew, my Kannada started deserting me. While they heaped insult after insult and volley after volley, gone was my Kannada fluency of a few seconds past. I was fumbling and stuttering. In that moment they sensed my weakness and swept in for the kill. They demanded I get out of the car. I refused. The driver of the two-wheeler lunged into the window for my car keys. He wanted to take the car out of the equation and force me out. I needed the sanctuary and escape it provided. He had my car keys in his right hand but I held onto it with both of mine, trying to pry open his fist. His friend in the meanwhile used the small opening in the window to land a few blows on my face. But because of the small gap available to him, they were firm taps rather than blows. The driver tried to use his left hand to free himself from my double-handed clasp. I fended off that attempt but now we held opposing hands, fingers intertwined, faces separated only by a partially lowered window. Despite everything, while it lasted, I almost chuckled at this weird intimacy between strangers that only rage can create. I knew I was in trouble if I lost control of the keys so I held on. Luckily a couple of people from the crowd stepped in to resolve the situation.
As I drove back, I began to feel the sharp taps on my face that they had landed. The adrenalin had done a good job of numbing them until then. The stinging pain worked with humiliation to ensure my anger returned in different ways. I repeated ad-nauseam in my head all the things I wanted to say to them, only this time in fluent Kannada. Then I got angry at my Kannada. It had deserted me in my time of greatest need.
In the days after the incident I found myself revisiting Karna’s story. It is said that his knowledge of archery deserted him when he needed it the most. The Mahabharata is complex enough to have a story for most situations and in that moment I had felt like the outsider pretending to be the insider that Karna did.
The ‘suta-putra’, the charioteer’s son, was not meant to wield weapons. He had been cursed by his teacher Parashurama that he would lose his skills when he needed them the most because Karna had concealed his origins from him. He was of the wrong background and did not belong. It was reiterated to him throughout his story in different ways. A gnawing sense of self-doubt must have been the one foe he had to muster the courage to contend with at all times.
On that day when he faced Arjuna, when all his courage was used up to confront his great rival who was born into the right background to wield weapons, there was none left to fight self-doubt. Duryodhana had convinced Shalya – a great warrior-king in his own right – to be Karna’s charioteer. Duryodhana wanted to even the odds a bit since Arjuna’s charioteer was Krishna, advising him on what to do. But Shalya must have felt slighted at the reversal; at being made a charioteer to a charioteer’s son when he was the born warrior. He took every opportunity to remind Karna of his origins and that he faced a superior foe born into warfare, free of self-doubt, free of a lack of confidence.
In the end, Karna’s abilities did not matter. In every version of the duel I have read, he fought well. I now think Parashurama’s curse wasn't about skills. It was about Karna forgetting how to be a warrior. As a first-generation warrior, his self-doubt ran deep and could be revealed by vulnerability. On that day it rose fast and clouded his judgement. I hadn’t thought about it before but when his wheel got stuck in the ground, why didn’t his charioteer Shalya step down to remove it? Shalya must have told the son of a charioteer to remove the chariot’s wheel himself; that removing it was beneath him. In that moment, instead of threatening to kill his charioteer for insubordination in a crisis as a warrior would have or even finding another chariot, only the son of a charioteer would have agreed to accept the refusal of a born warrior like Shalya, step down, and attempt to remove his chariot wheel leaving him exposed. In that final moment of his life, he was no longer the outsider pretending to belong in a warrior’s world. Wracked with self-doubt, when Arjuna’s arrows pierced his body, he was the suta-putra again, who died clinging to the chariot wheel of his boyhood years.
I now say I can speak Kannada, I don’t know it; not in my bones. Not enough to be an Idiot in it and rage with it. It is a friend I need to be wary of. I was not born and socialized into believing it belongs to me. With Kannada, in my city, in my neighbourhood, I need to have my wits about me.
This made me chuckle. As a native kannadiga who moved away years ago, I can proudly say on a rare occasion of traffic altercation the choicest of Kannada abuse words flowed effortlessly from my mouth. Some things you just don't forget. There was no need for coherent sentences. Just a volley of unrelated swear words. Somewhere, my Kannadiga ancestors are secretly proud of me. My Hyderabadi wife is still mad at me.
Understand the non Kannada feeling. Though I am also a first generation immigrant to Karnataka, my “local” Kannada is good. Somehow understood early while a kid that this brings me closer to my Kannada friends than anything else. Growing up in Mysore also helped which is more Kannada than bangalore. Busy still I feel I should have been more Kannada, should have had Kannada as the first language instead of Hindi. I would have been more comfortable than now..
The juxtaposition with Karna is an interesting thought. Will dive deeper into it to see how close the two are.. great writing, as always.