Portrait of Life in Karnataka’s Malnad

In 2006, Poornachandra Tejaswi, one of the titans of Kannada literature, published his deftly narrated novel Mayaloka. And now it has at last appeared in a faithful and superbly rendered English translation by Krishna Murthy Chandar, who taught English for three decades at Mysore University and is himself a gifted writer in Kannada. Mayaloka was the last major work by Tejaswi, who passed away in 2007. It is set in the heart of a region the writer knew like the back of his hand—the Malnad, the richly forested spine of Karnataka, formed by the great Sahyadri range of mountains, also known as the Western Ghats. Tejaswi’s roots were firmly anchored in its soil. Growing up as the son of one of Karnataka’s greatest writers, KV Puttappa (Kuvempu), Tejaswi quite naturally gravitated towards writing and soon emerged with a distinctive voice of his own.