What led you to writing Konda Polam or Tiger Lessons, focusing on a community of shepherds in the Nallamala hills in Andhra Pradesh?
I hail from a village amid the dry lands near the Nallamala foothills, where shepherds and farmers live together.
Being a seed himself, sprouting from the bosom of the soil and looking up at the sky, is what it means to be a farmer. Similarly, a shepherd is one who personifies hunger, just like his sheep, and
What led you to writing Konda Polam or Tiger Lessons, focusing on a community of shepherds in the Nallamala hills in Andhra Pradesh?
I hail from a village amid the dry lands near the Nallamala foothills, where shepherds and farmers live together.
Being a seed himself, sprouting from the bosom of the soil and looking up at the sky, is what it means to be a farmer. Similarly, a shepherd is one who personifies hunger, just like his sheep, and spends his entire life craving for fodder and water.
My life is a mix of being a farmer and a shepherd, in equal measures. It is a rural life – where half the body is a ripe stalk beaten down for corn, and the other half is an udder giving out milk.
The earth beneath my feet, and the lives of people around me, made me write ‘Konda Polam’.
I see myself as a court scribe, a voice for the dry lands and uplands, the brooks, streams, hillocks and heaps, trees and other life forms in the stretch from Sagileru river to the Nallamala hills. My vocation is to sit in front of them, carefully listen to what they say, and bring it to the world. The Nallamala hills narrated the story of Konda Polam to me, and I simply wrote it down.
This book could have been a realist depiction of the tragic lives of the gollas, but in writing it as an adventure, you have created a story that reads like a fantasy to the urban reader (I often thought of Tolkien’s works) and is yet grounded in reality. What led you to choose such a format?
The poignancy and adventurousness during the hill farming expedition is a natural part of the shepherds’ existential struggle. When a golla takes the responsibility for 50 animals on his head and ventures into the hills, the pathos of becoming a sheep himself during the ordeal of filling their stomachs, and the courage shown to protect the flock from predators are real. I did not have to resort to any imagination. The novel is inspired by the lives of these gollas and nothing else.
Embarking on a hill farming expedition is an aspect of the shepherds’ lives the outside world is not aware of. It is a courage borne out of necessity. When it is a question of life or death, the only way forward is to risk death for the sake of life.
I wonder why today’s youth do not take these shepherds as an inspiration to handle the rough terrain of life. That anguish is reflected in the novel. “Loving one’s work, taking ownership for one’s work, and becoming a personification of work” – this three-pronged approach will make anyone a winner. This is my strong belief.
This belief made me create the character of Ravindra Yadav, send him into the forest, and make him change his career from a software engineer to a forest official.
Did you envision the action sequences as you wrote them? What kind of research was involved in the process?
I sourced most of the incidents from the shepherds of Nallamala villages. I have been listening to those stories since childhood. It is a deeply evocative life style. I trekked all those hills with others from my village – to collect dry grass or wood or to visit the sacred spots. When I walked through those forests – the brooks, groves, ravines, meadows, valleys, cliffs, and rocky outcrops, I recollected the stories and connected them to the places. I mentally became a shepherd myself, roaming through the forested hills, to be able to write the novel.
Maybe, if the shepherds themselves wrote the novel, the narration would have been even more realistic, closer to their real-life experience and emotions!
All the characters are well-formed and distinct from one another. The reader can distinguish Pullayya from Gurappa or Ravi from Bhaskar. It’s a story about men and their relationship with the sheep. You layer this with inclusion of different tribes in the Nallamalla region. And women, despite being in the margins, have a significant role and leave a lasting impact. Tell us about this.
The character of Pullayya is based on a real person in my village. Even the other characters are based on people from nearby communities. The yaanadi settlements, and the Chenchu, Sugaali hamlets naturally became part of the story.
Though shepherds are mostly male, the driving force behind them are the golla women. The shepherd is always out and about, roaming with the flock day and night and in all seasons. The flock is the centre of his existence.
The shepherd’s wife handles the household – bringing up the children, managing the finances, celebrating festivals and rituals, maintaining good relations with the neighbours and relatives – to ensure her husband is free to focus on the flock, which is their livelihood. When she asks the men returning from the hills about her husband’s wellbeing, her moist eyes reflect the bond between the couple.
In every trail the shepherds take in the hills, the invisible footprints of the women can be discerned. The empathetic presence of the absent shepherds can be found in every decision the women make to run the home with a lot of patience and tact.
The relationship between the forest and humans is central to the story. How do you see Tiger Lessons contributing to the broader conversation about environmental issues?
The shepherds may not be aware of the terminology and slogans used by the conservationists. But they know how to take care of mother forest.
The tradition of not carrying sharp weapons into the forest exemplifies their philosophy. There is a strong belief, that they should restrict themselves to seeking feed and water, and not destroy the forest. It means not cutting down the trees and not killing any animals. Even if a tiger attacks the herd, give up a sheep or two, thinking of it as a tax paid to the forest. Attacking the animals in their habitat is against the ethical code. In Tiger Lessons, this is the key message from Pullayya. Even Ravi, after injuring the tiger, repents his deed.
The novel’s message is to co-exist with nature and not destroy the fragile ecosystem. If this message is spread widely, we will find solutions to most of the environmental concerns.
Konda Polam was adapted into a film with the same title before it was translated into English as Tiger Lessons. The film notably highlighted a romantic angle for the protagonist, Ravi, which isn’t the case in the book. How do you feel about your story evolving across different media, and the ways in which each medium introduces it to new audiences?
I used some literary techniques – proverbs, metaphors, descriptions of nature, local legends and so on – with the intention to make the reader see the landscape and feel the adventure with my eyes.
When director said he wants to adapt the novel as a movie, I was curious how he would convert my words into visuals. Readers imagine the scenes in their mind. But audience end up watching the visuals of the director’s imagination. I was with the crew during the production. I saw them bring flocks of sheep in front of the camera, the actors struggling with the dialect, and the various gimmicks to convert the descriptions into cinematic visuals. It was a different experience for me.
Now I am amazed to see the story in English. The lives of the shepherds, hidden under the overhang of the Nallamala hills, becoming known all over the country or world, is something I never imagined. The anguish of my soil, the dirge of the forest, the existential struggles of the humans and animals, are now leaving the Telugu land and journeying into the wide world. I owe many thanks to the translator Narasimha Kumar and Bloomsbury publishers for making this happen.
What books you recommend your readers that deal with similar themes or narrative style?
My literary journey started with reading puranas, kavyas and continued through modern literature. In these books, the stories offered me a bird’s eye view of human experience in forested habitats. When it comes to modern literature, the trees appear amid concrete jungles. Man, who once lived in small huts under trees, now lives in sky scrapers, with some vegetation here and there, surviving under human mercy.
To make human life more pleasurable, and defeat disease and old age, we are advancing science and technology. In this process, we are unable to perceive the destruction of other life forms that have a right to live with freedom on this planet. We seem to have a philosophy that assumes nature has been created exclusively for the benefit of our species.
Konda Polam raises a small, but pertinent question to this mindset.
The descriptions of flora and fauna, rivers, hills and caves in the Ramayana or the beauty of the human settlements in the forests of the Mahabharata, and the vivid narration of seasons in kavyas like Amuktamalyada, make readers feel the affectionate embrace of nature. Modern literature brings you the tragedy of barren landscapes, shorn of greenery and ecological diversity. Today’s youth should read books that delve deep into the root causes of this destruction and offer solutions.
Akankshya Abismruta is an independent writer.
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