Shakespeare of Rajasthan tipped for literature Nobel

“Says who?” asked Vijaydan Detha, 85, when DNA informed him that his name figured among the favourites to bag the Nobel for literature this year, according to an Agence France-Presse report. Popularly known as Bijji, Detha is known as the Shakespeare of Rajasthan for successfully drawing inspiration from local folklore and taking his writing to dizzying heights.

“I may or may not get the Nobel, but each of my stories is 100% Nobel-worthy work,” said the octogenarian whose literary works include Bataan ri Phulwari (Garden of Tales), a 14-volume collection of stories that draws on folklore and spoken dialects of Rajasthan. Detha’s stories and novels have been adapted for many plays and movies, including Habib Tanvir’s legendary Charandas Chor and Amol Palekar’s Paheli, which was India’s official entry to the Oscars.

Online betting site Ladbrokes tipped Syrian poet Adnois as the frontrunner for the literature Nobel which will most likely be announced on October 6.

Others in the running include another Indian — poet K Satchidanandan — Swedish poet Tomas Transtroemer and Australia’s Les Murray among others.   

Also tipped for the Nobel are Kenya’s Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Somalia’s Nuruddin Farah, Hungary’s Peter Nadas, Korean poet Ko Un, Japan’s Haruki Murakami and Nepali poet Rajendra Bhandari, 

Detha, however, does not write anymore. He suffered a head injury after an accident in 2007. “It strains when I write, so I don’t write anymore,” said Detha. But he has not entirely given up on what he loves the most. “We hail from a generation of Charans — our forefathers used to sing praises for the kings. So storytelling is in our blood,” he said.

True writing, said Detha, flows from the subconscious. “Passbooks are written with a conscious mind. When I sit down to write, I hear only my pen caressing the paper. True writing dwells in your subconscious,” said Detha. His characters are marked by their distinguishable streak of either strength or weakness, defining their actions. And, like Shakespeare, he often weaves a touch of magic, a higher calling or a paranormal intervention to draw a line of reason in his folk tales.

Detha worships Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay, Anton Chekhov and Rabindranath Tagore (in that order). “Their inimitable style of writing and above all the freshness that they brought into literature appeals to me,” he said. But despite idolising his literary “gurus”, Detha’s writings bear no impression of their respective styles.

“They are my gurus. But I discovered my own style of writing which is what I set out to do in the first place. I don’t imitate and I can’t be a clone,” said Detha. He says his works speak of emptiness of god, religion and money. “Just because someone has them does not mean they deserve it; having something and deserving it are two different things,” he said.

Detha makes a special mention of Russian authors who influenced him in his formative years. “Russians wrote and spoke in their mother tongue at a time when French dominated Europe,” he said. “I learnt to love my mother tongue even more after reading their works.”

It is a pity, however, that many in India, Detha’s motherland, fail to identify the man and his genius.