Moogavani Pillanangrovi: Ballad of Ontillu

Moogavani Pillanagrovi (1993) is woven around the near-suicidal death of a farmer who loses his land. While the period of the plot is around the 1950s, the story revolves around the farmer's ties with his land and his inability to visualize a life without it-an issue relevant even today. The farmer's death could have been forgotten by the village, except for several puzzling incidents that crop up. Myth and reality intertwine to create a folklore around the land and the farmer. This Telugu novella was first published in 1993, during a period when Andhra Pradesh's farmers had begun committing suicide in droves. Many surprising parallels can be drawn to the pressures in agriculture and the farmer in real life and in the novel. This novella introduced what is called (in Telugu literary criticism) as magic realism-mirroring real life and yet making wide departures into the world of lore, mythic representation, and strongly rooted cultural beliefs. Kesava Reddy writes with a strong inflection of his native Rayalaseema dialect. Breaking the tradition of writing in the standard Telugu form as it is spoken and written by people from the coastal districts of Krishna and Guntur, Kesava Reddy along with several other writers began writing in his native dialect-a bold step at that time. The detail in the novel is striking. Kesava Reddy also broke with Telugu literature (which was didactic at that time) to build on detail and cut down on dialogue. His dialogues are sparse and never interfere with the tempo built up in the story.