In the controversial folk story, ‘A Garland for the Lake’, for instance, the headman sacrifices his daughter-in-law, Bhageerathi, to revive a dried lake. In Aji’s retelling, Bhageerathi offers herself up for sacrifice, a more resolute and less vulnerable figure than in the original. And indeed this change of detail has a crucial implication for the turn in a later event: when a wily temple priest asks that Honni be burnt along with her deceased husband, Annaiah, the storyteller, reminds the villagers that Honni, like Bhagreerathi, has to offer herself as sacrifice and not be subject to community diktat. Retelling stories, for Aji, is an opportunity for creating new moral precedents and political possibilities. In another striking instance, the novel places an object associated with the lower castes – a goatskin pouch – in Kamadeva’s hands, creating newer resonances in the story.

Revisiting folk stories can often mean a recovery of the forgotten original ideals and the realignment of moral priorities in the present. The narration of the Renuka-Yellamma story, for example, lets the villagers realize that the practice of girls from poor lower-caste families being ‘married’ to Yellamma’s temple was not in harmony with the founding ideals behind her worship.

In the lush sensory world of The Wall, abundant space is made for bright colours (and, for sounds and smells too). Symbolizing the festival of Kamadeva, the lustrous colours also aspire to dissolve settled ways of seeing and thinking, and gesture towards newer freedoms, newer social arrangements.

Acknowledgements

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

abriel Garcia Marquez, Bharata Muni’s Natyashastra, K.P. Poornachandra Tejaswi, Daphne Du Maurier, U.R. Ananthamurthy, Devanoor Mahadeva, M.S. Sathyu, Chidambararao Jambe, K.Y. Narayanaswamy, Imran Qureshi, Prakash Raj Mehu and Parvaiz Bukhari for influencing the book in various ways over twenty years.

Shashi Deshpande, Vivek Shanbhag, Prathibha Prahlad and Chandan Gowda for giving their time and knowledge to add value to my book.

K. Marulasiddappa for giving me the courage to take this book forward, Jayanth Kodkani for detailed suggestions which helped me frame it, Basavaraj Suleripalya for catching early errors.

My teachers B.R. Sundarkumar and Padmini Ravi for opening up the world of Bharatanatyam; K.V. Subbanna, Venkatramana Aithal, K.G. Mahabaleshwar, K.V. Akshara, Phaniyamma; my mentors Sreenivas G. Kappanna, C.R. Simha for the same in theatre.

Gopinath, Yadugiri, Partha and Aisiri Aji; Amita Chaitanya; my cousins – Geetha Tamaroon, the first to read the first draft of The Wall; H.O. Sudarshan Rajagopal for wading through multiple drafts; Radika Makaram and Sumana Mandayam for their painstaking and awesome versions of the family tree; Preetam Maloor, Raja Aji, my niece Megha Kishore for their suggestions at various stages of the book; family patriarch S. Parthasarathy and my aunts Chitra Dasarathi, Mythily Makaram, Mukta Rajagopal, Mythily Srivatsa, my extended family; and Ambika.

Naheed Ataulla, B.R. Mamatha, Alladi Jayasri, Milan Vohra, Geetanjali Kapoor, Prathibha Prahlad, G.S. Jayanthi, Nistula Hebbar, Urmi Goswami, Rohini Swamy, Sarah Fathima and Smitha Rao, the sisterhood that sustains me.