Idle musings

    My fluency in reading Kannada is very poor, compared to my familiarity with English. My wife regularly solves crosswords in Kannada in the weekly Kannada magazine "Taranga". I attempt English crosswords but rarely complete all clues. So I admire her talent in solving Kannada crosswords. It was after marriage that I realised from her about the richness of local Indian languages like Kannada. The spark had been ignited by my late father who told me that he wished I had learnt how to read Kannada so that I could enjoy "Ramayana Darshanam" written by the Kannada literary giant Kuvempu or K. V. Puttappa also known popularly as Kuvempu . Now after having read one classic Kannada novel, I feel that it may yet be possible that I do read Kuvempu's magnum opus one of these days !     About 18 months ago or so, I picked up the Kannada novel "Roopadarshi" written by K. V. Iyer to read. In the beginning, I must have irritated my wife to a large extent, asking