About the Author and Summary

About the Author: P. Lankesh

P. Lankesh (1935-2000) was an Indian writer and journalist who wrote in Kannada.

• He took an honours degree in English from Central College, Bengaluru, and an M.A. in English from Maharaja College, Mysore.
• His first work was Kereya Neeranu Kerege Chelli (1963), a collection of short stories.
• He wrote short stories, poetry, three novels, critical essays and plays, and translated Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal, Oedipus Rex and Sophocles' Antigone.
• His 1976 film Pallavi, based on his novel Biruku, won India's national award for best direction.

The translator. The story was translated from Kannada by H.S. Raghavendra Rao (born 1948), a retired professor of Kannada, literary critic and translator.

[Exam Tip] — "The Gardener" is a Kannada story in translation. Name both: P. Lankesh (author) and H.S. Raghavendra Rao (translator).

Summary, Part 1: The Old Man Comes to the Garden

• The narrator says the story came to him "in a flash" after a chance meeting with an old man in a coconut grove near Chennarayapatna.
• The old man was tall, grey-haired, with a long beak-like nose and strong arms. He held a spade and had a newspaper under his arm. His eyes were "suffused with strange memories and native intelligence". He was "a labourer, overseer and philosopher, all rolled into one".
• He had come to the garden after walking hundreds of miles. The owner needed exactly such a man, and he stayed on.
• He knew agriculture and understood the workers. Petty thefts stopped, the income improved dramatically and the plantation grew far beyond its original ten acres.
• But the owner became lethargic, avoided hard work, made many new friends and fell into vices. His wife feared his adultery and could not decide whether the old man's arrival was for the better or the worse.
• One evening, as if he knew her worry, the old man brought her tender coconuts, sat beside her on the embankment of the well, and began a story.

Summary, Part 2: Tammanna and Basavaiah

• Tammanna had everything - ten acres of wet land, a comfortable house, people ready to obey him. His most important "possession" was his rival. (The old man first calls the rival Sangoji, then corrects himself: Basavaiah.)
• Competition turns into rivalry. If Tammanna bought four acres, Basavaiah did the same; if one had ten friends, the other had fifteen admirers. At first it looked like healthy competition, but soon there was no land left in the village. Tammanna had 1,000 acres; Basavaiah had 800.
• Basavaiah demanded that Tammanna sell him 200 acres. When Tammanna refused, Basavaiah seized 200 acres by force and built a fence around it.
• Tammanna's supporters suggested the court, the police, or hired men to attack Basavaiah. But Tammanna wanted to annihilate his rival completely.
• The songs. Tammanna began composing his experiences as ballads and singing them. The rivalry moved from the visible (land) to the invisible, abstract (art). His songs spoke of Basavaiah's cruelty and meanness; scholars and critics praised him; he became the best poet of his times. Art became the raison d'etre (reason for living) of his life.
• Basavaiah's reply. He could not sing. He grabbed more land, built a palatial mansion, hired people to praise him, wore gold and diamonds, and invited scholars, poets and musicians to fill his dull house with meaning.
• Basavaiah's hope. When Tammanna fell ill, Basavaiah felt revived: "Tammanna's disease was Basavaiah's health."

Summary, Part 3: The Twist

• Tammanna thought of a final way to punish Basavaiah: death - to separate his songs from his body, so Basavaiah would have no living rival to fight.
• The old man reflects: man needs wealth, education and art, yet he lives for "some kind of unbearable vengefulness"; without it he has no reason to exist.
• He says that after a particular age, man loses his name; only his age remains.
• He says the idea came to him when Russia told America, "I am not your enemy" - imagine America's "agony and boredom" when it lost its enemy. A nation can bear this; a human being cannot.
• He then reveals the truth: he himself is Tammanna. He gave up everything and left, as if dead. A few days later Basavaiah died - he had no more reason to live. Tammanna then forgot all his songs and became a nonentity. "Thus I avenged myself."
• He warns that the owner, now flourishing, will not take advice, because man lives for one revenge or challenge after another till he dies. Then he asks the wife to treat it all as a dream, and goes to visit Lokya's sick child who paints well.

Central Idea

"The Gardener" is a story about rivalry and human nature.

• Healthy competition can turn into destructive rivalry. Tammanna and Basavaiah first push each other to grow, then live only to defeat each other.
• Rivalry can give life its meaning. Tammanna calls his rival his most important possession; when one rival "dies", the other has no reason to live.
• Material wealth versus art. Basavaiah fights with land, gold and mansions; Tammanna fights with songs - and wins fame.
• A story within a story. The narrator tells of the old man, who tells of Tammanna, who turns out to be the old man himself. The layers reveal a hidden truth slowly.
• The story also hints at a warning to the owner's wife: her husband's new wealth and vices may lead him the same way.

[Exam Tip] — For "healthy competition turning into rivalry" (a 2025 four-mark question), follow the stages: buying land → no land left → 1,000 vs 800 acres → forcible seizure of 200 acres → songs vs wealth → Tammanna's "death" → Basavaiah's death.