Knowing and understanding history is important for the progress of mankind. It's important to learn from others experience, since it is not possible for each individual to experience all possible situations in life. Everyone desires to learn better ways of leading fulfilling life. Literature often throws light in that direction. There are folks who master the art of narrating those learnings & the right/better way of leading life. They will be the significant contributors to the literary world contributing to enrich the life of many others - who gets inspired from these literary persons' writings.
The environment in which a person lives or brought up shapes a person's thought, experiences & learnings. It provides the stimulus for some people to become more creative & produce things which may help better other's life. Different people will develop different train of thoughts. Ones advocated way of leading life may differ from another. It may not be easy to be judgemental about different prophecies or school of thoughts (though some may be easily classified as detrimental to lead better fulfilling life) .
There may be people who have an insight which they may advocate to others but they may not be doing 'walk the talk'! Sometime knowing or learning about the environment in which the people lived or brought up may help to understand them or their preachings better. But that's quite herculean task. Very rarely people will be able to gather such information, analyse & arrive at insights about those leading figures in the society. B.S. Venkatalakshmi is one of those rare person who meticulously tried to collect & share the insights about many significant people related to Kannada literature & culture. She had mastered the art of extracting the essence out of the study of the people's environment and the way it would have shaped their life, their thoughts and narrate it to others, giving new enriching insights. She had pursued that hobby for many years relentlessly. There were many beautiful canvases she had crafted on the lives of people which touches readers heart.
The canvases she crafted have many renowned people, heard by most (or their creations) as their subject, but it gives the readers an entirely new perspective on them. But there were many unheard or less known people figure in her beautifully crafted canvases appealing to readers, emphasizing the fact that learning about them too is useful.
Though BSV has been interviewing & writing on writers and others often during her journalist career (as a freelancer) for many newspapers & magazines, she started her own four page Kannada monthly named 'Charchegondu Chaavadi'(a platform for dialogue) to communicate her thoughts freely with readers & maintain a channel to have a meaningful dialogue. It carried features on interesting people or topic every month, immersing it's readers in deep thoughts, sometime in nostalgic memories, sometimes with new inspirations, or mesmerising with the some new insights.
Once she introduces a person from Bangalore whose curiosity on crackers brought many innovations to cracker industry in the country, another time about a person who had brought selfless innovations to ceramic industry - but still lived a struggling life even at old age & hasn't been recognised at his homeland. Once she paints the childhood pictures of a famous botanist as seen by his sister, narrating his naughty behaviour, the over indulgence in extracurricular activities due to which failing his intermediate examination, the influence of - his father who was a prominent Kannada writer and philosopher and the literary environment in which he had spent his childhood - have shaped him to become an eminent world renowned scientist and also an effective writer. Once she feeds to the curiosity of the readers about the fulfilling life of a lady (with eight children) whose husband poet had mesmerised and inspired few generations with his romantic poems & how she had been supporting her husband all along their long life.
She finds the life of quite a few common people interesting by the way they faced their life. That includes widow Krishnamma who used to slog in her old age serving others, the demolition boy - though his roughness repulses others to stand away, has a role in the society to make space by demolishing old structures to build new ones, the young widow 'Paati' who builds the life of her offspring and his family all alone earning her livelihood by feeding others using her culinary skills and never get bogged down by rituals & old beliefs while facing difficulties in life, the polio stricken Lakshmi Nizamudden who had shown - enormous courage to overcome physical challenges & passion to help others with similar deformities.
Once she registers her view on writing biography in response to the talk given by Ramachandra Guha on the tools needed for the writer for writing biography. According to her, what reader expect out of biography is the factual introduction to all facets of a person's life. It needs to depict his complete life including his competence, shortcomings, behavioural strangeness in an unbiased manner. But she laments that it isn't the case many times. She says that she had seen a famous novelist who was a drunkard, womaniser & often used to be suspicious about his wife without reason, whose biographies & books written about him, never presented to the readers his dual personality and about the tears of his wife!
She had good interest in other forms of arts like painting, sculpture, music, dance, drama etc. She brings out some perspective on the life & contributions of some people in those areas too. Some of the people on which she had written about include Basavaraj Rajaguru, Kaling Rao and his associates Sohan kumari &Mohan kumari, O.K (VN Shenoy), Siddalingaswamy (who built Kaamakaameswari temple of Mysore), M.S.Murthy, Kanakanahalli Gopi, MS Gurappa, Madhugiri Ramu, MS Pandit, RS Naidu, Roerich & Devika Rani, Devalakunda Vadiraj, RM Hadapad, Bhairavi Kempegouda, BV Karanth, Padmacharan (AV Krishnamachar)
After almost nine years of her dialogues, last year June, she was expressing with her readers in her next edition, her intent to stop her monthly as she was finding it monotonous of late and wanted to pursue her other interests. She left the world(on June 26, 2009) before her intent reached her readers by post. Her husband is bringing out the collection of those dialogues of nine years as book with same name 'Charchegondu Chaavadi' on the occasion her death anniversary. There is another book of her named 'baduku bavane, bharavase' - a comprehensive analytical book on women(which got Karnataka State Sahitya academy award earlier) also being reprinted along with it.
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