Most of us Kannadigas who have a flair for literature could not have missed this exotic little gem of a novel. It was made an un-detailed text book for PU I year for a decade in Karnataka. Enjoyable by any standards of popularity and critical interpretation, this novel is an unforgettable experience.

'Carvallo' is not a very elaborate and detailed novel. It is as sleek and economical with words as possible. None of its characters, not even the narrator who is an integral part of the novel assumes any airs of 'isms' although the overall derivative principle of the narration tends to talk much more than meets the eyes.

Briefly, the story of Carvallo is as follows. The narrator is an educated farmer who is on the verge of getting bored by the life in the village and the surrounding forests in the Moodugere village in the edge of Malenadu in Chickmagalur district. At this juncture, he happens to meet a colourful character in Mandanna who doesn't have a fixed occupation. Between the narrator's laidback life and Mandanna's histrionics, the Anthropologist Scientist Carvallo is introduced to the narrator. The scientist has high regards for Mandanna for his acute sense of observance of Nature and Mandanna is all smiles while proclaiming that he is the scientist's shishya. The scientist is waiting for some signal from the Government to start an exciting new project. Meanwhile Mandanna's stupidities and the narrator's soft-cornered nature cook up an exotic trail of comedy-of-errors culminating in the ill-timed marriage of Mandanna. Mandanna's alleged 'arrack-brewing' lands him in jail which is resolved ultimately making life miserable for the narrator and when he is on the verge of frustration, comes the announcement from Carvallo that he got the signal of go-ahead from the government for the project.

Prabhakara, a professional photographer and Carvallo's joins the crew for the expedition in which they are supposed to find the trails of a 'flying lizard' which was thought to be extinct some 3 million years ago. They set up an exciting expedition into the dense jungles of 'Naarve' between Charmadi Ghat and Shirad Ghat. The expedition ends with the narrator able to spot the creature and Kariappa the cook failing to catch hold of the animal in a desperate attempt at the end of which the creature just flies off and off into the dark recesses of history.

If we look at the more obvious features of the novel, we find the inseparable bondage between Man and Nature. Man is acting upon a primal quest for an answer; he is trying to obtain the keys to unlock a great secret locked up in the sandbox of millions of years. Nature and Man act in tandem all through the novel and never can we see Man as a reluctant subordinate to Nature trying to upstage this structure. Thus, Tejaswi forces an ordered template of a framework in which the events of the novel occur almost uninhibited. The more visible feature of the novel, though directly related to the style of writing is the unquestionable mastery of Tejaswi's art of story telling. Tejaswi is energetic and delightful. He leaps, hops, pounces, hides, runs, and whispers in a mysterious tone and keeps you engaged. Tejaswi's humor is strikingly realistic, unforced and finely weaved into the texture of the story. The narrator notices Pyaara's usage of language in a delightfully sarcastic manner. It is too subtle yet too noticeable at the same time. The novel is enriched by the actual life and its intense study that has gone behind the scenes. An acute observer himself, Tejaswi elevates Mandanna in the eyes of the reader by attributing this acuteness of observation through Carvallo's praises for Mandanna.

The delightfully problematic Mandanna (Mundana in official Police records!) intersperses the narrative only sufficiently but gets dissolved in the story so well that at the end of it all, we never notice or care about what Mandanna was wearing, how was he smelling, how civilized or uncivilized his mannerisms were, what might have happened to him in the future with his half-wit wife. This is the power of a powerful novel. Tejaswi never wavers from his goal but he never rushes towards it. Things happen as if in a natural succession of events, with all the minute details well in place. When the reader is in danger of settling cozily for a comedy of errors in Mandanna's 'arrack' case, he is reminded of the greater designs of the scheme.

As noted earlier, not even Tejaswi as a writer gives us an impression of any greatness lurking behind the scenes, modestly concealed and grudgingly employed in the narration. Whatever greatness, whatever things of a higher order - they all fall into place only as much as is necessary and only through Carvallo's scholarly demeanor. The narrator is a MA in Philosophy/Sociology but a farmer by profession and acts as one. Not as a Philosopher turned into farmer.

Carvallo as a novel succeeds easily. The success is partly due to the forced yet powerful simplicity. There are no 'isms', no great unpronounceable and unprintable-in-Kannada scientific terminology, and no qualms about the narrator's love for pork. No artificiality in the style of narration. The novel simply doesn't entertain any complexities - complexity of word, thought, action and ideology. But all said and done, when it comes to putting the point across, Tejaswi wins outright. The quest for a glimpse of the mysterious 'flying lizard' starts with a whole lot of preparation and a tedious yet interesting expedition and ends in a flash. The lizard simply flies away in to the jungle, into the dark, unreachable corners of history from where Carvallo wanted it to be brought back. The whole existentialist experience the narrator senses at that moment gets crystallized in the passage between the textuality of the narration and its realization in the reader's mind. Tejaswi keeps silent to allow the reader to gasp and try to grasp the gravity of the wholeness of the experience.

What makes Carvallo unique? Tejaswi somehow has remained a parallel to the mainstream intellectual modern Literature of Kannada. Although his name is usually taken in the same breath as Ananthamurthy, Lankesh and Karnad, Tejaswi has never been intellectually acknowledged as the flag-bearer of any literary movement. This is to a great extent due to the path, the environment and the goals he set out for himself in his literary career. An intense environmentalist, an amateur wildlife photographer professional in quality, an experimenting farmer and most importantly a severely non-conformist revolutionary writer of his time, Tejaswi had a great burden of his father's overbearing legatic image. Tejaswi chose to be different and has remained one. 'Carvallo', the first of his nature stories, is a powerful manifestation of this desire to be different. Probably apart from Tejaswi, the only other figure that comes to mind that chose to be different is that of Devanuru Mahadeva.

The difficult aspect of the reading experience comes when one tries to classify the novel. Though the theme sounds like a nature-bound adventure saga, it would be extremely unwise to stop at that. This novel involves many more factors than just scientific attitude, adventurism and the inseparability of Man and Nature. Far from being an altruistic society surrounding the plot, the novel contains suggestive sociological snippets neatly bound within the realms of the narrator's intellectual reach. For e.g., Mandanna gets his sexuality endorsed in an ill-timed and unlucky marriage which is a tragic situation for him, but the flow of the novel cannot stand losing time upon matters like that. This is where the brevity of Tejaswi's expressions is surprisingly harsh! There is exclusionism acting all through the novel, which doesn't have time or space for many complicated aspects of a novel. But Tejaswi's brilliance is obvious in the way he has employed all the inclusiveness and exclusions to act in a superbly orchestrated structure.

There will be questions regarding how to read novels like 'Carvallo'. Tejaswi's intentions through this novel cannot be derived. It is always better to 'just read' such novels and derive whatever we can and understand it in one's own way. A similar question when I asked one of my literature friends was about the assumptions, preparations, attitudes one needs to have before reading 'Midnight's Children' and the way it could be understood. I got the same answer 'just read' and derive whatever you can. This might be because; the art that works behind these novels by these supremely gifted writers can be very simple or very complicated. So, a Kannada lecturer, a PU I student, an adolescent, a factory-going middle aged man, a bank employee in her early 30's, a retired attorney general - all read and understand this novel in ways only they can do. This cannot be true of all books - Writers of a lesser world do not give this 'freedom of comprehension'. Tejaswi shines here.