demarcates the old from the new in the history of Mysore, the modern period starting with Tipu. Samsa therefore was trying to hide in the past. Kailasam came from a different background. He had gone abroad and had consciously shaped himself in the style of an English bohemian intellectual. He was the forefather of the modem theatre in Kannada. He wrote innumerable plays but he constantly gives one the impression of a man wanting to be on the stage rather than writing for it. He had a charismatic personality and was a very good actor himself. The Mysore royalty does appear in one or two ofKailasam's plays and on such occasions he amply demonstrates his fondness for that order. He shows tremendous concern for social injustice and makes it a point in every one of his plays to fight customs and taboos. On the broad question of colonial rule and the necessity to fight it, it appears that he was on the side of the nationalists, but he never expressed these opinions either in public or in his works. The struggle for independence does not appear even indirectly in his plays although he shows himself up as a fierce critic of old values. His plays are all social satires. If one notices a certain militancy in the expression of the above two writers, such an attitude is completely absent in Masti Venkatesha lyengar. Masti is known for his detached style of writing. Being a short story writer basically, he had the knack to capture the smaller things of life. Even when he chooses a big canvas for his works, as for example in his well-known playKakana Kote (which incidentally has the ruler from the Mysore dynasty appearing at the end and resolving the prime dispute in the play amicably, to everybody's satisfaction), he still manages to draw his characters with the subtlest and most delicate of lines. Masti was a highly successful bureaucrat in the princely state and he retained those elements of refinement and education in his works as well. Besides, being a bureaucrat he extensively toured the state and hence had a thorough knowledge of the land, the dialects, the people and their background. This also contributed to the richness of his writing. The intention here is certainly not to create an impression that these writers were not patriotic enough. When one looks at their work in detail one realizes that they had extraordinary talents. It is only when one compares their choice of themes and their attitude towards literature with that of writers of the same period in other parts of the country, or for that matter with writers from the north Karnataka region, that one realizes the difference. The great nationalist fervour had shifted the attention of most other writers towards the exploration of the Indian. Themes of rural poverty, oppression, the great Indian heritage, etc., were in vogue. The use of dialect, folk forms and folk idiom in literature was an expression of the nationalist sentiment. IfShivarama Karanth was then writing his Chomana Dudi (Choma s Drum), and Premchand his Godan, it reflected a certain urge on their part to match the overall anti-colonial political mood of the nation in their creative writings. Gandhi's call for swadeshi and the Indian left's call for mobilizing the peasantry to fight the British had their impact on Indian writers as well. 118 Numbers 14-15