Girish Karnad

In the passing away of Girish Karnad  (1938 - 2019), our country has lost a multi-faceted talent who graced Indian arts and literature for several decades. He rose beyond his Kannada identity to shine as a truly pan Indian personality. I had grown up admiring him in tastefully made Doordarshan serials and movies. I remember the late night movies on the national channel where I caught up with his works like Samskara (based on the U.R. Ananthamurthy novel), Vamsa Vriksha (novel by S. L. Bhyrappa) and Kadu (Sreekrishna Alanahally novella). He was also popular in mainstream movies like the 70s one, Swami made immortal by Yesudas's song 'Ka Karoon Sajini..' As a writer, he was a towering playwright. After seeing him as the doctor in the Gujarat village in Shyam Benegal's Manthan (The Churning), a film based on Dr. Verghese Kurien's Anand story, I wanted to wear corduroy pants and shirts the way he did in it. I really idolized him.

Kannada literature is immensely rich as evidenced by the fact that the language has had the most Jnanapith awardees. Litterateurs like Kuvempu, Poornachandra Tejaswi, Sivarama Karanth, Lankesh, S.L. Bhyrappa, Gopalakrishna Adiga, et al strode that world. R.K. Narayan and A.K. Ramanujan are Kannadigas who made a mark in English. Carving his lesser but very distinct space in their midst was the suave and handsome Karnad with his plays like Hayavadana (Transposed Head), Nagamandala (Play with Cobra), Tugluq, Cheluvi, Taledanda (Death by Beheading) and Yayati.  The success of the first play Yayati made him give up his ambitions to be a poet and take up drama seriously. Malayalam actor Mukesh and his dancer wife Methil Devika adapted Nagamandala to Malayalam as Naga some years back. 

Most people like me adored Karnad for his contribution to movies (director of Godhuli, Vamsa Vriksha, Kaadu, Utsav and actor in several Hindi and Kannada ones (Samskara, Nishant, Manthan). Utsav, a Hindi film based on the 2nd century BC Sanskrit play Mrischa Katikam or The Clay Cart by Sudraka, has beautiful songs which fetched a National Award for lyricist Vasant Dev. He even acted as an ex-military man on whom a teenaged Karthika has a crush, in Bharathan's Malayalam movie Neelakkurinji Poothappol) and serials like Shankar Nag's Swami and Friends based on R.K. Narayan's book. Interestingly Shankar Nag had won a National Award for Best Actor for his role in Karnad's Ondanondu Haladalli (Once Upon a Time in a Forest). His contributions to Sangeet Nataka Akademy and Film and Television Institute of India (he was the Director there when Naseeruddin Shah studied) are significant. Many people longingly remember the science program Turning Point that Karnad anchored on Doordarshan. This Rhodes scholar was bold enough to point out that Tagore was a great writer overall but not that great as a playwright. In his final years, he was a vocal critic of the suppression of artistic expression in the country, as evidenced in the assassination of many writers and freethinkers.

It was Karnad who introduced several actors like Sekhar Suman, Om Puri, Amrish Puri, Shankar Nag, Vishnuvardhan in movies. Three years back I saw his son Raghu Karnad at the last edition of the Kovalam Literary Festival at VJT Hall. Raghu's book on Indians who took part in WWII, Farthest Field, went on to win a huge prize recently.

Karnad will be missed by those who care for art in the country.
Watch the documentary made on Karnad's 70th birthday Part I
Part II
(10th June 2019)