JULY 2019 | ROLLING STONE | 59
television screens, as she is waiting for an interview
to begin. Her mirror image on a TV screen sets off a
dialogue that starts off almost playfully before delving
into depths of jealousy, feelings of inferiority and the
theft of a dead sister’s manuscript. Actors of the calibre
of Shabana Azmi and Arundhati Nag (I have seen her
Hindi version, not the Kannada one, to my regret) have
played the protagonist: a demanding role where she
has to interact with herself, in perfect sync with the
parts that are recorded earlier. This was one of the plays
Karnad directed.
Karnad’s decision to come back to India and to pursue
his creative writing in Kannada was instinctive. He
confesses in his memoir: “I concluded that my decision
to settle down abroad was not only vacuous but also self-
defeating... So, I landed up in India, where a culturalresurgence had begun. Although the country’s economy
was struggling, a grand new spirit was being forged in
the world of films, literature and theatre. It was opening
up doors to a new era, and it beckoned me. It is into this
infinite opportunity that I had walked in.” (from Sugata
Srinivasaraju’s translation).
Being at the right time in the right place has been
vindicated triumphantly in Karnad’s case. If he
had not jumped in with enthusiasm into acting and
directing Samskara, we would not have seen an actor
who grew in stature as a compelling presence, and a
skilled scriptwriter who wrote for some brilliant films.
Of course, starting with Samskara, when he adapted
U.R. Ananthamurthy’s path-breaking novel that set off
loud protests from orthodox Brahmins (especially the
Madhvas), Karnad scripted and enacted the central
role of Praneshacharya. And as inside gossip goes, was
the de facto director along with the visiting Australian
cinematographer Tom Cowan. Pattabhi Rama Reddy
is credited as director. All the passion that goes into
a radical first film can be felt even now. One of the
most effective parts of the film has Praneshacharya
wandering through the countryside, unable to find a
solution to the intractable problem of the final rites for
a renegade Brahmin. He finds an unlikely companionin Putta, a loquacious innocent whose simple questions
trigger many more doubts than he is already wrestling
with. A literary text has found the perfect cinematic
expression.
Karnad found the key to bend a sprawling novel
to a dramatic script in a series of Kannada classics:
Vamshavruksha, Kaadu and Tabbaliyu Neenade
Magane (Godhuli in Hindi). He also paid tribute to
Kurosawa with Ondanonda Kaladalli, introducing an
energetic, vibrant Shankar Nag as a medieval warrior
who wields the long, snaking sword and is trained in
kalaripayattu. Karnad also wrote lively and personalised
critiques of films. He brought alive the eager anticipation
he and his friends felt when a Fearless Nadia film was set
to release. Karnad also questioned the viability of the
feminist end of Kunku, V.Shantaram’s bilingual classic
of a young woman’s rebellion against her middle-aged
husband who had children older than her. The guilt-
ridden widower commits suicide, setting Nirmala free.
I remember Karnad’s caustic comment in its essence,
if not exact words: how will a young widow with the
slur of having driven her husband to death survive in
an orthodox Hindu society of the late 1930s? These
articles were written for the Sidharth Kak published
quarterly Cinema Vision sometime in the 1980s, lighting
up the turgid film criticism field with insights backed by
scholarship.
Karnad, like Vijay Tendulkar, took to scriptwriting
with remarkable felicity. He co-wrote Bhumika with
Shyam Benegal and Satyadev Dubey, and rewrote
Manthan on site, adapting it to the local milieu from
Tendulkar’s original script. Tendulkar chuckled
ironically, recalling that his only script that won a
National Award was Manthan. Bhumika stands as a
complex screenplay, that uses a lavni performed by Smita
Patil as the actress Usha, like a recurring punctuation
mark to unfold yet another chapter in Usha’s turbulent
emotional life. It rightly won the National Award for best
screenplay. Karnad’s signature is all over Shashi Kapoor
and Shyam Benegal’s Kalyug, a masterly adaptation of
Karna’s tragedy to suit the amoral industrial age where
there are no true heroes.
His last major film as director was Utsav, where
he cast the debonair Shashi Kapoor as a heavily
moustachioed Sansthanak, the king’s comically evil
brother-in-law pursuing the celebrated courtesan of
Ujjain. Karnad adapted the classical Sanskirt play
Mrichhakatika and introduced Vatsayana into the
narrative, researching the courtesan quarter to write
his Kamasutra. Having Amjad Khan, fresh from
his triumph as Gabbar Singh, play the inquisitive
Vatsayana leads to a hilarious scene: he sees a woman
on a rhythmically moving swing and tries to figure out
what sexual posture it described. Rekha’s languorous
eroticism juxtaposed with Vatsayana’s fervid sexual
imagination is something one can’t forget from a film
steeped in classicism.
That is Girish Karnad for you. As much as the public
figure valourising Tipu Sultan as a fighter against the
British, unmindful of the strong anti-Tipu virulently
vocal lobby in Karnataka. He was also no respecter of
Nobel prize-winning reputation. When he was receiving
the lifetime award at the Tata Lit Fest in Mumbai a few
years ago, he took off against V.S. Naipaul for his
persistent anti-Islamism, especially for implying that
the Muslims in India were the wound in Indian
civilisation. They don’t make such intrepid, honest
CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: COURTESY OF KATHASIYAH; ARIJIT SEN/HINDUSTAN TIMES /GETTY IMAGES; COURTESY OF JAGRITI intellectuals anymore.
ON STAGE (clockwise from left)
Still from Nagamandala-A Play With A Cobra
performed by KathaSiyah, Karnad joins people to
support the ‘Not in my Name’ campaign in protest
against the lynching of a Muslim boy, the cast of
Yayati performed by Bengaluru-based theater group
Jagriti with Karnad, posters of Yayati, Nishant, Utsav
and Umbertha.