BANGALORE: Padma Bhushan awardee U R Ananthamurthy, one of India’s finest writers and Karnataka’s most vocal public intellectuals, died of cardiac arrest on Friday evening at the age of 82.
Admitted to Manipal Hospital 10 days ago with a lung infection, he breathed his last at 6.30 pm, leaving behind a legion of admirers.
Ananthamurthy had been on dialysis for a few years. His condition started deteriorating on Thursday when his blood pressure went down. He was moved to the ICU and kept on a ventilator. Doctors said he had suffered multiple organ failure.
“This evening he had a cardiac arrest. A team of doctors tried to resuscitate him, but was not successful,” said Dr H Sudharshan Ballal, medical director, Manipal Hospital.
Ananthamurthy’s wife Esther, daughter Anuradha and son-in-law Vivek Shanbhag were by his side when the end came.
A Padma Bhushan awardee, Ananthamurthy was also a finalist for the Man Booker Prize in 2013. His novel, Samskara (1965) was made into a film, and both the novel and the film broke new ground. He won the Jnanpith award in 1994 and the State Rajyothsava award in 1984. He was also the Vice-Chancellor of Mahatma Gandhi University in Kerala during the late 1980s.
Also Read:
Many friends and writers visited him at the hospital. Nallur Prasad, former president, Kannada Sahitya Parishat, was in tears after his visit.
“He was a gem in Kannada literature and supported me in many causes,” he said. Poet Jayant Kaikini and film maker Girish Kasaravalli also paid their respects at the hospital.
Ananthamurthy had reportedly expressed a wish not to be sent to an electric crematorium. The government has announced that he will be cremated with state honours and picked up his medical bills amounting to about `11 lakh.
Chief Minister Siddaramaiah condoled his death, saying it was a great loss to the State literary world and describing him as “an ocean of thoughts”. He added that Ananthamurthy was a true ambassador of Kannada literature and that it has become poorer with his death. a towering literary figure: p10