BENGALURU: Writers, or for that matter all artistes, are considered great because of their ability to tell you things about the human condition, or the world, or simply touch you in a very personal way, long after the work was originally created. Playwright, actor and film director Girish Karnad did this time and again, and particularly remarkably with plays such as Tughlaq, a political drama, and Bikhre Bimb, which was technically and digitally ahead of its time. On his 83rd birth anniversary, Karnad’s contemporaries recall their long association with him, and how he touched their lives.
Director K M Chaitanya says his life would have taken a different course had it not been for a fateful meeting with Karnad in 1996. “I was supposed to travel to Mumbai that year for a new job. Since my father knew Karnad, he asked me to meet him to learn a thing or two about the city. After we got chatting, he asked me if he could change my mind and offered me a job to assist him for a movie,” says Chaitanya. He agreed, thinking that it would be a one-time thing.
But he eventually ended up working on many projects including Antaral and Swarajnama. Learning the tricks of the trade from the man himself was intimidating, Chaitanya recalls fondly. For one, Karnad was very particular about punctuality. “He was the kind of mentor who would train you and if you took the work seriously, he would not hesitate to give you complete control. He was a very democratic director and had a habit of discussing the script with his team and everyone was allowed to dispute his idea and propose a new one,” Chaitanya says. Actor Padmavati Rao, who had known him for 42 years, remembers him for his deep understanding of history, literature and human emotions, all of which he brought to his work, and which keep him relevant.
“During the shooting of Ondanondu Kaaladalli, all of us including Karnad, the director, stayed in tents in a village which has now been submerged to make way for a dam. He could have stayed in a posh hotel 18km in Belagavi, but he did not. I haven’t seen that happen since in my interactions with people in the Tamil, Malayalam, Marathi and Hindi cinema industries,” says Rao. On October 2, 2019, film and theatre director Arjun Sajnani premiered Karnad’s last play, Crossing to Talikota.
Both of them had worked closely on the production since Sajnani started work on it in April 2019. “That was unusual for Girish, since he normally never ‘interfered’ once he had given a script to the director. This time it was an added bonus for me to have him in my corner... Such a shame that he wasn’t there for the opening,” recalls Sajnani.
He admits that fortunately for him, some of his best work has come with Karnad’s vision – Crossing to Talikota, Tughlaq, Fire and Rain, and Agni Varsha-the movie. “It was my honour and privilege to get two original scripts from him. Unfortunately, Crossing’s run was spoilt by Covid and I’m sitting with the production all ready to go whenever the time comes,” he says.