BENGALURU: As one of the foremost playwrights in modern Indian literature, he gave the world iconic works like Nagamandala and Tughlaq. Through his extensive contributions to parallel cinema and teleserials, he not only entertained but also exposed an entire generation and more to the complexities of social and cultural themes. As a vocal critic and passionate activist, he unflinchingly defended freedom of expression and addressed critical issues – religious fundamentalism, casteism, gender discrimination, and environmental concerns. Girish Karnad was more than the sum of the roles he took up throughout his life.
Now, a new weekly newsletter titled Tell It Again – which debuted on Jan 2, hopes to keep Karnad’s legacy visible to the public, informing and inspiring a new generation of people. “After my father’s passing, many of his friends and associates suggested that we should do something to keep his legacy and works in the public mind,” says Raghu Karnad, writer and son of Girish Karnad.
“At the Girish Karnad festival at Dharwad in 2022, KM Chaitanya, one of my father’s filmmaking proteges, and I, decided that it made sense to share parts of my father’s legacy in a place where people could easily find it and learn new things. That idea had been with me for a while, but what put things into motion was when I moved back – last monsoon – from New York to Bombay, to the flat where my family lived. Although many people have stayed in that house and we never really let it be empty, it was only when we moved back, did we start going through lots of old material and stores of past papers that have been there since the ’80s.
The mid-80s was a productive and inspiring time for my father, it was the time when he was working on his film Utsav, and finished his most acclaimed play Nagamandala. So handling material – production drawings, images, his notes and more – from that period really inspired me to share them with the public,” he explains.
Curated by Harismita Vaideswaran, a PhD research scholar in English Literature at the University of Delhi, the newsletter explores themes and topics that Girish Karnad was interested in, wrote about, or had an intimate connection with. “Pretty much anything that was a major feature – a play, a film, a creative, academic, or scholarly association, work in an industry, etc – has the potential to be on the cards as a theme,” says Vaideswaran, adding,
“We picked Utsav as the theme for our first newsletter because it had a fascinating story of its own outside of the film itself – right from how it was conceived to its release. People might have seen the film or heard/read about it, but it made for a riveting and likely unfamiliar tale of its own. We’re exploring the Mahabharata this week. To me, there’s no end to the things we can think through, say, and unravel about Girish Karnad’s relationship with and deployment of the Mahabharata in his plays. Besides, the Mahabharata and the many conversations around it as a story and as text, remain relevant as ever.”
Meanwhile, the project also aims to make use of extensive archival material to spotlight some of the lesser-known aspects of Girish Karnad. “It is going to have everything from papers to photographs and correspondence. Our first newsletter also had material such as production art, and his notes on the original Sanskrit play, Mricchakatika. We’ll be including more of that sort of material as and when they find a place in our themes,” Vaideswaran adds.
The World of Girish Karnad, a new project that attempts to shine a spotlight on some of the lesser-known aspects of the late celebrated writer, includes a weekly newsletter that explores themes and topics that were close to Karnad’s heart.