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 January 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. That idea had been with me for 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, or had an intimate connection with. “Pretty much anything that was a major feature – a play, a film, 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 or 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.
Glimpse of the Genius
I belong to a generation that not only grew up seeing and performing Karnad’s plays, but also listening to him speak on literature, culture, society and politics. Since I worked with him closely, I was able to observe and learn much from him. In the two decades of closely interacting with him, I had a lot of material that I wanted to share. Since social media is a familiar platform to the younger generation, we decided to share some the material there. The idea is to not only post the material but also give it context. And Karnad was always relevant. This newsletter seeks to bring the world of Karnad to readers, and give a glimpse of the multifaceted genius that he was.