He was fit, he was happy and he was very active. He was ever amiable, down to earth and full of new plans. Barring the first six months after birth, he has been a star of the screen for 46 years. Anyone around him would say he could go on and on for another 40 years.
Until, he was cut down in his prime, yesterday. There will be tears and tributes from his fans, from every single person who knew him in the industry, from his large circle of family, friends and well-wishers, and the beneficiaries of all his charitable deeds. There will remain in us for a long, long time this deep sense of loss, a disconsolate grief that this good, kind and decent human, Appu, the universal brother, has been snatched away so abruptly, so wantonly by whatever fate or power that chooses to play with our lives.
The loss is not just emotional. Puneeth Rajkumar, in many ways, was the hope and possibility for a new generation of young filmmakers who have been imagining and writing new scripts to steer Kannada cinema through these challenging times brought on by digital cinema. With his enterprising wife Ashwini, he had launched PRK Productions four years ago to support youngsters who could produce viable new content for the big screen.
The couple was patiently listening to scripts, financing and guiding the process from script to screen. PRK Productions is one of the very few Kannada banners that has the attention of big OTT platforms. With Covid plaguing the world, Kannada cinema production, which was already under threat because of its small markets and aggressive competition from other language cinema, will feel the shock of this loss with greater accompanying despair. We needed Puneeth Rajkumar. He was much loved, a genuine star with a mass following. He was getting ready to announce a slew of new projects, now that Covid was showing signs of abatement. His passing has hurt us, made the Kannada world empty, indeed the cinema community in India, empty. It makes us anguished and a little angry. Why him?
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(The writer is a theatre, film, television and media personality)