Chaitanya K.M Remembers girish karnad

An important theater actor once invited Girish Karnad to his birthday. Karnad replied, "Birth and death are personal things. It must be marked with those who are close to us. That's what we do between birth and death that counts.

When he was about 16, Karnad used to sketch personalities and send them to them. He would ask them to sign it and send it back to him. The young Karnad possessed a large number of talented drawings of Albert Einstein, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and others, all signed with these legends. He sent such a sketch to Irish playwright Seán O'Casey. The playwright however wrote in reply: "Why do you worry about getting autographs from others?" Where Casey instead asked Karnad to use his intelligence and his work for that people ask him one day autograph.

Karnad was just 22 years old when he wrote Yayati .He has since written several plays that established him among the greatest playwrights of the world. India and the world My first memory of Karnad dates back to his move to JP Nagar in Bengaluru about 25 years ago Karnad came to my home one day with a box of bellulli thambuli a yogurt curry with garlic. "What good are the neighbors if we can not exchange food and groceries?", he asked my mother.

[19659002] I had seen him talk about science during the successful broadcast of Doordarshan Turning Point so it was strange to see him at our door with a box of thambuli . Karnad loved his house and the neighborhood. Five years ago, the road in front of his house was cleared, the trees that bordered it were felled and a huge underpbad was created. The construction process and the traffic jams that followed the completion of the project turned the road into a busy and noisy road. But he also inspired scenes in three of his plays [[ Boiled Beans on Toast Wedding Album and Many Broken Images – where the characters comment on changing landscape of the city.

Last year, he sold his house to JP Nagar and settled in an apartment in central Bengaluru. When I visited him, he said, "Look! It's so quiet here in the very center of the city. All the madness has moved elsewhere. "

"Do you want to help me?"

When I finished my master's degree in Communication and I wanted to relocate to Mumbai, my father m 39; suggested going to Karnad. He has long been fleeing a famous Bollywood actor at his home in London because she had arrived an hour earlier. I've also seen him reprimand another leading actor for his "five-minute delay". So for this meeting, I went five minutes earlier, I waited in front of his house and I entered just at the agreed time.

Nervously, I announced to him my intention to move to Mumbai and I said that I had friends who could help me find work. And in a very subtle way, I told him that I was visiting him only because my father had asked for it and not to ask him to withdraw favors for me. He surprised me by saying, "Why do you want to go to Mumbai? I'm doing a TV series. Do you want to help me? "

This is how I started my journey in the world of film and television. I have worked with him on two TV shows. When he decided to present Kuvempu's clbadic film Kanooru Heggadithi on screens, both as a feature film in Kannada and in Hindi series, I became his badociate director. During the shoot, he won the Jnanpith Award and has to travel to Delhi. As we were in the Malenadu region in Karnataka and the entire cast and crew were stationed, we could not stop shooting. So Karnad entrusted me with the command and left. S Ramachandra, the legendary filmmaker who shot Malgudi Days was the cameraman. I was 23 years old and I was upset. Every night, Karnad called the landline phone in the huge rented house where the main team was living together for almost two months. When he came back and saw the footage of the scenes I had shot, he told me to completely resume the television series so I could focus on the movie.

"Smoke your last cigarette with me"

Karnad swarmed with interesting anecdotes about historical moments in film and theater. When he was director of the Indian Institute of Film and Television, the selection board rejected Om Puri's admission to the actor's training, apparently because he was skinny. and skinny. Karnad used his discretionary powers to admit it, and the rest belongs to the story.

When he saw a young Shankar Nag playing in a Marathi play in Mumbai, Karnad said he had gone backstage and had approached him. Actor to play the lead role in his next film. movie. Shankar said that he respected Karnad as a writer and director, he did not want to act under him, but rather to be his badistant director. Karnad returned to Bengaluru and called Anant Nag, Shankar's older brother. A few days later, Anant brought Shankar to Karnad and Ondanondu Kaladalli became his entry into the world of cinema.

When Karnad decided to quit smoking about 40 years ago and joined the Jindal Naturecure Institute, Shankar visited him. Karnad told me that the actor had asked him to walk around and had taken a cigarette out of his pocket. Karnad told him that cigarettes were strictly forbidden on campus, but Shankar said, "If you quit, then I want you to smoke your last cigarette with me."

Karnad also told me how Amjad Khan had given him a full lesson.Satyajit Ray considered the Ambbadador as a better car than the Mercedes.He told me a lot more too.

& # 39; The art who created the world "

Once, the BBC was producing a series entitled The Art That Shook the World and asked Karnad to present the" The World ". episode on the Mahabharata He explained to the producers that the Mahabharata could not be compared to any clbadic in the world and that they should launch a separate series entitled "The Art That Created the World" s' they wanted to present the epic and he convinces them to do an episode on the Bhagavad Gita

He could freely cite the Upanishads, Gita and clbadical Sanskrit literature, just as he would quote Shakespeare and Eliot.

Odakalu Bimba Karnad decided for the first time to direct a play he had written. Since he was struggling to convince the interaction between the actress on stage and his prerecorded video, I suggested some solutions for it to work and I volunteered to attend the shows in order to guarantee the smooth technical progress. When the room's posters came out, Karnad credited me as the director of the play

When Agni Sreedhar was looking for a director for the first film he was producing, I suggested him to ask Girish Karnad. Sreedhar told a story to Karnad who stated that he needed a young energetic director. Sreedhar eventually chose me to lead. I asked Karnad to co-write the script with Sreedhar. He obliged and also played a major role in the film. When we drafted the first project, Karnad read it and said, "There is nothing here for women"

This was a film of the underworld based on actual events occurring in Bangalore in 1986. We had tried to make the drama scenario, but no one had thought of female audience up to Karnad. 19659002] He also suggested the dialogue " Daari yaavudayya vaikuntakke ", which became a memorable scene in the film Aa Dinagalu .

"A few months, that's all"

When the information department of Karnataka, then the Akademi Sahitya, had me responsible for making a documentary on Karnad, I was able to film abundantly with him in the places where he had grown up. When I sat down to edit it, I realized that it required very little comment. Karnad himself was so eloquent that all I needed to do was to put the images together in a coherent narrative.

Karnad still had noisy opinions. From the moment he left FTII to protest the urgency, to his criticism of Rajiv Gandhi's defamation bill, his staunch stand against the demolition of Babri Masjid and the ensuing violence in the community, Karnad has always been frank. As the media moves from daily newspapers and Doordarshan to TV channels and social media, the outspokenness of Karnad has become a gold mine for them.

Karnad loved his morning walk. He would not miss, no matter where he was. His typical morning consisted of a long walk in the JP Nagar mini forest. He then went to SLN Refreshments – a café near his home where he would eat his favorite uddina vada. He had missed a lot during his walk during his illness in the last three years.

A few months ago, Karnad was nominated for an award for literary excellence by the publication in Hindi Amar Ujala . It was to be entrusted to him by the former president of India, Pranab Mukherjee. As Karnad could no longer travel, he decided to send them a video of his acceptance speech and called me to come and shoot the video.

Once the filming was over, he told me that he might not live much longer. "At most, I have a few months, that's all," he said. He was aware of his condition and was reconciled to it. I have tried to alleviate the situation for myself. "What if your badessment is wrong?" I asked. "Then I will write the second part of my autobiography," he said.

He told his family and friends that his death must be a private matter. He left us with the same tranquil dignity and the same integrity with which he had lived.

Chaitanya K.M. is a filmmaker and a playwright.