Bengaluru, a June evening, the sky still light. On the plants-lined terrace of Girish Karnad’s home, translator-writer Arshia Sattar and educator-filmmaker Anmol Tikkoo are recording an interview on Girish’s life and work. Birds have begun to head home, there is the sound of city traffic from below, Girish’s “unmistakable voice” holds sway. Oximeter on finger and oxygen tubes in nose, the interview proceeds apace. Recording done for the day, Girish would offer them a drink. That was the pattern set for the first seven days. The conversations were to be resumed in a fortnight – but that didn’t happen, unhappily, because Girish Karnad died a few days after.The unfinished conversations were subsequently presented as a series of podcasts by the Bangalore International Centre, titled The River Has no Fear of Memories – the title being taken from one of the many songs in his memorable play, Hayavadana: “You cannot engrave on water/Nor wound it with a knife/Which is why the river/ Has no fear of memories…”The podcasts include extracts from his plays, as well as various writers and theatre persons recalling his legacy as an artist and as a public intellectual. The following piece is excerpted mainly from the introductory episode to a total of nine podcasts.Girish Karnad: Arshia has pursued me for these interviews which I had avoided for what – two, three years? Arshia Sattar: Whenever I asked him, he would grunt and ignore my question. Then one day, out of the blue, in March 2019, he called me and said he will do the interviews from June 1st. I was so pleased and excited because in all the years that I’ve known him, every time I met him, I would learn something new. His knowledge of classical Sanskrit literature, his amazing memory, the way he would tell a story…even if he’d heard that story from somebody else, he would tell it like he’d been there! Anmol Tikoo: And of course, we wanted to know what made him such a good playwright. He had written a memoir in Kannada (Life at Play) about his early years, but we wanted some sort of a record, in his own words, about the latter half of his life. I connected that hesitation to talk with what he had told me about Kurosawa’s autobiography. Girish Karnad’s autobiography. Photo: Special arrangementGK: You know, Kurosawa’s autobiography stops with the first film. His last line is, “I was wondering where the next whatever-Japanese-dish-it-was would come from, to accompany the rice. Then my wife opened the paper and read, ‘Japanese film wins International Award at Venice.’ And it was a film that had not even been entered for competition. It had been sent for publicity and the local Japanese person, just for fun, had entered the film (Rashomon) – and it won!” And then Kurosawa says “after that, there was no more worry about what would go with the rice.”AT: Girish had told me this story more than once about the ending of Kurosawa’s Something Like an Autobiography. He would say Kurosawa rightly ended his memoir with his first film, because everybody knows what happens once you’ve succeeded and become famous – what follows is history. And maybe that’s why Girish’s memoir also just covers his early years. AT: We had imagined that we would have a lot of time to talk with him. But with his death, we were left with these unfinished conversations. In their podcast avatar you will hear Girish talk about his wide-ranging interests: Kannada literature, Indian theatre, existentialism, being a public intellectual, the art and craft of playwriting. But they are far from being a complete picture. So for this introductory episode, a couple of stories are included from parts of Girish’s life we don’t hear much of. For example, his involvement in films. GK: I was never interested in films. In my childhood I loved the Nadia and John Cawas stunt films. But I thoroughly detested those Hindi films that were packed with song and dance. When I was at Oxford I saw Fellini, Antonioni… but since my interest was theatre, I wasn’t really attracted. Of course, one was very impressed with Satyajit Ray. What really hit me was Samskara –when I read the book, I said, ‘This is it.’ And as A K Ramanujan one of India’s finest poets and scholars– always says, translation is a way of possessing work. You haven’t written it, you are envious, so you translate it. With Samskara I was smitten, I felt, why haven’t I written this book? All these fell in together, Samskara, Satyajit Ray, small budget cinema – and I felt I must make a film. A kind of insolence or overconfidence I suppose, or being swept up by the spirit of the times. You know, I wrote my first play without wanting to be a playwright. I became a film actor without wanting to be one. I became a film actor without wanting. I told Pattabhi, “Please let me be your assistant. I want to be Satyajit Ray, I don’t want to be…” And he said, “Look there’s no other way (you have to play Praneshacharya!)” And that’s how Basu Chatterjee saw me. ‘Saw me’, that’s a pun because having seen me in Samskara, he offered me my first role in commercial cinema – which was Swami. The crew of Samskara. Photo: Special arrangementBut because of Samskara and the reputation it got (it won the 1970 National Award for Best Feature) – marking the onset of the New Wave cinema and all that – I was asked to be the director of the Film Institute. But I was not really a filmmaker, I think. I can talk about my plays, but not my films in the same detail. Too many things to fix, I think.AT: He seems to have had a difficult relationship with films. AS: Of course, what interests me is what Ramanujan says about translation – that translation is possession. Because Girish hadn’t written Samskara, he wanted to make sure that he would be involved in its film version. AT: It’s fascinating that even his foray into films was in some ways tied to his writing life and his writerly ambitions. In the playwriting episode, Girish talks of how everything he did was in the service of becoming a better playwright. AS: Besides film, what’s also missing is a discussion of the cultural institutions that Girish was a part of. And this despite the fact that he had an impact on the cultural policies of this country for two decades!GK: One reason that justifies my writing a memoir is from when I was nominated Chairman of the Sangeet Natak Akademi. At the very first meeting, a man in saffron, a scraggly beard, came up to me and said, “I am Appukuttan Nayar” – a great Kathakali scholar. I had heard of him, and he said, “If you don’t do anything, Kutiyattam is dying.” I knew of Kutiyattam, so I asked, “Why is it dying?” “The last guru, he’s in his eighties, he will die. And if Sangeet Natak Akademi doesn’t support us, there are no students. No one is interested, no one knows about its condition.”“Okay.” “Why don’t you go to the ministry?” “I know what going to the ministry means, nothing will come of it.” In those days, Kutiyattam was an unknown art form. I had heard of it because I’d been to Kerala studying these forms before writing Hayavadana. And you know what? With these performing arts, once the guru dies, that’s the end. You can’t revive it by looking at books – it has to be taught face to face, body to body. So I formed a committee and we worked out they would need about five lakhs, and I signed a document that we’re giving this art five lakhs (to get back on its feet). And the Akademi exploded! The official said, “But you don’t have financial powers! For five lakhs, you have to go to the finance committee, you have to go to the ministry.” This was 1988. “But what can we do? I have already signed the agreement.” “I’m sorry, we will have to suspend you.” I was fifty, just been nominated. So suspending me was not so easy. I knew that. “So what shall we do?” “You really played a very canny game. We’ll have to ratify it.” GK: You know, in the government, anything can get done. This is the experience I had in the government all through: in the Film Institute, London, with the Sangeet Natak Akademi … if you put your neck on the block, you can get things done. People are continually trying to avoid responsibility. So the five lakhs went to them in good time, and now you know Kutiyattam is on UNESCO’s ‘Cultural Heritage’ list… for all that, at the risk of sounding immodest, I must, along with Appukuttan Nayar, take sole credit. If I hadn’t taken that action at that time, the art form would have died. AT: Two things stand out to me. One is that Girish knew his performance traditions. He had done research in Kerala and other parts of India for Hayavadana, and that’s why he knew Kutiyattam. But what made him so effective as the head of a cultural institution was that he was an artist. He was a theatre practitioner. AS: Well, immodest or not, this is not the only time that Girish used his great talent and his significant stature in support of a public cultural institution. Just listen to this next anecdote: GK: Aru [Arundhati Nag] said to me she wanted to build a theatre here. After I attended two or three meetings, I said, “You’re asking me to waste my time. Please, don’t call me. I’m not coming.” And when the theatre was coming up, I thought it was all wrong, too sharp/angular?. Then Marulasiddappa showed me an invitation to the opening of Ranga Shankara. I said, “Oh, my god, in my name?” So I asked Aru, “How could you print my name?” “No one seemed to be helping me, and you too were not responsive…I had to name someone,” she said. I agreed to go. That evening, the chief minister was present, and the theatre opened. We went on stage, and I said to myself, “My god, she’s built a theatre! While I’ve been grouching, here is a theatre full of 300 people!” I apologised, “I’m sorry, I eat humble pie. I’ll write a play for you – a play that no one else can do.” AT: In the play ‘A Heap of Broken Images’ Kannada writer Manjula addresses a TV audience after the success of her English novel. She is aghast that intellectuals she respected, writers who were gurus, and friends, all of whom she expected to share her delight, were breathing fire because she dared to write in English and betray Kannada!Girish Karnad. Photo: Special arrangement“Betray? The answer is simple. If there was betrayal, it was not a matter of conscious choice. I wrote the novel in English because it burst out in English. It surprised even me. I was accused of writing for foreign readers –as if I had committed a crime! A writer seeks audiences where she or he can find them.”AS:: The title ‘A Heap of Broken Images’ is from T.S. Eliot’s Wasteland. Eliot was one of Girish’s great heroes and Girish even did a sketch of him. You know, sketching was Girish’s secret hobby! At 18, Girish would sketch eminent personalities and send them the sketches to be autographed. Irish dramatist Sean O’Casey replied, ‘Do not waste your time collecting autographs, but work hard so others will collect yours!’. Anyway, that play was written in both English and in Kannada in 2004– at a time there was an active debate about whether English was an Indian language or not. And that’s exactly what the play is about. Is an Indian writer authentic if they’re writing in English? Girish was very sure that he was a Kannada writer. There were also the challenges of writing a contemporary play – which writer Vivek Shanbhag (a close friend), and Girish would often discuss. Vivek reminded us that Girish’s first play set in a contemporary milieu was Anju Mallige, published in Kannada in 1977. In fact, most of our conversations with Girish revolved around playwriting and Indian theatre which is the focus of this series. One thing I was most moved by was how he kept coming back to Anju Mallige. How even in the last week of his life, he was looking at ways to improve a play that he had written, what, 50 years ago?AS: Yeah, we would often talk about Anju Mallige. Girish would ask us, like, where do you think the problem is? What should I cut? But in the course of those conversations, it was Girish himself who put his finger on the flaw in the play. But it was too late for him to fix it.Girish would often do this, you know, he would spend decades writing and rewriting his plays – Bali, The Fire and The Rain. Again, in the episode on playwriting, Girish talks about how a writer needs to know their audience. That’s what Girish learned from the failure of Bali, that his audience was in India and not somewhere else. AT: Coming back to Anju Mallige (looks at an incestuous relationship between brother and sister, against the background of racial conflict in London), Girish said it’s a record of the times, of the 1960s in the UK. He was at Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. Asians were assaulted with bicycle chains.This is also when Girish was attracted to the European philosophy of existentialism, which would fundamentally shape his life and his work. And it was in Tughlaq, which he wrote shortly after he returned from England, that Girish found his perfect existentialist hero – the Mad Monarch. GK: I was at Oxford. In search of a good subject, I went to what used to be called India House and took out an elementary book of history. I started with Mohenjo-daro, Ashoka was a cliché… until I came to Tughlaq. and I said, ‘Mad Tughlaq, God, marvellous!’. Madness was in the air, and I was about 23-24…quite quite mad! So I wrote this play about the Mad Sultan.What made it even madder was that he had actually banned public prayer in his kingdom for five years. And I thought, how marvellous. But as I started looking deeper and deeper, it occurred to me that if you were an atheist, as I planned him to be, you wouldn’t ban public prayer. It would mean nothing to you. It’s only a man who was a theist, who loved God, who would worry so much about prayer, to whom prayer would matter. He somehow wanted to challenge God: ‘Do what you like. I won’t pray for you.’ And why? AS: See, that’s brilliant. He nailed the problem of existentialism as one related to God. And in his play Flowers, Girish brings up the subject of bhakti (the path of devotion). What do you do when God acts? The priest in Flowers is shattered when he experiences prove that God does exist. AT: But it was Tughlaq, with its existentialism and its modernity, that electrified Indian theatre and propelled Girish onto the national stage. What’s impressive, though is how Girish followed that up with an even more audacious play, Hayavadana! Where he took on another set of big philosophical ideas besides experimenting with form. AS: You know what audacious is? Padmini is audacious, the female character in Hayavadana, because she intentionally, by ‘accident’, mixes up the heads of her lover and her husband in order to create the perfect man. I mean, the goddess herself is shocked and she says, ‘My dear daughter, there should be a limit even to honesty.’ You know, Hayavadana was extraordinary. People had never seen anything like it. Girish had combined folklore elements, a story from Sanskrit Kathasaritsagara, European philosophy, the question of where does the ‘self’ reside – in the mind or in the body? And he was able to bundle all of this up into a beautiful and utterly compelling human drama, which was brilliantly directed in totally different ways by B V Karanth and Satyadev Dubey.GK: Karanth knew his theatre, he was a theatre man. I had just read the Transposed Heads and I said to Karant one day that it could be nicely adapted for a film. In his usual fashion Karanth said, “Filma? Yake filmo? Chhee. Film-gilm beda re. Naatka maadona. Neevu Naatka bareeri avaag barteeni.’’ (Film? Why film? Chee. No need for a film. You write a play and I’ll join you.) “My god, you’re right, it’s unique material. for a play.” “Not only will you write, I know you’ll write it in the next 15 days!”So I did. Satyadev did it in Hindi. He was much taken by one line in the play, where the horse says, “I have become a horse, but I haven’t got the language.” And Satyadev was a Hindiwala – well suited to front page stories of today. People send their children to English medium schools, who wants Hindi now? Can you give them jobs? Resentment will tear things apart...Anyway, I don’t want to go into that. What I mean is Satyadev loved the play, so he did it in Hindi. And Karanth, in Kannada. For the first time, we had used folklore, horses, masks, all those kind of elements. And it was hailed as ‘Natyashastra Re-enters’… everyone was waiting to know how to use traditional forms.AS: Hayavadana, Habib Tanvir’s Charandas Chor, Vijay Tendulkar’s Ghashiram Kotwal, Shanta Gandhi’s Jasma Odan, all of these brought a new sensibility to our metropolitan stages. Indian theatre was so exciting in the ’60s and ’70s, and Girish was such an integral part of that.AT: After Hayavadana, he really didn’t write anything that he was happy with. This was a time when he was struggling with Bali and Anju Mallige. In 1987, when he was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Chicago, he returned to folktales and wrote the exquisite Nagamandala. And you were there! Tell us about it.AS: Oh! Nagamandala! What is there to say? I mean, it’s my most favourite play in the whole world, even ahead of Oedipus Rex which I truly love. And here’s just one of the reasons why Nagamandala is truly great. Girish displays this astonishing level of self-awareness in the play. The prologue is about a playwright who hasn’t written a good play in so long that he’s been cursed. To quote the goddess from Hayavadana, all I want to say is, ‘My dear Girish, there should be a limit even to honesty.’ It was A K Ramanujan, poet, translator, scholar who had invited Girish to the university, who gave Girish the two folktales that formed the heart of Nagamandala. Girish dedicates the play to Raman, ‘To A K Ramanujan, friend, hero, guru.’ Girish had known him sincehe was a college student in Dharwad and Ramanujan, a young professor in Belgaum. Girish often referred to him as his akshaya patra – the vessel that never stops giving.GK: To me he was it. Simply because I had come to literature blank. I had no notion of what literature should be. I learned it all from him – on railway platforms, bus stops, restaurants, anywhere. And he was one of those teachers who shared happily. With Raman, I just absorbed, he said so much. He was a continual source of information because he had thought it all out. AT: Ramanujan inspired Girish in so many ways. GK: Ramanujan very often said to me, “Girish, if you want to be a first-rate writer, your rivals are not within the circle of Karnataka or India. You have to think of the world. Take them as your rivals. Just take that as your horizon and write for the best.”AT: And we know that Girish produced incredible works. That’s how most of us actually know him – through his playsAS: Nagamandala unleashed a fertile period in Girish’s writing because soon after that, in 1990, he wrote Taledanda, his most overtly political play (on Basavanna’s reform movement in 12th-century Karnataka against the caste system and rigid religious rituals). He wrote the play in response to the Mandir-Mandal agitations that were rocking the country against reservations recommended for backward castes in government jobs. This is also the time during which Girish himself became more politically vocal and spoke up in public against what he believed was wrong. From that point until he died, Girish was our conscience keeper at least for those of us who believe in a fair and just India. Whether it was the demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992 or the Bajrang Dal attempt to Hindu-ise the Bababudan Dargah in Chikmagalur – where both Hindus and Muslims worshipped harmoniously – Girish Karnad was in the forefront of public protests against hate politics. His description of Tipu Sultan as a visionary and an early freedom fighter against the British raised the Hindutva brigade’s wrath. Subsequently, there was his attack on V S Naipaul who justified the demolition of the Babri Masjid, calling it Babur’s “insult to the country.”GK: At the time I was the Director of the Nehru Centre in London and Naipaul appeared on a BBC programme talking to Nisha Pillai, in which he lambasted Muslims. “They have destroyed Indian culture,” he said “they contributed nothing”, and so on and on. I was horrified. I wrote to the BBC, “Look, I would like to reply to him.” “Sorry, you’re a member of the Government of India, you have to come through the High Commission.” Since his very first book, A Wounded Civilization, Naipaul has never missed a chance to accuse Muslims of having savaged India for five centuries, spreading poverty and destroying glorious Indian culture. He has been insensitive to the intricate interweaving of Hindu and Muslim creativities – creativities that have given us such an extraordinary heritage.GK: My attack on Naipaul (at the 2012 Mumbai LitFest) was because of his rabid anti-Muslim statements spoken or written. (I lost many friends because of this.) But the Muslims have no defence –there is no one speaking for them! AS: Did you see this coming in your lifetime? GK: Not this sort of deliberate manipulation that Modi and Shah have been able to do, I didn’t think Indians would be so gullible. AS: You will meet Girish Karnad (in these episodes) as a playwright, as a Kannada writer, as a maker of Indian theatre, as a philosopher, as a humanist, a man who stood up for what he believed in – and in one and all of these ways, as someone we will miss dreadfully. AT: Girish wore so many hats, but if you asked him who he was, he would always unequivocally say I’m a playwright.GK: Let me speak plainly, I’m 80 now so I can afford to. I’ve been phenomenally successful in my life – not many playwrights of my generation have had the success I’ve had. There’s nothing I can grump about. I’ve been produced by the best directors of my generation, acted by the best actors, I’ve had good translations. Besides, I must add, it’s been great fun writing plays!This was excerpted by Rani Day Burra from the Bangalore International Centre’s podcast series Girish Karnad: The River Has No Fear of Memories, hosted by Arshia Sattar and Anmol Tikoo. You can listen to the series here.