Girish Karnad — a life at play

Aesthete, intellectual, restless storyteller. Looking back at Girish Karnad in the light of his newly released memoirs

He was our own Forrest Gump. Always at the right place at the right time. His was one of the hands that cut modern Indian theatre’s umbilical cord with traditional forms such as company nataka in Karnataka or Parsi theatre in north India. When Kannada cinema staked its claim on neorealism with the film version of U.R. Ananthamurthy’s searing portrayal of Brahminism in his novel Samskara, Girish Karnad not only played the lead, he was also a key mover in the making of the film. When Hindi cinema had its ‘art’ moment in the early 70s, Karnad was in the midst of it as actor and writer. When television took off and became a regular feature of urban middle class life, there was Karnad as Swami’s father in Malgudi Days, and as the sophisticated host of the science show Turning Point. But he was not a bystander witnessing — or accidentally influencing — history. He was very much a participant, who shaped that history actively.