Mogalli Ganesh: A chronicler of lives often unheard

When Mogalli Ganesh’s short story Ondu Hale Cheddi won a prize in the Prajavani annual short story competition in 1989, readers were left nonplussed by the tragicomic experience the story offered. Until then, Ganesh had simply enjoyed narrating his experiences to his friends. It was his hostelmate, Rajappa Dalavayi, who recognised the potential, prepared a fair copy and sent it to the competition. Beyond the glory of the prize, Ganesh had to face the wrath of his characters and family, as he had portrayed them as they were. Ganesh’s father was so angered that he set out to Mysore with a mission to break his son’s bones.

Relishing the challenge, Ganesh never went home but continued to draw tirelessly from his childhood and his village life, as he wrote stories that won him three first prizes at the Prajavani annual competition. Among them, Buguri (The Top), which centred on the bizarre event of a hapless boy’s top falling into a toilet pit in a village, created ripples. The absurd drama that unfolded in the story offered the reader an unusual experience. By then, Ganesh had mastered diverse storytelling techniques.

The kind of attention his stories earned often puzzled Ganesh, who used low mimetic and tragic modes in his narration. An unemployed youth with two master’s degrees — in Economics and Folklore Studies — he started enjoying the recognition that came with being a writer. Veteran author P Lankesh nurtured this gifted young writer, and even published his first story collection, Buguri.

The cover of Mogalli Ganesh’s autobiography Naanembudu Kinchittu.

Ganesh wrote in longhand for over 40 years. For him, writing was both a passion and a lens to view the world. He moved between various forms of writing with ease.

When Lankesh asked him to review books for his weekly, Ganesh enjoyed writing free-wheeling reviews, often ‘irritating’ authors while raising stimulating questions. His poetry collection, Deva Smashana and his novel Tottilu cemented his place as a major Kannada writer.

Ganesh stood out among his contemporaries for exploring the violence within the Dalit society, patriarchal oppression, and meanness pervading rural caste structures. His stories explored the helplessness and humiliation faced by children and women, shedding light on the realities untold in Kannada literature till then.

Ganesh (1962- 2025) was born in Sante Mogenahalli, a village in Ramanagara district. When he finished high school, his father forced him to be a bonded labourer. Ganesh fled home and managed to survive in Mysuru, a city that nurtured his talent. Fascinated by communism, Ambedkarism and socialism, Ganesh remained an anarchist writer, inspired by the act of writing, and readers’ responses. Only when he joined Hampi Kannada University as a lecturer in the 1990s, did he gain some security in life.

The creative writer in him was always restless. The demands of the academics pushed him to research areas he was not much comfortable with. He was at his best when he wrote novels, stories and poems that reflected his true self. He wrote a series called ‘Takararu’, a counter petition published in a tabloid, in a hard-hitting style, which earned him the ire of some established writers. If he felt someone was a fake Bandaya writer, he would say so, in an earthy idiom. At times, his judgments were not convincing, but his worldview earned him a following in the progressive circles.

Mogalli Ganesh. Photo by M S Manjunath

Writers like Poornachandra Tejaswi and U R Ananthamurthy engaged seriously with his work, the latter even entered into a debate with him. 

Writing was a true passion and a mode of seeing for Mogalli Ganesh. Photo by M S Manjunath

Ganesh explored a form of magical realism while writing his autobiography, Naanembudu Kinchittu. His autobiography and some stories in his last collection, Devara Daari, demonstrate extraordinary narrative ease. Ganesh wrote his last story

Hosilu Datidavaru (Those who crossed the threshold) a few days before he died. The story revisits the 12th century Basava era, and relates it to the ghastly murder of Professor M M Kalburgi. 

Ganesh’s socio-cultural concerns and his narrative energy were intact even when he was on his deathbed.