Nissar Ahmed: The poet who catalysed a genre of music

K S Nissar Ahmed, who died on Sunday at 84, is recognised as the ‘Nityotsava’ poet, and for good reason.

Although he wrote modernist poetry and literary criticism and translated Shakespeare, he is popular for the song ‘Nityotsava’, which perhaps is to Karnataka what Vande mataram is to India. Neither song became an official anthem, but they are anthems in their own right, sung widely and with much fervour.

‘Nityotsava’ is a tribute to Karnataka, and opens with an image of the splendour of Jog falls. It goes on to celebrate the evergreen forests of the Western Ghats, the history of the Kannada land, and ‘manadudaara mahime,’ the ‘glory of a generous spirit.’

Nissar Ahmed was born in Devanahalli, and grew up in Dodda Mavalli in Bengaluru.

The colony had about 500 Muslim families. His father, a

government employee, admitted him to a Kannada school, thinking it might help him secure a government job. Other children in the neighbourhood went to Urdu schools.

Poetry became a favourite subject. Nissar Ahmed was moved to tears when he heard his teacher Kamalamma sing ‘Dharani mandala,’ the folk ballad about Punyakoti, the honest cow. He was later inspired by writers G P Rajaratnam and M V Seetharamaiah who taught him in high school.

In an interview with Basu Megalakeri, Nissar Ahmed had said he wrote poetry in diverse styles because ‘some like romance, some like reason’. He credited All India Radio with making him popular. The radio station used to commission him to write poems in the 1960s. Around the time the hostilities with China broke out, he was writing war poems for the radio station.

P Lankesh and Sumatheendra Nadig, two poet-friends, used to ridicule him as a ‘mass poet,’ but Nissar Ahmed attributed that to ‘jealousy’. Drinking tea and lighting up cigarettes was his style as he locked himself up to write poetry. His exasperated mother would come by and say, ‘Bomman ka bachcha, kya likha re?’

Nissar Ahmed studied geology, and was a government geologist for a time. He then taught the subject at Sahyadri College in Shivamogga. In Bengaluru, he lived in Jayanagar, and then in Padmanabhanagar.

He remained largely apolitical, but wasn’t averse to writing political satire. His poem ‘Kurigalu saar kurigalu’ describes people as sheep and politicians as those ‘who push us into the sun and stand in the shade’ before they butcher us for biryani.

That poem, set to tune brilliantly and turned into a song by Mysore Ananthaswamy, is among half a dozen others featured in the cassette ‘Nityotsava’.

Each one became a concert standard in sugama sangeeta, a genre that began to thrive in the 1980s with the runaway success of his album. If people still sing his Haridasa-style ‘Benne kadda namma Krishna’ and his ghazal-style ‘Mattade besara,’ they are harking back to his ‘Nityotsava’ days.