Karnad was a playwright of innovations, first and last

When we look back at Girish Karnad’s life and times, it seems obvious that the charisma, the power and even the bafflement associated with him had everything to do with a certain kind of modernity which entered the Kannada literary sensibility from the 1960s.

Shantinath Desai’s novel, Mukti caught the spirit with all the lure it had for the young men who had left their conservative village homes and sought liberation in that modernity which was a heady mix of sexuality, rebellion against middle-class prudishness and ironically, a romantic spirit of protest and freedom which went in the name of modernity.

Karnad’s first play Yayathi was an existentialist play which portrayed the painful ambiguity of human actions. It also presented a world without certainties, with no values one could believe in. Karnad always said that the myth he used in the play was the opposite of the Oedipus myth with Yayathi, the father, symbolically killing his son Puru by taking away his youth.

He wondered if the two myths symbolised two opposing world views of two civilisations. The first play of the young playwright ended with the question, “What is the meaning of all this?” While older critics were unkind about such rhetoric, the young readers found it resonating with their own confusions. This is true of Tuglaq too.

It is not so much “disillusionment of the post-Nehruvian era.”” said to be the theme of the play which makes it an outstanding play of the post-independence period. It evokes very powerfully, existentialist questions about the tragedy of living in an absurd world and with a deep sense of guilt and responsibility, even as you see your actions leading to totally unexpected consequence.

The play revealed the master-craftsman in Karnad who could deal with such a dark theme while using intrigue, conspiracy, mob scenes, murder and Brechtian humour.

Kannada literary circles have endlessly debated the greatness or otherwise of Karnad’s plays. But what cannot be ignored is the endless original innovations Karnad makes in his plays. After a long pre-occupation with myth and history, Karnad wrote a series of “plays for today” such as Wedding Album and Broken Images. Then he returned to history in Rakkasa Tangadi.

His philosophical concerns have remained constant. They are about the instability of meaning and the ultimate ambivalence of life, whether you explore it in myth, history or the middle-class world of today.
The best compliment I can think of for Karnad is that he was a playwright, first and last. As a young scholar has said, a playwright is like a wheelwright and a cartwright putting together all pieces to make a play which is one and many at the same time.

A playwright is not a philosopher. He is not a poet. He is one who brings players on the stage who may dabble at everything, including poetry and philosophy but “the play is the thing.”

Among all writers in Kannada, Karnad remained the quintessential playwright, perhaps believing only in what comes alive on the stage. I believe Shakespeare did that.

What made Karnad a great Indian playwright? It is not the availability of his own English translations of the plays as some critics crib. The most memorable performances of his plays have been in the Bhashas which discovered that Karnad’s plays resonate with the experiences of communities of spectators and readers who perhaps did not know a word of Kannada.

This, I believe is what makes a playwright truly significant. Unlike a poet or a dramatist, he may not express a consistent philosophical exploration of experience. But he embodies in language and dramatic action what we may not be capable of articulating. We are as much troubled by the essential fragmentariness of our self and the world as Karnad’s characters are. That is why his plays speak to us just as they have spoken to spectators across many little worlds together known as India.

(The author is a former professor of English, Kuvempu University and Director, Manasa Centre for Cultural Studies, Shivamogga)