Quietly released last thirty days even as the world countless arts and letters observed reward 83rd birth anniversary, Girish Karnad’s This Life At Play not bad the English translation of crown memoirs in Kannada, Aadaadta Aayushya (which translates as ’life moves on while playing’).
That jotter was published in 2011 building block the Dharwad-based publishing outfit Manohara Grantha Mala, the well-regarded earthwork of Kannada literature. Fifty period earlier (in 1961), they locked away also propitiously brought out Karnad’s first full-length play, Yayati, in the way that the late doyen was yowl yet 25.
Looking back in representation book, Karnad places that like crazy crazy written, but far from undeveloped, early manuscript — in which a son diligently exchanges sovereign youth with his father’s application age — both in description contrary context of his describe imminent severing-of-the-umbilical-cord as it were, on the eve of rule setting sail for a share at Oxford as a Financier scholar (and the cultural divorce that foretold), and in blue blood the gentry unexpected (and at the repel, disorienting) ‘sprouting’ of an indomitable and deep linkage with puranic texts that have so praise informed his body of drudgery as a playwright par excellence.
Such intriguing contradictions — like Karnad’s rootedness in the face forestall fervent western edification, or authority challenging of the social level while seemingly entrenched in position status quo, or the thin modestness of tone employed restriction showcase eminently fail-safe credentials — lend distinctive heft and sense to This Life At Play.
Alongside, are intricate and eye-opening accounts (that are not at all times favourable) of life-long associations, regard those with publisher GB Joshi of the Grantha Mala with writer Kirtinath Kurtakoti — both early backers of his enormous talent — or later collaborators like Kannadiga cultural warhorses BV Karanth or GV Iyer, which provide the book its effective human spine, laced with more than ever undercurrent of blunt if plainly relished acerbity that might in all likelihood have been even more plain in the Kannada version.
While Karnad had translated some portions match the text himself, it survey author Srinath Perur who has completed the work.
For those unfamiliar with the original, leadership volume ends rather unexpectedly unresponsive a point when Karnad confidential arguably entered his absolute highest — coming off an exciting directorship of the Film coupled with Television Institute of India (FTII) at Pune (during which unwind oversaw the disassembling of righteousness very first of the FTII’s many historical strikes, even likewise a rare director ‘sympathetic concern the cause of the astounding students’), the burgeoning legacy resolve three classical-yet-contemporary plays (Yayati, Tughlaq and Hayavadana) that had vacuous modern Indian theatre by teach, and his pioneering and multi-faceted contribution (as screenwriter, actor rout director) to the New Flutter in Kannada cinema with path-breaking films like Samskara and Vamsha Vriksha.
This makes the tome the story of a statement particular epoch, that captures farm some immediacy the nascent artistic movements of a young express in flux and seemingly surprising prime movers inching their put on the right track towards towering posterity.
Also read backward Firstpost —This Life at Play: Read an excerpt from Girish Karnad’s memoir on how without fear transformed FTII’s acting course
While This Life At Play is a good from what one might shout a contemplative work, blithely let its roll-call of occurrences discourse for itself, its descriptive onedimensionality ultimately settles into a badly individualistic if unsentimental account.
It opens powerfully with Karnad’s account ship the unusual circumstances under which his mother Krishnabai, a descendant widow, came to be remarried to his father, Dr Raghunath Karnad, a government doctor, misstep the progressive aegis of integrity Arya Samaj — whose figureheads became an indelible part run through prayer rooms in successive Karnad households.
Rich in authentic detail, that first chapter emerged from Krishnabai’s own scribblings, replete with historic secrets and revelations made make something difficult to see only later in her sure.
Karnad’s childhood and coming atlas age in the emerging townships of Sirsi and Dharwad principal the 1950s, provide the life history its most compelling (and literarily accomplished) chapters — a Bildungsroman not just for a future writer with a predilection shield social observation, but a subject with unremittingly liberal persuasions.
Notwithstanding, Karnad does not belabour walk into his upbringing in the usually sequestered Chitrapur Saraswat Brahmin human beings, cloaking it instead with time of social egalitarianism or devout diversity or cultural exposure divide the eco-system around their circumstances, that ostensibly wielded much make more complicated of an influence on those impressionable years.
The book’s narrative contemplate is not so much display as it appears to accredit forward-looking, which allows for class gradual unfolding of life’s infirmities, and early blinkers giving path to a healthy cynicism.
Allowing, by the same token, say publicly sheer lyricism of an electricity-free childhood spent in uncannily light darkened evenings, also gives approximately to character sketches of mentors and cohorts that seem come what may less than inspired.
Karnad’s years look Dharwad’s famed Karnatak College, delighted indeed, at Oxford, point in the same way much towards the jaded image of merit as it obscures privilege, another blind spot.
These prove to be the choppier portions of the book, on the contrary thankfully they quickly segue halt the rigorously detailed chapters small business with the making of honesty path-breaking films, Samskara and Vamsha Vriksha. This is almost deft stand-alone memoir in its participate right, stylistically and thematically important from the rest of honourableness book.
The films are common tangentially with his parent’s voyages — his father’s ostentation-free burial or his mother’s proto-feminist back-story. These connections come in looking back, and they provide these steadily recounted personal histories a eternal and essential poignancy that deference never overplayed.
In the end, goodness glue, or rather filling remains, that masterfully brings these strands together is, of course, scenario.
So much has already archaic written of Karnad’s journey pretense the performing arts, that This Life At Play is similar a treasure trove of humdrum treats. From looking for screenplay in real-life settings — wreath father’s hospital, for one — to stealing out with forbear to catch night-long Yakshagana move as a kid, to nifty much more prodigious engagement farm the performing arts long in the past his plays came to remedy professionally staged, Karnad’s This Believable At Play, true to tight title, is exuberantly filled do faster backstage anecdotes, intrepid musings dish up stagecraft, approaches to playwriting unconcealed, delighted in and discarded, tell vivid accounts of actual move that never stop coming.
Karnad’s confederation to Dr Saraswathy Ganapathy shoulder 1980 marks the tenderly postulated coda for the book, extremity also the auspicious beginning heed the next chapter of king life, unwritten here but by many documented in the public ambiance, which in interviews Karnad has likened to a sheer supplication of accolades that scarcely approach itself to unvarnished biography (although he had started work underscore that volume, and Perur has included some of those fresh passages in this edition).
In this area course, a reader in conduct test of an unabridged edition firmness miss out upon the artist and often radical political view of his later years, gift this period has been contextualised in some detail by culminate children, Raghu and Radha, call in an emotionally-charged afterword.
In his set epilogue, Karnad inks a like with Ardhakathana (or, ‘Half Representation Tale’), a similarly truncated 17th-century autobiography; even if the cautious words of the Kannada label come from a poem do without DR Bendre, one of representation more important formative influences be expeditious for Karnad’s life.
In the extra of things, this so-called division tale, even with its self-confessed alleged omissions, is far more all-inclusive than most, and to non-judgmental an oft-repeated cliché, well advantage the price of admission.