# Thinking Activity
# Girish Karnad : Controversial Obituaries.
• A playwright, a writer, a director and an actor died, and a string of meaningful cinema from the 70s-80s was remembered. During the period 70' - 80', he won the National Award for various creations in Kannada, Kannada in different categories like Best Film, Best Director and Best Literature. He wrote such plays as Nishant, Churning, Fear, Ek Tha Tiger, Tiger Zinda Hai, Yeti, Harsh Vardhan, Tughlaq. Another Girish play called Bimba 2005 was written in the Kannada language and then played on the theater in Kannada, English and Hindi languages. The English version of Alec Paramastri was rewritten and cast by Shabana Azmi.
• If Satyajit Rai or Mrinal Sen were called Jyotiddars of Bengal, Kannada was the girish. Because of the South Filmfare Awards, he won the trophy of the 'Best Director', and the state award in his state of Karnataka, and his reflection on the merits of his work may also have come from the fact. In all of his life, he received three national awards. This war and quality work did them in Kannada language, but the fun aspect was that Kannada was not even their native tongue.
• Girish sailed to England by sea and could not give his parents information until he was there for 6 weeks so his mother realized that he had sent his son to work there and called him back. Had to study at Oxford and if that education was incomplete, the loss would be so great that the doctor could not afford the father. Finally, on the fifteenth day of the month, there was news of each other in the mail.
• In the mid-’60s, Girish Karnad was a 22 year-old playwright in search of a subject. He had just completed writing about the whim of a king (Yayati) when he came upon the statement of a fellow Kannada litterateur’s dissing existing Kannada plays as costume drama. Karnad decided to rise to the challenge. His ‘Tughlaq’ is a theatrical representation strong in rhetoric of the 14th-century king who destabilised his own kingdom; marched his people from the north (Delhi) to the west (Daulatabad) to set up a new capital and marched them back; went on a killing spree; struck coins in one metal and then another – all in the name of good governance. Watching a powerful man crack up, whenever it occurs, is a bad time in history. It’s great for art though.
• Tughlaq was first staged in Urdu in 1966 as part of a National School of Drama student production directed by actor Om Shivpuri, then a student. Its more famous outing was Ebrahim Alkazi’s grand set-piece at the Purana Qila, Delhi, in 1972; veteran actor Manohar Singh played the lead. A revival of the play in Delhi this weekend comes at an interesting point when books are questioning older books about dead rulers with bad press -- such as Aurangzeb – and the appropriate way to look at figures of history.
• Karnad is regarded as one of the three great writers of the Contemporary Indian Drama, the other two being Vijay Tendulkar and Badal Sircar. His significant plays include Yayati, Tughlaq, Naga-Mandala, Tale-Danda and Hayavadana.
# Girish Karnad : Controversial Obituaries.
• If Satyajit Rai or Mrinal Sen were called Jyotiddars of Bengal, Kannada was the girish. Because of the South Filmfare Awards, he won the trophy of the 'Best Director', and the state award in his state of Karnataka, and his reflection on the merits of his work may also have come from the fact. In all of his life, he received three national awards. This war and quality work did them in Kannada language, but the fun aspect was that Kannada was not even their native tongue.
• Girish sailed to England by sea and could not give his parents information until he was there for 6 weeks so his mother realized that he had sent his son to work there and called him back. Had to study at Oxford and if that education was incomplete, the loss would be so great that the doctor could not afford the father. Finally, on the fifteenth day of the month, there was news of each other in the mail.
• In the mid-’60s, Girish Karnad was a 22 year-old playwright in search of a subject. He had just completed writing about the whim of a king (Yayati) when he came upon the statement of a fellow Kannada litterateur’s dissing existing Kannada plays as costume drama. Karnad decided to rise to the challenge. His ‘Tughlaq’ is a theatrical representation strong in rhetoric of the 14th-century king who destabilised his own kingdom; marched his people from the north (Delhi) to the west (Daulatabad) to set up a new capital and marched them back; went on a killing spree; struck coins in one metal and then another – all in the name of good governance. Watching a powerful man crack up, whenever it occurs, is a bad time in history. It’s great for art though.
• Tughlaq was first staged in Urdu in 1966 as part of a National School of Drama student production directed by actor Om Shivpuri, then a student. Its more famous outing was Ebrahim Alkazi’s grand set-piece at the Purana Qila, Delhi, in 1972; veteran actor Manohar Singh played the lead. A revival of the play in Delhi this weekend comes at an interesting point when books are questioning older books about dead rulers with bad press -- such as Aurangzeb – and the appropriate way to look at figures of history.
• Karnad is regarded as one of the three great writers of the Contemporary Indian Drama, the other two being Vijay Tendulkar and Badal Sircar. His significant plays include Yayati, Tughlaq, Naga-Mandala, Tale-Danda and Hayavadana.
- Quoted in Shukla, S. & Anu (1 January 2003). Multiple Contexts And Insights. Sarup & Sons. pp. 9–. ISBN 978-81-7625-372-7.
• So, was Muhummad bin Tughlaq mad or brilliant? Should one laugh at him or listen to him? Was he a visionary or an insecure politician? Were his projects an expression of madness or driven by political calculation? The answers to these questions, says Karnad, may perhaps be set aside for the most important question -- is the play still contemporary or not.
• “Written in the ’60s, everyone latched on to UR Ananthamurthy’s comment of it being a critique of Nehruvian socialism,” says the actor-playwright. “The point about a play is that it cannot simply be about its own time. Tughlaq is not just about Nehru. There are lines in the play when two guards talk to each other and one of them says ‘Oh, this is such a strong fort!’ The other guard doesn’t agree. He says ‘This fort will crumble due its inner weaknesses.’ An 80s’ audience watching it, interpreted it as the aftermath to Indira Gandhi’s assassination… Every audience interprets a play according to his own sense of reality. The question is whether it will connect it to Modi….”
• “Written in the ’60s, everyone latched on to UR Ananthamurthy’s comment of it being a critique of Nehruvian socialism,” says the actor-playwright. “The point about a play is that it cannot simply be about its own time. Tughlaq is not just about Nehru. There are lines in the play when two guards talk to each other and one of them says ‘Oh, this is such a strong fort!’ The other guard doesn’t agree. He says ‘This fort will crumble due its inner weaknesses.’ An 80s’ audience watching it, interpreted it as the aftermath to Indira Gandhi’s assassination… Every audience interprets a play according to his own sense of reality. The question is whether it will connect it to Modi….”
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