Friends raise a toast to Girish Karnad

Bengaluru: The last things first. “Tonight, when you head home, you shall raise two toasts in the memory of Girish Karnad. The second toast will be to celebrate the greatness of Girish. The first will be to Dr Madhumalathi Gune, thanks to whom we got him,” said historian Ramachandra Guha. He was alluding to the doctor whose late arrival to her clinic over 80 years ago, meant that the late Karnad was not aborted.

On Tuesday evening, anecdotes and memories of the playwright, actor, director and writer came alive once again, as friends, peers, colleagues and admirers came together at Bangalore International Centre to celebrate his life and work. There were talks by friends Arundhati Nag, Vivek Shanbhag and Arshia Sattar and messages from Shyam Benegal, SG Vasudev and Naseeruddin Shah. Excerpts.

Naseeruddin Shah, actor

The first time I set my eyes on Girish was on screen, he was doing a commercial for a menswear brand. He was dressed in a suit, a moustache badly plastered on his upper lip, trying to do the cool act, and I remember thinking to myself, ‘This is the guy who wrote Tughlaq? There’s something wrong here’, and that was until I heard him speak in NSD... There were three qualities Girish embodied: Kindness, generosity and courage. The way he cared for his parents while at FTII; the way he cared for penniless students like Om (Puri) and me by boosting our morale and helped start our careers is something we can never compensate for; the way he fought for his beliefs and fought his disease, I finally understand what it means to ‘not go gentle into the night, to rage against the dying of the light’.

Shyam Benegal, filmmaker

I first heard of Girish from a cousin of mine who’d studied with him in Dharwad. Later, while making films, getting him to write and act for me was a huge bonus. Extremely intelligent, he was among the greatest playwrights of the last 50 years. He was a human being with a wonderful sense of social justice who would take up cudgels to fight injustice. He made such a dear, loyal friend. He has left a void very difficult to fill.

Arshia Sattar, scholar, writer

When I recently heard his voice in Ranga Shankara, I thought, ‘There, this may be the only place I will hear his voice again but since he died, I hear his voice in my head all the time’. He is not just telling me to switch off my phone, he is telling me, ‘Stop drinking, you will have more time to write.’ The reason he stands head and shoulders above the rest is his work which questions itself fiercely and visibly.

SG Vasudev, artist

I met Girish in 1963. We both spoke Kannada and soon became friends. I was a student at the Government College of Arts and he’d come to college because of his interest in arts. He introduced me to the best of literature and that changed my view of my own art. Girish introduced me to AK Ramanujan, to Madras Theatre Players, and after I won the Lalit Kala Akademi award in 1967, he even organised an exhibition of my work in, of all places, Dharwad!