Bhargavi Narayan -Naanu, Bhargavi

Bhargavi Narayan,   Naanu,  Bhargavi

Ankita Pustaka, 2012                 pp. 415; price: Rs. 250/-

               “Poignant Tale of a Gutsy  Artist”

       What is it that drives one to the stage and don the role of some one else

for a brief period,  against all odds?   Money? –there isn’t any in the Kannada theatre; fame? –very short-lived; inner urge to be somebody else?  Such questions  haunt one while  going through the autobiographies of  theatre-persons—like   CGK , BVK,   Prema Karanth, and others.  The most recent one in this illustrious group is the autobiography of  Bhargavi Narayan – the famous stage-film-TV artist.

"Kannada Vishwavidyanilaya Charitre" by Vijay P. Tambanda

   Vijay P. Tambanda (Ed.), Kannada Vishwavidyanilaya  Charitre, 8 Vols.

      Prasaranga: Kannada Univ., Hampi, 2010

                                   “Useful Volumes”    

       During the colonial period, histories of India were written by British historians like James Mill, Vincent Smith, and such others as part of the Imperial agenda of England.  As a reaction to such histories, during the 20^th century, there were many ‘Nationalist’ histories of India written by Indians, the most influential among them being the ones by Jadunath Sarkar and R. C. Mujumdar.  Towards the latter part of the last century, there arose many scholars like Romila Thapar, Bipan Chandra, and R. S. Sharma, who owed allegiance to Marxist ideology.  And then there were ‘Subaltern Histories,’  focusing on the those classes and communities that hadn’t found a place in ‘Elite histories.’  What these different histories tell us is that the narrative called History  is the ‘construct’ of an ideology, influential and powerful at a particular period of time, which may tell us about what may have happened in the past.

“For Reasons of Their Own” -book by Ramachandran C.N.

New book; released on Feb. 6, 2012

 “For Reasons of Their Own”:  A Study of Authors, Texts and Issues          

  with Particular Reference to Kannada Literature  

-Ramachandran C.N.

JNANPITH AWARDEE Chandrashekara Kambar -Part 2

Drama:

     At the time when Kambar wrote his first play in 1961, the Kannada theatre had begun to move away slowly from the Theatre of Realism (Kailasam and Sriranga), exploring new concerns and newer forms of representation.  The ‘Angry Young Man’  of the Fifties had begun to catch the attention of the city audiences (with the Modernist plays of Lankesh) along with the ‘Absurd Plays’ of Chandrashekhara Patil and Chandrakantha Kusanur.  Girish Karnad’s first play Yayathi (an interrogation of the old myth from a woman’s point of view) had just been staged (1960), introducing mythopoeic drama to Kannada theatre.

JNANPITH AWARDEE Chandrashekara Kambar -Part 1

JNANPITH   AWARDEE   Chandrashekara Kambar : Poet-Playwright:

                      “In  Search  of  Shiva-pura”¹

     Chandrashekara Kambar, playwright-poet-novelist-critic, holds a unique place in the field of post-independence Kannada literature; he fuses modern sensibility with traditional forms of performance and expression.  With 22 plays, eight poetry collections, three novels, and 12 collections of research articles on theatre and literature, Kambar is one of the most significant writers in Kannada, today.