There is a scene towards the middle of Shyam Benegal’s Nishant . A very frustrated and exhausted Girish Karnad, a schoolteacher, returns to his village. He has spent the day appealing to the police, government officials, lawyers and journalists to take action against the four evil landlords who have kidnapped his wife Sushila (Shabana Azmi).
All attempts fail and the teacher is not able to shake up the fear that the landlord brothers (played with terrifying intensity by Amrish Puri, Anant Nag, Mohan Agashe and Naseeruddin Shah) have spread among the villagers and even those with power in a nearby city.
In a fit of anger Karnad lets out a loud cry, and starts slashing at wild bushes with his umbrella as he walks back home. It is a devastating scene.
Nishant was released in 1975, the same year as Ramesh Sippy’s Sholay and Yash Chopra’s Deewar . But the college student in me was far more interested in seeing Benegal’s new film with its large ensemble of trained actors. A year earlier while I was in school I had seen Benegal’s Ankur at Delhi’s Regal Theatre, and experienced the power of cinema beyond what my young mind had imagined possible. I was blown away by Azmi’s acting skills and her beauty, and shaken up by her outburst towards the end.
In Nishant I discovered Karnad, tall, elegant and handsome even when he was mostly scowling and looking frustrated. (I did not know much about him before I saw Nishant. Years later I would see Samksara in New York, his first film as an actor.) In Nishant I also discovered two other actors who would change my life, how I would view cinema and my perception of what talented performers were capable of doing in front of the camera. I am talking about Shah and Smita Patil.
Amrish Puri, Anant Nag and Naseeruddin Shah in Nishant (1975).
A magical time
What a magical and special time it was. In the 1970s, Benegal, supported by very able producers, was on a roll. Every year he would make a new film, each an event by itself, each an exploration of the class/ caste divides in India or on patriarchy and strong-willed women fighting for space in a world defined by men. Nishant would be followed by Manthan (1976, with a simmering Karnad, Patil, Shah and Nag); Bhumika (1977, Patil, Nag, Shah and Amol Palekar); Kondura (1978, Patil and Nag), and Junoon (1979, Shashi and Jennifer Kapoor, Azmi and Shah).
If Karnad wasn’t acting in one of Benegal’s films, he would be writing part of the screenplay. He is credited as one the co-writers on Bhumika, which won the National Film Award for its screenplay. He also co-wrote the scripts of Kondura and Kalyug (1981).
But Benegal was not the only one who worked with this repertory of actors. It was the the peak of the parallel film movement, and many young filmmakers were churning out a range of films dealing with social issues. And the same set of actors would work in different projects with filmmakers like Saeed Akhtar Mirza ( Arvind Desai Ki Ajeeb Dastan ), Muzaffar Ali ( Gaman ), and M.S. Sathyu ( Garam Hawa ). Some of these actors also graced the screen in Satyajit Ray’s first Hindi film, Shatranj Ke Khilari (1977).
Much of my initial understanding of inequality, caste politics, and rural India came from these films. It was an important education that I would not have received from any degree course.
Smita Patil in Manthan (1976).
Tughlaq at Purana Qila
In the mid-1970s, Karnad’s talent was even more evident on stage. There’s one performance of his play Tughlaq that I’ll never forget. Directed by Ebrahim Alkazi, it featured the late Manohar Singh playing the lead character amid the ruins of Purana Qila. I saw another performance last year at a Delhi theatre, but the Purana Qila setting had made the anti-authoritarian play so much more impactful.
Karnad was back on screen in 1977 in Basu Chatterjee’s Swami , with the haunting thumri Ka Karoon Sajni . Here he plays a patient husband to Azmi’s rebellious Saudamini, who is resentful of her family forcing her into an arranged marriage.
The film ends with a beautiful — albeit predictable — scene. Saudamini has decided to run away with her former boyfriend. But then she changes her mind and falls at her husband’s feet as he (Karnad) says, ‘ ghar chalo Mini’ (come home, Mini).
Girish Karnad and Shabana Azmi in Nishant (1975).
Ancients and moderns
That same year, Karnad would also team up with B.V. Karanth to co-write and co-direct Godhuli (with Shah, Om Puri and Kulbhushan Kharbanda) — a clash of old and new ways in a village as the headman’s son arrives from the U.S. with his American wife. And in 1979, Karnad directed a stunning period film in Kannada depicting ancient Indian martial arts, a homage to Akira Kurosawa’s samurai films — Ondanondu Kaladalli (with Shankar Nag).
Many of the players from that era have left us. Patil died tragically in 1986, Shankar Nag in 1990 and Farooq Shaikh ( Garam Hawa and Gaman ) in 2013. Some of other key players in Shyam Benegal’s repertory group are also gone — Vijay Tendulkar (playwright and scriptwriter for Nishant and Manthan ), Amrish Puri, Om Puri, Shashi and Jennifer Kapoor, Jalal Agha and now even Karnad. The bigger tragedy was that through the 1980s the parallel cinema movement also slowly died down.
Having lived in the U.S. since 1981, I never got a chance to meet Karnad. But I tried to interview him for a book I wrote on Shashi Kapoor in 2016. Karnad had directed Utsav (1984), produced by Kapoor. I had heard from someone that things were fraught between the producer and the director since the film had gone way over budget. Plus, Kapoor had already lost money on his previous productions.
Karnad sent me an email in response to an interview request I had sent through a common friend. The email read: “While the film Utsav was being made or since the day it was released, I have not said a word about my experience of making the film or of Shashi as a producer and actor, preferring to let him have his say. I should like to continue the arrangement.”
I am heartbroken that I will now never interview Girish Karnad.
The author is an independent writer, film festival programmer and the author of Shashi Kapoor: The Householder, The Star .
