The River Has No Fear Of Memories: Podcast series celebrates Girish Karnad’s life

Hosted by writer, translator Arshia Sattar and educator, film maker Anmol Tikoo, the podcast commemorates the life and works of the late writer through extensive conversations Karnad had with Sattar before his death in June 2019.

The introductory episode, which was released on June 10, consisted of conversations on Karnad’s writing and what motivated him throughout his life. It dwelt on Karnad’s legacy as an artist and public intellectual as the podcast aimed to unravel the latter half of his life which had gone quite unnoticed. The eight remaining episodes will be released every Friday over the next two months.

“It was absolutely wonderful, a real privilege, and a pleasure. My colleague Anmol and I would look forward to our sessions every evening and talk about them for hours after,” Sattar said while talking about her experience while recording the podcast.

Portions from the discussions Sattar had with Karnad during her meetings have been extracted to focus on the playwright’s life and experiences to create the podcast series. The title track for the series was derived from the song ‘Hayavadana’ recreated by Pallavi M D and Konarak Reddy for the show.

“Since the pandemic years and the lockdowns intervened, Anmol and I were not in the same place most of the time so working on a project of this significance was not easy. Also, our conversations with Girish Karnad were cut short by his death, so it was a real task to bring ideas and themes together from what we had,” Sattar said.

The conversations were meant to showcase aspects Karnad had not mentioned in his memoir ‘This Life at Play’, which denotes the first half of the playwright’s life. “We wanted some record of his own words about the latter half of his life that he was reluctant to talk about,” says Tikoo during the podcast.

Through the episodes, Karnad talks about Kannada literature, the making of modern theatre, the art of writing plays and existentialism. He is backed up by special guests Vivek Shanbag, Shanta Gokhale and Sunil Shanbag, who provide context to Karnad’s statements. The episodes also include several scenes from Karnad’s plays that are read by members of the Bangalore Theatre Community.

“Finding Bangalore actors was easy, we just asked people we knew and everyone was eager and excited to be able to do this. The special guests were obvious choices — we chose colleagues and peers from the worlds of theatre and literature as that’s what the series focuses on,” said Sattar.

The explorations provide the audience with an understanding of the power of knowledge that Karnad had while familiarising listeners with his work. For instance, it reveals that the play ‘Taladanda’ written in 1990 was a turning point in Karnad’s writing.

According to Asrhia Sattar, “It is significant because it’s his most overtly political play and he wrote it in response to the Mandir Mandal politics that was rocking the country and this is also the time during which Girish himself became more politically vocal.”

“Listeners will derive what they want from the series; it is not prescriptive, nor does it have a ‘message’ that will be the same for all the different kinds of people who will tune in. Some will appreciate Girish, the playwright, others will enjoy his philosophical conversations, and still, others will respond to his political positions and fight for social justice,” she said.