‘Let me look into the present now’-GIRISH KARNAD

After a string of tales from the past, GIRISH KARNAD picks a contemporary debate on the language divide to mark a return to stage direction.

Girish Karnad (extreme right) has a word with Arundhati Raja and co-director K.M. Chaitanya during a dress rehearsal for Odakalu Bimba

You return to stage direction after 30 years with A Heap of Broken Images. Why did you stay away for such a long time?

I am directing a play after a gap of 30 years but I have been writing plays all this while. I stayed away because I had some good directors like B.V. Karanth, Ebrahim Alkazi and Shyamanand Jalan directing my plays. So I thought I could go on with my writing.

But A Heap of Broken Images was different. It’s a technically intricate play and I thought I should try and sort that out myself rather than leave it to others. I wanted to be sure that the technical effects were perfect. It’s very common today to fill up the stage with all kinds of technical gimmickry, lights and all.

What was the need for such an elaborate technical set-up?

Here, a woman who writes in Kannada is being interviewed on TV after she has won accolades for her literary work in English. When the interview ends, she gets up to go but her image on the screen wants to stay on. It wants to talk to her; she gets scared but then starts talking. So, the play is essentially a discussion between the woman and her image.

The play is also about technology. There’s TV, video and cable around us. We see images all the time. My main point was to see what happens if the image turns out to be your own… The irony is that this wouldn’t have happened if she hadn’t written the novel in English.

But you have also woven in a sub-plot of the woman’s relationship with her husband and her challenged sister…

Yeah… that’s there. Because the public domain goes into your private life too. And at the end the distinction between the self and the image gets blurred. She morphs into the image.

We play a recorded version for the woman’s image and it’s perfectly timed. It is also, in a sense, a comment on the relationship between theatre and TV. The real and the virtual.

A Heap of Broken Images marks a shift from your earlier works…

Yes… Some 30-40 years ago, I stayed in London for three years and when I came back I wrote plays like Hayavadana, Nagamandala and Tughlaq. Since I looked back into the past all these years, I thought let me look into the present now.

In Karnataka there’s a debate going on over globalisation versus culture. Now there are two aspects to it. First is whether Indians should write in English or in their mother tongue. Second, what is happening to our languages due to the impact of the language of globalisation, ie. English. But people don’t realise that this fear is useless. When satellite TV made its entry in cable homes, we were expecting Rupert Murdoch to rule our lives but that never happened.

But you write in Kannada which is an adopted language for you…

My mother tongue is Konkani, which is a dialect. I had Kannada as the medium of instruction in school. So writing in Kannada was the most natural thing.

How has the play been received in Bangalore?

It has had a tremendous response. We performed it at Rangashankara theatre to packed houses. Arundhati Nag plays it in English and Arundhati Raja features in the Kannada version called Odakalu Bimba.

Have you thought of bringing the play to Calcutta?

I was invited to bring it into Calcutta but things didn’t work out. It’s a very complicated set-up. We have eight TV sets, four DVDs and one plasma screen. We have to create the entire technological set-up as it is very essential to the play.

You have been an actor, a writer and a stage director. Which do you love doing best?

I am basically a playwright. I became an actor to earn a livelihood. I find acting very strenuous.