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Kiran Nagarkar

Summary

Kiran Nagarkar (2 April 1942 – 5 September 2019) was an Indian novelist, playwright and screenwriter. A noted drama and film critic, he was one of the most significant writers of post-colonial India.[1]

Kiran Nagarkar
2013 – at the bookfair of Leipzig, Germany
2013 – at the bookfair of Leipzig, Germany
Born(1942-04-02)2 April 1942
Bombay, Bombay Presidency, British India (now Mumbai, Maharashtra, India)
Died (aged 77)
Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
Occupation
  • Novelist
  • dramatist
  • screenwriter
Literary movementIndian
Notable awardsSahitya Akademi Award,
Order of Merit of Germany
SpouseTulsi Vatsal
Website
kirannagarkar.com

Amongst his notable works are Saat Sakkam Trechalis (tr. Seven Sixes Are Forty Three) (1974), Ravan and Eddie (1994), and Cuckold (1997) for which he was awarded the 2001 Sahitya Akademi Award in English by the Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters.[1][2][3] His novels written in English have been translated into German. In 2012, he was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.[4]

Personal life edit

Nagarkar was born on 2 April 1942 in Bombay, now Mumbai, in a middle-class Maharashtrian family, the younger of two sons to Sulochana and Kamalkant Nagarkar.[5][6][7] His grandfather, B. B. Nagarkar, was a Brahmo and had attended the 1893 Parliament of the World's Religions in Chicago.[8] He studied at Fergusson College in Pune and the S.I.E.S. College in Mumbai.[9][6] He graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1964 and a master's degree in English literature in 1967. After that, he worked as an advertising copywriter for 15 years.[7]

From June to November 2011 he was 'writer in residence' at the Literaturhaus Zurich and the PWG Foundation in Zurich.[10]

He was married to Tulsi Vatsal, sister of industrialist Anand Mehta.[9][11] Nagarkar was a life-long critic of the establishment and stood by his political views throughout his literary career.[12]

He was admitted to hospital on 2 September 2019, after suffering a brain haemorrhage at a friend's place during celebrations for the Ganesh Chaturthi festival.[13] He remained in a coma for two days and died on 5 September 2019.[9]

Novels edit

Nagarkar is notable among Indian writers for having written acclaimed novels in more than one language. His first novel, Saat Sakkam Trechalis published in Marathi in 1974, was translated into English by Shubha Slee in 1980 and published in 1995 as Seven Sixes Are Forty Three.[14] It is considered a landmark work of Marathi literature.[15] His novel Ravan and Eddie, begun in Marathi but completed in English, was not published until 1994.[16] Since Ravan and Eddie, all Nagarkar's novels have been written in English and also translated into German.[13]

His third novel, Cuckold, based upon the mystic Meerabai's husband, Bhoj Raj, was published in 1997 and won the 2001 Sahitya Akademi Award. It took him nine years to write his next, God's Little Soldier, a tale of a liberal Muslim boy's tryst with religious orthodoxy, which was published in 2006, to mixed reviews.[17][18][19]

In 2012, he published The Extras, a sequel to Ravan and Eddie that traces the adult lives of Ravan and Eddie in Bollywood. The third and last book in the series, Rest in Peace, was written in 2015.[9]

His 2017 novel, Jasoda, is the story of a young women and mother, trying to raise her children in the arid lands of Kantagiri. Jasoda shows every lamentable tradition in the hinterlands in stark clarity. It is a testimony, according to the author, to the millions of women in the parched and scorched regions of India and find themselves between a rock and a husband.[20]

His 2019 novel, The Arsonist, is a re-imagining of the life of Kabir, the 15th-century Indian mystic poet and saint. It also critiqued the rise of Hindu majoritarianism in India.[12]

Plays and screenplays edit

In 1978, Nagarkar wrote the play Bedtime Story, based partly on the Mahābhārata. Its performance was extra-legally banned for 17 years by Hindu nationalist[14] fundamentalist parties,[21] including the Shiv Sena,[22][23][24][25] a far-right political party;[26] Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and Hindu Mahasabha.[27] He warned about censorship faced by India in his introduction to the play: "Legal censorship in India can often be gauche, club-footed and hyper-protective of anything and everything but the freedoms of speech and expression. Extra-legal censorship in the country, however, is fearless and effective. It successfully prevented Bedtime Story from being performed for seventeen years."[14] In a 2018 interview, Nagarkar did not appear to be concerned about censorship in the country. He recalled past incidents when radical groups in Mumbai had threatened to prevent his play from staging. Nagarkar stated, "these things happen from time to time, and only then can we be assured that art is still living."[28]

Nagarkar's theatre work also includes Kabirache Kay Karayche and Stranger Amongst Us, and his screenplay work includes The Broken Circle, The Widow and Her Friends, and The Elephant on the Mouse, a film for children.[28][29] He played the role of Brother Bono as a cameo appearance in Dev Benegal's Movie Split Wide Open.[30]

Awards and honours edit

 
Kiran Nagarkar at the Chandigarh Literature Festival in 2010

Kiran Nagarkar was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany and Sahitya Akademi Award among others. He also received the Rockefeller grant and a scholarship from the city of Munich.[13]

Works edit

Novels

  • 1974: Seven Sixes are Forty Three (tr. of Saat Sakkam Trechalis). Translated by Shubha Slee. Pub. Heinemann, 1995. ISBN 0-435-95088-6.[9]
  • 1994: Ravan and Eddie[9]
  • 1997: Cuckold[9]
  • 2006: God's Little Soldier[29]
  • 2012: The Extras[9]
  • 2015: Rest in Peace[9]
  • 2017: Jasoda: A Novel[29]
  • 2019: The Arsonist[9]
 
Kiran Nagarkar at Chandigarh Literature Festival in 2016

Plays and screenplays

  • 1978: Bedtime Story[29]
  • Kabirache Kay Karayche[29]
  • Stranger Amongst Us[32]
  • The Broken Circle[28]
  • The Widow and Her Friends[28]
  • The Elephant on the Mouse[28]
  • Black Tulip[14]

See also edit

Notes edit

  1. ^ a b c Sanga, p. 177
  2. ^ "Sahitya Akademi Awards 1955–2007: English". -Sahitya Akademi Official website. Archived from the original on 11 June 2010. Retrieved 30 April 2022.
  3. ^ "In Conversation: The artful storyteller". The Hindu. 5 March 2006. Archived from the original on 4 November 2008. Retrieved 24 November 2008.
  4. ^ a b Staff writer (7 November 2012). "Germany confers Cross of Order of Merit, to Babasaheb Kalyani, Kiran Nagarkar". ANI. Archived from the original on 9 November 2012. Retrieved 18 February 2013.
  5. ^ "Kiran Nagarkar: God's little soldier". rediff.com. 2 May 2006. Retrieved 6 September 2019.
  6. ^ a b "Sahitya Akademi awardee novelist Kiran Nagarkar dead". Mint. 5 September 2019. Retrieved 6 September 2019.
  7. ^ a b Bhagat, Shalini Venugopal (11 September 2019). "Kiran Nagarkar, Novelist Who Chronicled Mumbai Life, Dies at 77". The New York Times. pp. 1–21. Retrieved 19 September 2019.
  8. ^ "Unapologetically Nagarkar". Harmony Magazine. Retrieved 6 September 2019.
  9. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Vij, Gauri (6 September 2019). "Sahitya Akademi Award-winning writer Kiran Nagarkar dies at 77". The Hindu. ISSN 0971-751X. Retrieved 6 September 2019.
  10. ^ Angela Schader (20 June 2011). "Der indische Romancier Kiran Nagarkar ist Zürichs neuer "writer in residence"". Neue Zürcher Zeitung (in German). Retrieved 20 June 2011.
  11. ^ "Humour and honours". Ahmedabad Mirror. 12 November 2012. Retrieved 6 September 2019.
  12. ^ a b Kohli, Diya (22 June 2019). "'I'm not trying to deny it has affected me': Kiran Nagarkar". Mint. Retrieved 7 September 2019.
  13. ^ a b c "Kiran Nagarkar - The born storyteller no more". mid-day. 6 September 2019. Retrieved 7 September 2019.
  14. ^ a b c d Tripathi, Salil (28 February 2015). "When Kiran Nagarkar said the unsayable". www.livemint.com. HT Media. Mint. Retrieved 6 September 2019.
  15. ^ "Unapologetically Nagarkar, Harmony Magazine". Retrieved 6 September 2019.
  16. ^ "The terrorist is inside us". The Tribune. 15 April 2006. Archived from the original on 5 June 2011. Retrieved 13 March 2010.
  17. ^ "The Soldier Reads". Outlook. 24 April 2006. Archived from the original on 29 October 2010. Retrieved 13 March 2010.
  18. ^ "LITERATURE: The light and the tunnel". The Hindu. 13 April 2006. Archived from the original on 6 June 2011. Retrieved 13 March 2010.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  19. ^ Shashi Tharoor (8 May 2006). "Review:A Fancy Bird Too Heavy To Fly". Outlook. Archived from the original on 11 August 2010. Retrieved 13 March 2010.
  20. ^ Anantharaman, Latha (23 December 2017). "She who shrugs and carries on: Jasoda by Kiran Nagarkar reviewed by Latha Anantharaman". The Hindu. Retrieved 2 March 2021.
  21. ^ "Award-winning author Kiran Nagarkar dies". Mumbai Mirror. No. 2. The Times Group. Mumbai Mirror. Retrieved 6 September 2019.
  22. ^ Tejuja, Vivek (20 March 2015). "Kiran Nagarkar's 'Bedtime Story and Black Tulip' a terrific read". www.news18.com. Network18 Group. News18. Retrieved 6 September 2019.
  23. ^ Dutta, Amrita (6 September 2019). "The bilingual bard of Bombay and Mumbai, Kiran Nagarkar gave Indian writing in English an electric charge". The Indian Express. Indian Express Group. The Indian Express. Retrieved 6 September 2019.
  24. ^ Joshi, Poorva (17 March 2016). "Mumbai is indifferent to the rest of the country: author Kiran Nagarkar". Hindustan Times. No. 2. HT Media. Retrieved 6 September 2019.
  25. ^ Bhattacharya, Chandrima S. (29 October 2015). "Duty to protest: Author". www.telegraphindia.com. No. 1. Calcutta, West Bengal, India: ABP Group. The Telegraph. Retrieved 6 September 2019.
  26. ^ Preston, Alex (10 February 2013). "The sharp end of Indian politics". British Broadcasting Corporation News. No. 1. BBC. BBC News. Archived from the original on 20 November 2016. Retrieved 6 September 2019.
  27. ^ Purandare, Vaibhav (2012). Sundarji, Padma Rao; Dasgupta, Shrabani; Mathpal, Sanjeev; Sahadevan, Shaji (eds.). Bal Thackeray and the rise of Shiv Sena. Mumbai, Maharashtra: Roli Books Private Limited. p. 288. ISBN 9788174369918. Retrieved 6 September 2019. In 1977-78, the [Shiv Sena] party, along with the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha, extra-legally banned Bedtime Story, a play written by Kiran Nagarkar.
  28. ^ a b c d e March 7, Vinayak Mohan On (7 March 2018). "A Conversation With Kiran Nagarkar On Art, Language & Freedom Of Expression". Silverscreen.in. Retrieved 6 September 2019.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  29. ^ a b c d e टीम, द वायर मराठी (5 September 2019). "कादंबरीकार किरण नगरकर यांचे निधन". द वायर मराठी. Retrieved 6 September 2019.
  30. ^ "The Sunday Tribune - Spectrum - Wide Angle". tribuneindia.com. 2 April 2000. Retrieved 7 September 2019.
  31. ^ Staff writer (17 February 2013). "The Hindu Literary Prize goes to Jerry Pinto". The Hindu. Archived from the original on 20 February 2013. Retrieved 18 February 2013.
  32. ^ Bose, Ishani (20 October 2013). "The critics gave me absolutely no support: Writer of Bed Time Story Kiran Nagarkar". DNA India. Retrieved 6 September 2019.

References edit

  • Yasmeen Lukhmani, ed. The Shifting Worlds of Kiran Nagarkar's Fiction, Indialog Publications, New Delhi, 2004 ISBN 81-87981-59-8
  • Sanga, Jaina C. (2003). South Asian novelists in English: an A-to-Z guide. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 0-313-31885-9.
  • Kiran Nagarkar on Extras, sexual repression & humourless Indians

External links edit

 
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Kiran Nagarkar.
  • Kiran Nagarkar The Unofficial Website Archived 24 August 2019 at the Wayback Machine
  • Kiran Nagarkar on Another Subcontinent
  • On Sanity Hazards of Being an Indian Writer at Tehelka
  • On bombings in Mumbai
Interviews
  • Kiran Nagarkar Interview on Jaberwock
  • Hindu Interview by Kalpana Sharma
  • Hindu Interview by Sangita Pishorty[usurped]
  • Rediff Interview
  • Kiran Nagarkar Interview on Another Subcontinent
  • Kiran Nagarkar: God's Little Soldier by Lindsay Pereira
  • Arts.21 | Between Berlin and Bombay – The Indian Writer Kiran Nagarkar

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