Podcast series on Girish Karnad

NT Correspondent
Bengaluru

Three years after he passed away, Girish Karnad is coming back to life. But don’t worry, it’s no seance but through a podcast. Titled ‘The River Has No Fear’, the nine-part podcast based on the extensive conversations Arshia Sattar had with Girish Karnad for a week in June, 2019, cut short by his death on June 10, 2019.

“The conversations were first conceived as a way for Girish Karnad to talk about all the things he had not mentioned in his memoir, This Life at Play, which is about the first half of his life. But once we started talking, the conversations took their own path,” said Arshia Sattar. “The podcast episodes have distilled a freewheeling conversation held over a week into broader themes - playwriting, Kannada literature, existentialism, modern Indian theatre - themes that Girish Karnad would return to over and over again in that week when we spoke. After a week’s conversation, we decided to take a break on June 8 and continue our conversation after two weeks. But he passed away on June 10,” she said.

The podcast isn’t limited to just conversations but also includes reading of this plays based on the theme of conversation. For instance, when Girish Karnad talks about Bhakti, the podcast has a reading from Flowers about a priest who is questioning his faith in God or a reading of the playwright’s prologue from Nagamandala, when Girish Karnad talks of the struggle with his plays.

The podcast also features music by MD Pallava and Konark Reddy as they recreate Neerina Mele Chitra from Karnad’s Hayavadana, the song which also gives the podcast its title - The River has no fear of Memories. It also features conversations Karnad had with other eminent theatre personalities such as Shanta Gokhale, Vivek and Sunil Shanbagh. The first episode of the podcast streamed last Friday. You can catch the rest of it on streaming every Friday over the next two months.