Kiran Nagarkar
The decades following Indian independence saw a generation of writers grapple with the question of which language — or languages — could carry the weight of a rapidly changing subcontinent. Kiran Nagarkar was one of the figures who worked squarely within that tension, moving between Marathi and English across a career that touched fiction, drama, screenwriting, and criticism.
Born in Mumbai in 1942, during the final years of the British Raj, Nagarkar was educated at Fergusson College and Savitribai Phule Pune University before establishing himself as a novelist, playwright, and film screenwriter. The range of forms he worked in was notable in itself: where many writers of his era staked out a single mode, Nagarkar moved between the stage, the screen, and the novel, writing in both Marathi and English. That bilingual practice placed him in an unusual position within Indian letters, giving him access to audiences and literary traditions that operated largely in parallel rather than in conversation.
Alongside his creative output, Nagarkar worked as a drama and film critic — a role that put him in a different relationship with the arts than pure authorship alone. Critics who are also practitioners tend to read form closely, and Nagarkar's work across these roles suggests a sustained engagement with what storytelling can and can't do in different media. Whether as a novelist constructing long narrative arcs or as a screenwriter working within the constraints of film production, he was consistently occupied with questions of craft and form.
The recognition Nagarkar received in the later part of his career came from two quite different directions. He was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award in English, one of India's most significant literary honors, acknowledging his contribution to literature in that language. He also received the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, a distinction that pointed to his profile beyond the subcontinent. Nagarkar died in Mumbai on September 5, 2019 — the same city where he had been born seventy-seven years earlier — having spent his working life as a novelist, playwright, screenwriter, and critic writing in two of India's most widely used literary languages.
Quotes by Kiran Nagarkar
Where do songs go when you cease to hear them? Where does the turbulence of the air disappear after thousands of birds flap their wings homeward at eventide? Where are the cries of the Rajput women who spatter their red palm prints on the wall and leap into the flames of johar? Where is my childhood, my catapult, my broken slate, my first parrot, my youth and first sin and all those that followed, where is my old age and the first time I saw the woman from Merta? Ask Gambhiree. She knows it all.
The only battles that he and his kin fought, the only blood they spilt was on the chessboard. Massacres and carnage were not to his taste. He preferred the long, slow, tortuous death. I.
I sometimes think that Buddhism is the toughest religion in the world. It not only eschews all talk of god but does not allow any instant remedies. Responsibility for one’s own acts is its only metaphysics. So.
When you deal with naked power from an inferior position, perspectives get distorted.
When you deal with naked power from an inferior position, perspectives get distorted. He was the aggrieved party and yet he felt guilty and would continue to do so all his life.
Leelawati was sitting on a swing in the palace. Without meaning to, i ran towards her. She swung herself from the swing straight into my arms and hugged me. She wouldn’t let go of me and i wasn’t about to let go of her. To be trusted so, without any reservations, i too must have been up to some good in my past lives.