Kiran Nagarkar
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A brief biography
Vaibhav Purandare, Sep 6, 2019: The Times of India
From: Vaibhav Purandare, Sep 6, 2019: The Times of India
Eminent writer Kiran Nagarkar, whose epic novel Cuckoldand riotously funny Ravan and Eddie trilogy count among the most celebrated works of fiction by an Indian writer in English, passed away late on Thursday evening. Nagarkar (77) had suffered a massive brain haemorrhage earlier this week, collapsing at a friend’s place where he had gone for Ganpati festivities, and had been admitted to Bombay Hospital, his family told TOI.
A man deeply affected by allegations of misdemeanour made against him during the MeToo movement in October-November last year, Nagarkar told this correspondent during the final conversation with him last Saturday that he had been labelled a “serial sexual offender,” something that had caused him intense personal distress. He had strenuously denied all the allegations.
Born in 1942, Nagarkar was bilingual: he wrote in English and his mother tongue, Marathi. His first novel, Saat Sakkam Trechaalis or Seven Sixes Are Forty-Three, published in 1974 just as Indira Gandhi was turning increasingly authoritarian as prime minister, is considered one of the major landmarks of modern Marathi literature. The book’s innovative idiom and compellingly explosive style astonished the pundits of Marathi literature and marked him out as a writer to look out for. He next wrote in 1978 the play Bedtime Story, a reinterpretation of the Mahabharata which explored the topics of the Emergency (that had just ended), the Cuban war and the Vietnam crisis. But the state theatre censor board ordered 78 cuts and fringe groups enforced an illegal ban, ensuring the play was finally staged for the first time only in 1995.
The 1994 novel Ravan and Eddie, which tells the story of a Hindu and a Christian boy whose families live next door to each other “but might as well have been inhabiting separate worlds,” established his position as one of India’s finest English writers, winning accolades for the story-telling and for his brilliant portrayal of the city of Mumbai. The subsequent two books in the Ravan and Eddie trilogy, published in the new century (2012 and 2015), carried readers further along with the two boys on their rollercoaster ride, throwing light at the same time on the craziness, contradictions, tragedies and – for all that – the unending charm of Mumbai, which he preferred to call “Bombay.”
Nagarkar’s masterpiece, however, was Cuckold, the fictional story of the husband of Mirabai, which won him the Sahitya Akademi award for best novel for the year 2000. Commenting on it, Dr Susan Daruvala of the University of Cambridge wrote that “No recent book has the strength and complexity of Cuckold” and that Nagarkar had fashioned “a dazzling narrative infused with multiple layers of philosophical, historical and spiritual meaning,” all in a “vivid, racy narrative voice.” The novel won much praise also from American writer and public intellectual Gore Vidal, among others.
In God’s Little Soldier (2006), Nagarkar turned to the theme of religious extremism, with the radical-minded protagonist ranged against his ever-questioning brother. This book, along with his earlier ones, was acclaimed in Germany after it was translated into German, and Nagarkar’s popularity in that country resulted in him getting the Order of Merit, Germany’s highest civilian honour, in 2012. His 2018 novel Jasoda, which has a woman protagonist, portrayed the struggle of the poor in drought-hit, twenty-first century India.
Nagarkar’s last book was based on the questioning brother of God’s Little Soldier, aptly named Kabir, but Penguin Random House cancelled its contract with the writer in the wake of the MeToo allegations, after which the book was published by Juggernaut Books in July this year. Asked by a Twitter user why it had stepped in to publish the book, Juggernaut Books had replied, “Nagarkar is one of our greatest writers and his new novel speaks urgently to the political and social climate in India today.”
Nagarkar’s seriousness and serious irreverence, and his penchant for constantly engaging with political and social issues, often made him a target of criticism for ideological hardliners, whether on the left or the right.
He carried on undaunted nevertheless, but the MeToo allegations in 2018 had clearly had a major impact.
