Kiran Nagarkar

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.

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. 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. His grandfather, B. B. Nagarkar, was a Brahmo and had attended the 1893 Parliament of the World's Religions in Chicago. He studied at Fergusson College in Pune and the S.I.E.S. College in Mumbai. 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.

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

Novels 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. His novel Ravan and Eddie, begun in Marathi but completed in English, was not published until 1994. Since Ravan and Eddie, all Nagarkar's novels have been written in English and also translated into German.

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.

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.

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.

Plays and screenplays 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 fundamentalist parties, including the Shiv Sena, a far-right political party; Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and Hindu Mahasabha. 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."

Awards and honours

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. 2013: The Hindu Literary Prize, shortlist, The Extras

Works Novels 1974: Seven Sixes are Forty Three (tr. of Saat Sakkam Trechalis). Translated by Shubha Slee. Pub. Heinemann, 1995. . Stranger Amongst Us The Broken Circle The Widow and Her Friends The Elephant on the Mouse Black Tulip