Kota Shivaram Karanth,
the third Jnanpith award recipient from Karnataka, was born on October 10, 1902, at Kota
in Dakshina Kannada district. He had his primary education in Kundapur and his college
education at the Government College, Mangalore.
The vastness and variety of Karanth's life and works defy any definition. Novels, short
stories, plays, encyclopaedias, translations, satires, travelogues, essays, biographies,
critiques, works on folklore, art and sculpture, philosophy and science… no sphere of
knowledge and no form of literature was alien to his creativity. Indeed, none else could
have deserved sobriquets such as "Mobile Encyclopaedia" and "Bhargava of
the Coast" more richly than Karanth.
Karanth shunned the beaten track and set his own path in an uncompromising pursuit of
truth, based on constant experimentation and exploration. He believed in the plentitude of
life and wanted people to experience every aspect of it and share such experiences with
others. This was why he did not find any branch of knowledge too big or too small per se,
for his cultivation. In fact, he found these branches to be different paths to explore the
same truth, and was himself very familiar with every one of them. For Karanth, life was
never different from writing and his rich life easily and effectively translated into
equally rich literature. |
