Between a temple town and a metropolis: The inner journeys of Jayant Kaikini

The Hindu

07-05-2025

Back in 1976, Jayant Kaikini did not get the research assistant's job he had applied for at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc).
The Kannada writer and lyricist began his recent talk at the same institute, titled My Literary Journey, with the story of how he missed the job. He filled in the application and took the written test needed to get the job, but in a hurry.
The reason for this haste? A film written and directed by P. Lankesh, one of his literary heroes, had just been released, and Kaikini scurried from the campus to watch it that afternoon. 'For that afternoon show, he was supposed to be at the theatre, so I wanted to go and meet him after the show,' recalls the award-winning writer at a lecture series called Paraspar, an initiative of IISc's Office of Communications. 'I literally ran to it,' he says, with a smile.
Unfortunately, the meeting with Lankesh appears to have left him disappointed. 'My idol, my hero, had already published some of my poems in his magazine, at that time, and I thought he would talk to me about my poems,' recalls Kaikini. Instead, Lankesh asked him about the film, specifically a scene that involved one of the characters running. 'It was like a hotelier asking me if the chutney was good. He was the director of a brilliant film, which later won the national award, and he asked me if I liked the scene,' he says, wryly.
Kaikini's deeply engaging storytelling skills were on full display through this talk, as he recounted anecdotes and observations drawn from his own life. The talk, he says, is a reflection 'of things that have enriched my sensibilities in my life… whatever has pushed, moved, stayed with me.'
Early life
Kaikini was born in the temple town of Gokarna, as 'a premature baby in a hurry to come to this planet. I was always restless,' he says. He describes his father, Gourish Kaikini, as 'an atheist and radical humanist, who wrote about everything and everybody,' adding that while his father could have used his writing skills to become a great novelist or poet, he, instead, used it to open the minds of people. 'My house was a hub of students, art lovers, poets,' he says. 'So I grew up in that kind of environment.' His mother, on the other hand, was a fighter who had to run a household on her husband's meagre salary. 'She did everything to run a small home… take a lottery agency, do LIC agency,' he says, describing her as 'very dominant, which was good.'
As a child, he did not like writers, because they would come home and just keep talking. 'I thought writers were useless because they only talk. So, I never thought I would write at all,' confesses Kaikini, now a distinguished writer who has published seven short story anthologies, six poetry compilations, four essay collections, three plays and written countless superhit songs for Kannada films.
At the talk, Kaikini also shares some of his other experiences in Gokarna that shaped his sensibilities: discovering torn-up last pages of detective novels in the local library, watching the touring talkies, which would come to Gokarna after the harvest season or watching local theatre troupes perform. 'All these things, there is a magic about it...something unknown…something that takes us away from our routine.' Strangely, this also included the bus stand in Gokarna. 'The buses that came from big cities were another great attraction for us,' he says. It made him think, 'We should also go in this bus some day.'
Moving away
Inevitably, that did happen, with Kaikini going first to Kumta and then to Dharwad for his higher education, leading him to experience 'three kinds of culture shock,' he says. 'From Kannada medium to English medium, small town to bigger town and home stay to hostel stay,' says Kaikini, who, during this phase, got terribly homesick and found himself going to the bus stand and looking at buses going to Gokarna. 'Every evening, I would feel that this bus is so lucky because it is going to my home town.'
Fortunately, literature came to his rescue around this time. 'I started taking part in debates and competitions in small popular magazines,' he says, pointing out how these popular magazines in regional languages have played a significant role in the development of writers and have nourished readers for generations. 'I have a great admiration for them,' says Kaikini, whose earliest short stories were written for magazines like Sudha and Mayura. He still remembers a girl emerging from the ladies' room of his college and telling him that a story he had published in Sudha was very good. 'That was like an Olympic gold medal, and I felt this is it,' he recollects. 'It is very motivating, and I became very popular in college just by writing short stories.'
Kaikini refers to the three years he spent in college majoring in biochemistry as 'a transition phase, where I wrote a lot of things', including election manifestos and love letters for his friends.. 'That is helping me now write love songs,' quips Kaikini, who went on to do his MSc in biochemistry at Karnatak University, Dharwad. 'That opened another door in my life…a new door for theatre and cinema.'
In Dharwad, as he exposed himself to more and more diverse forms of visual storytelling, Kaikini realised that 'when I am writing, seeing a good film, a good play, reading a good book, there is something that takes me beyond this. And I become one with a collective being,' he says. Art also gives us security because 'it is not done by one person, but a collective,' he says, recalling what his father used to tell him: society is not a tent which stands on a single pole, but a shamiana that stands on a thousand poles.
Kaikini also talks about other experiences and reflections that have shaped his perspectives: living in a highly-cosmopolitan Mumbai for nearly two decades; the curious dichotomy of being a writer – needing anonymity, while also desiring fame at the same time; the liberality of temple towns like Gokarna, which draw so many tourists and the spirituality and inspiration he finds in hospitals. He also talks about his family, career trajectory, move to Bengaluru, and tryst with film music.
Background score to life
'Cinema songs are the background score of our life,' says Kaikini, who began writing lyrics for film songs in 2003, starting with the Shiva Rajkumar starrer Chigurida Kanasu, based on a Shivaram Karanth novel.
His hit song, 'Anisuthide...', for the 2006 Kannada romance film Mungaru Male came about because Yogaraj Bhat, the film's director, was a fan of Kaikini's short stories. 'So he won my heart,' says Kaikini, who agreed to write a song. Bhat, he says, appeared to have had some trepidation when he heard this song, saying it sounded a little like a ghazal. 'They never thought it would become such a big hit,' he says. 'And the rest is history.'
Kaikini then shifts back to the present, donning the hat of a social commentator. He points out that we, as a society, are going through very testing times, using the metaphor of a Snakes and Ladders board to explain human progress. 'Our evolution from the Stone Age to here has been a snake-and-ladder game, where in the darkest of times, years ago, there was no education, no light, no knowledge… inequality, all kinds of blind beliefs,' he says. Slowly, he says, education and awareness came, comparing these things to ladders in a society. 'But still, snakes are there.'
In his opinion, while these snakes continue to hamper progress, we have now nearly reached the pinnacle of the evolutionary ladder. 'But now, as you know from any snake-and-ladder game, at that level, if a snake bites you, you will go back to the stone age,' he says. 'So you have to take care that we don't get consumed by the snake of divisive politics, caste, religion…everything,' he says.