Just a few feet away from the crossroads in Farmagudi village in Goa, six- year-old Chandu was jumping up and down, shouting ‘Mumbai, Mumbai’, while his father Narasimha and his mother Meera packed a bag in silence. Tiring of Chandu’s mischief and the hundreds of complaints about him across field and town, Narasimha had been left with no option but to take the boy to a remand home in Mumbai. Even the threats of the schoolmaster and the village police had had no effect on the boy.
It was already several months since they had written to Katkar Kaka who had been living in Mumbai for many years, and got the address of the remand home from him. Even after beating Chandu severely, the parents looked at his small body, thin arms and legs every night while he slept and were filled with affection for the child. In the dark, the husband and wife would whisper to each other that Chandu would become better behaved as he grew older. But with each new day, Chandu leaped to new heights of mischief. Beating up his classmates was the least of it. There was the time when he jumped out of the mango tree on top of Seetha Teacher and rubbed her face with raw mango sap; or when he mixed up the small change of all the flower sellers in front of the temple and heaped it up in a corner, thus setting up a fight between them; or when he shoved the pilgrims dressed in trousers and shirts who were standing with folded hands just outside the inner sanctum so that they fell into the sacred spot and cracked their heads, still clad in the clothes they were forbidden to wear inside; or pushed Savitrakka’s infant into a bucket of water and tried to hold it down – hundreds of such terrorizing acts were Chandu’s handiwork. The townspeople called him Gabbar Singh, after the villain in Sholay.
If they saw Chandu coming, the other children would flee as though they had seen a tiger. If anyone saw a child howling on the street, accompanied by a mother shouting curses, they would immediately know that Chandu had been at it again. Sometimes Chandu would run all of a sudden, like an arrow released from a bow, through the women who were picking stones out of rice, or rolling out papad, or weaving coconut leaves together, followed by the person who was chasing him. Even when he was running at that speed, Chandu did not forget to kick the heaps of rice or the wet papad dough, or hit the shaven heads of the widows or stick a finger in someone’s eye. Every night at lamp-lighting time, Narasimha and Meera waited as though for their punishment. Like searching for a missing ox, they wandered through the town calling through strangers’ yards, ‘Chandu ... Chandu...’
Sometimes, Chandu would come in quietly whimpering like a wounded animal and go straight to bed. Even if he had been beaten, he took it in silence. When his mother applied coconut oil on his wounds, and cuddled him, saying, ‘Why do you behave so badly, little one? Why behave like a demon? You sweet little baby...’ he hid himself in her bosom, sobbing. They tried not feeding him. They dragged him to the police station and got a policeman with a big moustache to shout at him. It was no use. During a wedding in Kesarkar’s house, when the guests were eating their lunch, there was a huge commotion in the kitchen. Chandu had peed into the pot of saaru and was being beaten by the cook with a ladle. He ran out, stamping on all the banana leaves spread out to serve the food. Narasimha and Meera, who had come for the wedding feast, had to return home quietly without eating.
They felt the entire town was turning against them. ‘Kali has entered into the child – he is a demon. If you leave him as he is, there’s no knowing what might happen,’ said the townsfolk. So Narasimha wrote to Katkar Kaka: ‘It’s become necessary to put Chandu in a remand home. I’m coming to Mumbai with him.’
When Chandu came to know about going to Mumbai, without bothering to find out why, he began to jump with joy. He ran to the temple to where a group of boys sitting in a row sold flowers to the devotees. Among them was Kunta Mangesha, called Kunta because he was lame, who sold bunches of hibiscus. The boys surrounded him chanting, ‘Chandu is going to Mumbai’. Kunta Mangesha was the beloved older brother of all the boys, adored for the way he waved his arms about as he told them stories. Chandu was especially fond of him. It was from him that Chandu had heard about the magical city of Mumbai. There were many versions of how Mangesha lost his legs. One version was that he had lost them as a soldier in a battle. Another version was that he had lost them in Mumbai. That he fell in love with someone whose husband cut off his limbs was another story. Kunta Mangesha had tied black rubber sheets to his amputated limbs, and stood like the disfigured idol outside the temple, waving his arms about and calling out to the tourists. Pretending to run fast even as he stood in one place, he pumped his arms and amused the children. And although the entire town hated Chandu, Kunta Mangesha always greeted him with pleasure.
On festival days if Meera prepared any special food, she sent some for Mangesha. If he met Narasimha, Kunta Mangesha always said, ‘Your Chandu is a little terror. Very brave. Fit to join the army.’ Wherever there was a village fair, in Mangeshi, Madkai, Ramanathi or Shantadurga, Kunta was there. Chandu wondered how the lame man got to these places. One day he had seen Kunta being lifted out of a bus at the Ponda bus stand. Once on the ground, Kunta crawled to the soda shop and drank a lime soda. On harvest festival days, trucks and tempos went through the town, displaying tableaux of various scenes and masked men in fancy dress. Kunta would be on a truck too, being the Appu Raja who couldn’t walk, grabbing the band’s bugle to play ‘Raja re Raja’. On rainy days, he tied plastic bags to his stumps.
One night Narasimha said to Chandu, ‘Don’t jump around with that Mangesha – if you keep on making mischief, someone will cut off your legs too.’
The schoolmasters, who used to complain that Chandu was not attending classes, had reached a state where they wanted him to stay away. When Mangesha heard that Chandu was going to Mumbai, he began to sing the Hindi film ditty ‘Yeh hai Bombay Meri Jaan,’ cackling, ‘I have thousands of wives in Mumbai.’
The night before the journey, neither Narasimha nor Meera could sleep. Meera leaned against the wall with Chandu in her arms. Both parents worried that Chandu would get beaten up in the remand home.
‘Anyway, Katkar Kaka is there. Let’s put him in the home for a few days. Then we can bring him back,’ said Meera.
‘No, no,’ said Narasimha, swallowing. ‘We must be strong. This is all for him, or else he’ll become a complete rogue. Let him learn a little discipline. Let’s be strong...’
‘Poor child, he won’t eat a single morsel unless he has his piece of fish,’ wept Meera, kissing her son’s arms and legs.
She went until the Farmagudi crossroads to see them off. The temple’s flower-selling boys had walked behind Chandu as though they were in a victory procession. Kunta Mangesha smiled and called out to Chandu. Meera asked her son to fall at Kunta’s feet. Feeling shy, Chandu bowed and joined his palms together in front of Kunta, who stroked his head and said, ‘You get very fine legs in Mumbai. You must bring me a pair. If you get a coloured pair, that would be even better.’
Throughout the bus journey, Chandu could only think about the coloured legs Mangesha had mentioned. Were they really available? Mangesha always spoke the truth, so maybe they were. So Chandu would definitely get a pair for him. As the bus approached Mumbai before dawn, Narasimha sat up straight. Chandu, who had been sleeping on his father’s lap, also sat up. By either side of the road, thousands of men had squatted like children for their ablutions. It was more frightening than disgusting. Trucks stood around, heavily laden with bags. At Dadar terminus, Katkar Kaka was waiting to receive them. Carrying their luggage, they walked a long distance to Kaka’s kholi, which was in an old railway chawl in Parel.
‘Chandu, my boy, why do you harass your parents so much?’ Kaka asked gruffly, but Chandu was lost in gazing at the city’s sights. In that old part of Mumbai, bankrupt textile mills were everywhere, looking like ruined fortresses. The blackened and cold chimneys seemed like hands raised up to the sky, crying. In Kaka’s one-room home, Narasimha looked here and there to see where he could put down his luggage.
Katkar Kaka’s wife was not around. Narasimha suspected that she had gone to her mother’s house so as not to inconvenience the guests. More than three would certainly be a crowd in this kholi. Kaka made tea for them, and heated water in a large aluminium vessel for their baths. In the adjoining mori, Chandu splashed about like a sparrow. On the mirror hanging on the wall were a bunch of sticker bindis. Chandu couldn’t tell whether Kaka had children or not, since there were no small-sized clothes hanging anywhere. Katkar Kaka went downstairs and bought some bread for them. ‘I’ll go to my office and come back early. Don’t wait for me to eat dinner,’ he said, and left.
Suddenly Narasimha and Chandu were left all alone. Narasimha lay down and tried to nap, while Chandu stood in the doorway, looking out. All the kholis had a small verandah in front, enclosed by an old-fashioned wooden grill. Each verandah had, in a small used tin of palm oil, a tulsi plant, and perhaps a money plant in a bottle. Women sat in front of their kholis, combing their hair or cleaning rice. Men were setting out to work, holding small tiffin boxes. Children in uniforms of different colours were heading for school with their backpacks. It seemed as though the kholis were places where people only came to change their clothes. And even in that tightly packed neighbourhood with those people walking so close to each other, no one seemed to have the time to look at these newcomers. The woman in the next kholi threw the fallen hair she had wound around her finger while combing it to one side. The ball of hair shuffled a little in the breeze, fell from the fence onto the verandah, and came to a halt in front of Chandu. Chandu looked at the woman and laughed. She did not even smile back, but just blinked at him and went back into her nest.
Narasimha went out and brought batata vada and biscuits for them to eat. ‘There’s a hotel down there,’ he said. ‘We’ll go there for lunch.’ They spread out the paper packets on the bed and ate straight from them. Afterwards, they stood at the main entrance of the chawl and looked at the bustling market outside that had suddenly come to life. The Parel railway station, from which hordes of people erupted when a train came in, was close by. Blind men wearing dark glasses stood selling lottery tickets. In front of a little shop that was closed, hundreds of small boys were picking up bundles of newspapers and then melting into the crowds. A man sitting on a little wooden box was counting out the papers. The small boys, talking to the man like adults doing business, would then pick up their bundles and go off. No one wore any footwear. In a few seconds, the papers were gone and the man’s wooden box nestled in a corner. Soon a vegetable seller spread out his wares in the same spot. A boy clinking a coin against his kettle came shouting, ‘Chai!’ Holding a tower of glasses in one hand, the boy pulled them out one by one to fill them with tea. Narasimha looked at Chandu meaningfully, as if to say this is what happens to children who don’t go to school. But Chandu was already enchanted by the smartness of the tea boy and the talisman on a black thread round his neck.
Unexpectedly, Katkar Kaka came home in the afternoon, saying, ‘I applied for half a day’s leave. We’ll go wherever you want to go.’
Narasimha felt rushed, as though he had to set off on an expedition even before he had recovered from the night’s journey.
‘You go and have your lunch,’ said Katkar. ‘After that we can go to the remand home in Dongri. No guarantee that I’ll get leave tomorrow.’ There was no mention of Katkar’s wife and children. He didn’t ask after Meera. Neither did he speak a word to Chandu. Narasimha felt fearful.
‘Come and have lunch with us,’ he said to Katkar.
‘No, no, you go. Bring me a masala dosa,’ Katkar replied. Narasimha and Chandu went out, looking into the kholis along the way. In some kholis, there appeared to be small workshops. Serious-looking young women were attaching something to pieces of plastic. Tiny machines were whirring. The women, whose eyes didn’t blink, looked like statues.
When they looked back from the road, the chawl seemed far away. There seemed to be many more such chawls in the distance, as though the buildings had merged into one another. Hanging from the rusted windows were drying clothes, looking like faded flags on an old chariot. In the Udupi hotel, each of them ate a ‘rice plate’ with gusto. When Chandu gently insisted on having an ice cream, Narasimha felt pleased, and bought him one, laughing. While Kaka’s masala dosa was being packed, Chandu looked carefully around the hotel. The waiters were adults, but the cleaners were small boys, who dashed about at the speed of lighting. As soon as Chandu finished his ice cream, a cleaner boy picked up the plate, and with a wet cloth meticulously swept the rice grains from the table into his tub. Narasimha smiled at him and he smiled back. Chandu felt the boy was deliberately not looking at him. He saw the boy standing in a corner later, speaking in a serious way with the waiters.
When they returned to the chawl, Katkar Kaka had woken from his nap, and started gobbling up the dosa. Even as he chewed, he continued to speak. Picking up courage, Narasimha said, ‘Let’s not take Chandu today. Let him sleep. We two will go by ourselves.’ Katkar seemed to be hesitating, and the reason became clear as they got ready to leave.
Katkar Kaka started telling Chandu, ‘Don’t touch this switch. Don’t meddle with that switch. Don’t open this cupboard.’ Then he peered into the doorway of the next kholi and told the woman, ‘Please keep an eye on this boy, he’s a handful.’ Narasimha pointed to a packet of biscuits and told Chandu to eat some if he felt like it, and not to go out anywhere.
Chandu tried to fall asleep but couldn’t. On the table in the corner was a square-shaped cloth bundle. It felt firm to Chandu’s touch. It had been tied with two or three bedsheets, and knotted firmly. Chandu tackled the knot with his little fingers. It refused to yield. Breathing heavily, he attacked it again. Then suddenly in a heart-stopping voice, the neighbour, who came rushing in, shouted, ‘Hey boy! What are you up to?’ After this initial question, she ignored Chandu altogether while she put two vessels she had been carrying on the gas stove, and started cooking. Then she brought in a series of utensils which all made their way onto the stove. After cooking for an hour and a half on Katkar’s gas stove, the woman said, laughing, ‘See here, boy, don’t tell him I used the gas, haan? Otherwise I’ll tell him you were up to no good.’
Chandu was frightened. Even though the bundle kept on enticing him, he stayed away from the knot. He went to stand in the verandah. The young women were hard at work on their bits of plastic. Just then, the tea boy came clattering up the stairs and began to hand glasses of tea to all the women, pouring from above so that there was foam on top. The women saw Chandu standing there, and signalled to him to come and drink some tea. As Chandu deliberated what to do, the tea boy came up to him and gave him a glass. The hot glass burned Chandu’s hand, and he put it down suddenly, while the tea boy laughed. He was probably not much older than Chandu, and the women called out to him, ‘Popat, Popat, dance that “hamma” dance for us!’
As though to indicate that he didn’t have time for all this, Popat balanced a glass on his head, held his hand on his hip, and said, ‘Hamma, hamma,’ while wiggling his bottom. In a trice, he had moved on to the next chawl. Chandu laughed. He finished his tea and went over to leave it near the young women, who had already returned to their statue-like positions. The machines had started whirring again.
Chandu waited for Popat the tea boy to emerge from one of the chawls. He was back quickly, having collected all the empty glasses. As though he understood Chandu’s fascination with him, he asked, ‘What’s your name?’ And when the boy replied, ‘Chandu,’ Popat immediately asked for the empty glass.
Chandu pointed towards the young women at their machines. When he picked up the glasses and collected his money from the girls, Popat came past Chandu and said, ‘Maaf kiya, you’re excused.’ It seemed as though the girls had forgotten to pay Popat for the extra glass of tea, but all the same he ‘forgave’ Chandu, before he went back into the streets and melted into the heat holding his kettle.
The breeze that blew from the side of the market felt hot on Chandu’s face. He peered slowly into the neighbour’s house. On a rather small cot, the woman, who was quite big, was fast asleep. A six-inch wide electric fan in a small square box was making a ‘kiti-kiti’ noise. Chandu glimpsed several cages inside the kholi, and wondered why rats needed such large traps. Suddenly Chandu realized with surprise that he hadn’t so far seen a single animal – a cock, or a dog, a cat or a squirrel. He began to think about Kunta Mangesha, who could cover his mouth with his hand and make animal and bird sounds. When he told them that yellow parrots used to come to Veling Hill, the children used to insist that parrots were green, and Mangesha would laugh and say they could have it that way if they wanted. Chandu wondered if this large woman was one of the thousand wives Mangesha had left behind in Mumbai. Then his attention turned to the mysterious bundle, and again he began to pull at the knot. Just then Narasimha and Katkar came back.
‘Eh, eh, eh, don’t touch that bundle,’ said Katkar Kaka, lying down on the bed. ‘Now you know the way to Dongri. Take Chandu tomorrow, and if you get lost just ask a panwala.’ Then uttering ‘Hey Ram!’ Katkar shut his eyes.
Looking defeated, Narasimha turned to Chandu and asked him if he had eaten the biscuits. In a small voice, Chandu related the story of Popat giving him tea, hearing which Katkar Kaka, with his eyes still shut, began to babble: ‘You should never take what a stranger gives you. These street children are up to no good. Today it’s tea, tomorrow something else...’
‘Let’s go and get something to eat,’ said Narasimha to Chandu.
‘Why don’t you go for a stroll and come back in a couple of hours?’ suggested Katkar Kaka.
As soon as they were on the street, Narasimha hugged his son, and asked: ‘Shall we eat an ice cream?’ Narasimha’s limbs were shaking, and his heart thumping as if he had just woken from a bad dream. He hadn’t recovered from Katkar’s unexpected behaviour when they went to see the remand home. They had changed buses twice, and then walked a long way to reach the home. Pointing out the rusted, jail- like building from a distance, Katkar said, ‘There’s your son’s remand home. You can go inside if you like, I’m not coming.’ Then he burst out: ‘Look, Narasimha, I’ve done all this for you because it’s the first time you’ve come to Mumbai. In the future, I won’t be able to mind your rogue of a son, or worry about his endless pranks. This place is infamous for housing juvenile delinquents and homeless children, and I don’t want to have anything to do with it. If you have the idea that I could be the local guardian for your son, remove it from your mind at once.’ Narasimha couldn’t understand why Katkar could not look him in the eye. His mouth felt dry as he stared at the remand home, which began to look like a graveyard. In the heat of the afternoon, the building seemed to be without human inhabitants. In that moment, Narasimha felt afraid that he had come so far from Chandu.
Father and son ate their ice creams. ‘Much better than what you get in Ponda,’ said Chandu, smacking his lips. They wandered for a bit through the bazaar. Like in the morning, Chandu saw only children everywhere. Shoeshine boys, boys who scrubbed windshields of cars with yellow cloths, those who sold rat poison, those who held the ladder for the poster- stickers, those who sold coriander leaves in bunches, those who shouted out to customers from bhelpuri and omelette carts – all of them like himself. What brave children. Chandu felt that all schoolteachers should come and see how these boys behaved. Narasimha, on the other hand, could not think of anything but Chandu’s touch and his voice. When Chandu said they should go and look at the trains, they climbed the station stairs. From the bridge they could see Parel Station. Each train looked as though it was carrying limbs and trunks and heads from a far-off battlefield. Each would deposit some of these on the platform and proceed to its next destination.
Chandu thought he saw a familiar small figure waving to him from the corner of the bridge. He was afraid to look closely. But when he did, he saw the tea boy Popat, sitting on his kettle, his talisman winking in the evening sun. Narasimha took Chandu’s hand and started climbing down the stairs. Chandu felt like a top that had begun to spin, thrilled to see Popat.
As they climbed down the stairs, they were shocked to see a middle- aged man lying on the steps and thrashing around as though he was having an epileptic fit. His body was arching like a bow, and his slippers and bag were scattered on the steps. People were walking past him. Some stood and looked. Some said he must be drunk. Others said, ‘Hold a chappal to his nose.’ One said, ‘Get some water.’ No one stayed beyond two or three minutes. But amidst the crowd, speculation about who he might be continued. Narasimha sat down on the step and held the man so that he would not fall off. Someone took up the piece of paper the man had been clutching. When pulled, the paper tore into three pieces, and people began to scrutinize each of the pieces. The paper was torn from a school exercise book.
‘There’s some sort of map here,’ said one in a raised voice.
‘There seems to be some lafda here.’
‘It’s a map of some underground activity...’ said some people.
‘Why don’t you join the three pieces together?’ suggested one person.
This was done, and people peered at the paper again.
‘Perhaps it’s the code of a smuggling gang,’ said someone.
‘We should inform the police,’ said another.
Yet another man sat on the steps and smoothed out the paper pieces.
Immediately, Chandu figured out what it was, but did not have the courage to speak up. He whispered in his father’s ear just one word: ‘Chappal.’ Then Narasimha too saw the diagram clearly, and began to tell everyone that it was the measurement of a small boy’s foot, made to buy a chappal of the right size. The man who had been lying on the steps was coming back to consciousness, and he too nodded faintly. The crowd dispersed, feeling cheated. The man stood up slowly, and after they had made sure he had picked up his bag and had begun to cross the bridge, Narasimha and Chandu left the station. How quickly the boy had understood the diagram! Narasimha felt very happy. He held Chandu close to him as they walked on. ‘How did you figure out what it was?’ he asked his son.
Chandu was filled with enthusiasm. ‘Appa, when do we go to the shoe house Mangesha told us about, and the aquarium?’ he asked.
‘Tomorrow,’ said Narasimha.
They got back to Katkar’s kholi a little earlier than expected. The door and windows, which were always open, were now shut from the inside. They could hear faint sounds from the kholi. Narasimha was astonished. He banged on the door, and the sounds stopped suddenly. Chandu stared at the door, which showed no signs of opening. Narasimha worried that thieves might have gotten inside. He banged on the door again. Then he climbed on the ledge of the window, slowly pushed aside the ventilator glass and looked inside. Katkar Kaka was tying up something in the sheets with great haste. Suddenly Narasimha understood what the small square object was. It was a television set. Folding up the wires, Katkar tied the knots tightly. Having placed it on the corner table, he came nonchalantly to the door and opened it. Narasimha jumped down from the ledge. ‘Oh, you came back early,’ Katkar greeted them.
Chandu saw that the bundle had changed position and that the knot looked different. Katkar’s behaviour, like a child eating a tidbit in secret, alarmed Narasimha. Chandu touched the bundle when no one was looking. It was hot to the touch. That night as they were making awkward arrangements to go to sleep, a series of strange growling noises and the shrieking of animals emanated from the neighbour’s house. Although it was a sound that pierced the night, no one in the chawl seemed bothered by it. Noticing Narasimha and Chandu’s stunned silence, Katkar said, ‘Cats, cats.’
Chandu wondered in fear where the cats had come from, since he hadn’t seen even a squirrel’s tail that morning. Katkar went on to explain that the neighbouring woman’s husband was in the business of catching cats and selling them to pharmaceutical companies for their research. The large cages he had glimpsed in the morning rose up before Chandu’s eyes. Katkar continued with his story. The cat catcher went around the city with a bag and lurked around waiting for cats to come by. He kept them in the cages and put them all into the tempo sent by the company every morning. When the chawl people had complained, he had let some terrible cats loose to frighten them. ‘Makes really good money,’ said Katkar, raising his eyebrows. The cats’ screams did not stop.
Neither father nor son could sleep. If Chandu had not recognized the drawing of the child’s foot today, the poor epileptic man would have been turned over to the police. Compared to these people with faces like torn banknotes, whose main effort was to save their pockets from being picked, little Chandu Gabbar Singh’s pranks in Farmagudi’s fields and hills, alleys and attics, began to seem like the god Krishna’s games to Narasimha. How scared the poor child must be feeling. Feeling the boy’s hot breath on him as he tried to sleep clutching his father, Narasimha’s chest felt a little less tight. He whispered in Chandu’s ear: ‘Do you see how the naughty little boys are all on the streets without their fathers and mothers? You’re a good boy. Tomorrow we’ll go home, and you must stop all your mischief, haan?’
Chandu’s eyes remained open. In front of him marched an entire army of brave boys. With baskets of roasted peanuts tied to their stomachs, looking like little pregnant women, they marched on. They would leap from the running trains so that not a single peanut fell. They held this entire city up on their thin hands, as though they were holding up Govardhan Hill itself. In their midst was Popat of the tin talisman, smiling.
All of a sudden, Chandu sat up. He had dreamt that the Zuari River in Farmagudi was swollen with rainwater. In it was a boat without oars, floating. Someone had put Kunta Mangesha into the boat, and he was drifting away, far away, waving his hand and smiling.
Seeing Chandu sit up, Narasimha said: ‘Sleep, sweet child. Tomorrow morning we’ll look for the shoe house, and then catch the bus at night to go home.’
‘I want to buy the legs for Mangesha. If we don’t get them, I’m not coming home,’ drawled Chandu.
‘But, my child, I’m not sure we’ll get them...’
‘You don’t know a thing. Ask Popat – he knows everything. He’s my friend. We’ll go with him,’ said Chandu stubbornly.
‘Shh,’ said Katkar, turning on his side.
The neighbours’ cats were howling. Chandu felt that Popat was standing outside that very moment, and stood up. He went onto the verandah and looked down. A shiver went through him. Down in the street, in the middle of the homeless people who slept on the road divider, Popat was standing. He was looking in Chandu’s direction, the shimmering yellow streetlights at his back.
From the collection No Presents Please: Mumbai Stories (HarperCollins India, 2017).
Jayant Kaikini, Kannada poet, short-story writer, columnist and playwright, with six short-story volumes, five poetry collections, three collections of non-fiction, and three plays to his credit, is also a much sought-after award-winning lyricist, script and dialogue writer for Kannada films. He won his first Karnataka Sahitya Akademi award at the age of nineteen in 1974 for his debut poetry collection, followed by three more in 1982, 1989 and 1996, for his short-story collections. He has also received the Dinakar Desai Award for poetry, the B.H. Sridhar award for fiction, the Katha National Award and the Rujuwathu Trust Fellowship for his writing. He is the recipient of the Karnataka State Award for best dialogue and lyrics, and the Filmfare Award for best lyrics in Kannada four times – in 2008, 2009, 2016 and 2017. Born in the coastal temple-town Gokarn, Kaikini is a biochemist by training and worked with pharmaceutical companies in Mumbai for two decades before moving to Bangalore, where he lives presently. A well-known television personality, he was given an honorary doctorate from Tumkur University in 2011 for his contribution to Kannada literature, film and television. He was honoured as Zee Kannadiga of the Decade in 2016. He was the first recipient of the Kusumagraj Rashtriya Bhasha Sahitya Puraskar in 2010.
Tejaswini Niranjana won the Central Sahitya Akademi Prize for her translation of M.K. Indira’s Phaniyamma (1989) and the Karnataka Sahitya Akademi Prize for her translation of Niranjana’s Mrityunjaya (1996). She has also translated Pablo Neruda’s poetry and Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar into Kannada. Her translations into English include Vaidehi’s Gulabi Talkies (2006). She grew up in Bangalore, and has studied and worked in Mumbai. She is currently professor of cultural studies at Lingnan University, Hong Kong.