RANDOM MUSINGS

The death of PadmaShri K Vishwanath ends one of the most glorious chapters of Indian cinema. In a cinematic era constantly diverging from our traditions and culture across the country, Vishwanath’s films, firmly rooted in the best of what Indian culture could offer, came as a cool invigorating breath of fresh air. Each film of Vishwanath was a classic and the songs in each film remain etched for posterity in golden letters. His contribution to cinema is far greater than anybody probably acknowledged and he stands right at the top along with other giants like Satyajit Ray, Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Adoor Gopalkrishnan, and V Shantaram. His packaging of serious messages in a popular format which a person of any age could enjoy and appreciate is perhaps his unique contribution to the cause of Indian cinema with few parallels. It is a remarkable achievement that he could combine the so called ‘art’ and ‘commercial’ formats of cinema into a single mould. Each Telugu person might have a favourite movie or song of K Vishwanath. Sankarabharanaman might be common to all but my personal favourite is a movie called Swathi Kiranam where Mammooty gives one of the most brilliant performances of his life as a music maestro who gets jealous of his prodigious disciple played by a young Manjunath. The movie, the songs, and the direction represents the best of Vishwanath. His legacy can never die and we hope some of the present generation of directors take inspiration from his kind of films which never derooted and deracinated Indians.