Nanna Thamma Shankara - Ananth Nag

Its common for a normal person to be curious to know more details about a person he/she admires/loves/hates . The curiosity is even more when that person happens to be a celebrity. I havent seen much of shankar Nag's work except for MalguDi days and also have no great fascination for his work. But, still the curiosity to know more about him made me read the book which I am reviewing today, "Nanna thamma shankara".

The book is written by Anath Nag, shankar's brother, who is a famous actor himself in Kannada industry. The book is written based on Ananth's interactions with Shankar and his observations about Shankar from right from his birth till his death. It won the "Kannada Saahithya parishath Award" in 2001.

IN short, the book is well written and makes a very good read. Since the characters are familiar to us, we can actually visualize the events while reading the book and that makes the book even more interesting to read.

The main strength of the book is that it is more conversational than just narration of events. The use of simple language makes the reader relate to it easily and as a writer, ananth does not put his opinion or point of view to the readers. He just presents the events in the form of conversations and leaves it to the reader to make his/her own opinion. Ananth also makes it a point to provide a good amount of information about the people , places and groups as and when they occur in the book. Ananth succeeds in letting the user know the character of Shankar Nag and also his thought process to a large extent. Rather than focussing on Shankar's film life and landmarks, this book shows light on what Shankar did and thought when he is not facing the camera. I would like to highlight that this book also reminds us of some of the beautiful words in kannada which are hardly used these days.

On the flip side,

1. there is no mention about Shankar's marriage / wife/kids. This could be due to some other personal reasons concerned to the author. But, it does leave the book incomplete!!

2. Along the narrative, Ananth puts forth his thoughts and ideologies about certain events and people, instead of concentrating on what Shankar thought about them

3. Since the book is more on anath's interactions with Shankar, there is hardly any details about Shankar's friends. Knowing that Shankar was very friendly with so many people in the theatre and film industry, it seems a little imcomplete without a mention about them.

Overall, a very good book, worth a read. After reading the book, it really made me feel that kannada industry in particular and the state in general lost an extra-ordinary talent as well as good human being at a very young age