Jayant Kaikini

Early life

Kaikini was born in Gokarna to Gourish Kaikini, a school teacher, and a Kannada litterateur and Shanta, a social worker. After a Masters in Biochemistry from Karnataka University, Dharwad, he moved to Mumbai where he worked as a chemist for many years. He now lives in Bangalore with his wife Smita and two children, Srajana (daughter) who is an Odissi dancer and a researcher/curator, and Ritwik (son). Apart from Kannada Jayanth is fluent in Konkani (his mother tongue), Marathi, Hindi and English.

Career

Kaikini is regarded as one of the most significant of the younger writers in Kannada today. He is a writer of short stories, film scripts and poetry, and is based in Bangalore. His poetry is characterised by subtle imagism, a minute documentation of the seemingly commonplace, a colloquial idiom and a conscientious refusal to engage in any poeticising. He has so far published six anthologies of short stories, four books of poetry, three plays and a collection of essays.

In an introduction to Dots and Lines, an English translation of Kaikini’s short stories, critic C.N. Ramachandran writes, “To understand Jayanth’s works, we have to situate him in the literary context of the last two decades of the 20th century. During that period, there arose a group of writers who consciously differed from both the earlier Modernist writers (called Navya in Kannada) and those contemporaneous to them, the Writers of Protest (called Bandaya in Kannada) and Dalit writers. They did not subscribe to any particular philosophical or political system of thinking – be it Existentialism of the Modernists or the Leftist ideologies of the Dalit and Protest writers. On the other hand, what they wished to do was to select precise and authentic details of daily life and organise them in such a way as to culminate in a particular experience . . . Generally, their style was comic-ironic; and the language they used was the spoken language of day-to-day life. They were neither idealists nor cynics; they just wished to observe the life around them – generally mediocre – to register all the fleeting details that marked an ordinary man’s daily routine, and lead up to an experience rich in connotations. Jayanth was a major figure in this group of writers who, loosely, can be called ‘post-modernist’.”

Dr. Jayanth Kaikini started writing lyrics to film songs beginning from movie Chigurida Kanasu. He is the credited with revolutionising the image of Kannada film songs, with the classic touch of literature and beautiful imagery. Films like Mungaaru Male, Gaalipata, Milana etc. have some touching and memorable songs with lyrics penned by him.

He was hosting a TV Show "Rasa Rushige Namaskara" in Etv Kannada which a biography on Rashtrakavi Kuvempu. This show was very popular with a particular section of audience. He continued it with other series' such as "Kadala Theerada Bharghava",..etc.Lately he was seen judging the reality show "Yede tumbi Haaduvenu" along with the legendary singer S.P.Balasubrahmanyam and famous Kannada music director and lyricist naada brahma Hamsalekha.

Kaikini received the Karnataka Sahitya Academy award for his first poetry collection at the age of nineteen in 1974. He received the same award again in 1982, 1989 and 1996 for his short story collections. He has been awarded the Dinakara Desai award for his poetry, the B. H. Sridhar award for fiction, as well as the Katha National award and Rujuwathu trust fellowship for his creative writing.

Poetry and stories

Songs

He wrote script for movies.

Awards and nominations

Awards for literary works