JOIN USThe director is busy instructing his cameraperson on what shots to take as I enter the sets of Girija Kalyana, on the outskirts of Bengaluru. You can sense his restless energy as he repeats his instructions using his palms to indicate the shots he needs. As he sees me waiting, his intense facial expression transforms into a smile of welcome.
Meet Naveen Krishna, film and TV actor, writer, singer, and now, debuting as a television director with Girija Kalyana.
Kannada cinemagoers and TV viewers know him well — he has been around for more than 15 years now as an actor. His early TV serials include Prathibimba, Chandamama Chakkulimama, Sahana, Laali, Mane Ondhu 3 Baagilu, and Preeti Illadha Mele; while his films include Shriasthu Shubhamasthu, Dheemaku, Haggadha Kone, Kadamba, Yograj But, and Actor. He’s the son of J K Sreenivasa Murthy, senior Kannada actor and director; you could say direction and acting run in his blood.
His debut as a director was by chance. After completing Actor, he was in-between projects. While he was having a casual conversation with Colors Kannada Channel’s Dilip, Naveen brought up the subject of writing dialogues for a film. The talk turned to serials, and Dilip asked him to write instead for television. “I told him that writing dialogues for a daily serial was a demanding job. I felt writing for a two-and-a-half-hour film was easier. That’s when he offered me the job of a director for Girija Kalyana. That’s how the shift to directing serials came about — by chance,” he recalls.
Luck by chance
He says that it’s a strange pattern that everything in his life has happened by “fluke”. “I didn’t know whether I would become a star, but it had always been my dream to earn a name as a good actor, like my father. But my entry into acting didn’t happen the way I had expected. I had failed my II PUC exam and was sitting at home. A family friend, ‘IOB’ Chandru, asked me why I didn’t work as an actor in TV serials. I said, ‘Why not?’ That resulted in Chandamama Chakkulimama, and all the serials that followed. I did these serials along with my studies. Their main person, A G Seshadri, became a sort of godfather to me.”
The self-belief or confidence to become a full-fledged singer or writer was absent once, as Naveen Krishna treated them as extracurricular activities. “When I used to listen to the playback of my voice, I used to hate it. But when I sang at a school function, I got the first prize. That’s when I realised that I could also sing. Then I wrote some poetry and came in for praise — that’s when I realised that I could also write.”
In the middle of the serials came a few calls for acting in Kannada films — notably Kadamba, with Vishnuvardhan. (It was a remake of the 1974 Tamil blockbuster Thanga Pathakkam that had Sivaji Ganesan and Shrikant in the lead roles essayed by Vishnuvardhan and Naveen).
Like all actors who get a big movie break, he thought he had arrived with Kadamba. But when he didn’t get the kind of offers he expected, he realised he had to re-launch himself as a lead actor. Dheemaku, a home production, established him as an actor, but failed at the box-office. As a result, Naveen began to accept offers from “Tom, Dick and
Harry.”
This resulted in a plethora of films. But he remained on a creative plateau until he met Dayalu Padmanabhan, who directed Naveen in Sri Harikathe. The director-actor pair continued with Yogaraj But, where Naveen also wrote the screenplay and debuted as a dialogue writer. This led the duo to a screen adaptation of Parvathavani’s famous play Haggadha Kone. “It was a 15-minute play. We made it into a 1-hour-45-minute film. This got me the best dialogue writer award.”
The serial he’s directing is set in a fantasy world. “Ours is a kingdom called Amaradevara Rajya, and a city called Shivapura, whose king Amaradeva is anti-Shiva. This is a story of conflict between the main protagonist, a woman — who is a Shiva bhakte — and Amaradeva, an atheist. All the hate and love are as in today’s world. But we have placed all this in a time of about 200 years ago.”
He says Kannada television is shifting away from mega serials. “Everybody is trying to get the viewer back to the telly. You can take me to a theatre and show me films back to back; I’ll watch them all! But I don’t have the patience to watch TV. That’s the reason I am shooting every scene like a movie,” he says.
Bubbling with story ideas, Naveen Krishna’s creative enthusiasm is infectious. “I don’t believe in settling down. I want to grow. The more I’m progressing with this serial, the more confident I feel of my technical capabilities to direct films.” One can only say ‘so be it’, or, to borrow one of his film’s titles, Shriasthu Shubhamasthu, ‘let it be good, let it be lucky.’