ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the highly popular Kannada-language film Nanjundi Kalyana in terms of its rewriting of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. Crucially, Nanjundi Kalyana places a regional gloss on its adaptive procedures, continually citing cultural practices and gendered attitudes germane to southern parts of India and to Karnataka in particular. Nanjundi Kalyana takes many of the premises of Shakespeare's play–namely a concern with shame, the taming of the 'shrew' and ideas of home and domestication–so as to invest them with meanings and resonances particular to a Kannada-language milieu. The film mobilises local registers in its representation of women, family and dharma, investing in a regionally based dialogue as part of its negotiation with the gendered questions thrown up by Shakespeare's play. Nanjundi Kalyana is distinctive in the ways in which it takes 'Bollywood' conventions and plays with them, sounding subtle variations on a theme.
