Though, Rathna puts on a brave face and goes on to throw their claims into the dustbin, her father loses the spring in his step. As soon as they begin to befriend the townsfolk, sadly, they learn that the house they purchased is haunted. The series starts off with the father, Giriyappa (Udyavara Madhava Acharya), and daughter Rathna (Kanaka) arriving in Kamarottu, from Bombay, to while away their days in the greeny-and-sunny land of Tulu Nadu.

He has definitely sharpened his skills over the years, but the twenty-something man you see in Guddada Bhootha isn’t merely another work-in-progress actor. Even without taking a moment to fix his gaze on his co-actor, letting his eyes carry the weight of his emotions, and raising his voice (his signature style) to threaten his opponents, he does his job. I didn’t have any idea about the nitty-gritties of filmmaking or the nuances of acting.” In one of the episodes uploaded on YouTube (12 are available and one seems to be missing), he recalls the period (in a segment called “Flashback”) and says, “I was just a boy who was floating in a running stream of water back then. Prakash Rai, his real name and as he’s known in the world of Kannada film and TV industry, is brilliant and easily the pick of the lot.

And I always wanted to catch Prakash Raj’s earlier performances – the ones he starred in before K Balachander took him under his wing. However, I kept hearing about it here and there through anecdotes. I wasn’t born then, so I missed witnessing the growing amounts of fandom that this 13-episode show earned. When the series was first aired on DD National, people of all ages gathered in front of the television. As the world is trying to hang on to the slippery slope called hope in the time of Corona and as Guddada Bhootha celebrates its thirtieth anniversary (a coincidence I didn’t see coming), I thought this is as good a time as any to visit the hale mane (old house) in Kamarottu and discover the bhootha (ghost).

Guddada bhoota all episodes download