Patre Lankesh was Kannada dramatist, poet, and novelist. He was born in the year 1935 in Shimoga district, and educated in Bangalore and Mysore. Patre Lankesh was a Lecturer in English at Bangalore University before settling down to journalism and launching the popular weekly, Lankeshpatrike. This eventually attained a circulation of over a lakh. Patre Lankesh was a noted filmmaker, who wrote, directed, and performed the role of the boss in Pallavi in 1976. Earlier, in 1970, Patre Lankesh had acted as the wining and meat-eating Brahman in P. Rama Reddy`s Samskam i.e. Funeral Rites. This was a milestone in Kannada cinema.

Most of Patre Lankesh`s plays are conspicuous in Kannada theatre by their contemporary themes and modernist techniques. Seven early, short works published in 1971 contain strong socio-political satire, protest, and absurdity tendencies. Sankranti i.e. `Transformation` in 1972 was his historical masterpiece. Patre Lankesh imaginatively interprets the social revolution affected by the mystic poet and religious reformer Basaveswara at Kalyana in twelfth-century Karnataka. Gunamukha i.e. `Recuperation` in 1993 dramatizes the life of Nadir Shah, known for his violence, military tactics, and imperialism, easily comparable to Caligula. The play shows how his own soldiers, fed up with his bloodthirstiness and cruelty, finally murdered him. Patre Lankesh is known for using the colloquial language of the Mysore region. Patre Lankesh` s plays are dialogue-oriented and marked by an absence of music and poetry. Although amateur groups perform them, they appeal mainly to intellectuals and critics argue that the common man fails to respond to his sophisticated dramatic vision. However, his translations of Sophocles`s Oedipus and Antigone in 1971 are very popular and often staged. Patre Lankesh died in the year 2000.