8. Hayavadana- for TSPSC JL/DL

 

8. Hayavadana- for TSPSC JL/DL

About the dramatist:

Girish Karnad, (born May 19, 1938, Matheran, Bombay Presidency [now in Maharashtra], India—died June 10, 2019, Bengaluru, Karnataka), Indian playwright, author, actor, and film director whose movies and plays, written largely in Kannada, explore the present by way of the past.

After graduating from Karnataka University in 1958, Karnad studied philosophy, politics, and economics as a Rhodes scholar at the University of Oxford (1960–63). He wrote his first play, the critically acclaimed Yayati (1961), while still at Oxford. Centred on the story of a mythological king, the play established Karnad’s use of the themes of history and mythology that would inform his work over the following decades. Karnad’s next play, Tughlaq (1964), tells the story of the 14th-century sultan Muḥammad ibn Tughluq and remains among the best known of his works.

Samskara (1970) marked Karnad’s entry into filmmaking. He wrote the screenplay and played the lead role in the film, an adaptation of an anticaste novel of the same name by U.R. Ananthamurthy. Karnad followed with Vamsha Vriksha (1971), codirected by B.V. Karanth. During this period Karnad continued to produce work as a playwright, including Hayavadana (1971), widely recognized as among the most important plays of postindependence India. For his contributions to theatre, he was awarded the Padma Shri, one of India’s top civilian honours, in 1974.

Samskara (1970) marked Karnad’s entry into filmmaking. He wrote the screenplay and played the lead role in the film, an adaptation of an anticaste novel of the same name by U.R. Ananthamurthy. Karnad followed with Vamsha Vriksha (1971), codirected by B.V. Karanth. During this period Karnad continued to produce work as a playwright, including Hayavadana (1971), widely recognized as among the most important plays of postindependence India. For his contributions to theatre, he was awarded the Padma Shri, one of India’s top civilian honours, in 1974.

Introduction

The play Hayavadana is based on the idea that humans are imperfect and thus have a number of limitations. The play also deals with woman emancipation.

Padmini gives preference to her sexual desires and gets opportunity to remain with both the persons she loves though fails to fulfil her desire (mind of her husband and body of her lover).

 

Summary of Hayavadana by Girish Karnad

The play is divided into two acts

Act-1

Bhagavata, a stage player enters the stage and raises some rhetorical questions on the perfection and imperfection in context to Gods and humans. Puja is done. He tells an anecdote of two best friends namely Devadatta (man of mind) and Kapila (man of body).

As the play is about to begin an actor (Actor-1), who was supposed to perform, comes running towards Bhagavata and is quite frightened. Upon asking, he tells that while he was defecating, a horse taunted him by talking in human voice.

Bhagavata does not believe him. While they are arguing, the horse namely Hayavadana enters the stage who has head of human and body of a horse. His look astonishes the audience.

Bhagavata enquires Hayavadana about its condition, suspecting that some curse might have fallen on him. However Hayavadana rejecting his opinion, tells that his mother, a princess fell in love with a horse. After 15 years the horse attained the human shape.

Princess did not accept him in human figure. Thus he cursed her and she became a horse and later on gave birth to Hayavadana. Bhagavata suggests him to visit the Kali temple as the Goddess Kali is believed to cure all such diseases.

He also asks Actor-1 to accompany Hayavadana. They depart and Bhagavata begins the play.

Devadatta is sitting on a chair. Kapila, his best friend comes and finding him in quite miserable condition asks about the cause. Devadatta requests him to leave him alone.

Kapila guesses that Devadatta might have fallen in love again as he had fallen 15 times before within two years and thus this condition of his is not unusual.

However when Devadatta shows his seriousness towards his love, Kapila also becomes serious. Devadatta gives clues about residence of the girl and Kapila sets out for her search. He succeeds in finding her (Padmini) at last and talks to her about Devadatta. Through the efforts of Kapila, Devadatta and Padmini get married.

However, in a course of time, Padmini gets attracted towards the Kapila because of his strong body and Devadatta becomes aware of it. One day the three decide to visit some fair in Ujjain.

On the way, Devadatta asks Kapila and Padmini to visit some temple. They resist but Devadatta does not listen to them and both go away ultimately.

 

Devadatta then goes to Mother Kali’s temple and beheads himself as he cannot live without his wife as well as his friend. Kapila and Padmini return and find Devadatta missing. Kapila sets out in his search and finding him lying dead, he also beheads himself.

Padmini after waiting for long also starts searching for them and finding them dead, she also decides to end her life, but she is stopped by Goddess Kali who in a mocking way insults both Devadatta and Kapila for killing themselves not in her name but for selfishness reasons (Devadatta kills himself in the name of Padmini and Kapila kills himself for his friend).

Goddess Kali gives Padmini an opportunity to bring both of them back to life. In haste, Padmini mixes up the heads of both. As a result, Devadatta’s head is fitted on the body of Kapila and vice-versa. Goddess Kali knows the intentions of Padmini and says that humans can never give up selfishness.

They all laugh but soon a quarrel arises between the two friends over the matter whom does Padmini belong to. Having failed to find any solution the three go to an old sage who declares that the man having Devadatta’s head is the rightful husband of Padmini.

Both Padmini and Devadatta return back happily. However Kapila being deeply hurt decides to remain in the forest in solitude.

Act-2

After some months Padmini becomes pregnant. After some months, Devadatta’s body starts assuming its original shape that weakens the love of Padmini for him. Their relationship loses affection and both quarrel often.

One day she, along with her child, goes to forest to meet Kapila who does not like her coming and asks her to go back. But she insists telling him that he is the rightful father of the child. She also asks him to complete the uncompleted love by sleeping with him.

Kapila cannot resist and both start love-making

Meanwhile Devadatta also comes to forest with a sword. However his wrath vanishes when he sees Kapila waiting for him. Both are convinced that they cannot solve the matter of Padmini and thus decide to end their life by fighting.

A fierce fight starts between the two friends and both are killed. Padmini hands over the child to Bhagavata requesting him to handover him to some tibe and herself commits Sati along with the pyre of the two

 

Play ends

Actor (Actor-2) comes running and tells Bhagavata that he has seen a horse reciting National Anthem of India.

While Bhagavata is in confusion, Actor-1 arrives with a child who was handed-over to him by the tribe in the forest (who cannot speak) while he had gone with Hayavadhana. He tells Bhagavata that on the way Hayavadhana left him alone and he returned back.

That patriotic horse also comes and Bhagavata at once recognises him as Hayavadana. Hayavadana tells Bhagavata that Goddess Kali instead of giving him shape of humans made him a complete horse. However he still has the voice of humans and he wants to get rid of it.

He has heard that those who sing patriotic songs have worst voice. This is why he was singing National Anthem of India so that he might lose it.

Hayavadana starts singing songs and suddenly starts laughing. Seeing him laughing, the child also starts laughing and consequently their voices are interchanged. the boy gets human voice and Hayavadana, the voice of horse.

Concluding Puja is performed.

 

HAYAVADANA - The Story in brief

In 1972 the Madras Players produced the play Hayavadana, originally written in Kannada by the young playwright Girish Karnad. Translated into English by the author, this now famous work has been heralded as the origin of a contemporary Indian theater based on traditional folk theater. Interestingly, this seminal Indian play written by an Indian playwright deals with the same story from the thasaritsdgarthat Mann treats so richly in Die vertauschten Kopfe. Karnad's play, however, is not based simply on the eleventh-century Indian text; it reworks Mann's version of the story as well:

The central episode in the play-the story of Devadatta and Kapila-is based on a tale from the Vetalapanchavimshika, but I have drawn heavily on Thomas Mann's reworking of the tale in The Transposed Heads and am grateful to Mrs. Mann for permission to do so.

Hayavadana thus presents us with a rare opportunity to study the cross-cultural treatment of a single story. The short Brahmin parable becomes an ironic German novella in the early part of the twentieth century and returns to India in the 1970s as folk theater. In this section, I am interested in analyzing the changes in form, content, and meaning that have accrued in the text due to this singular treatment.

 

The Story

Karnad's choice in reworking the parable from the Kathasaritsagar comes as no surprise because he has previously written two plays based on Indian myth and history.22 While the central episode of the play is borrowed substantially from Mann, Karnad exaggerates the themes and motifs found in Mann's Die vertauschten Kopfe, maintaining, for example, many of the caste and individual distinctions in Mann's novella, but reinforcing them so that the characters become even more symbolic and less individualistic. Nanda, the cowherd and blacksmith, becomes Kapila (the dark one), a wrestler and smith. Schridaman becomes Devadatta (a polite form of addressing a stranger), a learned Brahmin and poet, whose head is always in the clouds. Sita is transformed into Padmini (a lotus-- one of the six kinds of women as codified by Vatsayana), the daughter of a rich merchant whose beauty exceeds even her sauciness. Karnad also invents a frame story to exaggerate the literary themes and meanings in the central episode, and it is this frame that gives the play its name.

Hayavadana, as the name suggests, is a man with a horse's head (Haya = horse and vadana = face; Dodiya 191). (His mother, a princess, had fallen in love with and been impregnated by a stallion.) Hayavadana is desperately seeking to get rid of this strange head when he stumbles on to the stage where the play about the transposed heads is about to be performed. The Bhagavata of the play then guides him to the same temple of Kali where the characters in the play will get their heads transposed.23This incident forms the introduction for the tale of transposed heads that follows.

 

The main plot of the play begins with Kapila, who finds his best friend Devadatta despondently dreaming about Padmini. Kapila goes to arrange Devadatta's marriage to her and realizes that Padmini is as clever as she is beautiful. Although Kapila is attracted to her, he nonetheless finalizes the match, and Devadatta and Padmini are married. The marriage is unhappy from the beginning. Padmini is herself attracted to the strong-bodied Kapila, and Devadatta is consumed by jealousy. A few months into the marriage, the three travel to Ujjain to a fair. On the way, they rest between two temples, one devoted to Rudra (The Howler-a form of Shiva) and the other to Kali. As in the other versions, the two men behead themselves in the Kali temple. The pregnant Padmini, afraid that she might be blamed for their deaths, then decides to kill herself. However, Kali stops her and offers to bring the men back to life. Padmini rearranges the heads so that Devadatta's head is on Kapila's body and vice versa and asks the goddess to do her magic. Kali resignedly comments that "there should be a limit even to honesty" (2:33) and brings the two men back to life.

In the confusion that ensues after the transposition of heads, Padmini makes it clear that she wants to be with the Devadatta head/Kapila body (2:38). Her wish is granted by an ascetic who mediates the conflicting claims from both men to be her husband. The ascetic's decision is the same as that given by King Vikramaditya in the Kathasanitsagar and by Kamadamana in Die vertauschten Kopfe. With his new body Devadatta returns to the city with Padmini and they begin a blissful marital life. At this point Karnad introduces two dolls that Devadatta presents to Padmini as gifts for the expected child. Through their own dialogues, the dolls describe the dynamic changes occurring in the family. They document the change of Devadatta's body from its rough muscular Kapila-nature to a soft, pot-bellied Brahmin body. They reveal that Padmini has given birth to a disfigured son and that she has now begun dreaming about Kapila again. The dolls also become the theatrical device through which Padmini sends Devadatta to Ujjain, so she can use his absence to sneak away with the child to the forest where Kapila resides (Dodiya 183).

Back in the forest, Padmini finds the rough and muscular Kapila again. He is surprised to see Padmini, and she reveals her desire for his well-muscled body. Devadatta, armed with a sword and two new dolls, finds the lovers, and the two men decide to kill each other since their love for Padmini cannot be reconciled. Padmini then decides to commit Sati. She entrusts the boy to Bhagavata and leaves instructions for him to be raised both as Kapila's son and as Devadatta's son.

Here the Bhagavata ends the story, and Karnad suggests in his stage directions that the audience should feel that the play has ended (2:64). However, the frame story involving Hayavadana begins again. An actor stumbles on the stage screaming that a horse has been singing the National Anthem, while another actor leads in Padmini's son-a mute, serious boy clutching his two dirty dolls. No amount of clowning and questioning by the actors elicits a response from the boy. Hayavadana returns to the stage, now with the body, as well as the head, of a horse. Kali has answered his prayers, it seems, by eliminating his human physical characteristics altogether. Nevertheless, he still has a human voice and is singing patriotic songs. Hayavadana begins laughing when he sees the actors and Bhagavata. His laughter and human voice infect the mute child with laughter, and the child begins to speak and laugh normally. In a cyclic transformation, the child's laughter causes Hayavadana to lose the last shreds of his human nature and he begins to neigh like a horse. Karnard thus uses the logic of myth to create a double, reciprocal exchange of functions that allows for resolution (Levi-Strauss 227). Hayavadana and the boy in effect complete each other: the one, as a human child returned to the fold of society and the other, as fully animal...........

Hayavadana (meaning horse-face), a play written by Girish Karnad, is the story of three protagonists Devadatta, Kapila, and their lady-love Padmini. The play is based on Thomas Mann’s Germans play The Transposed Heads, which in turn was based on the sixth story of Vetala Panchavimshati Katha, written in Sanskrit.

Benaka, one of the oldest theatre groups in Karnataka founded by theatre veteran and parallel-cinema pioneer B.V.Karanth, staged the play at Rangashankara. The star cast was led by noted film maker T.S. Nagabharana as the narrator, Mico Chandru as Devadatta, Poornachandra Tejaswi as Kapila, and Vidya Venkataram (all familiar faces on television and theater circuit). B.V. Shrunga of Boy With A Suitcase fame joined Pavan, Nagabharana’s son Pannaga Bharana and others as a companion of the narrator. Not surprisingly, Rangashankara was jam-packed.

 

The play has a three-part structure.

Part 1 – Introduction: Hayavadana starts with a "Naandi": traditionally a song meant to invoke divine blessings for the prosperity of the kings, Brahmins, the land where the play is being staged and the organizer/producer/writer of the play. In Hayavadana, the entire troupe led by the narrator seeks blessings for the politicians instead. Not sure about the blessings but this definitely "invoked" laughter from the audience who didn’t see it coming. As the Naandi ends, Hayavadana, the horse-faced human being, approaches the narrator and asks for a solution to his curse of being horse-faced. The narrator sees him off by suggesting that he seek the blessings of a goddess in Chitrakoota mountain, and introduces the play.

Part 2 – Main act: The play is set in Dharmapuri, home of two inseparable friends Devadatta and Kapila. Devadatta, from a scholarly Brahmin family, is a gifted poet and Kapila, son of a blacksmith, is brawny and illiterate. Both friends fall in love with Padmini, a fun-loving, happy-go-lucky girl from the same town. Circumstances force Padmini to marry Devadatta and what happens next forms the main story. In the course of the play, we are treated to a fascinating love triangle with a mélange of romance, insecurity, jealousy, sacrifice, opportunism and deception.

Part 3 – Closure: Hayavadana, who has completely transformed into a horse now, returns to the stage. The narrator introduces him to Padmini’s son and they leave the stage together. The narrator ends the play thanking the audience.

Benaka stuck to the original script throughout the play, with minor modifications to the introduction and closure to bring in humour. Right from the Naandi to the final thank you note, the dialect of the source is retained.

Several factors make this play stand out. First, the time-honoured way of a Naandi leading into the play and the return of the narrator to close the play. It reminded me of my high-school days when we studied plays structured in a similar fashion (Abhignana Shakuntala, if I remember right). The lead actors display complex emotions such as confusion, indecisiveness, and pretense effortlessly, without any exaggeration. Their body language in the scenes where they are questioned about the genuineness of their behaviour by another character, or when they doubt the appropriateness of their own behaviour in short soliloquies, were perfect examples of their talent.

Another factor I was impressed with is the performance of the supporting cast. Characters such as Hayavadana, Goddess Kali, and the talking dolls have only about five minutes of stage time, however their performance lingered in my mind for quite some time after I walked out of the auditorium.