Page 229 - DENG503_INDIAN_WRITINGS_IN_LITERATURE

Unit 27: Girish Karnad: Nagmandla—Themes

• Rani, as a victim of severe repression and alienation, seeks refuge in the world of dreams and Notes
hallucinations. She fantasizes that she is being carried away by an eagle far from the world
of Appanna.
• Girish Karnad uses a magical folktale to reveal the complexity of human life. In particular, he
uses the folktale in the Indian context to reveal the social and individual relations.
• Man-Woman intimate relationships, the question of chastity being imposed on married women
while their husbands have a merry-go-round with other women outside their wedlock,
married women's earnest desire for the love of their husbands in spite of the shortcomings of
their husbands, the throbbing of secret love that Naga demonstrates by his killing himself on
the passionate and warm body of Rani, and, above all, the result of the sexual communion
being a male child, the "son" lighting funeral pyre and so many other potent and hidden
meanings, make this play a very complex play.
• In the backdrop of a folktale, which includes flames, snake, avatars, performance of impressive
ordeals, cremation of the dead snake, and the background chorus, Nagamandala comes alive
with numerous symbols, hidden meanings, and explicit and implicit lessons, even as the
play bewitches the captive audience, scene by scene.

• Nagamandala is a folktale transformed into the metaphor of the married woman. It is a
Chinese box story with two folktales transformed into one fabric where myth and superstition,
fact and fantasy, instinct and reason, the particular and the general blend to produce a
drama with universal evocations. The predicament of Rani as opposed to the name is
deplorable than that of a maid.

• The woman is portrayed as dependant in all three phases of her life-as a daughter (Rani's
dependence on her parents), as a wife (Rani's reliance on Appanna) and, as a mother
(Kurudavva's handicap without Kappanna). In Indian society, the woman is said to be
complete only after marriage. However, paradoxically she neither belongs to this world or
that: her parental home or her husband's abode. For the woman, the home is said be an
expression of her freedom: it is her domain.
• 'Appanna' literally means "any man" and points to the metaphor of man in general, his
chauvinistic stance and towering dominance to the extent of suppressing a woman's
individuality. Rani endeavours to discover her individuality by seeking refuge in dreams,
fairy tales and fantasies to escape the sordid reality of her existence.
• The author also remarks of the identity of tales in general, about their reality of being and
their continuance only on being passed on. The objectivity leads us to perceive the story as
a concept with its own existence and identity; and to emphasize its individuality it is
personified in the form of a woman.
• The playwright gets to the heart of the matter when he asserts at the outset that "The idol is
broken so that the presiding deity of the temple cannot be identified". Appanna is the king
of his castle, a supreme egoist. He is the prototype of Indian masculinity that asserts itself by
arresting the spouse's selfhood within the four walls of the house.

27.3 Key-Words

1. Nocturnal : Active at night, having flowers that open at night and close by day.
2. Self-negation : To deny the existence, evidence, or truth of.

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