Female Desire Claiming Male Lives: Fractured Identities amidst Search for Completeness in Hayavadana

Journal of Integrity in Volume: 3 Issue: 5 Year: 2025 Ecosystems and Environment ISSN: 3030-3729 | http://journals.proindex.uz 21 Female Desire Claiming Male Lives: Fractured Identities amidst Search for Completeness in Hayavadana Dr Aindrilla Guin Assistant Professor, Department of English, Bankura University, Bankura Abstract: Girish Karnad, the veteran Indian playwright ransacked the huge store of Indian folklores, myths, stories, the narratives from epics and whatever source he could lay his hand on to extract a story suitable to track the problems and confusions of human existence. Women played a very important role in his plays where their complexities of thoughts, concerns and their interaction with the world of men and the world of nature played a very important role. In his play Hayavadana, the protagonist Padmini is married to the scholar Devadatta who is steeped in subtle sensibilities, which she cherished but admires his powerful and dark friend Kapila. In her desire for the best of both, she brings together the head of Devadatta and the body of Kapila. Her urge for completeness brings all the male characters to the verge of fractured identities. Though she too faces the ennui, she nonetheless overcomes in her union with Nature, life, and with the men in her deep desire for both. Keywords: Completeness, desire, folklore, Identity, Mythology, Nature. Girish Karnad is well known for his intricate exploration of Indian mythology in handling his plot. The different characters of the Kathasaritsagara come in their age-old form but daubed in a colour all new. The characters Devadatta and Kapila are the two facets of the same identity and while one stands as the intellectual spearhead, the other Kapila is the owner of physical prowess. Both in their own way control the force of life which is Padmini. Padmini the life spirit is as if the water nymph who wants to conquer life through respective prowess whether of the body or of the intellect. Nature instead reigns supreme as Padmini never stoops before any God (male) but surrenders before Kali and names her Mother Nature. Nature of which Padmini seems to be an inevitable part conquers life or Death in any form of existence. The two ends of life the man and woman as they come together and contest over the supremacy of the dual forces of life for the survival of their relationship, similarly their heads are transposed to find out the real mystery of life. What is it that excels, the Godhead or the humans, the Providence or Will Power? As the veteran Critic Mohit K. Ray observes: The sarcastic treatment of the divinities arising out of Karnad’s atheism makes a significant departure from the classical and folk tradition of theatre and makes it eminently modern (Ray 209). The head of the two birds at the gate of Padmini brings to the fore the implication of the presence of two different instincts, two diverse aspects of the same personality in a single being. The two friends Devadatta and Kapila not only suggest two beings but the different qualities which signify the bi-polar division in men. Padmini is driven by two instincts her urge for loyalty towards the husband and a love and desire for the lover Kapila on the other. She wants to possess both. The two Gods and the two dolls too reiterate the same notion of duality. The presence of both the gods and goddesses Rudra and Kali signify the presence of the male and female principles who try to rule over each other and sacrifice the other for its prominence. Life or love, habitualization or urgency of desire, the power of the moment, what will actually rule and what relinquish man remains the main motif of the text. Journal of Integrity in Ecosystems and Environment, Volume: 3 Issue: 5 Year: 2025 ISSN: 3030-3729 22 While Devadatta pledges his head to Rudra he gives his arms to Goddess Kali. While the head is one; the arms which signify action are two. They drive one to diverse directions; the petals which attract are many but controlled by a single stem. This life which directs a man’s life and the urge / desire of man which dissipates in different directions and bifurcates, makes life act and interact to gain and lose at once: Why should love stick to the sap of a single body? When the stem is drunk with the thick yearning of the many-petalled, many-flowered lantana, why should it be tied down to the relation of a single flower? (Song sung by the Chorus Hayavadana 11). Love, desire and consummation play their role and marriage acts as the pivot on which the entire play turns. It is not only marriage with desire as its most powerful force which works but the conflict of passion in marriage and love too has its thrust on the play. Padmini gets wedded to Devadatta but her fascination for Kapila remains live and both Padmini and Kapila feel an indomitable urge to be with each other. Their love finds expression in their prattle and their urge to look out for each other. Padmini’s urgency for Kapila catches Devadatta’s sight and he repents for having intruded into the life of his friend and his wife. Devadatta decides to surrender his life. He gives up his life when he finds out his wife’s eyes feasting over the sight of Kapila’s bare body. Kapila in his turn kills himself when he finds the truncated head of his friend Devdatta grovelling in the dirt of the desolate temple of Kali. Padmini traces their steps and in sometime gets at the reality and the crisis of the situation. In the tense situation that she is in she resorts to Goddess Kali, the mother of Nature to come to her aid. She calls upon her to resolve her of the crisis of her situation, to which the Goddess responds immediately. The Goddess asks her to put the truncated heads on the respective bodies so that she might infuse life in them. But Padmini unconsciously mistakes in the darkness of the cave and transports the head of the one on the other. Through this transposing of heads the characters change and the two men become the master of unknown bodies. Devadatta’s head gets Kapila’s body and Kapila’s head, the soft and tender body of Devadatta, knowing no use of wrestling or swimming, hard labour or rigorous work in the smithy. What comes to Devadatta’s credit is the chiselled, able body of Kapila which gets rusted in the course of time. This would immediately make one think of Freudian slip. Though Padmini finds it a wish-fulfilment as she attains the body of Kapila that she had ever desired and Devadatta’s head, the body gradually changes and so too her attraction. Instead she turns to erstwhile Devadatta’s body then adorned with Kapila’s head. Padmini after she is once again desirous of a different body than that which she possesses, she tracks Kapila. This remains the most puzzling enigma as to why Padmini looks out for Kapila— for his head or for Devadatta’s body. What does she at all come to? Is it as she mentions, the body of her husband, and the body whose seed had given to her, her child or is it for her attraction for Kapila’s body which she had acquired by clipping it to Devadatta’s head, but had waned out for Devdatta had never known its use. Or could it be that she must have had it in her mind that Kapila’s body which had initially been Devdatta’s must have changed to become Kapila’s muscular and strong metalled body once again. Though Padmini repeatedly mentions she had come to meet her husband’s body, the father to her child, there remains enough doubt as to the veracity of the comment. Initially when she had been permitted to take Devadatta’s head on Kapila’s body as her husband, both Devadatta and Padmini had gone out, “laughing, rubbing against each other” (41). As Bhagavata had proclaimed: “As the heavenly Kalpa Vriksha is supreme among trees, so is the head among human limbs. Therefore the man with Devadatta’s head is indeed Devaddatta and he is the rightful husband of Padmini” (40). Devadatta and Padmini are seen to spring to life and move to the corner of the stage delighted, “laughing and dancing” (40). As the three leave Devadatta and Padmini are euphoric exalting and jeering at having possessed Kapila’s body. There was hardly any sign of grief at having deprived Kapila of his grace, or longing for Devadatta’s soft body of a scholar or even the body that had fathered her child. This immediately makes us question Padmini’s real intention behind returning to Kapila, once again returned to his original stature. Her prerogative behind seeking Kapila might Journal of Integrity in Ecosystems and Environment, Volume: 3 Issue: 5 Year: 2025 ISSN: 3030-3729 23 have been her urge to connect with Kapila’s self which she could have been unconscious of. Her “rubbing” (41) herself against the body which had earlier belonged to Kapila, shows her dire urgency. However there is always the scope for gradual change in mind as she even gets habituated with Kapila’s body or may be she loses attraction for Devadatta once again as Kapila’s body changes to become Devadatta’s once again. The transposed heads suggest the reversal of identity as identification comes from the head, the seat of the intellect, which contains that force which controls man’s impulses. The body remains a mere object responding to the whims of the mind. The sentiment runs high and what emerges is that the body becomes a mere tool in the hand of the mind. With the reversal of the heads and the transportation of the one over the other, their identities do not change rather with the alteration of the heads their bodies transform gradually to their initial stature. It is not the body, but the mind which proves powerful. Both the men aspire for the woman but what becomes clear is that their desire and love fails to win her over. The men crave for her love but she remains divided in her love from the very beginning till the end. The urge to combine both the superior power, the power of the mind and the prowess of the body connects Padmini’s urge to the ageold search for the ideal; a search for completeness. The completeness and fruition that every individual desires of love drags Padmini to direct possibilities and ultimately to the death of the three characters who form the nodal points of the story. Hayavadana, the incomplete horse-man and/or animal’s search for completeness to become a complete man and the Invocation to Lord Ganesha, the “destroyer of incompleteness” (1) reiterate Karnad’s experimentation with completeness. Fulfilment and completion remain the leit-motif of the play Fire and the Rain, the most important craving of the three hearts. While the men derive completion in their union with the woman—the woman finds both lacking— one the strong body, other the strong mind, the intellect. In search of the perfect state of fulfilment of desire the characters attain a state where each remains dissatisfied at the presence of the other, yet each character’s absence creates a state of lack. In Hayavadana the characters look out for completeness as the ultimate goal of life. However in the course of action they realize that perfection or the ideal deceives human existence. With the gradual growth and development of the human mind the characters feel more and more aware of the faults and grow jealous. In the course of time the characters form their own life away from the benevolence of the company of the other. In the course of action the characters resort to their Gods— Rudra, the male God of perfection who is responsible for the perfect state of existence even while being the Destroyer. He stands as the cult of the ideal state amidst flux and destruction. However the woman instead of appealing to the male God comes to Kali, addressing her as Mother Nature. The dichotomy between Kali and Rudra is masterfully crafted in the discrimination between the two set of devotees ascribed to both. While the men prove less effective in the understanding of their inner nature and what is being ascertained to them, Padmini in her oneness with Goddess Kali becomes more understanding of the inner processes of her self and of Nature itself. Human nature and Nature become one in their interaction with each other and the playful talking and the jostle of the dolls. The action of the inactive dolls reveals the coming together of the inanimate body and the animated mind. The corporeal transcends its limitedness and enters into a progressive zone where the body surpasses its restrictions and enters into a more interactive process. As A. S. Dharwadker in the Introduction to Collected Plays: Girish Karnad, Vol I, observes: The dominant presence of the ancient and medieval past in Karnad’s drama is a result of both personal and cultural compulsions. He has argued from the beginning that the deep-rooted narratives of myth, oral history, and legend constitute a vital connection between an author and his or her audience, and theatre is particularly powerful medium for the communication of such culturally resonant fictions (Dharwadker x). Journal of Integrity in Ecosystems and Environment, Volume: 3 Issue: 5 Year: 2025 ISSN: 3030-3729 24 The characters throughout the play struggle for their sanctity, a perfect order and fulfilment but none attains till the end. Trapped between the quest for fulfilment in life and satisfaction of the senses the characters seek but fail to find. Kapila on the other hand can be said to be born of the earth, the earthen one, who is nonetheless marginalized. He fails to attain but tries to get over his attraction for his love. He discards even his body and never attains satisfaction, not even moment’s satiety in his becoming one with Padmini. Padmini and Devadatta gain their satisfaction and fruition in love, they possess their child though begotten of the erstwhile body of Devadatta, later acquired by Kapila. The name Kapila which itself means brown or the dark one also means innocent, uncared for the complications of the world. Devadatta on the contrary is the high prized one, the Brahmin, begotten of God and hence superior, bearing the imprint of God himself. God in his ways and moves and his actions are sophisticated reaching out to the world. He is God himself and like the gods in Hindu mythology who had drunk the demon’s share of elixir, the Amrit that which could have made them immortal, depriving the black demons, here too the dark Kapila is deprived of attaining Padmini or the bliss of life and love, or even fatherhood. He remains marginalized, and when Devadatta’s body fails to arouse the passion incited by Kapila’s presence, he by the grace of prejudiced heaven or the artful wiliness of his wife, gets to enjoy the tough sinews of Kapila. The passion which Kapila sprouted in the female spirit embodied in Padmini is absolutely nature in its primordial existence. The significance of the same comes live as, when Padmini and Devadatta become one in their love and languor, overjoyed with each other, enjoying the presence of the body of Kapila, while cherishing the status of being Devadatta’s wife; Kapila recedes to the jungle. The ambience of darkness which surrounds Kapila perfectly matches his complexion and the spirit of his poise, his composure. The perfection of Kapila that had enticed Padmini gets perfected as the blacksmith gets secured in his selflessness and his grief. Kapila’s marginalization comes out clear in the deprivation of the upper caste, whether friend or beloved, as they side with his body, the most prized identity marker of his self, crafted with a lot of skill and workmanship. In the course of time as Kapila is left in the premises of the jungle to fend for himself without love, care, concern or the security of home and hearth, he once again darkens his body and his muscular body gains back its metallic colour and texture through his tough labour that had made his chiselled body possible earlier. He proudly discards the white plump body of his friend Devadatta and regains the lustre of his fabric in no time. In this context G.S. Jha’s comment in his article titled “Karnad’s Hayavadana: A Post colonial Fruition,” deserves mention: On the sociological plane the play manifests, two faceted relationships, that of failing Brahmanical potential and a subaltern hijacking on the pretext of quest for completeness or fulfilment (Jha 74). Devadatta and Kapila, as has already been mentioned are one and the same existence crafted into two different individuals. However the two characters interchange their bodies and mingle their lives to form an intermingled existence where two make one and the same part into two as the mind and the body, the rational and the emotional, the intellectual and the sensual side out to form two clusters assuming an identity exclusively unique to itself. The characters looking for completeness amidst these clusters ultimately choose death as the only way out of the serious effects of life. The male and the female principles come and live in the dolls and the inanimate too talk and respond and gain animation as the characters slyly respond to their inner passions while still sticking to the norms of society and the religious structure of sin and sinning. The urgency of the characters who want to possess and know themselves are baffled and their hearts get fainted as they realize that under no circumstance can they derive fulfilment or the satiety which they are hankering after. Happiness, real satisfaction eludes making the characters hollow, devoid of real spirit. While the dolls gain life and spirit in their expression, their attempt at getting hold of the urge that is unconsciously realized within, fails. K. Narasimha Murthy in his book Modern Kannada Literature observes: Karnad’s Hayavadana is a play employing native folk theatre strategies to present man’s tragic futile aspiration for perfection or completeness (Murthy 30). Journal of Integrity in Ecosystems and Environment, Volume: 3 Issue: 5 Year: 2025 ISSN: 3030-3729 25 The characters in the play repeat their actions at different points of their lives to derive diverse results making them aware of the different perceptions. The way life takes its turn doesn’t scare the characters, but the bliss that their existence had been turns out to be much different from their initial life. The characters search for satisfaction and fulfilment but none attains the same and ultimately their unquenchable thirst for fruition abandons their life. In their urge to vent their desires the characters take the wrong road. As Padmini claims as she finds her way to the desolate Kapila who had taken recluse in the jungle: “The wrong road stuck to my feet; wouldn’t let go” (54). The “mad dance of incompleteness” (57) deceives every completion and what comes out is a cacophony where no character is his own and none can pursue his identity as individual. If the men lack the congruence between their body and mind, Padmini lacks the conformity between her self and desire. As the men get back to their original forms after their neck or nothing struggle with the alien bodies glued to their heads, Padmini still suffers in her craving to reach out to the perfection that her heart desires: Padmini: ...you won, Kapila. Devadatta won too. But I— the better half of two bodies— I neither win nor lose. ..It’s my fault. I mixed the heads up. I must suffer the consequences.” (57) What comes out is an inescapable tragedy— Padmini: They burned, lived, fought, embraced and died. I stood silent...Because you knew death you died in each other’s arms. You could only have lived ripping each other to pieces. I had to drive you to death. You forgave each other, but again, left me out (62). Unlike Kapila who had taken recluse in the jungle, Padmini realizes her peace in the depths of darkness. As she enters the forest her admiration reveals the affinity of her character with the chiaroscuro of the shades of darkness in the forest. With her child clinging to her bosom she gets deeper into the density of the jungle fearless as if retracing back to her mother’s womb, the innards of life, the darkness where every confusion began, the darkness that had let loose the primitive desire in her and her unconscious. She enters fearless, calm, uncared of the “[w]ild beasts— robbers— pathless paths— all sorts of dangers” (54). Devadatta wonders in sarcasm: “Amazing! Even a man like me found the road hard. But how quickly she covered it— and with a child in her arms (59). As S. Shubhangee Raykar observes in her article, “The Development of Karnad as a Dramatist: Hayavadana,” Padmini’s predicament is the predicament of a modern emancipated woman in our society who is torn between the two polarities: a woman who loves her husband as well as someone else for different personalities (Raykar 177). Works Cited 1. Dharwadker, A. B, Edited. “Introduction”. Collected Plays: Girish Karnad, Vol I. OUP, 2008, pp. vii-xxxvi. 2. Jha, G. S. “Karnad’s Hayavadana: A Post colonial Fruition”. Thunder on Stage: A Study of Girish Karnad’s Plays, edited by C. L. Khatri and Sudhir K. Arora, Book Enclave, 2008, pp. 68-75. 3. Karnad, Girish. Hayavadana. OUP, 1975. 4. Murthy, Narasimha. Modern Kannada Literature. Pustakalaya, 1992. 5. Raykar, S. Shubhangee. “The Development of Karnad as a Dramatist: Hayavadana”. The Plays of Girish Karnad: Critical Perspectives, edited by Jaydipsinh Dodiya. Prestige Books, 1999, pp. 174-189. 6. Ray, Mohit. “Hayavadana: A Study of Karnad’s Use of Source Texts and Folk Form.” Indian Writing in English, edited by Rama Kundu, Atlantic Publishers, 2003, pp. 196-211.