LITERATURE AND GENDER - Maharshi Dayanand University, Rohtak

Girish Karnad – Nagamandalstructures of classical texts and institutions. The position of Rani in the story of Naga-Mandala, for instance, can beseen as a metaphor for the situation of a young girl in the bosom of a joint family where she sees her husband only intwo unconnected roles-as a stranger during the day and as lover at night, inevitably, the pattern of relationships she isforced to weave from these disjointed encounters must be some thing of a fiction. The empty house Rani is locked incould be the family she is married into.Many of these tales also talk about the nature of tales. The story of the flames comments on the paradoxical natureof oral tales in general: they have an existence of their own, independent of the teller and yet live only when they arepassed on from the possessor of the tale to the listener. Seen thus, the status of a tale becomes akin to that of adaughter, for traditionally a daughter too is not meant to be kept at home too long but has to be passed on. This identityadds poignant and ironic undertones to the relationship of the teller to the tales.It needs to be stressed here that these tales are not leftovers from the past. In the words of Ramanujan, ‘Even in alarge modern city like Madras Bombay or Calcutta, even in western-style nuclear families with their well-planned 2.2children, folklore . . is only a suburb away, a cousin or a grandmother away.”The basic concern of the Indian theatre in the post-independence period has been to try to define its ‘Indianness.’ Thedistressing fact is that most of these experiments have been carried out by enthusiastic amateurs or part-timers, whohave been unable to devote themselves entirely to theatre. I see myself as a playwright but make a living in film andtelevision. There is a high elasticity of substitution between the different performing media in India: the participants aswell as the audiences-get tossed about.The question therefore of what lies in store for the Indian theatre should be rephrased to include other media aswell-radio, cinema, audiocassettes, television and video. Their futures are inextricably intertwined and in this shiftinglandscape, the next electronic gadget could easily turn a mass medium into a traditional art form.Perhaps quite unrealistically, I dream of the day when a similar ripple will reestablish theatre-flesh-and-blood actorsenacting a well-written text to a gathering of people who have come to witness the performance-where it belongs, atthe centre of the daily life of the people,Note to the Play Naga MandalaSummaryIn the note to the play that the author wrote on 28 November 1988 he has acknowledged his debt to Professor A.K.Ramanujan for the source, the play, the two oral-tales from Karnataka as told by the Professor. Incidentally Karnadalso dedicated the play to Professor Ramanujan.PrologueThe play begins with a prologue. The setting of the play in the inner sanctum of the rural temple sets the tone of theplay. The ruined temple, the broken idol, the moonlight filtering through the cracks in the roof combine to suggest thatthe play shall unfold something more ethereal than merely material.A man sitting all alone in the desolate precincts is trying hard to keep himself awake. He opens his eyes wide, turnshis eyelids upside down and shakes his head violently to keep himself from falling asleep. He addresses the audienceto tell them the cause of his desperate need to remain awake.He had been told, says he, by one mendicant to keep awake for at least one night of the month failing which he woulddie. He had tried hard to keep awake for the whole night one after the other but failed. It is not so easy to evade sleep;one falls asleep involuntarily in spite of the best efforts to hold oneself together, sleep comes stealthily and conquersyou. The man’s speech is interspersed with pauses.The age-old analogy between death and sleep is deeper in this case, since sleep on this particular night can bring theMan’s death. He even warns the audience that he may fall dead in front of them if he fails to keep awake. The manhas realized the power of sleep over man’s body.“ I thought nothing would be easier than spending a night awake—— I was wrong— Perhaps death51