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

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.