SHORT NOTE ON THE THEME OF INCOMPLETENESS IN GIRISH KARNAD’S HAYAVADANA

THE THEME OF INCOMPLETENESS IN

GIRISH KARNAD’S HAYAVADANA

Girish Karnad’s play Hayavadana deals with the theme of incompleteness. Karnad has tried to illustrate incompleteness with divine, human and animal figures. Ganesha has the elephant head and the human body. The transposition of heads does not give Devadatta , Kapila and Padmini completeness. Only Hayavadana, who had the horse head and the human body, achieves completeness. He wanted to become a complete human being , but he becomes a complete horse.

LITERATURE

In this play, Karnad has presented the theme of incompleteness at three levels- Divine, Human and Animal. When the play begins, “ a mask of Ganesha is brought on the stage and kept on the chair. The Bhagavata sings verses in praise of Ganesha, accompanied by his musicians.From the very beginning we see the use of the word ‘incompleteness’. Ganesha is worshipped as the destroyer of

incompleteness. Here the Bhagavatta regards Ganesha the embodiment of incompleteness because Ganesha has an elephant head and a human body.

Devadatta and Kapila are close friends. Devadatta marries Padmini. One day they plan a short visit to Ujjain. Kapila drives the cart. Padmini admires Kapila’s physique. Now Devadatta does not like this. Kapila offers to go to the temple of Rudra. Padmini immediately agrees while Devdatta stays back. Then Devadatta goes to the temple of Kali and hacks off his head with a sword kept there. In course of events Kapila also hacks off his head.But when Padmini takes sword, Goddess Kali appears and asks her to put the heads on their bodies and press the sword on their necks and they will be alive again. Out of eagerness she puts the heads on the wrong bodies and presses the sword. Both of them come to life but three are greatly surprised. They saw the attachment of the head of Kapila and the body of Devadatta and the head of Devadatta and the body of Kapila. Kapila with Devadatta’s body claims Padmini. He argues that it is with the body that Padmini took the vows of marriage before the sacred fire and the child which she is carrying in her womb is the seed of that body. Then they go to a sage who announces that just as Kalp Vriksha is supreme amongst all the trees in the same way head is supreme of all human limbs. The body who has the head of Devadatta is indeed Devadatta. The body who has the head of Kapila is indeed Kapila. So Kapila becomes very sad and goes to the forest.

RESEARCH PAPER

Hayavadana has the horse head and the human body. He wants to become a complete human being. ‘Haya’ is a Sanskrit word which means ‘horse’. ‘Vadana’ is also a Sankrit word which means ‘ face’. He is the son of the Princess of Karnataka. She fell in love with a white stallion. She was married off with it.But after five years she found it a gandharva.,who became a horse because of the curse of the God Kuber. After fifteen years of human love he had become his original self again.  Released from his curse, he asked the Princess to accompany him to his Heavenly Abode. But she wanted him to become a horse again. So he cursed her to be a horse herself. She became a mare and galloped away without thinking in the least of Hayavadana, the product of her marriage with the white stallion. So Hayavadana is in search of identity and completeness of his physical body. He wants to get rid

of his horse-face. He visits many religious places and meets a number of sages. But he is not able to get rid of his horseface.

The Bhagavatta asks him to go to the temple of Kali and request her to make him complete. Even before he could say make him complete man, the goddess says: ‘So be it’ and disappears. So now he becomes a complete horse. But he does not become a complete being because he still has human voice. At the end of the play, he gets his horse voice. “Hayavadana achieves completeness when finally he becomes a complete horse and loses the human voice through singing the Indian National Anthem. But this is one-sided completeness. But for human being, who is a combination of flesh and spirit, body and mind, completeness requires a harmonical relationship between body and mind but Cartesian division seems to be a perennial irresolvable problem for man. The major reality of this world is selfdivision. Both man and society are self-divided and disturbing antinomies struggle for supremacy. The problem of Hayavadana, alienation, absurdity, incompleteness and search for identity are central of the plays of Karnad. Incompleteness is an inescapable and insurmountable reality. This concept helps to solve such riddles in Hayavadana as why Hayavadana’s mother chooses for her husband a stallion rather than a man and why Goddess Kali makes Hayavadana a complete horse instead of a complete man.”

Thus , Karnad has presented the theme of incompleteness at three levels- Divine , Human and Animal. Bagavatta regards Ganesha incomplete because he has the elephant head and the human body. But at the end of the play, he praises Ganesha: “Unfathomable indeed is the mercy of the Elephant-headed Ganesha. He fulfils the desire of all – a grandson to grandfather, a smile to a child, a neigh to a horse. How indeed can one describe his glory in our poor, disabled words ?”

In the case of Devadatta , Kapila and Padmini, we see that they fail to achieve completeness. They all die. But Hayavadana achieves completeness. He wanted to become a man. But he becomes a complete horse. So the theme of incompleteness has been nicely presented in this play.

                                                                                                                 Composed By,

                                                                                                                BIKASH MAITY