A Journey from Incompleteness to Perfection: A Study of Girish Karnad’s Hayavadana

Pages:181-183
Rashmi (Independent Scholar, Department of English, Rohtak, Haryana)

GirishKarnad is the foremost playwright of the contemporary Indian stage. He has enriched the Indian literary scene by his contribution to art, culture, theatre and drama. It is most befitting that Karnad has been conferred by the President of India, the prestigious awards, Padam Shri in 1974 and PadamBhushan in 1992. He also received the Gubbiveeranna Award from the Government of Karnataka in 1997.Girish Karnad is undoubtedly the most important dramatist of the contemporary Kannadstage. His play was published in 1971, at that time Karnad was at the peak of his career and was under the influence of the great dramatist Brecht. This play has the repercussions of Brecht in many ways as K.Narsimha Murthy has rightly observed,“Hayavadana is a Brechtian kind of play employing native folk theatre strategies to present through a folk tale man’s tragically futile aspiration for perfection” (qtd. in Bala 190). The very opening of the play with Ganesh pooja rightly suggestsone aspect of the play that is ‘a journey from incompleteness to perfection.’Theopening of the play with the worship is quite significant because Lord Ganesha with human body and animal head properly suggests the central theme of incompleteness of being.As Bhagavata says in the play: