UGC MHRD e Pathshala

Subject: English

Principal Investigator: Prof. Tutun Mukherjee, University of Hyderabad

Paper: 09: “Comparative Literature, in ”

Paper Coordinator: Prof. Tutun Mukherjee, University of Hyderabad

Module No 34: : Broken Images

Content Writer: Dr. Shrabani Basu, St. Francis College, Hyderabad

Content Reviewer: Dr. Satyabrata Rout; University of Hyderabad

Language Editor: Prof. Tutun Mukherjee, University of Hyderabad

1. INTRODUCTION

This module is about the celebrated playwright, director, scriptwriter and actor Girish Karnad, and more specifically explores one of his lesser known plays “Broken Images”. You would be looking at a brief account of Karnad’s life and work and then we would concentrate on the itself, exploring the different themes and concerns that revolve around it. This module would also contain occasional interesting facts about the playwright and the play, with some self- assessment questions to test your understanding of the play.

“Broken Images” or “Odakalu Bimba” in the original , was specifically written for Ranga Shankara’s opening festival in October 2004, but was not staged before March, 2005. Subsequently Karnad also wrote the English version – “A Heap of Broken Images,” which was later published as “Broken Images”. It was also translated in as “Bikhre Bimba.”

DID YOU KNOW?

With “Broken Images” staging in March, 2005, four interesting things happened:

• Girish Karnad directed the play himself, something he has not done for forty years, his last stage direction being Badal Sircar’s Evam Indrajit.

• This was the first time that Ranga Shankara had produced a play. • This was the first time that any of Karnad’s play debuted subsequently in two

languages. • Karnad translated his own play in English.

2. GIRISH KARNAD’S LIFE AND CAREER

Born in 1938 in Maharashtra, Girish Raghunath Karnad, has mostly written in Kannada. Educated in University and later in Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, Karnad’s initial career was in Oxford University Press in Chennai. After quitting this job, he got involved with the Chennai based amateur group The Madras Players. He has been a Fulbright scholar in The University of Chicago and has served a year long tenure at the Pune Film and Television Institute of India (1974-75) and National Academy of Performing Arts (1988-93) as the Director.

In spite of having Konkani as mother tongue, Karnad has resolutely written in Kannada, though most of his works have been translated into English and other vernacular languages. His rise as a playwright changed the much used westernized literary tradition of Kannada. Being inspired by a version of Mahabharata by C. Rajagopalachari, Karnad started writing plays in Kannada based on Indian mythology. His first play “Maa Nishaadh” was quickly followed by a remarkably prolific career including “Yayati” in 1961 and continued to subsequent famous ones like “Tughlaq”, “Hayavadana”, “Bali”, “Taledanda” or “Death by Beheading”, “Agni mattu Male” or “Fire and the Rain” etc. with the 2012 play “Benda Kalu on Toast”.

Karnad made his acting and screen writing debut with a Kannada film adapted from U.R. Anathamurthy’s Samskara. He acted in multiple films directed by Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen, Shyam Benegal and more recently Nagesh Kukunoor. He has received Filmfare and National Awards for acting and directing, and Padma Shri, Padma Bhushan, Kannada Sahitya Akademi, Jnanpith Awards for his literary contribution.

DID YOU KNOW?

His rise as a playwright in 1960s, marked the coming of age of modern Indian playwriting in Kannada, just as Badal Sircar did in Bengali, Vijay Tendulkar in Marathi, and Mohan Rakesh in Hindi.

3. MAJOR THEMES IN KARNAD’S PLAYS

Girish Karnad has been put together with Mohan Rakesh, Dharamveer Bharati, Vijay Tendulkar for thematic similarities and for creating a national theatre of India.

3.1. Retrieval of Indigenous Traditions and Culture of India

It has often been said that Karnad, through his plays, manages to retrieve the rich cultural and mythological traditions of India and adapt them for the modern stage. He has unearthed modern reality enmeshed in “the Great and the Little tradition, the classical and the folk elements of Indian literature” (Mukherjee, 134). Karnad brings out the colorful folk tale techniques of the ancient story-telling tradition with masks, vibrant , multi-layered narrative, speaking dolls, supernatural entities etc. However, Karnad’s success lies in perpetuating the transcendental reality beneath these mythological garbs. The audience can relate with the crisis on stage, even if it allegedly is having a thousand years ago. Thus, we have no trouble understanding the conflict between physique and intellect in Hayavadana, or the crisis of the Varnas in Taledanda or the changing society and the clash of tradition and human inclination in The Fire and the Rain.

Through subtle adaptation of theatrical techniques from Parsi theatre, Yakshagana, Bayalala, Company Nataks and particularly from Sanskrit plays, Karnad successfully minimizes the demarcation between the performers and the audience. He also establishes the eternity of myths, proving that socio-cultural and philosophical realities only adapt themselves with the temporal axis, they do not change essentially.

3.2. Quest for Identity and Perfection amidst Duality and Incompletion

Most of Karnad’s plays explore an individual’s quest for identity in a mottled and confusing background. Devadatta and Kapila in Hayavadana look for the ‘self’ they have lost as they exchanged body to survive and to find perfection. In Yayati, the old king exchanges age with his young son, but neither find any consolation of completion, as old age does not bring any wisdom and youth does not facilitate the sensual satiation. The Dreams of Tipu Sultan explores the conflict between the colonial and the cultural past. In Nagamandala, the snake’s transformation

into a man to pursue Rani reinstates the fact that modern man cannot have one identity and every choice gives way to certain experiences and at times at the cost of penalty.

DID YOU KNOW?

Naga cult worship of Kerala is a kind of religious ritual. It is variously practiced in many parts of Kerala. It retains the impact of Hindu mythology. There are more than a dozen temples in Kerala dedicated to Naga and Naga-cult. Naga myths/Tales promote worship of serpents. A Hindu religious sub sect of Kerala, The Pulluva community is believed to have descended from Dravidian clan whose totem was the image of the hooded serpent. There is a belief that if serpent’s anger brings calamity, disasters and diseases, it can be pleased by the Pulluva alone in Kerala Naga trance is a cultural performance that is related to the nature and character of Naga. The planning of this performance entails a colorful picture of a Naga designed in the courtyard of the temple. Here the worship takes place with the ritualistic song and chanting in praise of the serpent with the help of musical instruments. An elaborate worship is done by the priest to the Naga to make man free from sin. The Pulluva women enter the sacred courtyard and begin to the Naga trance dance. Finally these women (orakkals) are ready to tell about the future of the devotees under the induced trance. After the foretelling, the women fall unconsciously marking the end of the ritual.

4. STAGE DIRECTION AND SETTING

The play being a monodrama (one act, one performer), has minimum stage directions. There is a single moderate stage direction in the beginning of the play and only a few scattered ones throughout to facilitate the understanding of the audience and the readers. The setting is rather expensive as it asks for plasma screen, multiple television sets and if possible a revolving stage. Though, cheaper adaptations of the setting can be probably managed.

The initial stage direction describes the interior of a typical television studio with a big plasma television hanging on one side, close enough and big enough for the audience to see from it. On the other side of the stage are a strategically placed chair and a typical semi-circular telly table. At the back of the stages, we are supposed to see several television sets with varying

screen sizes. Moreover, a red bulb glows high above the table so as not to appear in the television screen.

The only character Manjula Nayak enters at this point wearing a lapel mike, looking confident and easy in a television studio. She is described to be in her mid- thirties/ forties. The entire play runs through conversations between an image of Nayak that appears on the television screen and the Nayak on stage. There are cues for laughter, pause and tears, with certain stage-directions about frenzied behavior and aggressiveness and different facial expressions.

There are three final stage direction where in a frenzied attempt to block the image, Manjula tries to disconnect the screen, but ends up syncing the image as the upper part of the body, as Malini’s personality takes over Manjula. The setting requires a revolving stage, where the entire studio will revolve showing all the televisions with different images of Manjula silently gesticulating on screen. Finally, there is a deafening cacophony where all the screens start emitting Kannada and English and one by one the screens are turned off, finally leaving the stage in darkness.

DID YOU KNOW?

• The play starred Arundhati Nag as Manjula Nayak and her doppelgänger in the Kannada and Hindi versions while Arundhati Raja played the same role in the English version. • The play earned itself positive reviews which subsequently resulted in a new production of it in English which was directed by Alyque Padamsee and featured Shabana Azmi playing the lead role of Manjula Sharma, a Hindi writer who is unsuccessful. • Karnad got the idea to write the play when he attended a talk in Bangalore by Shashi Deshpande, daughter of Kannada writer Shriranga, on how Indian writers who wrote in English, were not being treated on par with English writers of foreign

origin.

5. PLOT SUMMARY OF “BROKEN IMAGES”

The one-act one-performer play tells the story of Manjula Nayak, a professor of English literature who has been an unsuccessful writer in Kannada. She finds international acclaim when she writes a novel in English, which becomes a bestseller. The story starts with her introducing the audience to her novel in a TV studio, prior to a film on it is telecast. After she finishes her introduction, she is confronted by her own image on the screen which poses questions on betrayal of her language and identity when she chooses to write in English. Through this rigorous self-reflexive inquisition by her own image, several suppressed memories and secrets come out making Manjula face herself both literally and figuratively.

The play opens with Manjula Nayak, who is described to be in her mid thirties/ forties, walking confidently inside the television studio, prepared to speak for ten minutes. From the announcement made by the anchor, who is never again seen on either the television or the stage, we understand the Nayak is a Kannada short-story writer and a lecturer in English, who has recently shot to fame writing her first English novel This River Has No Memories fetching a lucrative financial advance and universal literary acclaim. Manjula addresses the supposed television viewers and delivers a carefully timed ten minute speech, speaking on her choice of writing in English and the chosen plotline of her novel.

Manjula defends her choice of language, saying that it was not consciously that she started writing in English, but it just gushed forth in this language. She refused to be “Accused” of betraying her mother tongue and claimed that the choice of language does not bereft her novel in the so called “Indian ness”, as her writing has received universal literary fame, particularly because she has not sacrificed the native essence to please the western audience like other writers in English. She further criticizes the narrow-minded take of the President of Sahitya Akademi who disapproved of her writing in English, but himself delivered his speech in English. Manjula further pointed out that how speaking in English often makes people feel empowered enough to make “oracular pronouncements on Indian literatures and languages.” She declared that she is unashamed about commercializing her literary work, drawing an analogy between “meaning” and “money”: “Meaningful: Arthapoorna. The Kannada word for Meaning is Artha—which also means money! And of course, fame publicity, glamour… power.” (265)

Manjula breaks off the topic at this point and starts talking about the central plot line of the novel. We come to know that it involves a young physically challenged woman. She expresses how the protagonist of her play is based on her deceased younger sister Malini, who was wheelchair ridden all her life due to nervous dysfunction waist below. After their parents’ death, six years before, Manjula had cared for Malini and had an insight on her perspective. She published her book a few months after Malini’s death the year before. She also thanks her husband Pramod for supporting her literary ambitions through exacting familial and professional obligations.

As she smugly finishes her speech and prepares to leave, the television screen facing her blanks and her own image appears speaking to her. Amazed and shocked, Manjula attempts to escape but does not as the image starts speaking to her, questioning her closely and relentlessly. The image, her doppelganger, challenges the authenticity of her earlier claims, including the one where she declared that she loved her sister. Being questioned, Manjula confesses that her sister always got the best of everything, being disabled from her infancy. Malini always got their parents’ undivided attention. She was smart and beautiful, and far outshone Manjula in intelligence and charm. Manjula and Malini’s parents had left the former with her grandparents and focused their lives on caring for their younger daughter. When Manjula married Pramod and settled down with him, her father had helped them financially, otherwise depriving her from her rightful inheritance. After their death, they sold the ancestral property and cared for Malini in their own house.

While speaking, Manjula’s complicated relationship with her younger sister surfaced as she could not help keeping her bitterness hidden, yet tried to redeem her sister by calling her sensitive and non-demanding. She also revealed her innate parochialism, as she admitted that she refused to stay in Koramangala, a predominantly cosmopolitan Bangalore neighborhood, and preferred to stay in the predominantly Kannada Jayanagar.

The image continues questioning her about the language competence of the two sisters. Manjula admits that though Malini could speak Kannada, she preferred communicating in English. The image corners her as Manjula is forced to admit that she is not very comfortable in English. It is also revealed that the plot of the novel is based on life, as Manjula is portrayed as a villainous first cousin, and Malini, the sensitive but helpless disabled victim. Other

uncomfortable truths like Pramod’s platonic camaraderie with Malini, are revealed. Manjula describes how Pramod and Malini were intellectually close friends, but had never felt close enough with Manjula to argue or share jokes. She also says how Pramod was looking for female companionship from old friends, but had grown distant from Manjula.

The final revelation is made when the image questions on the whereabouts of Pramod, and Manjula is finally admits that she and Pramod has become estranged over his disapproval of Manjula’s appropriating the novel, which was originally written by Malini. Manjula tries to defend herself by saying that Malini had adapted Manjula as a villainous first cousin and given her a rather negative image. Being scared that it would be a public knowledge that Malini and possibly Pramod despised Manjula and considered her shallow and coarse, the latter send the typescript signed “M. Nayak” to a literary agent as her own. The image further hints that it was Manjula who had alienated and hated Malini for being more attractive, sensitive and intelligent all her life. In a final attempt to blank out the image, Manjula tries to disconnect the television, but suddenly the image syncs with the upper part of the body as Malini’’s personality takes over Manjula. It is as if Manjula’s body becomes an extension of the image. The stage revolves with the image speaking and the lower part of Manjula’s body gesticulating accordingly. The screens show different images of Manjula silently gesticulating. All of a sudden there is a cacophony where all the television screens start speaking in Kannada and English loudly, and then one by one the set switches off in a final lights out.

6. MAJOR THEMES IN “BROKEN IMAGES”

It has been said that “Broken Images” is a major deviation from Karnad’s mythological plays. It is grounded on the postcolonial, postmodern, technological world of linguistic and identity crisis. Whereas in his other plays Karnad was more occupied looking for cultural and traditional roots, in this play he explores the roots of the crisis of modern individuals.

6.1. The Conflict of Languages

One of the obvious themes of the play is the linguistic crisis of a postcolonial individual, as English hegemonizes over Indian vernaculars. Manjula Nayak was initially a Kannada short

story writer and a lecturer in English. It is also mentioned in the play how recurrent the phenomenon of lecturers in English becoming celebrated vernacular writers is. However, Manjula also defends the “accusations” against her that she has abandoned her native tongue in order to seek fame and fortune from the western audience. She points out the parochial narrow- mindedness of the literary institutions as the President of Sahitya Akademi disapproves of her work, but hypocritically delivers the lecture in English.

The play also explores the supposed class conflict in languages. Manjula while refuting the claims of the President of Sahitya Akademi, says that proficiency in English makes people feel empowered to be condescending. Later in the play, she disapproves of her sister Malini’s consistent use of English for social communication citing it snobbish, letting slip how she had used Kannada to communicate with her subordinates and domestic helps. Karnad reveals the linguistic hypocrisy of a postcolonial individual, to whom English is empowering but essentially a class statement, but the mother tongue is a cultural root which needs to be jealously guarded from imaginary western onslaughts. It is interesting how the play ends with the Babel of Kannada and English, before the stage darkens finally.

6.2. The Quest for Completion

The novel mentioned in “Broken Images” centers around a disabled person’s perspective on the world around her. Manjula, in her on-screen live speech explains how she based the character on her physically handicapped younger sister Malini, who was disabled waist down. There is a persistent crisis between the intellectually superior Malini with the physically imposing Manjula. Manjula in spite of her physical vigor is decimated by the wheelchair bound Malini who wins the love and affection of their parents and Manjula’s husband Pramod, and also manages to write the universally acclaimed English novel before her premature death. Manjula strives throughout her life to win over the “crippled” Malini, who finally manages to take over Manjula’s body as the image on the screen syncs with the lower body of Manjula and takes over her personality. Malini finally wins the game as despite her disability and premature death, it was she who achieved the coveted completion—physical, emotional and social.

6.3. The Suppression of Memories

Manjula deliberately suppresses her memories of Malini and distorts them to defend her actions. She pretends of writing the novel which was written by Malini before her death, and suppresses her hatred for Malini pretending to be a caring and mourning sister. Even through the inquisition of the image, Manjula desperately tries to distort the reality of her relationship with her parents, Malini and even her now estranged husband Pramod. In the final denouement, Manjula is forced to admit her hatred for her sister and stealing her novel. But, even then she tries to blank out the image by unplugging the screen.

6.4. Identity Crisis

The image in the screen puts Manjula in a crisis, as it is her own image but not her ‘self.’ We are never sure who the image on screen is. In a review of the play Shanta Serbjeet Singh says how “it looks like her but it is Malini and the conflict between the self and the image, between delusion and reality, between the outer mask and the inner truth that emerges in the tussle between the sisters and is the very stuff of the drama.” It becomes evident how suppressed truth and memories only come out through self-questioning and by dissociating from the stereotype of the ‘self.’ Manjula’s frenzied attempt to preserve herself, by unplugging the screen fails as Malini’s personality through the image takes over as the lower half of her body mindlessly syncs with the image. The stage direction where the stage revolves with the various other screens showing different images of Manjula silently gesticulating, also cements her loss of identity and ‘self’.

6.5. Virtual Reality vs. Reality

There is a tassel between the virtual reality that Manjula was trying to push in the live television programme, and the sordid reality of her relationship with Malini and Pramod and her subsequent appropriating of Malini’s novel, which interestingly is disclosed by a virtual image. This ongoing conflict between the “real” Manjula and the virtual reality of Manjula’s “image” essentially inverts our understanding of reality and virtual. It is the so called real Manjula who is

deluding herself and the audience, while the virtual Manjula who unearths the truth. In the end, the real and the virtual unites, while one decimates the other.

6.6. Celebrityhood

“Broken Images” subtly disapproves of all those writers in English who are constantly in the news, for lucrative advances from foreign publishers, for works that are many years away to seeing the light of day, for invitations to foreign colleges, lecture tours and autograph signing book launches. There are also the questions that disturb some of us: are the Indian English writings cut off from the "smell of the soil," have they sold out to a market-driven economy, have they struck a trade-off with their conscience by not writing in their native language.

However, Manjula in her initial television speech also marginally defends this celebrityhood through English writing. She admits that the bonus from her literary agent has made her financially independent, but also says how it was the Indian-ness of her writing and not the western audience angling that has made her novel so successful. She defends the commercialization of her writing suggesting that there is no shame in making her trade meaningful through money. She also claims that she can very well be a bilingual author, and writing in English is just choosing a different linguistic medium for her story not abandoning her native culture. But, all these claims fall flat as her doppelganger unmasks her for what she is—a mediocre literary fraud who steals her deceased sister’s writing for her own benefit.

The final sequence perpetuates the celebrity image, as the image/ Malini takes over both Manjula’s self and the studio and speaks in a flamboyant celebrity voice of her many plans and successes, as we continue seeing the fragmented individual behind the celebrity image.

DID YOU KNOW?

Talking about the technical facet of staging the Hindi version of the play “Bikhre Bimba”, director Alyque Padamsee said, "There are two Shabanas in the play, it is

Shabana speaking to Shabana. With the aid of technology, there are two Shabanas on the stage at the same time!" Shabana Azmis, on the other hand said, "The minute I finished reading the script, I said I was on! The play is so dramatic and challenging. It is a technical nightmare; I have to react to my own televised image on the screen. The image is shot as a single one hour shot, so the timing is crucial, there is no room for mistake."

7. CHARACTER ANALYSIS

“Broken Images” is a one-character play. But, the doppelganger of the protagonist Manjula acts as the necessary other for dialogue delivery. There are also mentions of Malini and Pramod. It might be futile to attempt a character analysis of the latter two, as their characters are seen through the perspectives of Manjula and her image. Thus, how truthful they are might be dubious.

Manjula Nayak

Manjula is a lecturer in English and the now successful, Kannada-turned-English writer. She initially looks confident and efficiently delivers her ten minute speech on television. She declares her parochial liberality, literary success and love for her younger, disabled and now deceased sister Malini. But later the whole truth of her hatred for Malini, her territorial aggressiveness (as she refused to stay in Koramangala for its cosmopolitan non-Kannada neighborhood) and unscrupulous stealing of her sister’s novel are revealed.

She is also revealed to be suspicious and jealous of her sister’s beauty, sensitivity and intellectual vibrancy. She is distant with her husband Pramod and is bound in a love-less relationship, where she is the predominant and bitter caregiver. She deliberately suppresses her memories and attempts to defend her subterfuge, as she declares that she appropriated Malini’s novel not because of financial gain and fame, but to cover up Malini’s cruel portrayal of her in the novel. She is bitter of the fact that her parents and later Pramod got estranged from her and blames it on Malini. She finally admits that Malini and possibly Pramod had despised her insensitivity and it was all a probable revenge against them.

Her final attempt to decimate Malini and all the bitter and uncomfortable memories unearthed by the inquisition of the image backfires as her personality is taken over by the image who speaks in the voice of a now celebrity Malini.