Journal of Research in Humanities 142

Introduction
The article analyses a short theatrical performance of Girish Karnad’s
play Hayavadana, directed by Prabha Mandayam and Mayank Bakshi at
the OASIS (Organization of Associated Students from the Indian
Subcontinent) Annual Culture Show in 2008. OASIS shows rich and
complex cultural tradition of Indian subcontinent with performances that
comprise of classical, folk, and contemporary forms of music, dance, and
drama. This performance of 44 minutes and 40 seconds was uploaded on
YouTube on 7 September 2012 (Mandayam n. page).
In the article, the theatrical performance of Hayavadana is examined with
reference to Karnad’s text. I have focussed my discussion on the structural
and thematic importance of the characters and scenes that are not included
in the performance. My discussion specially focuses on the use of masks
in the performance as compared to their employment in Karnad’s text.
Themes emphasised through masks in the text as well as in the
performance are suggested in terms of Yakshagana tradition, modernity,
post coloniality, and the Indian nation. I have debated in this article that
Karnad’s use of folk forms is not unintentional but evinces a tenacity to
introduce an innovative form for modern Indian theatre. I have explored
how Karnad makes the traditional folk forms of Indian drama modern in
their exhibition so that the local and traditional themes become suitable
and effective for his present audience.
Methodology
The text of Hayavadana and its theatrical performance are two different
sources that are engaged in this article for discussion. The research
methods used for the study are, therefore, analytical and dramaturgical. I
have developed a postcolonial approach drawn from critical theory to
interpret this theatrical performance in relation to the written text.
Yakshagana Conventions
Karnad admits that he has composed Hayavadana in the Yakshagana
tradition (Karnad, Indian Literature 99). For this composition, young
Karnad’s familiarity with Yakshagana plays during his boyhood at Sirsi
cannot be overlooked. The requirement for an essentially Indian
experimental theatre during the 1960s is also a contributory factor for
Karnad to go back to Yakshagana. The immediate occasions, however,
were Satyadev Dubey’s desire for ‘a play in the Bhagavata style’ from
Karnad, and B. V. Karanth’s suggestion to make a play out of the story
 Girish Karnad's Hayavadana: Analysis of Text and its Theatrical Performance 143

of the transposed heads instead of a film as Karnad was planning (Paul

4). It did not take long for the playwright to realise that the story could
‘make a marvellous theatre’ (Karnad, Indian Literature 99). As the use of
masks became a solution for swapping the heads, he began to engage all
other conventions of Yakshagana: songs, music, the Bhagavata, Ganesha
pooja (prayer) at the opening, the Bhagavata’s prayer at the end, and
stylised action. All these conventions are observed in the text, but in the
theatrical performance under discussion, the directors do not employ
some conventions. This performance employs narrative techniques like
the story-within-a-story, an omnipresent narrator, Bhagavata, and uses
conventional devices like masks for the two male protagonists and the
horse- man and curtains in an untraditional fashion, but it does not include
the mask of Lord Ganesha, the female chorus, and the talking dolls.
Ganesha
The text of Hayavadana begins with stage directions. When the curtain
rises, the entire stage is empty except one chair and one table in the back
portion of the stage. Mask of Ganesha is placed on the chair. The play
opens with the projection of the myth of Lord Ganesha who himself being
an ‘embodiment of imperfection’, of ‘incompleteness’, is worshipped as
the destroyer of incompleteness (Karnad, Three Plays 73). Bhagavata
sings the prayer to Ganesha, the Lord and Master of success and
perfection, and the musicians make an appropriate opening of the play in
Hindu Yakshagana tradition as follows:
O Elephant headed Herambha whose flag is victory
and who shines like a thousand suns,
O husband of Riddhi and Siddhi, seated on a mouse and
decorated with a snake,
O single-tusked destroyer of incompleteness... (Karnad, Three
Plays 73)
According to the folk drama convention, the image of Lord Ganesha has
to be transported to the stage for offering a pooja to Him for the success
of the play. After pooja, the Bhagavata sings a song as a tribute to the
God and pays homage to Him. Accepting Him as supremacy, Bhagavata
notices innate paradox, including identity crisis, within the God.
Although He is the son of Lord Siva and Parvati, Lord Ganesha is
incomplete and imperfect for He has an elephantine head with a broken
tusk and a cracked belly. Nevertheless, he is the ‘destroyer of
incompleteness’ (Karnad, Indian Literature 99). Significantly, He does
not perform any role in the lives of Karnad’s protagonists, nor is played
 Journal of Research in Humanities 144

by any actor. In this framework, Karnad has used the mask of Ganesha to
announce another incomplete character that is Hayavadana. Karnad
presents Ganesha as an outer agency for ensuring the success of the play
and to design the play in traditional Yakshagana form. In the text of
Hayavadana we perceive that at the very beginning of the play, it is
through the mask of Ganesha that hybridity is offered as the best solution
for life but in the theatrical performance the non- appearance of Ganesha
tarnishes this thematic strength.
Hayavadana deals with the theme of completeness and by opening the
play with Lord Ganesha, Karnad indicates that the perfection of man has
nothing to do with his physical look which perhaps the audience of this
performance cannot understand completely. In this play the incomplete
Hayavadana seems better than the complete human character such as
Devadatta, Kapila, and Padmini. In my opinion, the readers of the text
understand it better as they see a distorted and incomplete deity right in
the opening of the play who is worshipped by the otherwise complete
looking individuals.
The mask of Ganesha, a traditional requirement of a Yakshagana play, is
employed by Karnad in the text to present that Hayavadana is strikingly
similar to the Lord who has ‘An elephant’s head on a human body, a
broken tusk and cracked belly’ (Karnad, Three Plays 73). Hayavadana’s
interference is as meaningful as that of the presence of Ganesha in the
text. For instance, Hayavadana is mistaken to have put on a mask by the
Bhagavata, who soon realises that ‘this isn’t a mask! It’s his real
head!’(Karnad, Three Plays 78). The mask is reality in the case of both
Hayavadana and Ganesha. The readers of the text realise that the human
beings exhibit no such correlation between physical appearance and
reality.
In the text, the ritualistic invocation of Lord Ganesha, the elephant headed
God in the nandi (singing of benedictory verse) and the Bharatavakaya
(valedictory verse) fulfil the traditional Yakshagana preparation and the
God assumes symbolic significance (Mangaiyarkarasi 321). The play
revolves around the myth of Ganesha which operates at several levels.
Lord Ganesha, the embodiment of imperfection, suggests a major
development in the action as well as in the central theme of man’s struggle
for completeness. C. Georgge Jacob says as follows:
The mythical figure of Lord Ganesha representing a perfect blend
of three different worlds of experience – the divine, the human
 Girish Karnad's Hayavadana: Analysis of Text and its Theatrical Performance 145

and the animal – becomes central within the frame of the sub plot
too, since it foreshadows the character of Hayavadana. (Jacob 10)
The mask of Ganesha is used to criticise religious beliefs and practices of
Indian Hindu men. First, the incomplete and imperfect Lord Ganesha is
exposed and then Hayavadana recounts his authentic experiences of
wasteful pilgrimages that he had undertaken to all the holy places, holy
people, gods, and goddesses. In the performance, Hayavadana shares his
experiences of going to deities and holy places but as the audience do not
see Ganesha as an incomplete deity on stage, they do not understand why
the gods and goddesses are criticised for not being useful.
Hayavadana occupies a unique status in Karnad’s vision as it
encompasses three worlds of experience: the divine, the human, and the
animal just like the mask of Ganesha presents these three worlds to the
readers of the play. Quite strikingly, Hayavadana is similar to Lord
Ganesha who has ‘An elephant’s head on a human body, a broken tusk
and cracked belly’ (Karnad, Three Plays 73). Where Ganesha is brought
to the stage as the supreme God, fulfilling the Yakshagana traditional
requirement, Hayavadana is seen as an unwelcome intruder into the main
play. Ganesha, therefore, becomes a foil for Hayavadana. The play is a
criticism on the theme of completeness and complete selves. What,
perhaps, the performance neglects by excluding Ganesha is the essential
principle to display the major themes of totality and perfection and how
masterfully Karnad employs Yakshagana tradition to deal with the
modern realities.
Lord Ganesha does not interfere in the human affairs, either positively or
negatively. It is merely a traditional requirement that Karnad makes use
of for the opening of his play, but Ganesha is later compared to the
Celestial Being, Hayavadana’s father, who rather than being grateful to
Hayavadana’s mother, turns savage to curse her. Karnad shows that
perhaps the Celestial Beings too are not free from jealousy. Had the
gandharva been magnanimous, he could have just left the Princess as a
human being and transformed Hayavadana, his own son, into a complete
man or complete horse, if not a divine being. Unfortunately, he has no
good use for his divine power as is seen in case of Ganesha.
Unlike Lord Ganesha and the Celestial Being, Goddess Kali makes her
presence felt directly. Karnad’s masked goddess in the text of the play is
a modern presentation of a deity on stage. First she is asleep. Then, she is
insolent and reluctant to grant the prayers of her devotees. When she is
roused from her sleep, she offers help half-heartedly indicating that such
 Journal of Research in Humanities 146

incomplete blessings add more woes to the incomplete beings. She does
not really care to check whether or not the bhaktas (Lochtefeld n. page)
are benefitted by and satisfied with her blessings (Dhanavel 45).
Bhagavata’s closing prayer to Lord Ganesha, another traditional
requirement to close a performance, remains just a prayer. According to
Karnad, it is better for the prayer to go unheeded to avoid further
problems. Karnad does not see the problem of identity crisis as a crisis,
but a characteristic of the human beings with which they can live happily
or otherwise can make their lives miserable.
It is merely a technical feature of a Yakshagana play to have the image of
Lord Ganesha and perform a pooja for Him for the success of the play.
Karnad, however, realises the rich thematic connotations of the image
through the poetic and prose rendering of the Bhagavata’s prayer which
is highly suggestive of the playwright’s chief concern throughout the
play. Lord Ganesha, representing a perfect blend of three different worlds
of experience, the divine, the human, and the animal, is the ‘destroyer of
incompleteness’ (Karnad, Three Plays 73). Simultaneously, He is the
‘embodiment of imperfection, of incompleteness’ as well as ‘the Lord and
Master of Success and Perfection’ (Lochtefeld n. page). Interestingly, the
concluding part of the Bhagavata’s invocation to this paradoxical god
resonates with a sense of mystery: “It is not for us to understand this
Mystery or try to unravel it. Nor is it within our powers to do so. Our duty
is merely to pay homage to the Elephant-headed god and get on with our
play” (Karnad, Three Plays 73).
In a very important sense Lord Ganesha ‘pervades’ the whole play
(Mukherjee 137). In addition to the traditional requirement, Karnad uses
this mask of Ganesha to discuss important themes in the play and to
understand other characters in relation to him. Ganesha foreshadows the
character of Hayavadana and is a contrast to Goddess Kali whose role is
played by an actor on the stage. Significantly, the Bhagavata does not
direct Hayavadana to Lord Ganesha for the destruction of his
incompleteness but to the goddess. None of the characters mentions Him
in the play. But at the end, the Bhagavata thanks the Mangalamoorthy that
is Lord Ganesha, for His grace in fulfilling the desires of a grandfather, a
child, and a horse. Then, joining all the other actors, he also prays to Lord
Ganesha as follows:
Grant us, O Lord, good rains, good crop, Prosperity in poetry,
science, industry and other affairs.
 Girish Karnad's Hayavadana: Analysis of Text and its Theatrical Performance 147

Give the rulers of our country success in all endeavours, and

along with it, a little bit of sense. (Karnad, Three Plays 139)
Thus worshipped as a traditional requirement, the God’s mystery of
incompleteness and imperfection is accepted without question whereas
other gods, goddesses, saints, and rishis (sages) are ridiculed along with
the incomplete characters. Lord Ganesha remains the entry as well as the
exit point for Hayavadana indicating that apparently Karnad’s approach
to drama is religious and reverential, though his play is generally
concerned with irreligion and irreverence.
The protagonist of the sub-plot, Hayavadana, has a human body and an
equine head but he is not a god as is Ganesha. Though Hayavadana is
born of a gandharva father, he is not one himself because he does not
have divine powers like his father to change his own shape or that of
others. He is not a man, nor a horse, though he has features of both.
Hayavadana is thus incomplete but he is unable to accept his fate. Within
the range of his experience, he desires to look like human beings in order
that he may belong to their society. Hence, he struggles for completeness
that is to be a complete human being. Karnad brings in Ganesha, a
traditional use of mask, with that of Hayavadana, a modern presentation
of mask, to study the two characters focusing on their similarities and
differences.
Female Chorus
The Female Chorus is introduced in the text of Hayavadana but is not
employed in the theatrical performance under study. This Female Chorus
suggests that Padmini who is presented as oppressed and deprived and
who becomes alienated in the end of the play is a representative of a
colonised nation that is struggling to either attain or regain its identity.
Karnad’s use of the Female Chorus as Padmini’s mask is a novel feature
in the masking tradition of India.
When Padmini is given the option of placing the heads back, she makes
use of the opportunity and swaps the heads to make a complete individual
with Devadatta’s head and Kapila’s body. If it is assumed that Padmini
manipulates the situation during head swapping, it is the Female Chorus
that effectively reveals the cause of this transposition as Padmini’s desire.
To understand her inner mind, the song of the Female Chorus is sung both
at the beginning and at the end of the play as follows:
 Journal of Research in Humanities 148

Why should love stick to the sap of a single body? When the stem
is drunk with the thick yearning of the many-petalled, many-
flowered lantana, why should it be tied down to the relation of a
single flower? (Karnad, Three Plays 82)
It does not escape reader’s notice that the single stem of Padmini is
endowed with the treasure of many petals and many flowers. When this
natural image of the single stem with many flowers is applied to the social
image of marriage and family in an Indian society, discord and
discontentment is experienced. Karnad through this song of the Female
Chorus questions monogamy in his society. The Female Chorus functions
as an innovative mask for Padmini on the stage to reveal her hidden
thoughts. This mask of Padmini suggests the struggle of a subaltern, a
postcolonial term used by Antonio Gramsci to denote subordinate
position, who is deprived of her basic right of choice in marriage in an
Indian society (Spivak 269). Karnad further presents how this subaltern
becomes a rebel as Padmini speaks her mind out rather than accepting
whatever is decided by her patriarchal society that functions as a coloniser
for her. The Female Chorus gives voice to the desires and feelings of
Padmini who becomes a doubly oppressed subject by colonialism and
patriarchy in India. Karnad through this mask for Padmini, not only
exposes her subalternity but also fuses energy in her life so that she can
speak her heart out. Karnad, therefore, shifts Padmini’s position from the
margin to the centre.
Karnad through the swapped heads of Devadatta and Kapila gives the
Indian idea of the supremacy of head because he shows later in
Hayavadana that the bodies revert to suit their heads. This idea taken
from Indian mythology indicates Karnad’s Indian imagination. On the
other hand, Padmini remains discontented because she cannot enjoy
living with her complete husband, in terms of head and body, for good.
Her ultimate desire to attain perfection and completion in her husband
stays unfulfilled. It is at this point, that the recurrent song of the Female
Chorus about ‘the thick yearning of the many-petalled, many-flowered
lantana’ symbolises Padmini’s mind (Karnad, Three Plays 132). It is this
mask of Padmini in the text that shows that her choice to attain a perfect
husband is in conflict with the particular concept of matrimony in India.
Padmini, therefore, finds herself alienated from her community and
decides to perform sati that is self-immolation. As Padmini’s body blazes,
the female musicians sing a chorus that is agonizingly ironic and escalates
the pain of death. The soft yet poignant song heightens the irony of the
situation:
 Girish Karnad's Hayavadana: Analysis of Text and its Theatrical Performance 149

Our sister is leaving in a palanquin of sandalwood. Her mattress

is studded with rubies which burn and glow. She is decked in
flowers which blossom on tinder wood and whose petals are
made of molten gold. How the garlands leap and cover her,
aflame with love. Good-bye, dear sister. Go you without fear. The
Lord of Death will be pleased with the offering of three coconuts.
(Karnad, Three Plays 131)
The custom of sati is scorned but with the painful song. However, the
audience of the performance do not get emotionally involved in this tragic
scene because of the absence of the Female Chorus. However, in the text,
the Female Chorus voices Padmini’s fulfilment for a short duration
followed by alienation, pain, and suffering.
Dolls
Karnad has introduced the two talking dolls in the text of Hayavadana to
comment upon the changes that appear in Devadatta and Padmini after
the interchange of heads between Devadatta and Kapila. Both were in
love with Padmini and she also loves both of them. She is presented as a
sensual woman in postcolonial terminology and her sensuality is
addressed through the talking dolls. She loves Devadatta for his intellect
and is attracted towards Kapila because of his physical virility. Padmini
swaps the heads of the two and conveys her desire of a husband with the
new combination of a strong head with a strong body. But it is the head
that rules over the body and after some time the body of her new husband
loses its vigour. The changes that are observed in the body are to be
highlighted in scenes; therefore, Karnad has introduced the two dolls in
the second act. Puppets are popular as a traditional use of masking in
India, but Karnad has made this technique modern by introducing
performers who are masked as Dolls rather than employing puppets on
the stage. These dolls, who possess an unusual perception, become
psychological mask for Padmini just like the Female Chorus. Where the
Female Chorus supports the desires of Padmini, these talking Dolls
condemn her inner desires. The strategy of dolls helps in evolving the plot
further. Padmini is the only character in the play who does not wear a
physical mask. Karnad has, therefore, used two different kinds of masks
for Padmini to present two diverse views in a contemporary yet traditional
Indian society.
Hayavadana has a Chinese box structure, with the outer frame telling the
story of the horse-headed man, and the inner frame telling Devadatta-
Kapila-Padmini story. There is a third frame, that of Bhagavata who, like
 Journal of Research in Humanities 150

the Sutradhara in the Sanskrit plays, traverses faultlessly between these

two frames. These three frames act as the abstract register of the stage,
whereas the ‘actors’, the musicians and to some extent the dolls and
goddess Kali create the concrete register. What distinguishes the
performance from the text is that by eliminating the Dolls from the
performance it becomes hard for the audience to appreciate the principal
account and evaluate the play to its fullest.
In Act II, two dolls are brought to Padmini’s house. These dolls observe
changes in Devadatta’s body and Padmini’s change of emotions for him.
They perform the role similar to that of the Greek chorus in telling the
audience what is expected of an Indian wife and what kind of attitude is
considered objectionable. The dolls ultimately reveal to the audience that
in an Indian society it is the head that matters and not the body. Padmini,
while living with Devadatta’s head and Kapila’s body dreams of Kapila.
Since the dolls can see what Padmini sees in her dreams, they find that a
man who comes in Padmini’s dream is not her husband. Padmini sees in
her dream a man who is rough like a labourer indicating that she dreams
of Kapila and this is conveyed to the audience through the dolls.
Karnad has, therefore, introduced these dolls in Hayavadana to express
effectively Padmini’s feelings and the nuances of sexual repressions
along with Devadatta’s physical transformation:
DOLL II: I know I’ve noticed something too. DOLL I:
What?
DOLL II: His stomach. It was so tight and muscular.
Now... DOLL I: I know. It’s loose... (Karnad, Three Plays 116)
Biological transformations take place in both Devadatta and Kapila as
they reach their former self of distinct head and body. Gradually, Padmini
is disenchanted with her transposed husband. In fact, she speaks to
Devadatta about the increasing loss of Kapila’s vitality in him. He brushes
aside the question but she becomes obsessed with Kapila’s memories and
these are dramatically well brought out through her song and the dolls.
Just like the Female Chorus, the dolls also bring Padmini, a subaltern, to
the centre rather the margin. It is around this subaltern character,
oppressed in a patriarchal Indian society, which the whole plot revolves.
She uses the Ujjain fair as an excuse to buy new dolls for her son and
sends Devadatta out. Then, she goes to the forest in search of Kapila and
finds him. It is important to note that she also takes her son with her. At
first, Kapila is upset by Padmini’s arrival but he accepts her in order to
 Girish Karnad's Hayavadana: Analysis of Text and its Theatrical Performance 151

attain completion. However, their happiness is short- lived, as Devadatta

comes after them to put an end to their unsettled triangular life. Both
Devadatta and Kapila realise that they love Padmini deeply but cannot
live together ‘like the Pandavas and Draupadi’ (Karnad, Three plays 129).
Hence they fight with each other and kill themselves. Padmini stands a
mute spectator to this deadly fight because she also knows in her blood
that they could not live together. Inevitably, she enters the funeral pyre as
a sati. The identity crisis of Padmini, of Devadatta as well as of Kapila
leads all of them to find liberation in fire.
Conclusion
Karnad has employed dolls as one of the important motifs of folk-theatre
to facilitate a mixture of the human and non-human to create a magical
world. Hayavadana is a realm of incomplete individuals, substantiated
with imperfect god Ganesha and vocal dolls to present a world apathetic
to the longings and frustrations, ecstasies and miseries of human beings.
A theatrical text becomes detailed only when the authorial cycle of it
comes to a complete circle. This includes the text of the writer, the
directorial reading, the actors’ physicality, the stage conceptualization,
and the light designer’s art of forming the atmosphere. Thus the play text
acts as a potential field of significance and by omitting vital details from
the text, the theatrical performance dulls the thematic vigour of the play.
Strikingly, the Yakshagana techniques have beautifully blended with the
themes of Hayavadana. For example, the worship of Lord Ganesha, the
incomplete and imperfect god, a mere technical requirement of
Yakshagana, becomes very significant thematically. Similarly, the
Bhagavata, the traditional stage manager and narrator of Yakshagana
plays multiple roles, including that of a listener to Hayavadana, who
interrupts in the main play. Of course, the Bhagavata performs his
traditional functions of introducing the characters, filling the gaps by his
narration, singing songs at appropriate situations along with the Female
Chorus, and helping the characters when necessary. In this performance,
however, the songs of Bhagavata and the Female Chorus are not included
which provide restricted information to the audience. Bhagavata is also
an important complement of the play as he comments on the inner
thoughts of the protagonists. In the text, the Female Chorus shares his role
of singing, which is Karnad’s notable invention in Indian drama. Female
Chorus ironically celebrates Padmini’s desire and her voluntary death by
fire. Karnad’s Female Chorus, in contrast to the dolls, is not the voice of
traditional wisdom. Contrarily, it stands for the passionate feelings of
 Journal of Research in Humanities 152

Padmini and thus merges with the protagonist as an integral component

of the character. The Female Chorus and the talking dolls are used as
psychological masks for Padmini. Padmini’s lack, deprivation, and
alienation shown through these two masks present her as a subaltern, but
on the other hand, she is not subjugated, subordinated, and silent in the
play.
Stylisation of action, a major feature of Yakshagana, is observed both in
the text as well as in the theatrical performance of Hayavadana. This
technique constantly reminds the audience that they are watching a play
and not a slice of life, resulting in some amount of distance between the
play and the audience psychologically. Therefore, the audience is able to
think over the play for themselves critically. The theme of
incompleteness, embodied by Lord Ganesha, Hayavadana, Padmini,
Devadatta, and Kapila requires that the audience analyse their own
incompleteness and accept it as a fact of life. The sword fight of Devadatta
and Kapila, and the reaction of Padmini are stylised so as to increase the
awareness of the audience about the problems faced by the characters in
the play. As the action is slowed down in stylisation, the characters freeze
when the Bhagavata reveals the feelings of these characters. Thus, action,
slow action, and stillness go to make the play of incompleteness in
Hayavadana. In short, the Yakshagana conventions have enriched not
only the thematic significance of the play but also Karnad’s Indian
dramatic imagination.