The Shadow Lines, Indian English Novel, BA English Honours, MA ENGLISH, The Story Line

The Shadow Lines, BA English Honours, MA ENGLISH 

The Story Line: 

The Shadow Lines (1988) is a Sahitya Akademi Award-winning novel by Indian writer Amitav Ghosh. It is a book that captures perspective of time and events, of lines that bring people together and hold them apart; lines that are clearly visible from one perspective and nonexistent from another; lines that exist in the memory of one, and therefore in another's imagination. A narrative built out of an intricate, constantly crisscrossing web of memories of many people, it never pretends to tell a story. Instead, it invites the reader to invent one, out of the memories of those involved, memories that hold mirrors of differing shades to the same experience. 

The novel is set against the backdrop of historical events like the Swadeshi movement, Second World War, Partition of India and Communal riots of 1963-64 in Dhaka and Calcutta. 

While in London in the early 1980s, the unnamed narrator recounts a series of stories and memories to his cousin Ila and his uncle Robi. The stories and memories belong to the narrator; his uncle Tridib; and his grandmother, Tha'mma. The memories begin in the early twentieth century when Tridib's grandfather, Mr. Justice Chandrashekhar Datta-Chaudhuri, befriends Lionel Tresawsen at séances in London.

 

Tha'mma was born in 1902 in Dhaka, British India. As a young girl, Tha’mma’s father and her uncle, Jethamoshai, begin feuding, so they split their huge communal house in half with a wall. The two sides of the family stop speaking to each other, and Tha'mma tells her younger sister, Mayadebi, that Jethamoshai's family lives in "the upside-down house," where they do everything upside down and backwards. After Tha'mma and Mayadebi marry (Mayadebi marries the Shaheb, Justice Datta-Chaudhuri's son), they lose contact with Jethamoshai. Tha'mma follows her husband as he works on the railroad until he dies in 1936. At this point, her son, the narrator's father, is still a child. Tha’mma becomes a teacher and refuses to accept help of any sort from her family. Though Tha'mma had been very interested in the terrorist movements against British rule in her youth, when the Partition happens in 1947, it means little to her. However, she never returns to Dhaka since it becomes the capital of the Muslim country East Pakistan. 

The Shaheb is a wealthy diplomat, and in 1939, he ends up needing a special medical operation that can't be performed in India. Mrs. Price, Lionel Tresawson's daughter, invites the Shaheb and his family to live with her in London so that he can receive medical attention there. Tridib, who is nine years old, accompanies his father, while his older brother, Jatin, stays in school in India. Tridib loves London and is fascinated by Alan Tresawsen, Mrs. Price's brother, and his friends Dan, Mike, and Francesca. In the time leading up to World War II and the early days of the Blitz, Tridib spends his days exploring bombsites and listening to Snipe, Mrs. Price's husband, tell stories. In 1940, a bomb hits Alan's house on Brick Lane, killing him and Dan. Later that year, Tridib's family returns to India. 

Over the next decade, Mayadebi and the Shaheb have a third son, Robi. The narrator's father marries the narrator's mother, who soon gives birth to a son, the narrator. Jatin marries a woman affectionately known as Queen Victoria, and the couple has a daughter named Ila, who is the narrator's age. Mrs. Price, whose daughter May was an infant when Tridib was in London, has a son named Nick. Ila's parents are wealthy, and she spends her childhood traveling around the world for her father's work. The narrator, on the other hand, never gets far outside of Calcutta. Instead, he spends his time listening to Tridib tell stories about London and other faraway lands. Tridib teaches the narrator to use his imagination and explains that the world in one's imagination can be just as real as the outside world. Ila doesn't understand this—she sees too much of the world to understand how one's imagination can be anywhere as good. 

For a time, Ila's family lives with the Prices in London. When she's eight, her family visits Calcutta for a festival. The narrator convinces Tha'mma to allow his family to accompany Ila's to their family home in Raibajar. When they meet Ila's family in Gole Park, the narrator's mother is shocked that the narrator, who spent weeks asking after Ila, is too shy to talk to her. The narrator feels as though his mother betrayed him by making it clear that he needs Ila more than Ila will ever need him. Regardless, the family piles into the Shaheb's two cars and drive for hours. When they reach the massive house, Ila leads the narrator into a half-underground storage room, which stores a massive table that Tridib's grandfather shipped back from London. Ila decides that they're going to play a game called Houses, which she plays with Nick in London. She informs the narrator of who Nick is, and the narrator understands that Nick is his competition for Ila's affection. Ila draws a map in the dust of Mrs. Price's house and adds a room for Magda, her doll, who is the baby for the purposes of the game. When everything is set, Ila tells the narrator what "happened" to Magda at school that day: the ugly school bully chased the beautiful blonde Magda home, yelling slurs at her—but Nick Price saved her from being beaten up. When Ila starts to cry, the narrator is angry and doesn't understand why she's crying. Finally, Tridib walks in with the children and listens to the narrator tell Ila's story. He encourages the narrator to not call Ila dumb for crying like the story is real, and he insists that everyone lives in stories. 

In 1959, Tridib and May, who is nineteen at the time, begin writing to each other. They exchange photos after a year. In 1963, Tridib sends May a very long letter recalling an experience he had as a boy in London, when he watched two strangers have sex in a bombed cinema. He tells May that he wants to meet her like those strangers did—as strangers in a ruin. May is flustered, but she makes plans to visit Tridib in India. Around the same time, Tha'mma, who is retired and has time on her hands for the first time in her life, receives word that her uncle Jethamoshai, who is in his nineties, still lives in the family home in Dhaka. She believes that it's her duty to bring Jethamoshai home to India. Not long after this comes to light, the Shaheb receives a job posting in Dhaka, and he, Mayadebi, and Robi move there. Finally, Mayadebi invites Tha'mma to visit, and they make plans to try to save their uncle from the growing unrest in the Muslim-majority city. May makes plans to travel to Calcutta and then to Dhaka with Tha'mma. Tridib decides to accompany them to Dhaka. 

The narrator joins Tridib and his father to pick May up from the train station. Over the next few days, the narrator accompanies Tridib and May as they drive around and see the sights. He shows her the table in Raibajar, and she tells him that Ila was a victim of bullying, but Nick never saved her. When they visit the Victoria Memorial, May becomes suddenly emotional. Tridib tells her that it's their ruin, which puzzles the narrator. He understands that there's a relationship between May and Tridib that he won't understand. Not long after that, on January 4, 1964, Tridib, May, and Tha'mma leave for Dhaka. 

A few days later, the narrator experiences a harrowing bus ride home from school as the driver tries to protect the dozen boys from the angry mobs in the streets. Meanwhile, in Dhaka, the Shaheb warns Mayadebi and Tha'mma that trouble is brewing there, but Tha'mma insists on seeing Jethamoshai anyway. Thirteen-year-old Robi is excited to see "trouble" and goes with them to the old house in Dhaka. There, a Muslim mechanic named Saifuddin greets them and explains that a rickshaw driver named Khalil cares for Jethamoshai. When Khalil arrives, he leads his guests into the house. Jethamoshai doesn't recognize his nieces, but he tells Tridib that he's waiting for his family to return so that he can take them to court and gain full ownership of the house. The driver races to the door and says that there's trouble, and they have to leave. Khalil agrees to drive Jethamoshai in his rickshaw to Mayadebi's house. When they're in the car, they turn a corner and come face to face with a mob. It surrounds the car and breaks the windshield. When the mob descends on the rickshaw, Tha'mma tells the driver to go, but May gets out to try to save Jethamoshai. Tridib follows her, but Tridib, Jethamoshai, and Khalil are all brutally murdered by the mob. The narrator's parents tell him later that Tridib died in an accident. The following year, Tha'mma gives her beloved gold chain away to fund the war with Pakistan and appears crazy to the narrator. His mother explains that Tha'mma hasn't been the same since "they" killed Tridib. 

In college, the narrator continues to both love Ila and find her frustrating, as she never understands why he is so insistent on remembering Tridib's stories or their own childhood antics. Once, during a summer holiday, she convinces the narrator and Robi to go with her to a nightclub. Robi doesn't want to go, but at the club, he forbids Ila from dancing with another man. She screams at them that she lives in London so she can be free of this kind of oppression. The narrator tells this story to Tha'mma on her deathbed, and it makes her extremely angry: she doesn't think Ila's kind of freedom is real. In her anger, Tha'mma writes a letter to the dean of the narrator's school the day before she dies, telling the dean that the narrator visits prostitutes and should therefore be expelled.

 

After seeing a lecture in Delhi, the narrator realizes that although he never connected the events as a child, the riot he experienced in Calcutta and the riot that killed Tridib in Dhaka was part of the same political uproar. As he studies Tridib's atlas, the narrator discovers that borders are meaningless and actually helped create the climate that brought on the riots in the first place. The narrator goes on to pursue an advanced degree in London. At one point, Ila takes Robi and the narrator to visit Mrs. Price and introduces them to Nick. The narrator shows off the power of Tridib's stories by leading his friends around London and through Mrs. Price's house based off of the mental maps Tridib created for him. Ila, Robi, and the narrator have dinner at an Indian restaurant afterwards, and Robi admits that he has a recurring nightmare about the riot in Dhaka in which he can never keep Tridib from getting out of the car. The narrator also reconnects with May, who plays oboe in an orchestra. They spend Christmas with Mrs. Price, and May suggests that Nick is lying about leaving his job in Kuwait: she believes he embezzled money. There's a blizzard that night, so Ila and the narrator stay at Mrs. Price's house in the cellar. Ila undresses in front of the narrator, not realizing his feelings for her, but she spends the night with Nick. 

Back in London a few years later, Ila marries Nick. At their party, the narrator gets very drunk and May offers to take him home and put him to bed. The narrator assaults May but feels horrible about it in the morning. She takes him with her while she collects money for her "worthy causes," and on a break, she talks about her relationship with Tridib. As the narrator prepares to return home a few months later, Ila confides in him that Nick is cheating on her, though she refuses to leave him. The night before the narrator leaves, he has dinner with May. At dinner, May tells the narrator about the riots and asks if he thinks that she killed Tridib. May tells him that she used to think she did, but she knows now that Tridib sacrificed himself and knew he was going to die. She asks the narrator to stay the night and he accepts, glad to finally understand the mystery of Tridib's death.

 Disclaimer: Images have been taken from the Google sites.

Borders, Violence, and Political Unrest, Relationship In Shadow Lines, BA English Honours, MA ENGLISH

 

Borders, Violence, and Political Unrest

 

The events of The Shadow Lines center primarily around riots that took place in Calcutta, India, and Dhaka, East Pakistan, in late 1963 and early 1964. Though the narrator doesn't discover the truth until the very end of the novel, it's this riot in Dhaka that kills Tridib, a realization that suddenly forces the narrator to reevaluate his experience of the conflict from his hometown in Calcutta and consider the ways in which the riots were an even bigger defining moment in his life than he realized at the time. As the narrator, in his late twenties or thirties, finally pieces together what happened, he begins to consider the role that British colonialism and the border between India and East Pakistan played in the conflict, and how the political unrest of the period truly impacted his understanding of his family and the world.

 

The novel questions the efficacy of borders. The family of Dutta Choudarys and Prices in London defy the borders between them and there is a continuous to and fro movement between the two. They have good relations despite the racial and cultural differences. Ila gets married to Roby and May falls in love with Tridib. Had the tragedy not struck, then the two might have tied the nuptial knot. It, therefore, demonstrates that there is not much difference between the people across the globe. The humanity is same everywhere. It would not be too bold to say that Ghosh has gone a little too far to bring the people together. When the British finally granted their colony of British India independence in 1947, they divided the colony along religious lines, creating the Hindu-majority country of India and the Muslim-majority countries of East Pakistan and West Pakistan. As the narrator, who grew up in the Indian city of Calcutta, describes, these borders meant that he was relatively unaware of anything happening outside his home in India—cities that were a thousand miles away but still in India were in the forefront of his consciousness and understanding, while cities that were a day's drive away, but in another country, simply didn't exist in his mind.

Freedom and Identity

 

The novel has an unnamed narrator relating the story of his experience, or to be precise, his uncle Tridib’s experience most of the times. Tridib was the narrator’s guiding spirit and mentor, who taught him how to use his imagination with precision who gave him worlds to travel in and eyes to see them with. Read More Novel The action of the novel has as its starting point the narrator’s memories of Tridib (then 8 years old) being taken to London during wartime and his experiences there with the Price family. Through the narrator’s grandmother and memories of her girlhood days in Dhaka, and her later return to the city in search of an old relative, the narrator is made aware of the tragic and violent consequences of the partition. Essentially the narrative ends with the incident, ghastly and tragic, of Tridib’s death in Dhaka riot.  

 

The Relationship in the Storyline:

 

The Shadow Lines centers on the relationship between freedom and how people try to achieve that freedom. In this way, the novel seeks to parse out the meanings of different kinds of freedom and how one's perception of freedom influences their identity. Further, the novel also suggests that the idea of freedom is enough to drive someone mad, even if freedom is ultimately unreachable.

 

The undivided India had long been living in peace and harmony and though people followed different religions, they stayed in mutual cooperation. It was towards the beginning of 20th century that the seeds of dissension were sown by some people in connivance with and on provocation of the ruling masters and the matters came to such a pass where the partition was the only choice. M.A. Jinna’s obstinate stand for a different nation for the Muslim population was not only myopic but also hazardous. Even after partition, the people lived peacefully except those led by the rumour mills of their brothers being attacked and killed in the other parts. The most to suffer were typical plodding countrymen who did not even know who M.A. Jinna or J.L. Nehru was or what was India being partitioned for. The old uncle to Tha’mma gives entry to a Muslim family, which stays with him and looks after him. Khali, the rickshaw driver is more concerned for him than his own family; and both the innocents are killed in the riots. The old folks stay where their roots are. They have an unqualified love and a deep sense of belonging for the place where they have been born. Tha’mma wants to get back to her native place in Dhaka and her uncle does not want to come to India. Both of them do not believe in the borders. Riots and other things of such nature are very transient in nature and get sucked up in the history and fade away from public memory before long.

 

The novel explores the idea of freedom primarily through the opposing definitions held by Tha'mma, the narrator's grandmother, and Ila, his cousin. Tha'mma, who was born in 1902, grew up during the British occupation of India. As a young woman, Tha'mma believed that there was nothing more important than securing freedom from British rule, even telling her wide-eyed grandson that she wanted to join the terrorists and assassinate British government officials to meet those ends. Despite being so intent on this freedom as a young woman, when Partition (the process that granted the colony of British India freedom from colonial rule by creating the separate countries of India, West Pakistan, and East Pakistan, which later became Bangladesh) finally took place in 1947, Tha'mma was far too busy working and raising a family as a widow to even celebrate, let alone consider the gravity of what happened. It's not until much later that 62-year-old Tha'mma, as she prepares to return to Dhaka for the first time since she was a young woman, realizes the implications of the colony's divisions. While she identifies proudly as an Indian and Hindu woman, the fact that she was born in Dhaka means that, in light of current borders, she was born in East Pakistan—a Muslim-majority country. This realization shakes her sense of identity to its very core, especially in light of her growing nationalism in her old age. This nationalism, which reaches its height after Tridib dies on this trip to Dhaka, leads Tha'mma to sell her beloved gold chain to fund the Indian fight against Muslims. When the narrator confronts her about it, she screams at him that she did it to ensure his freedom from "them" (presumably, the Muslim East Pakistanis). This suggests that Tha'mma's desire for freedom and an easy identity very literally drives her mad, and this nationalism only increases in the following years until her death.

 

The novel begins with the eight-year-old narrator talking of his experiences as a schoolboy living in the Gole-Park neighbourhood in Calcutta. He introduces the reader to the two branches of his family tree- the families of his Grandmother Tha’mma and that of the Grandmother’s sister, Mayadebi. According to the acclaimed critic Meenakshi Mukherjee this rendition in the novel amongst other details helps the reader feel the ‘concreteness of the existential and emotional milieu…the precise class location of his family, Bengali bhadralok, starting at the lower edge of the spectrum and ascending to its higher reaches in one generation, with family connections above and below its own
station…’ The grandmother is a schoolteacher and the father is a middle rung manager in a tyre company. 

As far as Tha'mma is concerned, Ila's desire for and definition of freedom is a direct attack on her own beliefs about freedom. This is primarily because Ila seeks her freedom by escaping to England, where she can live as a modern western woman: she can sleep with or flirt with men if she feels like it, she can travel around the world, and most importantly, she's no longer under the control of her male relatives in India. However, the novel questions if the "freedom" Ila finds by living in England is even real when it describes the man she marries, Nick Price. Though Ila's marriage to Nick is supposed to free her from obligations to her family and give her a platform of support, Nick admits mere months into their marriage that he has several other girlfriends and no interest in giving them up. When Ila refuses to leave her marriage because she loves Nick too much, she chooses to exist in a place where her freedom is compromised. The narrator interprets this as an indication that in some ways, Tha'mma was right: Ila can't be free. This is reinforced in a point that comes later in the novel but earlier chronologically, when the narrator tells his dying grandmother that Ila lives in England so that she can be free. Tha'mma calls Ila a whore and insists that Ila is in no way free—as per Tha'mma's understanding, freedom can't be purchased in the form of a plane ticket, especially since her own first and only plane ride to Dhaka resulted not only in an identity crisis, but the loss of family.

As the narrator speaks to others about the meaning of freedom, from his uncle Robi to May, he comes to understand though everyone desperately loves the idea freedom and wants it for themselves, actually achieving true freedom is nearly impossible. Robi believes he'll never be free of the traumatic memories of Tridib's death, which he witnessed firsthand; Ila chooses to never free herself from her unhappy marriage that was supposed to free her; and the narrator asserts that the Indian subcontinent will never truly be free from the spite and animosity caused by British rule, long after Partition. With this, the novel suggests that freedom is an impossible idea, and no one can ever be truly free, no matter how hard one might fight for it or attempt to escape oppression.

 Disclaimer: Images have been taken from the Goolgle sites.

The Shadow Lines, Themes and Symbolism, BA English Honours, MA ENGLISH

 The Shadow Lines, Themes and Symbolism, BA English Honours, MA ENGLISH

The Shadow Lines (1988) is a Sahitya Akademi Award-winning novel by Indian writer Amitav Ghosh. The book stirs up a number of themes. Time and distance in The Shadow Lines are illusory. The novel moves back and forth and the events are not narrated sequentially. The narrator is a man with great and penetrating insight. He can not only peep into the past and future but also into the lives of characters. It is a book that captures perspective of time and events, of lines that bring people together and hold them apart; lines that are clearly visible from one perspective and nonexistent from another; lines that exist in the memory of one, and therefore in another's imagination. Here the author shows that the borders those are drawn on the surface of the earth are so called borders which can not divide one's mind and imagination and the sense of nativity and origin. A narrative built out of an intricate, constantly crisscrossing web of memories of many people, it never pretends to tell a story. Instead, it invites the reader to invent one, out of the memories of those involved, memories that hold mirrors of differing shades to the same experience.

 Youth vs. Maturity

 The novel is set against the backdrop of historical events like the Swadeshi movement, Second World War, Partition of India and Communal riots of 1963-64 in Dhaka and Calcutta.

The Shadow Lines follows the unnamed narrator, the youngest member of the Indian Datta-Chaudhuri family, as he pieces together his family history. This history spans several decades and follows many different family members—including his grandmother's youth in Dhaka in the 1910s and 1920s, his uncle Tridib's experiences of World War II in England as a child, the Partition of India in 1947, and finally, the riots in Calcutta and Dhaka in 1964, which unfold when the narrator is eleven. As the narrator recounts these events in a nonlinear fashion, he seeks to make sense of his family and his history by reevaluating initially youthful and simplistic understandings of people and events. The novel suggests that in doing so, the narrator is finally able to reach maturity and a greater sense of his place in his family and in the world.

 

The novel pays close attention to the different ways that characters approach things based on their age, particularly in regards to the narrator. To this end, the narrator often tells stories multiple times, sometimes from different perspectives, to explore these differences. This is most evident first in the narrator's interpretation of the story Ila tells him while they're playing a game called Houses. She tells him a story about how their "daughter," her doll Magda, was attacked by a racist classmate on her way home from school. Ila and the narrator are eight years old at the time that Ila tells this story, and in his youthful ignorance, the narrator doesn't realize that this isn't a made-up narrative—this event actually happened to Ila. As a child herself, Ila attempts to make the event easier to bear by using the doll as a stand-in for herself and altering the story so that it ends happily. Because the narrator doesn’t realize that Ila’s story is part of her lived experience, he becomes angry when Ila cries while telling the story—as far as he's concerned, the story shouldn't matter, since it is just make-believe. However, Ila's version of the story does develop Nick Price, the savior figure, as the person with whom the narrator must compete for Ila's affection. Three years later, when the narrator recalls Ila's story and tells it to May, Nick's older sister, she explains what actually happened: Ila herself was the victim, and Nick didn't save her. In fact, he ran away, as he didn't want to be seen with an Indian girl. When the narrator learns what actually happened, it helps him to move towards maturity by developing a greater sense of understanding of those people around him. Especially since the narrator idolizes both Nick and Ila as a child (and Ila into adulthood), this shows him that he must be willing to allow his perspectives and understandings to mature and develop in order to grow up.

 This idea that understanding one's family history allows a person to reach a point of emotional maturity. The narrator, now an adult in his late twenties or early thirties, reconnects with May in London and learns about May's brief romantic relationship with Tridib almost twenty years prior, as well as the truth of Tridib's death. These were events that the narrator witnessed or heard about as a child, but he never fully understood—Tridib died before he could help the narrator make sense of the riots or Tridib's seemingly mysterious relationship with May.

 

When the narrator accompanies Tridib and May on their tourist activities in Calcutta, he is frustrated to realize that there are things between them that he doesn't understand, such as when Tridib mentions "ruins" belonging to them. It's cathartic for the narrator to finally be able to piece together some of those mysteries, such as when May explains that the "ruins" referred to a letter he wrote in which he confessed his love for her. She also tells the narrator that contrary to what his parents told him, Tridib didn't die in an accident. Rather, he died a grotesque and violent death attempting to protect May and his great uncle Jethamoshai from a riot. Following these revelations, the narrator and May have sex. In doing so, they connect in a very adult way over events they barely understood in their youth, which left them lost and uncertain of what even happened. By finally giving words to what happened and looking at each other as equal adults, rather than continuing to relate to each other like they did when May was in her early twenties and the narrator was a child, both of them achieve a sense of relief at finally uncovering a mystery that kept them chained to that place in time.

Overall, Ghosh presents youth and childhood as a period of both blissful innocence and shocking, anxiety-inducing uncertainty. By framing the novel around the narrator's quest to understand his childhood more fully—and his childhood desire for a more adult understanding of the people and events he experiences—the novel suggests that while youth and adulthood are two distinct states of being, each state continuously informs the other. Further, because it's not necessarily the happy moments that the narrator dwells on, either in the past or the preset, the novel ends with the assertion that growing up, becoming mature, and making sense of one's childhood necessarily hinges on losing one's childlike innocence and self-importance, and in doing so, coming to grips with the violent, awful, and nonsensical world.

 Ghosh in The Shadow Lines not only gives the readers the idea of nationalism but questions the so-called nationalism. The fundamental nationalism also emerged from the character of the narrator's grandmother. She is a fundamental nationalist and wants freedom. She is very passionate for freedom. As we see that when she was young during the Swadeshi movement, she wanted to john it and could do anything for the country.  But the author shows that the so called nationalism has no value at all. Here Thamma fails to see that nationalism has destroyed her home and spilled her kin's blood. As she says, "we have to kill them, before they kill us." Till the end she fails to realize that national liberty in no war guarantees individual liberty.

 

Disclaimer: Images have been taken from the Google sites.

NAGAMANDALA, The Background and the Themes of the Play, MA ENGLISH, BA ENGLISH HONOURS

 

NAGAMANDALA, The Background and the Themes of the Play:

 

Nagamandala  is  a  two-act  play  written  by  the  well-known  Indian  playwright  and actor Girish Karnad in 1987-88 and published in 1988. Nagamandala means ‘a play with cobra‘.  It was basically a Kannada play, then was translated into English. The play blends history with mythical  elements.  The  story  is  taken  from  a  Kannada  folklore  which  Karnad  heard  from  the poet A K Ramanujan. Nagamandala means ‘a play with cobra‘.  The  story  is  taken  from  a  Kannada  folklore  which  Karnad  heard  from  the poet A K Ramanujan.

 

The name “Nagamandala” has been derived from the ceremonial (cobra worship) practised in the southern Karnataka coastal areas. The legendary implications of  folklore traditions has been utilised by Girish Karnad in the play. The drama portrays the societal intricacies, evils, and the protagonist’s desire for emancipation and fulfillment. The play, Naga-Mandala, is based on folktales about Naga, popular in Karnataka and in several other parts of India in its different forms. Karnad had heard these tales from A.K. Ramanujan, who had collected many folktales and their variants prevalent in different parts of India.

 

Popular Folktale:

 

According to the folktale, there is a snake who assumes the form of the prince and enters the palace and woos the beautiful princess. When the prince comes to know about it, he gets the snake killed. The wife then sets him a riddle. If he fails to answer the riddle, he is to die. In some tales, the snake takes revenge on the man.

 

Utilisation of the Folktale In Karnad’s play.:

 

In Karnad’s play, it sacrifices itself for the happy life of Rani and Appanna. The play dramatizes man’s attitude to woman in a patriarchal society, mistrust, infidelity and lack of communication, breaking family life and the institution of marriage, and it reaffirms the significance of motherhood as the cementing factor in the family and the society. The play upholds the significance of family, marriage and society. The play is founded in a pastoral setting.

 

The Story Line:

 

It is the story of Rani, a trivial Asian woman who was married off by her parents, without her active consent, to an affluent man named Appanna. Rani, a naive virgin, goes to Appanna's house, yearning for a joyous and content life, as every woman aspires. But the circumstances she endures are despicable. Her husband, an orthodox character, who surmises in masculine pre-eminence, locks her on the first night of their weddings and leaves to see his paramour. This intimidation and coercion become a daily routine in Rani's vitality, who condones this as her fortune. 

 

The play Nagamandala is based on the two oral stories from Karnataka that the playwright Girish Karnad heard from his mentor, Professor A.K Ramanujan. The play exposes the exploitation and incarceration of women that occurs through the institution of marriage and how myths display the fears of men in society. The patriarchy control and restrict the actions of women. The play also mocks at the idea of chastity. It subtly hints at the emancipation and empowerment of women.

 

How a Bridegroom is chosen:

 

Her husband is a rich man named Appanna (any man). The name is a symbol to highlight that this is the reality of most weddings that occur. Rani is married to a man who does not have any particular name. The parents of Rani had only these considerations in arranging her marriage – “The young man was rich and his parents were both dead”. Indian parents feel satisfied if they succeed in finding rich boys for their daughters perhaps because they find that earning one’s livelihood is terribly difficult and their daughter will live in comfort with her rich husband, forgetting that the emotional comforts which proceed from happy marital relations are far more important.

 

Appanna’s ignorance to his committed offence and Rani’s Hallucination:

 

Appanna is rich but has no interest in Rani. He is interested in a concubine. As his parents are already dead, there is nobody to give him the moral teaching and he does not know the difference between a wife and a concubine. Like many Indian men, he considers his relationship with the concubine a normal thing. He never feels ashamed of it. As Appanna is bewitched by the concubine, he fails to see that Rani is young and beautiful. He claps her lock and key and tells her that he would come every day only for lunch which she should keep ready for him. It is a bolt from the blue. All the dreams of the young bride are shattered in a moment. He becomes so cruel that Rani loses her mental equilibrium. She has only dreams left which haunt her day and night. She gets hallucination.

 

Appanna is an example of male chauvinism which is a typical Indian word. He goes to the concubine but keeps his wife under lock and key lest she should also get a lover. He fails to realize that love knows no barriers.

 

Inspite of his vigilance, Kurudava meets her. Naga comes to her through drains and crevices. It is due to his failure to love his wife that Naga manages to court Rani, and Rani fails to unravel the mystery of the contradictory behaviours of the two Appannas due to her craving for love. She had some doubts in the initial stages but Naga managed to win her confidence by his ingenuity.

 

Appanna is shocked to notice that Rani is pregnant in spite of all the restraints that he has imposed upon her movements. He is shocked. With the Indian concept of chastity in mind, he starts questioning her. He charges her with the offences of adultery and perjury – “Tell me who it is? Who did you go to with your sari off? You haven’t? And yet you have bloated tummy. Just pumped air into it, did you? And you think I’ll let you get away with that? You shame me in front of the whole village, you darken my face, you slut - !”

 

He takes her to the village elders who ask her to hold a red-hot iron bar to prove her innocence. They very well know that Appanna himself is an adulterer. Indian society is a male dominated society. It does not even take cognizance of the offence done by the husband, but asks the wife to take the acid test. Rani passes the test, but it does not remove the doubts of Appanna. He knows for certain that Rani’s child is not born of him. This idea tortures him. He is exhorted by the village elders to spend his life in Rani’s service. “You need merit in ten past lives to be chosen for such holy duty”, they say. He raves, “What am I to do? Is the whole world against me? Have I sinned so much that even nature should laugh at me? I know I have not slept with my wife. Let the world say what it likes. Let any miracle declare her goddess. But I know what sense am I to make of my life that’s worth nothing!”

 

For any Indian, it is the greatest torment if he knows that his wife is an adulteress. Appanna suffers such a situation.

 

Rani is subjected to further devine test. She agrees. The cobra slides above her shoulders and spreads its hood like an umbrella over her head, much to the surprise of the elders. Rani is declared a goddess by the village elders. Appanna’s emotions are obvious, and he is aware that he has never slept with Rani. He starts to doubt his own sanity.

 

Rani tells him, “When we cremate this snake, the fire should be lit by our son. Every year on this day, our son should perform the rituals to commemorate his death”. By saying this, she confirms that the snake is the real father of her son. Appanna has to say nothing but the statement: “Of course, there is no question of saying no. You are the goddess herself incarnate. Any wish of yours will be carried out. ”

 

Appana, having the knowledge of being the cuckold husband, is forced to treat his wife as a goddess and to carry out her every wish. Indians have strong superstitious beliefs and this is evident in Appanna also. He is not any particular person but a representative of chauvinistic males of the Indian society. He demonstrates Indianness in many of his qualities, views, and attitudes.

 

Symbolism:

 

We find that Karnad’s play is full of symbolism that represents the unequal nature of our society and how the women feel. As Rani’s emotional and sexual needs are not being met, she suppresses her urges and this suppression is meant to display how women are not able to claim their needs. She dreams of an eagle coming taking her far away from Appanna’s world, which is another symbol of the repression of her desires. Her repressed desire to be loved and to be free gets expression in her fantasy where an eagle wants to take her away. Being a victim of extreme isolation and subjugation, her dreams function to fulfill her emotional needs.

 

As the story progresses, Rani comes across Kurudava who offers her a mystical root and assures her that if she feeds Appanna the root, he will forget about his mistress. Upon cooking the root, the potion takes a horrible red color and she disposes of it in a nearby ant hill where a Naga (snake) drinks it. The snake falls in love with Rani due to the potion and takes the form of Appanna at night, praises her long hair and talks a lot about her parents and listens to her attentively. He also fulfills Rani’s sexual needs and soon she falls in love with the Appanna.

 

She however gets confused with the discrepancy in behaviour between the Appanna she sees at noon, who disregards her and leaves for his mistress and the Appanna at night, who treats her with care and is a sensual lover.

 

However, she can’t question her husband.  She must obey whatever she was told by her husband or any other male. Here nobody permits Rani to question anybody – Naga because of his deep passionate love for her and Appanna for his egoistic, male chauvinistic dominance. The women are seen as an object and not as a human being with an agency of her own.

Diaclaimer: Images have been taken from Google sites.

NAGAMANDALA CHARACTER SKETCH, ENGLISH HONOURS, MA ENGLISH

NAGAMANDALA CHARACTER SKETCH

RANI’s Character:

Rani is the main woman character of the play, if not the heroine of the play. She bears all the tyrannies, yet she does not give up her values of life. She is the only child of her parents and gets their love in full measure. As happens with most of the Indian girls, her fond father finds a match for his daughter and marries her to Appanna. An Indian father generally thinks that a man is a good match for his daughter if he has means to provide wherewithal to his daughter. These fathers never bother about the character of the men with whom their daughters have to pass their lives. Many men have turned out to be libertines and adulterers, but their richness overshadows all other considerations. Rani is married to such a rich man who is called Appanna and lives a life of any dejected Indian woman.

 

Appanna regularly visits a concubine. He ignores Rani and becomes a jailor to his wife. From day one he locks her in his house with the command that he would come to the house only for his lunch which she would prepare punctually and regularly and would not ask any questions. Rani is shocked but accepts his orders as a typical Indian housewife. She becomes a maid servant in her own house. She sweeps, mops the floor, scrubs the  utensils, cooks food, and obeys Appanna’s commands for a square meal.

 

Isolation and incarceration lead Rani to hallucinate. See see dreams. In her intuitive feat, she tells Kurudavva that her husband speaks to her only in words such as ‘do this’, ‘do that’, and ‘serve the food’. As she is locked in the house, she is not able to meet anybody. Narrating her tale of woe she tells Kurudavva, “Apart from him, you are the first person I have seen since coming here. I’m bored to death. There is no one to talk to…” To add to her woes, she is left alone during nights. She is timid as young girls generally are. “I am so frightened at night. I can’t sleep a wink. At home, I sleep between my father and mother. ” We see Indianness as most Indian children remain very close to parents until their marriage.

 

Inspite of this persecution, she does not want any harm to reach Appanna. Kurudavva gives her some roots which can get her the love of Appanna. The small piece she gives Appanna makes him sick. Therefore, she does not give the bigger piece to him. Kurudavva says with confidence that it will certainly bring him back to her: “Go in. Start grinding it. Make a tasty curry. Mix the paste in it. Let him taste a spoonful and he will be your slave. ” But Rani does not take any risk even to get the love of her husband.

 

Rani is an example of Indian wives who endure the tyrannies inflicted by their husbands, yet serve them with all sincerity. Appanna keeps her as a slave, yet he is her dear husband and has to be kept out of the harm’s way. The marriage rites make the husband master of the woman and the wife a poor slave. This is evident in Rani’s life also Rani expects nothing from Appanna, yet she is ready to do anything for him. Even when she comes to commit a mistake, she holds herself guilty and ever remains repentant for the lapse. It will not be amiss to say that an Indian or rather an Indian wife is masochistic, taking pleasure in being tormented by the husband. She never revolts even in her thought. She suffers at the hands of Appanna but does not take any risk to gain the love of her husband. Her character typifies an Indian wife who deliberately accepts sufferings as misfortune.

Appana's Character:

‘Appana’ literally means “any man” and points to the metaphor of man in general, his chauvinistic stance and towering dominance to the extent of suppressing a woman’s individuality. Rani Endeavour’s to discover her individuality by seeking refuge in dreams, fairy tales and fantasies to escape the sordid reality of her existence. At an age where the typical fantasy would be a sultan or Prince coming on Horseback, Rani’s flight of the imagination transports her to a seventh heaven where her parents wait for her.

 

Critics show her body as a site of “confinement, violence, regulation and communication of the victimized gender – self”. And they also point out how she later uses the same body to rebel, to subvert and to negotiate her space in society. Appana considers her as an adulterous woman whereas he himself has an illicit relationship with a concubine. He and his hypocritical society questions Rani’s chastity and side. The male chauvinism ignores the validity of Appana’s principles.

Disclaimer: Images have been taken from the Google sites