Identity Crisis in Girish Karnad's "Hayavadana"

The drama begins with a prayer to Ganesha "the destroyer of incompleteness". He is the husband of Riddhi (style) and Siddhi (talent). Riddhi has no existence without siddhi, and siddhi forges its identity with the appropriate riddhi. The synchronization of these two aspects constitutes the ideal of aucitya (harmony or appropriateness) that Karnad endeavours to achieve throughout the play through his heroine Padmini. Nevertheless, the ideal is only a transient or ephemeral concept.

Could it be that this Image of Purity and Holiness, this Mangalamoorthy, intends to signify by his very assurance that the completeness of god is something that no one can comprehend.(73)

The play invites our attention to the thought-provoking question -what determines one's identity? Is it facial beauty and intelligence, or strength and physical prowess? Devadutta and Kapila are these two attributes personified respectively. Nevertheless, the two are envisaged only as complementary entities -Lava and Kusha, Rama and Lakshmana, Krishna and Balarama-and are not treated as a unified entity.

Ever since times immemorial, the head has gained predominance over the body. The Bhagavata, the omniscient narrator, himself declares that the head defines the identity of a man. Ironically, we find that the Bhagavata himself reverses the same when he addresses Hayavadana in the first part of the play as " poor man", even though Hayavadana possesses the head of a horse. If the voice of the Bhagavata declares that the head is supreme, the tale of Hayavadana seems to echo that the body is superlative. The prince controlling the horse indicates the head, and the horse signifies the body. Contrary to these two, the main plot shuttles between priority over the head and the body.

Earlier, if Ganesha was the husband of Siddhi and Riddhi, Padmini is the lover of intelligence and strength. Nevertheless, in her case, it fails to constitute a harmonious whole; she is caught between association with two personalities, and this leads to a split in her identity. The mental imbalance is clearly explicit in the provocative imagery that portrays her as a woman bathing in the blood of the two men. The female protagonist is a schizophrenic individual caught between two worlds. This becomes implicit in the doorframe of her house which has on it the engraving of a two-headed bird. A bird instantly signifies a female. Having two heads its, its individuality can never remain in integrity as one head will always strive to assert superiority over the other. Kapila strikes the chord when he claims:

A proper two-headed bird. But it is so tiny you can't see it at all unless you are willing to tear your eyes staring at it. (87)

.................for this phenomenon is purely psychological. Padmini is legally wedded to Devadutta out of her desire for fair looks and intellect; and attracted to Kapila for his physical elegance and manual efficiency. P. Dhanavel claims that the flourishing friendship between Kapila and Padmini leads to the acute crisis of identity in Padmini. Padmini herself affirms that the song: "Is this one that / Or that one this?" points to her autobiography. When Padmini visualizes Kapila arriving during their trip to forest she loses her sense of propriety...and her self divides. The Bhagavata simultaneously chants: "And the head is bidding good-bye to the heart."(95) She relegates Devadutta to the background and gets preoccupied with Kapila: "And what an ethereal shape."

Subsequently, when she comprehends that Devadutta and Kapila have committed suicide, she loses her sense of proportion. For her existence, her identity is deeply entangled with any of the two. Ironically, she either loses both or acquires association with the two leading to an onset of neurosis. She retorts to the Goddess Kali:
"If you'd saved either of them, I would have been spared all this terror, this agony."(102)

Her consistent existence depends on the presence of either of them. Eventually, she finds herself in intense euphoria when she combines the head of Devadutta and the body of Kapila. This union signifies and symbolizes her temporal stability. Padmini wants to procure something beyond an earthly concept which she calls the perfect combination:" My celestial-bodied Gandharva."(111) In contrast, the princess of Karnataka seems 'more down to earth', literally and metaphorically, in that she ventures on securing an earthly being and rejecting a celestial being. Her temporal constancy enables her to behave like a normal human being. However, even in that state of condition, there are traces of her earlier self in consoling Kapila. At a later stage, Karnad utilizes dolls to interpret Padmini's dreams. Even at that unconscious level there is a split-hence Doll I and Doll II. Also, note that the dolls are dressed in such a way that it is difficult to decipher their sex; as conscience has no gender.

DOLL I: Is that little Satan asleep yet?
DOLL II: Think so. God! It's killing me.
DOLL I :........crying all day.
DOLL II: Making a mess every fifteen minutes. (114)

DOLL I: His palms! They were rough when he first brought us here like a labourer's. But now they are soft, sickly soft like a young girl's. (116)

Dolls are generally acquainted with soft hands. If Doll I therefore calls it "sickly soft" it is not from its personal point of view but that of Padmini's. And it speaks so, immediately after Padmini touches Devadutta and shudders realizing that fact that he has transformed into his original form. The split becomes more prominent as the dolls begin quarrelling with each other (this reflecting the conflict in her mind) and Padmini tries to achieve the ideal concept in her imaginative lullaby. First the paragon of her dreams is constructed in the song and subsequently her failure to achieve this is in reality is reflected in the latter part.

Here comes a rider!
from what land does he come?
On his head a turban
with a long pearly tail.
Round his neck a garland
of virgin-white jasmines.
In his fist a sword
With a diamond studded hilt.
The white-clad rider...
...what shine in his open eyes?
Pebbles O pebbles
Why is his young body
cold O so cold?
The white horse gallops
across hills, streams and fields.
To what land does he gallop?
Nowhere O nowhere. (117)

Padmini coaxes Devadutta into believing that she does not care about Kapila anymore. At any rate, as soon as she closes her eyes, the dolls start speaking of the visitor in her dreams. As Devadutta transforms into his original self once again, the split becomes almost complete in Padmini; and she becomes belligerent (pg.50). A schizoid individual does things in secrecy and the tattered dolls can be attributed to this aspect. Furthermore, with the dolls is associated a sense of honest propriety (or what one would call the morality principle) and she has to discard them before she leaves for Kapila.

DOLL I : The whore
DOLL II: The bitch. (120,121)

When the heroine goes to Kapila again, he pleads with her to go away. He hits the hammer on the nail when he retorts:

"What do you want now? Another head?"(125)

Padmini clearly reflects that she is an entity caught between two different identities of association.

"Yes, you won Kapila. Devadutta won too. But I, the better half of the two bodies- I neither win nor lose (126)."

The realisation of the split reaches its saturation point when Devadutta and Kapila meet each other in complete honesty at the end of the play. Padmini comprehends that both cannot co-exist within her at the same time. She says in pg.130 that she knew it in her blood that they both could not have lived together, because they had to share not only her body but share theirs' as well.

KAPILA : Devadutta, couldn't we all live together like the Pandavas
and Draupadi
DEVADUTTA : What do you think?
KAPILA : No it cannot be done. (129)

Subsequently, we find the Bhagavata presenting the crack in Padmini's self in emblematic terms:

After sharing with Indra
His wine
His food
His jokes
I returned to the earth
and saw from far-
a crack had appeared
in the earth's face-
exactly
like Indra's smile.(129)

The only solution to this is the exorcising of the ghosts of Kapila and Devadutta, and in turn suicide for Padmini. The playwright achieves this in a remarkable metaphor. As the two slay each other, Padmini jumps into the funeral pyre in the ritual of Sati. As their fight is stylized like a dance, Padmini's reaction is also in the form of a dance synchronizing with the former. In expressionistic terms, this dance is exemplary to Padmini's identity crisis.

At another level, Kapila and Devadutta get into a state of identity crisis when their heads get transposed. The Bhagavata in his omnipotent authority allows the head to gain precedence and christens them Devadutta and Kapila corresponding to their heads. Devadutta also refers to the shastras and says that the head is the sign of a man. Nevertheless, one cannot fail to perceive the influence of the bodies on the two. Like never before, the dull-witted Kapila becomes logical and convincing in his arguments:

This is the hand that accepted her at the wedding. This is the body she's lived with all these months. And the baby she's carrying is the seed of this body. (106)

And in Devadutta we observe a kind of violence in language and action.

DEVADUTTA (pushing Kapila aside):Get away, you pig.(107)

Devadutta professes to have defeated a champion wrestler and sword-fighter just because his body had 'inspired' him. He avows that his body "doesn't wait for thoughts-it just acts!" (113)At any rate, this is only a passing phenomenon of stability, and ultimately the body adapts itself to the head. Padmini summarizes the gist of the play when she tells Kapila in Pg.55:

The head always wins, doesn't it?

Metaphorically applied this idea can always pertain to any system also, be it social, political or economic. The head of a system always dominates over the system for its smooth functioning. This is always the case and if the system rarely renders itself stronger, then the head is overthrown. Therefore as long as they co-exist the head is always superior. A stable relationship is not something consistent and always remains a utopian paradigm in our imagination.

As for the identity of the child, it remains shrouded in mystery. It probably corresponds to a representative of the next generation in that it remains indifferent to the system or reacts violently to the same. The child biologically belongs to Devadutta's head and Kapila's body; however, it exhibits qualities of Kapila in its violence and unintelligible activities. The mole of Kapila remains, on his shoulder and on his identity. The body reigns supreme here. To cap it all, Padmini prefers Kapila over Devadutta; the body over the head at every instance. She utters the name of Kapila before Devadutta always (101,104). And the child favours the horse over human; bodily instinct over human intelligence yet again. This becomes Karnad's primary motive in writing the play, to ponder upon the significance of the body in one's identity and hence reverses the dichotomy head/body in his title Hayavadana where 'haya' stands for horse/body and 'vadana' for man/head. N.P. Ashley affirms that the focus on the body governs the characterization of the two male characters. Since they have inanimate, static faces (masks), body language becomes the "signature of their individuality". And according to me,the main reason for the title "Hayavadana" is that- Hayavadana is more complete than the other main characters Devadutta, Kapila and Padmini. And more significantly, he is complete, because towards the end, he is the only character who is satisfied! Being complete/incomplete is only a matter of one's own perception; else, how can the animal-headed Ganesha be regarded supreme and the animal-headed Hayavadana be called incomplete.

Besides, the head/body dichotomy also relates to the dialectic pair man/woman. According to the Semitic religions of the world, woman is said to be constructed from the ribs of man. Karnad seems to question this theory also. Besides, by presenting a white Devadutta, and a black Kapila, Karnad also appears to address hidden agendas and issues of racism. Critics like Erin B. Mee stress:" Hayavadana exemplifies the divided self of the postcolonial subject, he is also an example of the failure to deal successfully with that situation: he survives by negating one side of himself." Does the body really depend on the head? By relying on bodily instincts, isn't it better to transcend back to primitivism than live in this calculating and manipulative era by aid of the brain? Which holds a better identity for this? These are points to ponder upon in the play.