-Rukhaya.M.K
Kasaragod, India
MA,M.Phil. Featured Arts and Entertainment Contributor,
AssociatedContent.com rukhaya_mk@rediffmail.com
The theme of identity crisis, as prevalent as it is in the plays of Girish Karnad, is the most pronounced in this play as it is titular – A Heap of Broken Images. The play starts off from T.S. Eliot’s “Wasteland”:
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats
…for you know only,
And the dead tree gives no shelter,…
The discordant images refer to generation gap, spiritual disintegration, communication lapse and political instability in a transfigured existence. And in this pseudo-modern world, we have limited ourselves to broken electronic images. The electronic media has given birth to a new kind of reality termed ‘virtual reality’-a reality that the media daringly project and the audience willingly believe. Something that was the initial response to the Aarushi murder case in Noida. Electronic channels are quite often far from the truth in an age where news channels have rendered themselves into gossip channels. Here, we find the image fighting itself back, unveiling the truth on the other side. At the end of the play the term ‘virtual reality’ exchanges itself-as the human being seems virtual or fraudulent and image grows to be more real. This is a pointer for the audience who is credulous at the cost of their own intelligence. The ‘invisible audience’ connotes the lack of coherence and co-ordination of the psyche of modern man in relation to his surroundings, and with respect to himself. It also highlights lack of perception. Hence the stage direction at the beginning of the play:
A big plasma screen hangs on one side, big enough for a close- up on it to be clearly by the audience.(261)
A woman’ s identity is forever fleeting. When she is unmarried, her identity is deeply entangled with her father’s surname. As she drifts on to married life, the change in surname brings with a change of identity. In the play, the truth unfolds later as to why Manjula uses the surname ‘Nayak’ instead of ‘Murthy’. She emphasizes that her creative self continues to be Manjula Nayak. It has always been debated as to
whether a woman should change her surname after marriage. Perhaps then, that would be the only possession entirely her own, that she would carry to her husband’s abode. The process of change of surname even leads one to modify ones signature that is a mark of one’s individuality. A number of other problems relating to legal documents also crop up. Divorce complicates things further. The protagonist hits the nail on the head when she retorts:
There are some areas in which we must not let marriage intrude too much ( 263).
The writer also highlights the age-old conflict between writing in one’s own language and a foreign language, through the objective correlative of the writer’s confrontation with her own image. Neelam Mansingh Chowdhry says:”On another register this play deals with the politics of language. How language is not just ciphers on paper but contain within them a cultural history, and images as well as being time-bombs of hierarchy and discrimination.”Girish Karnad ascertains that the seed of the play was planted in his mind by a conversation that he had with the writer Shashi Deshpande who had an emotional encounter at the writer’s conference in Neemrana between the regional writers versus the English writers. Again, on another occasion, the Kannada writer U.R.Ananthamurthy is supposed to have burst out against English writers claiming that English writers were like prostitutes since they wrote with an eye for money and global reach the language offers.
Karnad is a playwright who most of the time pens his plays in Kannada first and then translates them into English. Broken Images is the first play that was simultaneously staged both in Kannada and English, and therefore lends justice to the theme of the play.
If a writer aspires to showcase his culture to the world, why refrain from ‘mediating’ through a widely spoken language. Thanks to the modern post-colonial theories, English has been quite often demarcated as the colonizer’s language intruding into the vernacular languages. U.S.A, the most successful country in the world, has adopted and adapted, the colonizer’s language as its national language, then why do Indians dissuade from merely utilizing this language for practical purposes. Besides, as long as one earns one’s bread honestly, what is unethical if money comes from creativity? The writer is alleged to have betrayed her mother tongue as though she has committed a crime because those who pen their works in English are termed “prostitutes”. There is a direct indirect reference to U.R. Ananthamurthy here. A prostitute is a person who sells her honour for money. Here, the
protagonist is trading her creativity for money. The writer seems to echo that those who write in their mother tongue also do accept royalties and trade their creativity, rather than wield the pen for social service.
Again, the playwright reminds us that most of the people who wrote in Kannada were lecturers in English. These include the likes of earlier ones like B.M.Shree, Gokak, Adiga; and modern ones like Lankesh,Shanthinath, Anatha Murthy and A.K.Ramanujan. This seemed to be the greatest irony that these safe guarders of the native language wanted to “teach” people the colonizers language and initiate them into “ prostitution”. And funnily, these verdicts on the Indian English writers are passed in English. As long as the subject and theme is Indian, how illegitimate is writing in English? Manjula argues that her novel has sold as it retains the ‘smell of the soil’. Definitely, writing in English gives wider readership to the writer. The protagonist, Manjula Nayak goes on to claim that no writer can express himself/herself honestly in English.
Therefore, the writer Manjula Nayak stands as a metaphor for all those writers limited to their native language (Kannada); not out of responsibility, but due to lack of choice. Malini stands for the Indian English writer worthy of global recognition. Given a chance, Manjula readily trades places with Malini for richness, renown and recognition. Manjula, a hypocrite, projects herself as a person who by default wants to “breathe the language. Live in the heart of Kannada culture.”(270)She claims to have sold the Koramangala house as she detested the idea of living amidst Non-Kannadigas.
Manjula is a lesser-known Kannada short story writer till she wins accolades for her maiden English novel. The River has no Memories turns out to be a bestseller. The announcer at the television studio introduces the literary genius Manjula Nayak who puts on an image of treading success effortlessly. She adorns a bright green sari flamboyant as her superficial self. A lecturer in English in Bangalore, she gives up her job as she has received a huge advance for her masterpiece. A Kannada channel is to broadcast the premiere of a movie based on the novel. Manjula enters putting on air and attitude, quipping about her worldwide ventures. She comments nonchalantly on Indian technology. As she has finished her ‘rehearsed’ 15-minute speech, she prepares to leave the room when she encounters her image on the screen that is not her reflection. It comes across as ‘ absurd’ to her. The image interrogates Manjula in a scene reminiscent of the trial of Benare in Silence! The Court is in Session. The truth is unraveled as Manjula is
entrapped in a whirlpool of questions from which she has no escape. The only alternative left for her is to wear her heart inside out. “Her guilt is expressed not as a Dostoyevskian interior monologue but through tense agitated dialogic exchange,” writes Tutun Mukherjee. This enhances the theme of fragmentation.
The novel is said to be based on her crippled sister who suffers from meningomyetocele- a disease in which a person is disabled for life due to dysfunction of the nervous system. Her whole life was confined to the wheel chair. She was the apple of her parents’ eye and was always the focus of attention. Manjula had to always settle for second place and was constantly disregarded. Malini excelled in all areas over Manjula- in looks and in intelligence. Manjula was made to stay with her grandparents who loved her, but who were, according to her, “no substitute” for parents. The most cherished moments of her life were the times that she spent with her parents during her vacations. It was later that she met Pramod, married him and settled down in Jayanagar. Her father left most of his assets in Malini’s name. After her parents’ demise, Malini moved in with them. Manjula affirms that her sister had adjusted beautifully with them and died a few months before the book came out. She takes care to cite that Malini is the only character drawn out of real life.
However, later the truth unfolds. Manjula has not penned even a word of the novel, and has ‘literally’ stolen Malini’s identity, creativity and language. Apparently, it was her revenge for years of agony, frustration and anguish. Malini had first caught her parents’ attention, and later Pramod’s. She gradually reveals how she had taken Malini in, only for her wealth. Pramod, being a software engineer, worked from home most of the time, and finally found his intellectual match in Malini. Earlier on, Manjula used to ignore Pramod due to her job, and later she side-stepped his sentiments in her newfound success. Pramod strived to discover new ways of entertaining himself. Manjula confesses that there were times when she doubted that Pramod fantasized and romanticized about Malini than herself. Manjula is often portrayed as the venomous first cousin in the novel, she says, as Malini stalked her and pinned her down in “coruscating prose”. Finally, the image on the screen becomes real in comparison to the deceptive human being on the other side. The image of Manjula morphs into Malini at a climatic juncture in the play.
The image of Malini therefore projects the Indian English writer who is ostracized for his stupendous success because the native writer (Manjula) has to settle for second place. Given an opportunity, Manjula steals Malini’s work in English, though she pretends to be addicted to the Kannada language. The sisters’ rapport with Pramod
symbolizes their bond with their motherland. Manjula is with him out of the matrimonial ties of responsibility, and fails to live up to her responsibilities of a wife, as Pramod continuously pines for attention. Malini is with him purely out of love. Pramod craves for her treatment of love that is all encompassing. As the image finally morphs, it ascertains:
However I am in truth Malini, my genius of a sister who loved my husband knew Kannada and wrote in English. (284)
When the image claims that Malini “loved my husband” it is evident that Manjula did not. More significantly, Malini “knew Kannada” and therefore knew her roots. Manjula looks into a ‘broken mirror’ to reveal bits and pieces of the personality-some hers, some of her sister’s-but totally disjoint. Hence the term Broken Images. The objective correlative of these broken mirror images are the different small screens that flash different images of Manjula at the end of the play. These are in contrast to real broken mirror parts that at a fraction of time reflect the same image of the person in all the pieces. The only coherent image appears to be the image of Malini that eloquently asserts:
I am Malini Nayak, the English novelist. Manjula Nayak, the Kannada short-story writer was decimated the moment she read my novel. She thus obliterated all differences of ink and blood and language between us and at one full stroke morphed into me. (283)
The Kannada writer betrays herself the very moment she makes association with an English novel by reading it. This is why Malini avows that the Kannada-writer was decimated at the very moment she read the English novel. This leaves the readers wondering that if writing in English is termed “prostitution”, then what does it make the Kannada writer reading the English novel at the other end.
Images rule the roost today. In particular, ’simulated’ images- images that people wish for us to believe. These false images are assertive, as they have to magnify their so-called truthfulness. Karnad points out that the ‘play begins with a false image of Manjula giving her speech before the television camera because she has never written anything creative in English.’ The play as a whole is a mirror to the false image of invidious green-eyed writers. Broken Images is essentially Karnad’s response to his critics. The significance of the play reverberates as Manjula utters a Kannada proverb in the play:
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A response is good. But a meaningful response is better. ( 265)
WORKS CITED
Murthy,Anatha.U.R. Introduction to Tughlaq. Three Plays. By Girish Karnad, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994.145.
Bartoncii, Charles. ”A HEAP OF BROKEN IMAGES by Girish Karnad.”Weblog.xanga.com. Jan.2008. Xanga. May 2008.
<http://weblog.xanga.com/bartoncii/635268185/a-heap-of-broken- imagesby- girish-karnad.html>
Chowdhry, Neelam Mansingh. ”Karnad Centrestage.” The Tribune Online Edition. May.2005. The Tribune. May 2008.
<http://www.tribuneindia.com/2005/20050508/society.htm>
“History of Theatre.” Mar.2008. Wikipedia,The Free Encylcopedia. May 2008.<http://en.wikipedia.org/wik/History_of_theatre#Asian_Theatre
_History>
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< http://www.indianetzone.com/1/indian_drama.htm>
Karnad, Girish. An interview on receiving the Jnanpith award. Indian Express. Sunday: March 28, 1999
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Karnad, Girish.Two Plays by Girish Karnad.New Delhi: Oxford University Press,2004.
Kumar,Sanjay.”The image is intact!”Mar.2008. The Hindu. May 2008.
< http://www.hindu.com/mp/2008/03/08/stories/2008030852240200. htm>
Mukherjee, Tutun. ”The Splintered Self: A Heap of Broken Images at Rangashankara.” Girish Karnad’s Plays: Performance and Critical Perspectives.Ed.Tutun Mukherjee. Delhi: Pencraft International, 2006. 341.
Tripathi, Vanashree. Introduction. Three Plays of Girish Karnad. By Tripathi, New Delhi: Prestige Books, 2004. 9-33.