Frame narrative of Nagamandala :
Literature has an indispensable tie with indigenous myths and folk culture in both the orient and occident and Indian English writers are especially fond of garnishing their creation with the flavour of Indian myth. Girish karnad’s play “Nagamandala” is no exception since the playwright modified two narrative stories of Karnataka- which he heard from his mentor -. Professor A. K Ramanujan – to build the plot of his play. The play basically narrates the story of Rani and her serpent-lover who gives Rani all that a woman wants : a husband, a child, a passionate lover and social reputation. Karnad used one of the oral stories as the frame narrative and intertwining both these narratives seamlessly, he weaved a marvellous plot.
Karnad used the first story “A Song and a story” to produce the frame narrative of “Nagamandala”.This folktale talks of a woman who knows a story and a song but never uttered either of them to anyone. Suffocated and unable to transmit to other people, the song and the story decided to take revenge from her one day when she was sleeping with her mouth open, both of them escaped and the song took disguise of a man’s coat hung on the peg and the story camouflaged itself as a pair of shoes outside the house. When her husband returned he questioned about the whereabouts of these shoes and coat but receiving no satisfactory response from the wife, got angry and went to the Monkey-God’s temple to sleep. The wife, unhappy and puzzled by the reason for the appearance of the shoes and coat, put out the lamp and fell asleep. That night all the lamps of all the houses assembled at the Monkey-Gods temple but one lamp came late and explained as the reason for its delay the fight between the husband and wife and its house till late night. When it told about the transformation of the untold story and unsung song into shoes and coat, the husband became relieved of his suspicion and returned to his home when he asked his wife about the song and the story, she was completely forgetful about both of them : “what story, what song? “
This folktale is supposed to indoctrinate us about the immortality of stories and songs_that they are living, breathing creatures like human beings and if not expressed before others, they will take revenge. Culture should be treated as an alive entity which lives and gradual transmission and putting a stopgap in the living flow of culture is to strangle it to death. Songs and stories ,like the lamps, are never extinguished. They always illuminate the darkness of the human mind in a playful manner generation after generation. This folktale draws an analogy between the nature-culture parallel and the material-immaterial continuum in the context of the popperian Third world where these cultural ideas invariably enter the construction of both the subject and the object. Karnad’s tactful employment of this frame narrative into ‘Nagamandala’ signifies the relevance and essentially of the basic life lessons taught by these myths- the same idea that Levi-Strauss holds : “myths think themselves through humans”.
The folktale of the serpent lover is transformed into the main narrative of Kamakshi’s story whose husband locks her up in the house and enjoys himself with a concubine. Kamakshi prepares a love-potion to attract her husband but eventually pours it into the ant hill over the snake king who falls in love with her. In the husband’s absence the serpent comes to her in the husband’s disguise and loves her. When the husband alleges her publicly as a whore and demands justice, she puts her hand into the ant hill and the serpent coils around her neck without biting her. Everybody declares her a demi-goddess and the reconciled husband accepts her. One day the serpent enters the house and strangles itself in her locks in feats of jealousy of her extreme satisfaction, followed by her instructing the son to do a proper funeral of the serpent.
Thus, this central narrative focuses on multiple issues like the dual nature of husband as a patriarch and an amorous lover, the mockery of the chastity test, the biassed attitude of patriarchal society to question women only and so on. It also demonstrates the repressed desire of women to bypass their superego to achieve in the story-world what they cannot achieve in the real world-freedom to love and gain respect. Karnad’s craftsmanship of using this folk-tale can be lauded in the same manner as Michael Bakhtin extolled Dostoevsky’s heroes : “Every thought senses itself to be…. a rejoinder in an unfinished dialogue.. It lives a tense life on the border of someone else’s consciousness “.
