Summary
Act One
The Bhagavata sits on a chair at a table. A mask of Ganesha is brought in and Pooja (a worship ritual) is done. The Bhagavata sings, and the mask is then taken away.
The Bhagavata opens by reflecting on Ganesha, the Vighneshwara, who with his strange appearance is still the Lord and Master of Success and Perfection, which might remind us that we cannot fathom the completeness of God. We must only, he says, pay homage to the Elephant God and begin the play.
He describes the setting—the city of Dharmapura, ruled by King Dharmasheeka—and our two protagonists—Devadatta, handsome, slight, fair, intelligent, son of a Brahmin, poet, and witty; and Kapila, dark, plain, muscular, strong, physically impressive. As he talks there is a scream offstage, but he continues and says the two men are very different but the best of friends.
Suddenly Nata, the Actor, comes out in fearful fluster. Yelling, he clutches Bhagavata, who tries to discern what is going on. The Actor pants in his haste and tries to explain, but is too overcome. Finally he is able to say how he was coming along the road and stopped to pee, but then saw and heard a talking horse. Bhagavata is dismissive and amused but the Actor insists he is not drunk and he saw it clearly.
Bhagavata sees the man must continue his recounting, however false, so he encourages him to do so. He then suggests the only thing the Actor can do is go back to the fence and reassure himself that the horse does not talk. The Actor is shocked and resists this idea, but Bhagavata orders him. The Actor gives Bhagavata a last look and reluctantly departs.
As Bhagavata begins to sing once more of the best friends, another scream is heard and the Actor rushes back in. He yells that “he” is coming and rushes back out. Bhagavata is perplexed, but it is clear something has frightened the Actor. He hopes the audience will not become frightened as well.
Bhagavata orders stagehands to pull up the curtain, which then masks the entry of Hayavadana. Bhagavata calls out to ask who is there, and he only hears sobbing. The curtain reveals a horse head, which is crying, and finally a man’s body attached to the horse head. Bhagavata is stunned, and calls the horse-man over.
Hayavadana sniffles and obeys. Bhagavata sternly asks what he is doing scaring people and bothering the audience with his stupid mask. He orders Hayavadana to take off the mask, and when he does not, tries to grab it himself. He realizes it is not a mask but the man’s real head. He asks him several times who he is. Hayavadana remains silent until Bhagavata asks if this is a curse, or the result of an insult, or if he desecrated a holy place.
Hayavadana finally speaks, indignant and annoyed at these questions. Bhagavata apologizes and asks for his story. Hayavadana sighs that this is his fate, and he let Bhagavata try to pull the head off because he cannot seem to get rid of it himself. He explains that his mother was the Princess of Karnataka and able to choose her own husband. She did not like any of the men she knew, but when the Prince of Araby came on his white stallion, she fell in love with the horse and would only marry it. No one could dissuade her so the marriage happened. One morning she woke up and the horse was gone, replaced by a Celestial Being who had been cursed as a horse for fifteen years for misbehavior. The love of a human rescued him, and he asked the Princess to come with him to the Heavenly Abode. Shockingly, she refused, and he cursed her and she became a horse. She was elated and ran away, and Hayavadana, their only offspring, remained with his human body and horse head. He has tried to accept his fate, he explains, and live a full life, but he desires to become a “complete man” (81).
Musing, the Bhagavata suggests Banaras. Hayavadana says he has been there already and then names off numerous other holy spots he has tried. Bhagavata suggests the Kali of Mount Chitrakoot, and Hayavadana shrugs that it is worth a try.
Bhagavata is pleased and says Hayavadana cannot go alone so the Actor must accompany him. The Actor is not happy but has to do what Bhagavata says. Hayavadana thanks Bhagavata, who blesses him in return.
After the two depart, Bhagavata says it is time to get back to their story.
Analysis
Girish Karnad’s Hayavadana, which means “horse-head,” is one of the playwright’s most accomplished works. Amusing, profound, and a fusion of Indian dramatic motifs, structures, and myths with elements of the Western, it is an apposite example of the “theatre of roots” (see Other in this study guide).
The play begins with Bhagavata, a figure who is devoted to worshipping the god Vishnu. Bhagavata is the play’s narrator and theatre director and its guide, offering commentary on characters and actors and even the audience. Karnad emphasizes the multiple layers of the theatre experience through this figure, as Bhagavata often talks to the audience; additionally, the Actors come onstage as if they are not actually acting yet (“What do you mean by all this shouting and screaming? In front of our audience too!" [74]). There is a slippage between what the audience sees as the play and what they perceive to be “real.”
Bhagavata begins with an evocation to Ganesha, the god with the elephant head and boy’s body. He marvels at how the god seems “the embodiment of imperfection, of incompleteness” (73), yet how we venerate him nonetheless. This must be a lesson that “the completeness of God is something no poor mortal can comprehend…It is not for us to understand this Mystery or try to unravel it. Nor is it within our power to do so” (73). This is not a random allusion, of course, but one that foreshadows the events and the themes of the play. Amara Khan writes, “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.” Indeed, Hayavadana appears mere moments after this introduction, another creature fused from two disparate species and one whose “completion” at the end of the play defies rational understanding.
The Yakshagana form that Khan mentions is a type of traditional, regional Indian theater that Karnad much admired, especially as a child, and one that relies upon masks. Karnad stated once that writing a play like Hayavadana “seemed to me to provide perfect justification for the use of masks. For...in Indian traditional theatre, as in the Greek, the mask is only the face writ large.” He desired to draw upon “this paraphernalia of masks, half curtains, mime, dance, and music.” Yakashagana also features stylized action, of which Khan notes, “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.”
A final note about this first section: Bhagavata begins by talking about the story that is going to unfold with Devadatta and Kapila, but Hayavadana interrupts him. The Hayavadana plot is a sub-plot, as will become very clear to audience/reader, and does not resolve itself until the very end of the play just as the audience thinks it is time to get up and leave. Karnad wanted to have his sub-plot intertwined with the main plot, and explained he’d “always felt tremendous fascination for Shakespeare’s sub-plots—how he tells us the same story twice, from two different points of view.” As we progress further into the play, we will see how this parallelism manifests itself.
