115. Deepak H. Shinde

Abstract 115

Deepak H. Shinde 

Dissent of Filial Duty in Karnad’s Yayati

Abstract

Girish Karnad is one of the distinguished Indian playwrights in Kannanda and English. He has been associated with the Indian Theatre for more than four decades. He has written about ten plays bilingually. Karnad’s creative sensibility is characterised by the tradition of dissent which is explicitly evident in all his plays. He has adopted the episodes from the epics, folk tales and history for creating his plays and his plays disagree with the values or views upheld in the source texts. Thus there is a tradition of dissent in his plays. This paper demonstrates the tradition of dissent by taking Yayati for analysis.

                   Yayati is Karnad’s first play written in Kannada and was rendered by Karnad himself in English after many years. It has been received well by the readers both in India and abroad. It is based on a few episodes dealing with the mythical character called Yayati in the Maharabharata. The story of Yayati is told by the risis to Pandava brothers to uphold two values namely filial duty and over indulgence in pleasure as evil. Yayati marries Sharsmitha without the knowledge of his wife Devayani. Consequently Devayani becomes angry and complains to her father, the well known risi called Shukracharya who subsequently curses yayati to become premature-old. Yayati pleads with Shukracharya to help him out of the curse. Hence Shukracharya relaxes the curse by providing an alternative.

Accordingly, if any young man exchanges his youth with the old age of Yayati, the later can become young again. Yayati’s fifth son, Puru, agrees for the exchange and yayati regains his youth and pursues the path of pleasure in the garden of Kubera. Later he realises that there is end for the pleasure. Indulgence is bound to increase the passion instead of containing it. He returns to his place and returns the youth to his son and takes back his old age. Then he sets out for the forest for his retirement. Through these episodes filial duty was established and advocated as a value and it has been followed in our society without any dissent since then.

                  Karnad adopts these episodes in his play Yayati but defies this established value called filial love in two ways. Firstly, Pooru in Yayati volunteers himself to exchange his youth with the old age of his father not due to the sense of filial duty. On the contrary, he sacrifices his youth for the desire of the kingdom. There is also another reason. He is not interested in the conjugal love. Secondly, Karnad has created a new character called Chitralekha who is portrayed as a wife of Pooru. She makes objection to the exchange of her husband’s youth with his father’s old age by arguing that she will be deprived of her wifely rights if it is done. In these two ways, the conventional value of filial love which has been established and propagated through various forms of art and literature since the time immemorial is dissented in Karnad’s Yayati.