Girish Karnad’s Wedding Album : An Overview : Prof. AJ Sebastian sdb
Introduction
Girish Karnard (1938- ) has powerfully portrayed socio-cultural, mythical and historical themes in his oeuvre of plays such as Yayati (1961), Hayavadana(1971), Ma Nishada (1964), Tughlaq (1964), Nagamandala (1990), Tale-danda (1993), The Fire and the Rain (1998), The Dreams of Tipu Sultan (2000), Bali: The sacrifice (2004), A Heap of Broken Images (2004), Flowers: A Dramatic Monologue (2005) and Wedding Album (2009). His plays have been universal in appeal with “efficacy and entertainment… to urge a socio-cultural interrogation” (Mukherjee 22).
In Wedding Album, though the title refers to a video made by Vidula’s family for her prospective groom in America, the story moves like a collage of snapshots exploring the characters in their hopes, frustrations, emotional tangles. The play gives insights into contemporary middle-class Indian society in the wake of technological advancement. The play is humorous and comical, marked by irony, multiple issues and questions of social and emotional nature. The play is like the modern day TV serials, presenting a realistic family situation. It also demystifies middle class South Indian Brahmin marriage (Srinivasan x) in the backdrop of familial and emotional relationships, their choices, values and life styles. An Indian wedding is an occasion for a family to bring together all the relatives and friends to show their solidarity and family ties. In the process the family also has to cope up with anxieties concerning dowry and other financial burdens while maintaining its social status.
Karnad presents the story surrounding Vidula Nadkarni’s wedding in the form of a television serial. One of the characters in the play, Pratibha, a producer of television programmes, however find the plot not sufficiently appropriate for an episode saying, “How can you make a character interesting in a tele-serial when you are not interested in her in real life?” (WA 9). As the play progresses, each scene reveals some hidden secrets of human yearning as the characters continue in their search for emotional and sexual fulfilment. The older members find it difficult to adjust to modern lifestyles in the technologically advanced world. The new generation on the other hand has its own ambitious plans of easy success. They have their dreams to scale and seek emotional fulfilment in sexual freedom, ignoring certain values and traditions.
2. Applying tele-serial technique in the play
The playwright lets scenes one and five take place about three years after the episodes in the play, to suit his application of the tele-serial technique. Scene one opens with the central character Vidula, a self conscious girl, speaking in front of a camera. She makes her attempt to introduce herself, her background and interests as her brother Rohit is making a video film on her, to be mailed to a prospective gentleman caller from America. Rohit is offscreen, directing her to show her best to be attractive. She is tired of the several reshootings. As she speaks in front of the camera, all information about her and the family is listed one by one:
She is a twenty two years old Geography graduate willing to go to USA after her marriage.
Her father Nadkarni is a retired government doctor.
She has an elder sister Hema who is married and lives in Australia.
Rohit, her elder brother, is engaged in writing script for TV production of teleplays.
She discloses a guarded family secret about a mentally retarded brother who had died in childhood. Humorously she also adds that she is not retarded, but possesses high CQ (Cooking Quotient).
The scene continues with the editing of the film in a Software Production Office by Pratibha and Rohit. Pratibha dumps Vidula’s story incredible though Rohit tells her it happened three years ago. The argument continues:
PRATIBHA: …They may believe it, but they won’t like it. A girl from an educated middle-
class family – a graduate – agrees to consider marrying a man whom she has
never met….in this day and age?
ROHIT: They were not total strangers. I mean, they had exchanged video tapes. SMSed.
Talked on the phone. And he belonged to our caste (8).
Rohit continues to give more details about his sister who was a very decent and innocent girl who never had any relationships with boys. She was married off to the boy from USA, after exchanging video tapes and spending a few days together in a hotel. But Pratibha being bored with the story, switches over to episode ten about the cook Radhabai and her mad daughter.
As the episode is being edited, the conversation focuses on Rohit’s own life – how he got married under familial pressures to Tapasya, a girl not of his choice, after he had gone steady with Isabel, a Christian girl. His pregnant wife had gone to Hyderabad to visit her parents. In the meantime, Isabel had joined Pratibha’s company. She had confided to Pratibha how she was emotionally broken after Rohit broke up with her. Both of them had their own stories to narrate. Isabel thought he broke off when Tapasya’s father financed his trip to Germany. On his part Rohit blamed Isabel breaking off when they were about to be engaged. Now, Pratibha questions why he had invited Isabel to dinner when his wife was away: “On the day your wife left for Hyderabad! You didn’t mention that you were alone at home. But she guessed. She knows you well… Since then you have asked her again. Twice within ten days. In spite of her refusal” (61). Pratibha continues to daunt Rohit with her own marriage to a Muslim who she married three years ago when anti-Muslim riots surged only because he offered her affection and security. When she invites him along with Tapasya for dinner, Rohit utters “bitch” indicating his exposed guilt.
3. An overview of various episodes
Scene two takes place in the living room of Nadkarni’s home. Vidula, Hema and their mother are engaged in selecting silk sarees to be given to various relatives on the occasion of the wedding. The mother is very conscious of keeping the purchases affordable. The cook Radhabai comes in to add to the comical element in the play. The father is seated on a chair with newspaper in hand. But obviously he is not concentrated in reading as he puts it down occasionally looking at the horizon. He is bored with life as he yawns and keeps uttering “I am so bored or time just won’t move” (10). He wished if his late brother Ramdas were around to help.
The mother had planned to purchase a necklace for Hema, who on the contrary, expressed her desire not to waste any money on her. The mother was keen to gift it to her as her marriage was arranged all of a sudden fifteen years ago, when they were not in a position to buy her any gold. Hema’s mother begged her father to arrange some gold for her, but he didn’t make fuss over it since his son-in-law didn’t ask for anything.
Joining the conversation, the father began to recount how he grew up in poverty along with his brother Ramdas. They had to share a plate of gruel and went from relative to relative for survival. They received education through scholarship from Saraswat Education Society.
As the mother goes to the kitchen, Hema and Vidula strike up their conversation on their lives. Hema speaks of her husband’s successful life as a banker. The Indians like him run the whole commercial world in America. Being transferred from place to place, Indian boys prefer to marry Indian girls who will trail after their husbands’ footsteps like obedient Sati Savitris. Hema also considers her life similar to that of her mother, even though her husband has a top job.
The conversation is interrupted by Vivan the boy next door, who comes to return borrowed books. As Vidula busies herself on the phone, he tells Hema that he had a letter for her in the book. Reading it she was shocked by its content. Immediately he kept another more pungent letter on the sofa. Vidula happens to read the content: “Darling, you don’t know how I desire to crush you in my arms” (19). As Hema snatched away the letter, Vidula thinks the love letter came from Hema’s husband.
The episode moves on to mother and the cook Radhabhai quarrelling in the kitchen. Radhabai keeps complaining that she had no choice but continue to live in their home after the death of her husband. She threatens to leave as she often did, but finally refuses to move out as she has nowhere to go. The story reveals how Radhabai was married and had a daughter Yamuna. Since they were so poor Yamuna came to Bangalore and got a job and sent money home. When her husband died, Radhabai came to Bangalore and worked as cook in a family. The following day a messenger came to take her to where her daughter lived. To her utter shock, she found Yamuna living as a concubine of a trader. Radhabai left to continue her job as a cook and never mentioned about her daughter to anyone. After a couple of years, she lost all communication with Yamuna and found that she was abandoned by the trader. She saw Yamuna in the street, gone mad and searching for her mother. That was the last time she saw her daughter.
Rohit comes to inform that Ashwin would arrive only a few days later and he would meet Vidula and spend time with her. If they liked each other then they would go ahead with the wedding, otherwise they would part as friends. The mother was very upset over his delayed coming and wanted to break off the engagement. Ashwin and Vidula had seen each other on tapes. He had said he didn’t want any fuss over a wedding with rituals. Others in the family were unhappy with such arrangements, but Rohit found Vidula and Ashwin satisfied with their electronic friendship through tape and mobile. The father was ready for anything as he considered marriage a gamble. He only wished his brother Ramdas were there to do the needful.
Rohit shows his annoyance with Vidula for spending several hours daily at the internet parlour playing video games instead of applying for her birth certificate required for getting her passport. When Hema enquired what she did at the café, Vidula merely said she listened to sermons by Swami Ananga Nath.
Scene three brings in the conversation between father and Rohit in the company of family friends Gopal Hattangadi Vatsala Hattangadi, Mohan Sirur and Mira Sirur. They recollect the earlier times when Ramdas was there to arrange everything for the wedding of Hema. The Hattangadi’s have brought their daughter Tapasya along with the plan of fixing the nuptials between her and Rohit. Mohan and Mira are also with them to persuade Rohit to agree to the proposal. But Rohit shows his exasperation at their persisting in their proposal every week when they called on them as he had been dating Isabel, a Christian girl. They even try to bribe him with the plan of sending him abroad. Rohit gets bothered and keeps saying he was not interested in the marriage. The bargain continues among them for a long time, but Rohit remains firm in his noncommittal attitude. Gopal shows his helplessness and pleads pathetically, “…we have told everyone in Hyderabad that this alliance has been finalized. Everyone there thinks we are here for the engagement ceremony… Her classmates have actually thrown a party to celebrate the event… She is our only child, Rohit. She is sensitive. Don’t hurt her, please, don’t wound her… I’ll fall to your feet…” (39). Gopal nearly breaks down and kneels to touch Rohit’s feet while he recoils in horror. As Rohit excuses himself to go in a hurry, Mohan requests him to reconsider his stand. As they leave Rohit gets Isabel’s call and tells her of the ordeal he had been through with the Sirurs. He expresses his inability to be with her. Overhearing the conversation, Hema shows her botheration in his not dating a girl from their own community. Vidula reprimands him for not having been firm with the party in saying about his relationship with Isabel. She teases him how he wields power over them: “To have a girl waiting for you – her parents kneeling before you – begging and pleading… It really must make you feel grand” (42).
Scene four begins with Hema returning home and finding Vivan browsing through books. She tells him to leave as the family is to have an important meeting. She scolds him who is younger than her son, for writing filthy love letters to her. He speaks out his heart telling her that he fell desperately in love with her and longs to die kissing her. He is convinced of his infatuation for her and hands over two letters which she puts into her handbag.
The family gathers to discuss the mistaken entry in Vidula’s birth certificate where her uncle Ramdas’s name was entered as father. The mother is convinced that it was no mistake, but done deliberately by Ramdas to blacken their face. She begs them not to reveal it to their father lest he might die of shame.
In scene six Vidula visits the internet café and begins her chat with her secret lover who had been pining for her being addicted to her. She tells him she is being sold off in marriage. The conversation reveals her ironic view of marriage.
VIDULA: I have been sold off…I told you I am a kept woman. Kept by a trader. I am his concubine. Maintained by a man much older than me… He is dying. He has had a heart attack. Last night. He is in the ICU. Could be dead by tomorrow. His family is bound to throw me out. So I had to find a new master. A young man. He lives in the US. He has paid a good price to my family.
VOICE: Tell me your name and address and I’ll come and buy you.
VIDULA: Thanks, mate. I knew you would say that. You are nice (64-5).
The matter stated by Vidula is from her subconscious with reference to the fate of Radhabai’s daughter who was kept by a trader. It also refers to her father who they feared would get an attack if he knew of the game played by Ramdas claiming to be the father of Vidula in the birth certificate. She continues to indulge in internet sex with the secret lover. But she gets scary of the rest of the intimate movements as the Hindu vigilante youth make commotion outside. The Hindu youth charges Vidula for indulging in porno films. As one of them threatens her with dire consequences, the second youth attempts to calm him down and let her go since she belonged to his caste. When she is warned never to return, Vidula challenges them and accuses them for having molested her and attempted to rape. She demands that police be called in. The scene mocks at the fundamentalists trying to extort money in the name of maintaining cultural tradition and moral values. The attendant reveals how the youth keep coming to the café whenever they fall short of money.
This scene is suggestive of the sex porn to which young people get so easily addicted. Individual’s hidden inner sexual cravings are exposed by the dramatist, revealing certain aberrations in society and those who take law into their own hands in the name of moral disciplining.
Scene seven brings to focus father and mother expecting Ashwin, the boy from America. The mother wonders how Vidula who is timid will cope up meeting for the first time a total stranger. The fathers’ comment “parents are irrelevant to their growing up” (73) presents the irony of the hidden truth of the matter. They never could imagine, Vidula whom they took to be a shy and inexperienced girl, had been indulging in secret internet sex. chat.
The scene shifts to the father searching for the wedding accounts of Hema which his brother Ramdas had kept. He is full of praises for him. But his wife shows her annoyance the way he still regarded Ramdas faithful although he hated her husband and had done him wrong. The father accepts facts and sympathises with him instead, for having been a failure all his life. The conversation also draws attention to disruption of their family life with the father’s frequent transfers from place to place, making children grow up with aunts and relatives.
In scene eight Ashwin and Vidula are in serious conversation with each other. Ashwin confesses he is passing through a spiritual crisis. His only condition for marriage is that she shares his spiritual quest. He speaks of his successful career having everything he longed for, including girl friends and mistresses. Now he has reached the fag end coming to the conclusion “that whole culture is empty of values now, bereft of any living meaning…The European Industrial revolution began by rejecting religion in favour of material values. But today the legacy is strangling the West. They have no spiritual moorings left. They are adrift in a godless, amoral world” (80). He has come looking for a life partner who carries within her the essence of Hindu spirituality, innocence and purity. “Someone like you carries within youth essence of Hindu spirituality. Woman as Mother, Wife, Daughter. Womanhood as the most sacred ideal…. I want you to see this not merely as a marriage but as a mission. I would like you to be my partner in carrying the best of our spiritual tradition to the west and save the West” (81-2).The irony is that the partner he finds in Vidula is a girl far from his idealistic expectations – a girl who indulges in sexual fantasies and perversions in secret in the midst of the vigilante youth who attempt to perpetrate fake religious fervour. His expectations are too idealistic like St. John in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, who wishes to marry Jane to be his wife and helpmate in an idealistic mission. “God and nature intended you for a missionary’s wife. It is not personal, but mental endowments they have given you: you are formed for labour, not for love….You shall be mine: I claim you – not for my pleasure, but for my Sovereign’s service” (Bronte 424). Ashwin like St. John has fallen in love with a mission and not with a person. Such idealism in spousal relationship will only wreck it as the type of love remains purely in the level of empty love.
Though scene nine is one of parting of characters, it reveals how Vidula had spent eight days with Ashwin in the hotel to know each others before deciding on their commitment in marriage. She agreed to fall in line with his demands. In the course of the conversation, Hema tells Vidula that she shouldn’t hesitate to divorce him if the marriage does not get on well in America. Rohit seconds the opinion as divorce is considered a common thing in modern times. But strangely Vidula has taken to live by Ashwin’s principles becoming a vegetarian and deciding never to divorce him.
As they leave the father makes his comment on marriage as a gamble which none can escape. The mother on her part taking Vidula aside gives her parting advice that she shouldn’t miss opportunities she may get in America to explore her talents. The mother bemoans her lost dreams becoming a mother at an early age, so too Hema becoming merely a housewife. She challenges Vidula to make use of the opportunities in the modern world. The father adds his final comments on how the mother had made all the difference in the family sacrificing herself for the sake of everyone. “If we are all happily gathered together here, if we have been a such a loving family, the credit must go to your mother” (91). The play is an excellent portrayal of a modern day wedding in contrast to traditional Indian marital relationship.
4. Application of the theory of love
The characters in their interpersonal relationship can be analysed applying the triangular theory of love propounded by psychologist Robert Sternberg. He examines love from three components: intimacy, passion, and decision/commitment. These may operate in combination or separately from one another. Accordingly, love can be classified into seven distinct kinds as shown below. The different kinds of love lets individuals to understand and communicate the types of emotional behaviours they express. Consummate love is the ideal and complete love, combining intimacy, passion and commitment (Sternberg).
Intimacy – Which encompasses feelings of closeness, connectedness, and bondedness.
Passion – Which encompasses drives that lead to romance, physical attraction, and sexual consummation.
Commitment – Which encompasses, in the short term, the decision to remain with another, and in the long term, the shared achievements and plans made with that other (Ibidem).
Different types of love can be classified either individually or in combination of these components. A particular type of love in course of time can be transformed into another type.
Various types of love among the characters:
TYPES OF LOVE
INTIMACY
PASSION
COMMITMENT
CHARACTERS IN RELATIONSHIP
Nonlove
Liking/friendship
X
Infatuated love
X
i. Vidula’s relationship with internet lover
ii. Vivan’s relationship with Hema
Empty love
X
i. Rohit’s relationship with Tapasya
ii. Ramdas’s relationship with Dr. Nadkarni
Romantic love
X
X
i. Rohit’s relationship with Isabel
Companionate love
X
X
i. Relationships in Dr. Nadkarni’s household
ii. Relationship between Vidula and Ashwin
iii.Dr. Nadkarni’s relationship with Ramdas
Fatuous love
X
X
i. Ramdas’ relationship with Mrs. Nadkarni
Consummate love
X
X
X
i. Relationship between Dr. Nadkarni and wife
ii. Relationship between Hema and husband
iii. Relationship between Pratibha and husband
iv. Isabel’s relationship with Rohit
Nonlove is the absence of all three components of love.
Liking/friendship is intimate love in which a person feels a bondedness with another. There is no intense passion or commitment.
Infatuated love is pure passion. Romantic relationships often begin as infatuated love and leads to romantic love as intimacy develops in course of time. Infatuated love may disappear all of a sudden if it does not develop intimacy or commitment.
Empty love is characterized by commitment without intimacy or passion. In the case of most arranged marriages, relationships often begin as empty love, but in course of time may develop into one of the other forms.
Romantic love hinges on intimacy and passion, thereby bonding individuals emotionally and physically through passionate arousal.
Companionate love is intimate and non-passionate type of love. It has the element of long-term commitment devoid of sexual desire. Such love is found in marriages in which passion has gone out of the relationship leading to deep affection and commitment. The ideal love relationship among family members is a kind of companionate love. Such relationship between close friends lead to platonic love.
Fatuous love is characterised by sudden courtship and marriage through passion and commitment. It lacks stable intimacy and partners share passionate or sexual moments only out of commitment. It tends more to Empty love.
Consummate love is the fullness of agape love which is an ideal relationship between a perfect couple. However such an ideal love can deteriorate into companionate love when passion declines (Ibidem).
Conclusion
In Wedding Album Karnad has been very innovative in depicting absurd situations and strange sequences in a passing manner, raising too many passing questions and issues that plague contemporary Indian society. Behind every such passing issue there is a deep rooted mystery the playwright subtly presents such as: Ramdas making false entry regarding the fatherhood of Vidula; his attempts to be close to his sister-in-law and being her protector when her husband used to abuse her. The mystery remains – was there an illicit relationship between Ramdas and Vidula’s mother? Is Ramdas Vidula’s biological father? In passing Karnard makes his readers and audience pay attention several issues that plague modern Indian society. The sequence where Vidula consents to marry, coming to terms with Ashwin’s ideological dreams, sounds very unrealistic. Vidula, though appears to be a traditional girl, is far from it in her behaviour and life style. Her suppressed sexual fulfilment in the internet café and Hema’s response to the young Vivan are hidden problems afflicting our society. Karnad’s introducing the sequence of Radhabai’s mad daughter, though superadded, exposes rampant sexual pervasion and abuse in society. The play may be assessed as a superb commentary on appearance and reality in a society that is caught up in the backdrop of globalization and technological progress. The story is deplete with abrupt situations and episodes like in an absurd drama. Though hilarious, the story exposes suppressed frustrations and sexual games people play under cover of maintaining traditional values.
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Works Cited:
Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Oxford: Oxford University Press, re-set 1993.
Karnad, Girish. Wedding Album. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2009. Abbreviated: WA.
Mukherjee, Tutun. “Introduction.” Girish Karnad’s Plays: Performance and Critical Perspectives.
Delhi: Pencraft International, 2006.
Srinivasan, Amrit. “Foreword.” Girish Karnad. Wedding Album. New Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 2009.
Sternberg, Robert. “Triangular theory of love” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangular theory_of_love.
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