The Fire And The Rain By Karnad Analysis

through the story of Hayavadana. The play provides complex seeing by use of a multi-level organization of communication between characters—chorus, talking dolls, Goddess Kali, an objective Bhagavata—which help in the playwright’s purpose in providing a contemporary idiom in an otherwise folk play. The play is feminist in the sense that the woman succeeds in getting the man of her choice—with brain and brawn—and is even capable of deciding the future of her child. The induction of masks, use of rangapati (small curtain), the rhythmic movement and stylized dance, the instrumental music and songs by chorus and prose recitations by the Bhagavata— the voice of the spectators, who time and again makes comic and contemporary remarks

The next play by Karnad based on a less-known myth is The Fire and the Rain (1995; rendered into English in 1994). The play was originally written in Kannada (Agni Mattu Male) but rendered immediately into English for a workshop with professional actors at the Guthrie, and the entire process of change and revision took place in English. Karnad found his subject in the rather obscure myth of Yavakri(ta) that he had encountered decades earlier in C. Rajagopalachari’s prose retelling of the

What makes The Fire and the Rain more interesting is the fact that here caste and gender issues appear to be entwined with each other and within this coiled framework works the power politics of the caste-ridden, patriarchal society. Bali: the Sacrifice (1980; rendered into English in 2004) was first brought out in Kannada in 1980 by the name of Hittina Hunja, but was not translated in English at that time. In 2004, Karnad reworked the play completely and published it alongside another original English play, The Dreams of Tipu Sultan. The play has thus evolved over two decades, and achieved its definitive form not in Kannada but in English. The source of the play is an ancient thirteenth century Kannada epic called Yashodhara Charite, by Janna which in turn refers back to an eleventh-century Sanskrit epic, Yashastilaka, by Somadeva