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Telling IT as it is A scene from the play

“I was away in London for three years. When I came back to Bangalore I realised that in these three years, Bangalore had transformed. Like the French social theorist Jean Baudrillard argues that Simulacrum is not a copy of the real, but becomes truth in its own right, simulated images appeared real,” recalls Girish Karnad. There was a shower of images, brands, brand names, hoardings and advertisements. Amitabh Bachchan is selling everything from cars to pens and what we buy is not the product but Amitabh’s image itself, explains Karnad, and this is what struck him very strongly.

“One could still talk of masks and folk and the rest… but if you had to grasp contemporary society, reality and non-reality, we had to deal with images. These images have become our reality,” avers Karnad. In fact, in the play, the image takes over and the self gets transformed into the image itself. “That’s because even when we talk to ourselves, we are talking to images of ourselves. We recognise ourselves through these images,” he feels.

Karnad speaks of how there has been no time in history when a society was not in crisis. “Crisis has been replaced by crisis,” and it would be a dead world to have none. Literature — poem or novel — has captured crisis in the written word, but in a play, it keeps evolving with every show. Hence, the “instability of a show is the instability of an image”. “That’s why the play is the most exciting form and the most truthful one,” says Karnad.

The play also talks about multiple selves and hasn’t it heightened the complexity of plot? How different is it from the selves that texts of dramaturgy speak of? “We classify individuals through their ethical qualities and fit them into these four slots. But in the world that we live in, psychological understanding of man has become much nuanced. Rama and Dushyanta may have the same ethical attribute but they are not the same,” argues Karnad.

According to him, if a society that lashes at the British worships Shakespeare, it is because he was able to bring in psychological shades into his characters. “We over analyse ourselves, but I think, it is a condition of our lives.” That’s probably why one finds, Manjula, the protagonist of his play as someone who keeps changing and is presented in shifting shades.

“Bikhre Bimb” also speaks of huge advances in the publishing industry. “What’s wrong with big money? When there is no money, we complain and when there is money we complain. I wish it would happen in Kannada. We should stop selling our books in old-fashioned book shops and change our selling strategies.” But that hardly means that he is unhappy for having written in Kannada. “The joy of writing in one’s own language is unmatched. When someone on the street walks up to you and says that you’ve read your works, it warms the cockles of one’s heart. I don’t think that happens to a writer writing in English…,” Karnad mulls over.

“Bikhre Bimb” will be staged at Koothambalam, Kalakshetra, on February 17 (7 p.m.). Tickets priced at Rs. 300, Rs. 200, and Rs. 100 will be available at the venue from February 14 and at Landmark outlets. For tele-booking call 98869 98550 or visit www.rangashankara.org

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