Understanding Rivalry: Staging Jealousy in Karnad’s “Broken Images”

Abstract

Acclaimed Kannada and English playwright, Girish Karnad’s play Broken Images focuses on human relationships and their intricacies, as well as on the relationship between languages. Outwardly, it addresses the sibling relationship and focuses on its destructive side. However, on a close reading, this monologue unfolds a series of diverse human relationships, viz., the relationship of the two sisters, Manjula and Malini; the husband-wife relationship between Manjula and Pramod; the camaraderie of Pramod and Malini; the friendship between Pramod and Lucy; and the amity between Lucy and Manjula. Besides these personal relationships, the play deals with and explores at length another important relationship, the one between two languages, one regional and one global, the legacy of the erstwhile colonizers. The relationship between Manjula and Malini acts as a metaphor for the mismatch and the hierarchy between regional language writers and Indian English writers on the Indian literary scene. This paper, therefore, examines the aforementioned human relationships in the play to reveal the motives behind the enmity and the causes which lead to sinful actions that remain invisible at all times, and in the process comments upon the relationship between different language writers, as well as what leads to the formation of existing hierarchies. First, the paper investigates the sororal bond between Manjula and Malini; second, it examines the tripartite relationships and how the third party is perceived as a rival in the relationships of Manjula-Lucy-Pramod and Manjula-Malini-Pramod; and finally, it looks at the relationship that exists between the Bhasha writers and Indian English writers, and exposes the enmity in these relationships and its various causes.