The Reference : Hayavadana

Girish Karnad’s play Hayavadana(written originally in Kannad and translated in English in 1975), derived from the original plot in Kathasaritsagara and Thomas Mann’s reworking of the same in “The Transposed heads”, serves as a constant reference and undercurrent to the narrative of “3 on a Bed”. Karnad’s play, written against the backdrop of an India searching for its identity between a post-colonial modernity and a lost glorified tradition parallels this split with that of its main character Padmini torn between her two lovers Devdutta (identified as mind/head) and Kapila (identified as body). In an effort to unite her two lovers Padmini transposes each other’s heads onto different bodies in a cruel twist of fate leading to further hybridization of this identity, complicating this quest for identity and completeness even more. Standing at the entry-point of the second decade of the new century, where globalization has become the synonym for deculturization, this theme of transposed identities and switched positions remain a constant motif in “3 on a bed”.

While in ‘Hayavadana’ this case of mixed up identities serve as a profuse chaos from which begins the search of true individual identity, in ‘3 on a Bed’ this mixing up and unification becomes an ultimate coveted goal. In a world where individuals have been reduced to mere entities in the name of individuality bereft of fellow feeling, empathy, and a sense of a greater identity as social beings, the apparent loss of the ‘individual’ and dissolution into the greater identity of a ‘team’, ‘group’ or ‘family’ become the only hope through which true individuality can survive.