T.P. Kailasam’s
The Curse or Karna
Hello Everyone…!
This blog is a task assigned by megha ma'am, Department of English M.K.B.U. This blog deals with several assigned questions based on T.P.Kailasam's "The Curse of Karna".
T.P.Kailasam
Thyagaraja Paramasiva Kailasam is a popular figure in the Kannada theater scene. He was born in the year 1884, and was a playwright of eminence. He contributed greatly towards Kannada literature. He was so popular in the Kannada theater that he earned the title Prahasana Prapitamaha, "the father of humorous plays".
Early Life of T. P. Kailasam
Kailasam was born in a Tamil family in southern Karnataka, in the year 1884. He received his higher education in England. T. Parameswara Iyer, his father, was employed with the Mysore state service and was the younger brother of Madras High Court judge, Sir T. Sadasiva Iyer. T. P. Kailasam came from a family of scholars and professional people. While he was in England for higher education, he spent several times in theaters and attending classes and participating in many plays.
After his return from London, he took up a job at government geology service. He did his job seriously and prospered well. But soon, he lost interest and shed his former lifestyle and began living as a nocturnal bohemian, writing plays.
Here are some famous works written by him-
- ToLLu Gatti or MakkaLiskool Manelalwe? (ಟೊಳ್ಳು ಗಟ್ಟಿ)
- Poli Kitti, The Story of a born scout (ಪೋಲಿ ಕಿಟ್ಟಿ)
- Bahishkara (ಬಹಿಷ್ಕಾರ)
- HomeRoolu (ಹೋ೦ರೂಲು)
- Gandaskatri (ಗಂಡಸ್ಕತ್ರಿ)
- Vaidyana Vyadhi (ವೈದ್ಯನ ವ್ಯಾಧಿ)
- TaLikattokkooline? ( ತಾಳಿಕಟ್ಟೋಕ್ಕೂಲಿನೇ)
- Huttadalli Hutta (Waels Within Weals) (ಹುತ್ತದಲ್ಲಿ ಹುತ್ತ)
- BandvaLvillada Badayi (ಬಂಡ್ವಾಳ್ವಿಲ್ಲದ ಬಡಾಯಿ)
- Ammavra Ganda (ಅಮ್ಮಾವ್ರ ಗಂಡ)
- Seekarne Saavitri (ಸೀಕರ್ಣೆ ಸಾವಿತ್ರಿ)
- Sattavana Santhaapa (ಸತ್ತವನ ಸಂತಾಪ)
- AnukoolakkobaNNa (ಅನುಕೂಲಕ್ಕೊಬ್ಬಣ್ಣ)
- Namkampni (ನಮ್ ಕಂಪನಿ)
- NamkLabbu (ನಮ್ಕ್ಳಬ್ಬು)
- NammBramhaNkay (ನಮ್ಮ್ ಬ್ರಾಹ್ಮಣ್ಕೆ)
- SooLe (Murder O' Mercy) (ಸೂಳೆ)
English
Fulfilment
Purpose
The Brahmin's Curse
Kailasam's plays are known for their social realism, humor, and sharp wit. He was a pioneer of modern Kannada theater, and his works continue to be popular and performed today.
Kailasam was a moralist, but he had the subtlety needed to carry off his moralizing. His appreciation of what was really noble in traditional ways of living, added a grace to his plays. He gave the spoken language the status of literature. He created the new vogue for the satirical social play which proved that powerful prose with penetrating humor could do away with tinsel attractions of music, setting and costume.
T. P. Kailasam died in the city of Bengaluru in the state of Karnataka in 1946.
The Curse or Karna
Karna is the son of Surya and Kunti and the doyen of archers, endures a challenging journey on his way to becoming one of the greatest warriors of the Mahabharata. His Foster parents were Sootha Radha and Adirath. The story of Karna begins with the misfortune of his secret birth and unfolds itself amidst the unremitting gloom of injustice and insult. Karna was lodged in the section reserved for ordinary pupils and away from the section reserved for princes and other high caste students. The Curse or Karna is one of the best known works of Kailasam. This story is from Karna’s perspective. Here we get to see Karna as a hero of Mahabharat. He was the one who in spite of being of high class society had to face all the shame of being in lower caste. In every step of his life he has been cursed for being a Sootha. In ancient times society was divided into 4 categories based on their work (karma) but slowly with time it changed and everyone had to do work based on birth. In this case lower birth talent was never counted and was cursed. Same happened with Karna. In Mahabharat he is always shown as a supporting character. We never knew in detail about the pains of his life. T.P. Kailasam in this work has tried to bring Karna as a hero and brought to us pains of his life.
The story of Karna is the intriguing story of a hero who despite being born to royalty was brought up lovingly by a lowly charioteer and his wife, his whole life was one great struggle against cruel destiny and all the odds placed in his way by the inequities of his time.
Q-1 Karna - The Voice of subaltern.
The story of Karna begins with the misfortune of his secret birth and unfolds itself amidst the unremitting gloom of injustice and insult. A long time ago, a beautiful young princess named Kunti lived with her Uncle, King Kuntibhoj, in a lovely palace along the banks of a wide river. One day Maharishi Durvasa visited the palace of Kuntibhoja. He stayed there for almost a year. During his stay Kunti was given the responsibility of attending to his needs. Kunti served the Maharishi with great reverence without caring for her own comfort. The sage had a very peaceful and happy stay and wanted to reward Kunti for her services. Maharishi said,
“Child, one day you will need the help of the Gods. I am going to teach you a secret mantra for inviting the Gods into your life. Be very careful with this mantra! Use it wisely.”
Early the next morning Kunti was playing by herself in the royal garden. The sun had risen and Kunti watched its rays touch a flower here, a leaf there. She felt its warmth on her skin. She thought about the Sun God waking up the whole world. Forgetting her promise to Durvasa, she began to recite the mantra. She closed her eyes and concentrated the way she had been taught to summon the Sun-God Surya who is compelled to give her a child, fearful that a child conceived before marriage may ruin her reputation, Kunti places the child- born with natural armor and divine earrings- in a wicker basket. She coated the basket with the wax to make it waterproof, and lined it with layers of the silk to make it soft and warm. She placed the baby carefully in his new bed and carried the basket to the river.
Then she kissed him good-bye and set the basket afloat and whispered, “May the Sun-God watch over you always and keep you safe. May you find parents who will love you and care for you.” Downstream, Adhiratha was sitting on a rock, hoping to catch a fish for the midday meal. He was a gentleman, a charioteer by trade, and his wife Radha was a gentle and good woman. They were often sad, however, for they were unable to have children. Adhiratha cast the line out over the river and sighed again, he waded out into the current and caught hold of the basket. His surprise knew no bounds when he discovered the sleeping newborn baby inside the boat. When Radha saw the tiny baby lying peacefully asleep, she was overjoyed and said to her husband,
“Swamy, it seems that our prayers have been answered. We will keep this baby and bring him up as our own”.
He replied I agree with you. He is a gift from God in answer to our prayers. In fact, he himself is Godlike with these divine earrings and armor. After consultation with the Brahmins, he was named Vasushena since he was wearing a Vasu Varma. He also came to be known as Radheya or the son of Radha, and more famously as Karna (signifying ear, because he was born with the divine earrings). Radheya was outgrowing like every other young boy of his age in the village. With his special features and personality, anybody could see that the boy did not quite belong to the category of ordinary village lads. Because of his strength and skills at any kind of game, nobody would mess up with him and he became a natural leader in the village. Although he soon lost interest in the games that other boys played, while at home he would shape beautiful clay toys. Outside the home he would be interested in wrestling or cutting stout branches of trees, shaping them into bows and arrows and shooting them at imaginary targets.
Seeing his son in such a getup Adhiratha decided to provide him a formal education. Adhiratha was particularly tense, as he recalled how Dronacharya had initially refused to do anything with a Suta Putra (charioteer’s son), and how he had to seek the intervention of King Dhritarashtra himself. Even after the royal intercession, Guru Dronacharya had only agreed to impart basic education and training in arms to his son. In due course both father and son entered the hut
of Guru Dronacharya and touched his feet with due reverence. Karna was lodged in the section reserved for ordinary pupils and away from the section reserved for princes and other high caste students.
After a few days when Adhiratha visited his son in his lodgings, he found him tense and somewhat angry as well. Before entering the room he had assured him that his son was very bright and a quick learner. But on entering the room he found him in a different frame of mind which made him apprehensive. On being asked, Karna started asking all sorts of questions with his father. He asked,
“Baba, is it a crime to be a Suta-Putra? Why do scriptures sanction this class-based discrimination? Why should the princes and other so-called upper-class students be given better food, better lodgings, and better education as compared to students like me, who seem to have an inborn stigma attached to their names? Where does my fault lie in all this?”
Similarly, this scenario is also denoted by the term ‘subaltern’ conventionally denotes an inferior military rank, it is more generally used as ‘a name for the general attribute of subordination in South Asian society’ often expressed in terms of caste and gender as it is being acquired at birth and is non-changeable.
The term ‘Subaltern’ was coined by Ranjit Guha and later it was adopted by Marxist Antonio Gramsci and further it was discussed by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak in her essay ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ People consider Subaltern as the unrepresented group of people in the society, people of inferior race, not fit for making any real contribution to the society and therefore they cannot speak, but in reality subaltern can speak but others do not have the patience to listen to them and same can be seen with Karna, he is capable but he ultimately he is Suta Putra.
To console Karna Adhiratha sensibly replied,
“My dear son, during your education you will surely study
scriptures and find out for yourself that they don’t sanction any kind of discrimination. These divisions are all manmade and tools used by those people who wield power to subjugate those who are weak and less fortunate. Let me assure you, my son, being a Suta is not a crime. We earn our living by fair means and struggle hard to make both ends meet. Be assured there is no dishonor involved in all this. But you and I are not in a position to change the system. My advice to you is that you can earn recognition by hard work and dedication and outshine everyone with your superior capabilities. For that, you have to work very hard and convert your anger into the will to overcome the handicap of discrimination. I am sure one day you would achieve such heights as are aspired for only by the best of men”
On the psychological front, the stigma of his perceived lineage never left him. It required Adhiratha, his father, to quote him the equally tragic story of Ekalavya to bring him out of depression into which Guru Dronacharya’s rejection for his enrolment for higher studies had pushed him. His psyche again suffered a setback when he was debarred from the tournament on the basis of his lineage, despite being the best performer of the day. Another big shock came his way in the Swayamvar of Draupadi. The biggest ambition of any warrior is to display his powers in battle. But cruel fate even denied him that privilege when he was forced to sit out of the Kurukshetra war for the first ten days. He might have looked
normal from the outside but his inner personality was surely impacted by these and many other tragedies. Rejected and insulted by society at every step, he developed some flaws engendered by a defiant spirit and nurtured by association with the devil designs of Duryodhana, his benefactor prince. But those very things seem to enhance and enliven the appeal of his character. At every stage in his life he had to endure immense hardships and yet, never did he deter from the path of righteousness. The various sacrifices he made were only one aspect of his towering, though complex personality. Sometimes it was hard to believe to what extent he could drive himself to adhere to his principles of not sending anybody back empty-handed from his presence. His commitment to his principles generosity was so strong that he knew that he was virtually giving away his own life to Indra in the shape of his armor and earrings despite having been warned beforehand by Surya-deva, his
divine father. In another instance, he broke the sandalwood panels of his own palace for charity, when he could not otherwise procure the sandalwood demanded by an old Brahmin. Before him, all of the Kaurava, as well as Pandava princes, including Arjuna, had pleaded helplessness in meeting the Brahmin’s request because of the non-availability of sandalwood in Hastinapura. The commitment to his principles was so deeply embedded in his psyche that he could not breach the same even in the thick of battle and in his worst nightmares. Overall, all this made him a unique personality with no parallel among his contemporaries. Therefore Karna can be considered undoubtedly as the unsung hero of the Mahabharata.
Q-2 Is moral conflict and Hamartia there in Karna's character?
An ethical dilemma arises when a person is committed to two or more moral obligations and he cannot fulfill one without violating his duty to the other.
This is exactly what happened in the case of Karna in the episode ‘The Temptation of Karna’. At one point of time in the Mahabharata, Karna was also suffering from a great ethical dilemma. That was the decision making time for him, in which he had to choose between law (dharma) and his duty; between his mother and his friend. That was a hard time for karna where he could not obey his mother without violating his duty to his friend, at the same time he could not remain loyal to his friend without disobeying his duty as a son.
The Mahabharata which is wholly devoted to the classic and sublime scene in which Lord Krishna disclosed to Karna about his true descent, about his real mother and the secret of his birth. Just before the outbreak of Kurukshetra war, both Krishna and Kunti approached Karna and revealed the truth of his birth and urged him to join the Pandavas. Karna, for the first time, learnt about his true descent from Lord Krishna that he is not Radheya but Kunteya and five Pandavas are his brothers.
After hearing this, Karna was shocked for a moment and he did not understand how to deal with this traumatic situation. He became so helpless that he
started having an ethical dilemma- the dilemma of responsibilities both as a son and a friend.
Krishna Visited Karna First and Tried to Tempt Him by offering Several Advantageous Choices which he Would Get by Joining Pandavas:
“Come with me and you shall be a king……Pandavas shall have to recognize you as the Kaunteya senior to Yudhisthira. The five pandavas shall clasp your feet as your brothers and so shall the five sons of Draupadi, and the unvanquished son of Subhadra mighty Bhimasena himself shall hold the grand white umbrella over you…Arjuna shall drive the chariot drawn by his white horses…Abhimanyu, Nakula, Sahadeva, and the five Draupadeyas shall always be at your beck and call…..”
Lord Krishna even offered him the company of Draupadi if he chose to side with pandavas “ and at the sixth turn you shall lie with Draupadi.” Krishna further said that he himself would follow Karna if he joined the Pandavas.
Karna refused to accept all the offerings of Lord Krishna, because he knew that it was too late for such offerings. Rather he was determined to stay with Duryodhana, because it was only Duryodhana who always stood behind him. When he was all alone, Duryodhan was the only person to come to his aid and he would never give him up. Karna also told Krishna that he considers Adhiratha and Radha as his real parents because they showered unconditional love on him, whereas Kunti cast him out as though he had been stillborn.
Even Karna request Vasudeva not to disclose their meeting in front of the Pandavas because if Yudhisthira learnt about the true identity of Karna, he would give away his kingdom to him, because he is a true dharma abiding person, and he (Karna) in turn would give to Duryodhana because of his friendship and loyalty.
When Lord Krishna Failed to Tempt Karna, Kunti came to Meet him and Revealed herself as his Mother:
“you are the son of Kunti, not of Radha, nor is Adhiratha your father, you have not been born in the line of …..I gave
birth to you before I was married. You are my first-born whom I carried in my womb in the palace of Kuntibhoja. You are a
Partha, my son...”
Thus, it is clear that the stone hearted mother, Kunti was trying to emotionally blackmail Karna so that he could join the Pandavas and fight for their cause. She revealed in front of him the untold truth and secret of his birth and accepted him as her son, not out of love but in order to protect the life of her legal sons. In reality, by inviting Karna into her son’s side she wanted to have a life-long protection and permanent armor (kavach) for her favorite sons. Had Kunti really loved Karna, she might have revealed his true identity in front of her five sons and begged Karna’s life instead. But she did not do that. If she had a really soft corner for her first born son, she would have accepted him in front of all at the time of Pandavas first military exhibition. Karna, for the first time, challenged Arjuna for archery competition but he was refused and was humiliated by all due to his low origin. Everyone, especially the 2nd , Bheema mocked him by saying that he does not have the efficiency of a warrior. It would be a dishonor for Arjuna if he fought with a suta. At that time, Kunti could have disclosed Karna’s true identity and saved her son from utter humiliation instead of remaining a silent audience of her son’s mockery. How selfish Kunti was! She remembered her first son just before the outbreak of war when Karna wholly determined to destroy the Pandavas troop.
Karna is a man of morals and values. Because he not only remained on the side of his friend, Duryodhana but also kept his promise throughout the battle, which he had made to his mother, Kunti, that he would not harm the Pandavas other than Arjuna. But at last, Karna was unable to defeat Arjuna and met his tragic end at the hands of his opponent, Arjuna, his soul enemy. Hence, no other character in Mahabharata is as morally strong as the Maharathi Karna. He is the most powerful, heroic, inexhaustible, enduring, and unbeatable of all characters.
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