The famous Play “Nagamandala” is written by famous Indian director and writer, Girish Karnad and it was originally published in 1988.
Nagamandala By Girish Karnad
Summary of Nagamandala By Girish Karnad
The story of play begins with the character, Rani, a woman who is recently married to a man named Appanna. Rani and Appanna are married but Appanna has no interest in Rani. He spends most of his time living with prostitutes. Rani is living a loveless and lonely life as her husband doesn’t show any type of interest in her. Rani wants Appanna to spend time with her.
She craves for her husband, Appanna’s attention. One day, Rani mixes vashikaran medicine in his husband’s food to attract him towards her side. After some time, Rani realises that using black magic for vashikaran on her husband is not a good thing to do. She decides not to give vashikaran food to her husband. So, Rani throws out vashikaran food in a snake pit.
Rani’s life took a turn when Cobra snake eats her vashikaran’s food and takes the form of Appana. Cobra snake became Appana and started meeting Rani daily at night. Rani thinks that her husband has changed impulsively. Rani has a feeling that Appanna has stopped going to prostitutes because he is spending time with her. She feels very happy about it. But she doesn’t realise that the man she is meeting at night is not her real husband, Appanna but a Naga.
One day, Naga pregnant Rani while he was in Appanna’s form. Next day, Rani tells this news to his husband very happily. As soon as Appanna learns about Rani’s pregnancy, he gets furious with her because he knows that it is not his child. He accuses Rani of infidelity.
The fight between Rani and Appanna about pregnancy spread everywhere in their village. Their village’s panchayat decides to solve their fight. They give Rani one dangerous task to check her loyalty for her husband. Rani was told by the panchayat to put her hand inside of the Snake pit and if the snake bites her hand that means she was lying otherwise she wasn’t lying. When Rani puts her hand inside of the snake pit, the snake does not bite her hand.
On the other hand, Appanna still believes that he is not the real father of Rani’s baby because he never slept with her. One day, Appanna hides himself and monitors her wife at night. Later on, he saw a man just like him who goes into Appanna’s wife’s room to sleep with her. Appanna was shocked to see a man like him.
Appanna in anger stopped his Humshakal i.e Naga and started fighting with him. He killed Naga in anger. The story of novel ends with Appanna who realises his mistake and decides to change himself for his lovely wife, Rani. At the end of the novel, Appanna accepts his wife, Rani, with her baby and started living with her happily.
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