Mahesh Paudyal
Poet and media personnel Naba Raj Lamsal’s epic Karna adopts a bottom-up approach by featuring an unsung hero Karna as his protagonist. Hybrid in form and completely unconventional in content, the epic takes Karna, the subsided Mahabharat hero as the central character, and retells the epic story from a completely different vantage. An epic of guilt and remorse, of revenge and apologies, of valour and cowardice, and above everything, of morality and spiritual corruption, Karna subverts the classical Mahabharat notion that the Pandav camp symbolizes virtue and that of the Kaurav, vice.
This novelty of approach perhaps is what defines Lamsal’s epic. It is new, and completely off-beat. If Bhanubhakta’s Ramayan heralded the dawning of the religious epic in Nepali belles-lettres and Devkota’s Sulochana took the epic tradition away from religious stronghold to the social arena, Lamsal’s Karna holds the distinction of inaugurating a new era in the Nepali epic tradition, namely ‘political-allegorical’.
Epics have come off and on, and gone their ways. But why Karna deserves an attention in my view has at least three different answers. First, it marks a landmark in the tradition of the genre itself, by experimenting with a religious subject from political stance. Second, it takes the risk of running against the grain by writing completely against the general understanding of the epic, depicting traditionally understood heroes as villains, and villains as heroes. Third, it gives the subaltern and the speechless a voice and representation, which after all is the essence of contemporary politics, and that way, of the postmodern times.
The classical Mahabharat—with all the available translations and versions—revolves around the Pandavs, and their omniscient and omnipotent deux-ex-machina, Krishna. And a ‘god’ as Krishna is, nothing ‘can’ and ‘should’ go wrong with him and his moves. Moreover, the very prologue of it, announcing a story that ends vice and celebrates virtue, forces any reader to predict whatever will ultimately prevails: the Pandavs and their kingdom. This, they believe, is right, and what ends—the Kauravs and their kingdom obviously—is wrong. Krishna is not questionable, and by corollary, his allies in the name of the Pandavs are always, already correct. Not to talk of Kunti, the mother of the Pandavs, whose mere presence with her five ‘good’ sons at the end makes her a benevolent and virtuous mother!
This, in fact, is a highly idealistic interpretation of the Mahabharat, bent on serving some vested designs. One, religion as a binding factor should continue to bind the society and whatever apparently is with it—with Krishna, its symbol for that matter —should prevail. This way, the so-called learned, the strong and the powerful ones ‘should’ continue their hegemony upon the mass, and the mass should meekly comply with whatever has been cooked for them in the religious palace. Where then are the voices of Karna, and other Karnas that occupy the peripheral territories in Mahabharata? Who celebrates Adhirath and Radha, who in fact make Karna a hero? In spite of all crimes, pride and prejudices, Kunti continues to be the Queen Mother, the epitome of virtues, and an emblem of righteousness. She is the refuge, the guide and the philosopher.
Kunti strips Karna of this celestial armour Surya, his ‘father’ gave him at his birth. This way, she strips him of his powers, and renders him virtually armless. Then she does her every bit to help the Pandavs acquire power—both in terms of arms and relations—and prepares them for the war. The classical Mahabharat validates and justifies every bit of Kunti’s move, compromising it with the apparent guilt, and her action in the larger interest of the Kuru dynasty. However, her position as a criminal cannot be acquitted for a thousand recantations and confessions. Lamsal’s Karna establishes this.
The most beautiful and thought-provoking comparison is made when Karna and Arjun are simultaneously brought forth for a comparative analysis. Arjun is not a power in himself. He is as cut-and-paste model of powers collected from here and there. He has Krishna all the time by his side and the whole galaxy of gods by his father’s political influence, and mother’s marital relation. This way, he acquires almost all the powerful arms. Karna is in a way no match to him in terms of arms, but he takes Arjun by neck, though virtually unarmed he is. Arjun’s fight and apparent valour against Karna is a fight between a heavy armed aristocrat with a galaxy of soldiers at his side, with a subaltern character, bare and unarmed, and discredited from almost everyone in the ruling arch.
What the epic fundamentally seems to do is to subvert the conventional understanding of the classical Mahabharat. It urges the readers to change their perspectives, and make Karna the subaltern hero, the chief spectacle to look at the permutations and combinations of the Mahabharat. With his extremely lucid style of metrical versification, mixed with modern prose poetic style, once again Lamsal has been able to assert his poetic self at its best.
His thematic experimentation however involves a risk. Since Mahabharat is an epic firmly rooted in almost every mind in the region where the epic is read, and understood for ages from Pandavs’ point of view, it will either be coldly received, or reluctantly hailed, however judicious and right it might have been. It might be like a Galilean discover—accurately correct, but forced to wait till the right time comes and attests its truth value. Lamsal may also face the need to wait longer to see his epic picking up support. His courage and the spirit of experimentation however are salutary!