Girish Karnad (19 May 1938- 10 June 2019) was an Indian actor, film director, Kannada writer. He was active in the Indian cinema working as an actor, director, and screenwriter in Hindi and Kannada movies, and has earned many awards. He was then awarded Padma Shri and Padma Bhushan by the government of India and won four film fare awards.
The play Nagamandala is based on the two oral stories from Karnataka that the playwright Girish Karnad heard from his mentor, prof AK Ramanujan. Through this play what Karnad tries is to expose the exploitation of the woman that occurs through marriage, how myths display the fears of men in society, and how they are inherently patriarchal, this power was essentially used to control and restrict the actions of women.
This play is set in a rural setting and is centered around the life of rani a submissive Indian woman who is married off to a man by her parent’s will and without her considerations. Her husband’s name is Appana (any man) who is a rich man. Rani thought that their marriage life will be happy but it soon turned into a disaster when her husband is not interested in her and went to another woman. At that, she decides to feed him a magical root but she didn’t have enough guts to do so and decided to pour it off and that portion was drunk by the snake and the snake falls in love and due to the magical power, it takes the form of her husband which she doesn’t recognize and fulfills all her needs, but she eventually gets doubtful due to the dual behavior and at last, she became pregnant which made him so angry and decided to call the panchayat. Where she mentioned that if she has committed any sin let the snake bite her, but the snake didn’t bite her instead became a shield made everyone think that she’s some goddess and declared not guilty. Upon the ending, there is no hint about the snake most of the readers believe that the snake has died and that question is left us to interpret