Author: Akshara K V Translator: Jayanth Kodkani

These two plays negotiate with the real problems of contemporary India. If Sahyadri Kanda is about the ripples caused in the life of the people in a village on the Western Coast which will soon have a nuclear plant, Swayamvaraloka, is an allegorical narrative set in a small village that extends to include the larger contemporary world. Both the plays dwell on the seeming binaries of village-city, success-failure, modern-traditional while examining the nature of human relationships in the changing world. These plays also reflect an ambition to elevate the real experience to a mythical level. While most playwrights attempt to echo contemporary concerns by reinterpreting history and mythology, for these plays, the epics, their grandeur, the struggle, the wars are not episodes that happen in kingdoms and palaces and battlefields, they are also that which takes place in the microworld of one’s consciousness. Each character in these plays find their own dharma, yet it offers no model for the reader, and remains only a pointer to the complex process of finding it.

Also available on

eBook available on