ABSTRACT
Urban spaces emerge, grow, engulf, recreate identities and may even decline into relics of the past - Delhi, Seringapatam, Kalyan, Vijaynagara, Bengaluru - Karnad’s real-life urban spaces explore these coercing phenomena. The proposed chapter shall enquire into the always-changing nature of the space/no-space being occupied by people whose upward tendencies along the social ladder follow such varied patterns that any attempt to trace them is as challenging as surviving in such a space. Therefore, strategies of survival in creating, occupying, and consolidating one’s own space may invite the literati, like Karnad, to peep into interesting aspects of the ever-changing network of these movements. The city thus acquires an engaging dimension which is determined by certain fundamental factors and points towards others in turn. Being a person brought up in an urban (sometimes semi-urban) milieu, and finally settling down to cater to the theatrical ventures of an urban audience, Girish Karnad, in some of his plays which fall back upon the vibrant city life, has consciously attempted to hold the mirror up to this section of society for complex-seeing of themselves, which also includes their occupation of urban space.
