Ahalya B. D. (Ahalaya Balakrishna Devadiga) is an adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s definitive work on woman Hedda Gabler, written in 1890. This play comes three years after Leo Tolstoy published Anna Karenina. And two years before Strindberg published Miss Julie. All these works unequivocally depict the longing for freedom of a woman from the stifling society, of a woman trapped in moralistic society, of a woman caged in the institution of marriage.
Ahalya⏤Hedda Gabler in Kannada⏤is married to an academic, bored to death and longs for life. At one point in the play she declares, “I want to bore myself to death”. The Ahalya of Ramayana was torn between two men, an ascetic whom she is married to and the other who lusted for her, and the two decided the course of life for Ahalya. For having consented to the call by her lover, for wanting to come to life, she is cursed: “You will live here for many thousands of years, eating wind, without any food, lying on ashes and generating inner heat. Invisible to all creatures, you will live in this hermitage.” And thus she lived, for thousands of years, breathing, yet invisible, waiting for someone to release her from the curse. Our Ahalya, trapped in a marriage, does not become invisible, but longs to write the destinies of two men, a man whom she loved but did not dare to announce it to the world and another whom she is married to. Finding the men around her inadequate, insipid, she is attracted to a woman, against the norms of the moralistic society, but does not have the courage to make it public. Her life has been charted out by three men⏤one who does not understand the nuances of marriage and life, the other who demanded too much of her when in love and frightened her into a shell, the third who tries to ‘use’ her vulnerability. Unable to ‘create’ her own man, afraid of the backlash from society, Ahalya kills herself, ‘beautifully’, leaving behind a tragic note. Ahalya does not wait for someone to release her from the curse, but finds her own answer. She sleeps forever.