Oedipus vs Yayati. A 'Sacred Games' perspective

As the last episode of the first season of Sacred Games ended, 'Guruji' (played by Pankaj Tripathi) left us with a strangely mythological, intellectual embryo of the 'Yayati Complex'. Interestingly, the title of the episode was also Yayati.

Yayati was a puranic king and an ancestor of the Pandavas. He was cursed of premature and perennial old age by his wife, Devayani's father, Shukracharya. The condition for Yayati to regain his youth was if one of his own sons decides to swap his life with his father, to which only Puru (Sharmishta's son) agreed.

 

While there is still debate on what the 'Yayati Complex' actually means, it can primarily be interpreted in two ways.

The popular interpretation of the 'yayati complex' is that there is an inherent desire in Indian children to forego their own happiness and desires for the greater happiness of the entire household, which is usually determined by the happiness of the elder generations (more generically, the parents), which eventually leads to their own happiness (Puru was rewarded for his decision when Yayati decided to make him the ruler of the empire). Now, one could go on and on about the individual morality and subjective utilitarianism that conflicts this position, it wouldn't be of much use when the current political atmosphere is shaped by Right-Wing Hindutva forces harking on to the glory that Ancient India was. 

Another interpretation of the same complex is however a darker one when seen with the current Hindu perspective. No doubt this is the "unpopular" interpretation. In this interpretation, although the events and outcomes are the same, the parents are made to be the bad people. The second interpretation posits that the parents have no regard for the happiness of their children. They make their demands and wishes based solely on their whimsical choices for what they deem best for themselves and see the suffering of their children as a collateral damage.

In the context of 'Sacred Games' the makers decided to go with the unpopular interpretation as Guruji states "पिता पुत्रा से जलता है और उसके जैसा बनना चाहता है"- "The father is envious of the son and wants to be like him". And being the proud symbol (apparently) of Ancient India that he is, denounces the ‘Western’ Greco-Roman concept of the Oedipus complex.

While the Greco-Roman culture has always been about rebellion, the Indian culture has always been about submitting and giving in which perfectly is analyzed the Oedipus vs. Yayati Complex.

Now let us delve deeper into the context (oh and it’s a long way to delve into), i.e. Sacred Games.

Right from the beginning, when Ganesh Gaitonde starts his narrative we get to see a perverted version of the Oedipus complex when we see Ganesh murdering his mother and falsely implicating his father. According to the complex, Ganesh would have had a sexual desire for his mother which was repressed because of the presence of the ‘Indianized’ Yayati within him. When he can’t bear to see his mother sleeping with another man, we see how this repressed sexual desire metamorphoses into a violent abusive desire to ultimately terminate the source of his angst, i.e. his mother. A similar parallel of a suppressed Oedipus complex can be drawn from what happens in Hamlet. And moreover, Ganesh Gaitonde doesn’t stop at that. He hates his father equally and wants never to be like him, a condition, differing from both Puru (yayati) as well as Oedipus. After killing his mother and implicating his father, he runs away freely, thus completing his first ‘Oedipus’ task.

Further moving into the literary realm of his name, Ganesh is the exact antithesis of what his name stands for. While ganesha, Shiva’s son himself suffered through a Yayati complex, always respecting his parents and treating them as his ‘universe’, our own Ganesh Gaitonde has refuted the Puru within him to become his own Oedipus. Ganesh Gaitonde, no matter how indigenously Indian he might look running and shooting and fucking in Bombay slums, he is nothing, absolutely nothing like heroes of traditional pan-theistic Hindu dramas. He is a Greco-Roman Hero placed amidst the Bombay of 1970-1990. And the reasons that I say this are plenty.

Ø  He detested his parents and killed them.

Ø  He overcame the Puru within him to become his own Oedipus.

Ø  He rebelled. Ran away. Subdued authority. Rejected tradition. Fought with ‘gods’

Ø  More importantly, vanquished those gods(Salim Kaka, Suleiman Isa, the owner of the Hindu restaurant)

Ø  The most important parallel however is how he often keeps repeating ‘Aham Brahmaasmi” (I am Brahma) – I am God. The one. The Supreme. ‘आज से गोपाल मठ में सब मेरी पूजा करेंगे’. This is a typically classic Greek Hero line, which all Greek tragedies have succumbed to.

Ø  The scene in which his ‘Teesra baap’ rescues him from jail is the usage of another favourite Greek tragedy device, Deus Ex Machina. God out of the machine.

The bigger question that it further poses is- “Does Gaitonde manage to retain his Oedipus, or the (chronologically) final shot where he shoots himself in the head is the ultimate death of our Oedipus and birth of our Puru, in the form of the sacrifice for his ‘Teesra Baap’?”