Mahesh Dattani’s is one of India’s
foremost playwrights – someone who takes keen interest in wading through the
tempestuous waters which our society finds itself struggling with, by adhering
to ideas, notions and practices which scarce are servants to reason or logic.
Dattani sees in society what others conveniently ignore. He calls them the ‘invisible issues’ of our society,
permeating our culture, affecting our daily existence; yet, people somehow
collude to maintain a tacit, steadfast silence on them. It is once in a while,
that a voice like that of Dattani is heard, who in his own, carries the voice
of many other voiceless characters nature has given birth to and society has
destroyed. “Giving Voice To The Voiceless”
is the title of one of the works referred while writing this paper, and how apt
does it sound in terms of describing Dattani and the essence of his works.
Tara, earlier
published as Twinkle Tara, is one of
Dattani’s plays, which deals with notions and conditions of gender. In a
poignant story of two Siamese twins, this play unearths the many dishonourable
tendencies which exist in the underbelly of our society even today when we have
come around to fooling ourselves into believing that we celebrate womanhood. Tara also does well to depict the
dynamics of a family which is dealing with a situation society does not define
a precept for. It is a unique situation – bringing up twins, who were conjoined
at birth, separated after a surgery and who now live with one artificial limb
each and extremely fragile health conditions. With ease, yet with force,
Dattani depicts the bizarre, but universally accepted philosophy of women
playing second fiddle to men. Woven into the narrative of the play are issues
of class, of conflict between the modern and traditional lifestyle, of the
inexpressiveness of filial love, and the clash between new and old value
systems.
In an interview with Lakshmi
Subramaniam, Dattani had himself made a statement – “I see Tara as a play about male self and female self, and the male
self being preferred in all cultures. The play is about the separation of self
and the resultant angst.” In these lines of Dattani, it becomes amply
clear, that this play is being enacted as a microcosm of the practices and psyche
of the society. History has been witness to a cruel and inherent bias against
its female members since ages. Societies have come and gone, but the politics
of gender have never been completely erased from its face. Invariably, it is
the society which assumes a deterministic role over the life (and body, as we
will discuss in later paragraphs) of a girl, which ordains tenets for their
existence. This ‘society’ is usually a male set-up; if not that, it is heavily
patriarchal or patrilineal in character.
Discrimination
against women is not limited to India. However, when it comes to conducting an
academic inquiry into prejudices which females suffer merely by the virtue of
their biological characteristics, India is a land rich and vibrant with stories
and practices and rituals which can put one’s beliefs in right and wrong to
shame. In Tara, in which the family
is constructed as a credible, average Indian household, grappling with a unique
problem, the bias against Tara, vis-à-vis her twin, Chandan, is clearly
visible, without the need for any ornate dialogues or visuals. This bias is
present in the way Tara is treated by her father, in the way Chandan is
expected to conform to certain roles and abstain from certain activities, in a
repentant mother’s lament for the future of her daughter, and more than
anything, this bias is present in the story of Tara’s birth. This bias,
perhaps, is also visible in the telling of this story, which will be understood
once the process of Tara and Chandan’s separation and the gender politics
there-in is understood.
As
mentioned earlier, Tara and Chandan are conjoined twins. Birth of conjoined
twins is an extremely rare phenomenon, and in most cases where they are
surgically separated, only one of the two survives. Chandan and Tara, however,
carry with them the promise of living as two separate individuals. They have
perfect chances of surviving after surgery, with each important organ present
in each body. There is, however, one issue. The boy and the girl, together,
have three lower limbs, and chances of the limb surviving on the girl are more,
as stated by Dr. Thakkar, also present in a significant role in the play. In a
cruel judgement, the mother of the twins, Bharati, with the help of her father,
convinces Dr. Thakkar to graft the leg onto Chandan’s body, where it does not
survive for long! Thus, there seems to be something destiny ridden in the way
both twins are again made equal – they both now boast of one Jaipur foot each.
What is interesting to note here is the application of gendered role of a girl.
Since time immemorial, female body is seen as a means for comforting,
rejuvenating and even entertaining the male body. Going a step further, it would
not be wrong to assert that female body is also seen as an instrument for
alleviating male deficiencies and deformities. The body of a girl has often
been seen akin to a territory, with many claims to it, which passes on from
hand to hand, which has human (man) making decisions for it. Poor Tara, even
before being given a chance at a full life, is deprived of it, because the
classic male-child-preference psyche operates here, in this case. There is a
certain cold ease with which the mother (microcosmic representation of the
society), strips the girl of the right to live as an able bodied, complete
woman and seizes from the girl which is biologically, and hence naturally hers.
 |
| The author - Mahesh Dattani |
A carefully
placed conversation in the text of Tara is about one of the most hideous
cultural practices of that India which considers its daughters as curses. In a
scene between Tara, Chandan, their next-door-neighbour and extremely garrulous
Roopa and Bharati, a practice of drowning infant daughters in milk is mentioned
in a rather subtle and casual way. Though the deed of choking daughters on a
nourishing white fluid is ironic and hideous, the essence of that scene is not
in creating awareness among the audience that such practices in India exist (In
Gujarati community specially, as per the play). The catch in that scene is in
the attempt of Bharati to stop Roopa from revealing to her twins this practice.
Why does she do that? May be, an acute undercurrent of guilt operates in her
system. May be, she equates, in her mind, the act of killing an infant with
what she did to Tara, by depriving her a chance at a full and healthy life.
More intriguing is the character of Mr. Patel, Bharati’s husband, who had no
role to play in Tara’s deprived existence, but who sure is the reflection of a quintessential
male-head of the family in a patriarchal society. Patriarchy is a social system
in which the male acts as the primary authority figure central to social
organization, and where fathers hold authority over women, children, and
property. It is also a system in which division of labour is clear and roles
expected from gendered selves pre-ordained. There are not any premeditated,
conspiratorial acts conducted against the woman; patriarchy is more of a way of
living. As evident in the play, Tara is dearly loved by her father, but Patel
has lofty expectations from his son. He scolds his wife for making a sissy out
of him when he observes him helping in some domestic chores. He insists on
taking Chandan to his office in the face of his absent interest, and doesn’t
take the suggestion of replacing him with Tara in the office trip too kindly.What their daughter is worthy of is some human consideration and
compassion, but nothing beyond. This ethos is articulated in a powerful
dialogue by Bharati addressed to Chandan – “It’s
all very cute and comfortable when she makes witty remarks. But let her grow
up. Yes, Chandan, the world will tolerate you. The world will accept you – but
not her!”
Bharati does try
to reduce her burden of guilt by showering enormous maternal affection on Tara.
She, realizing her sin, leads a stigmatized motherhood, consequently suffering
nervous breakdown and metamorphosis. She cultivates disproportionate compassion
for Tara in an effort to seek salvation and exonerate herself by donating a
kidney to her daughter, but not before Dattani makes it amply clear that the affection
of mother-daughter relationship is subordinated and subjugated to the demands
of a patriarchal society. Therein lies the tragedy of the narrative. Patel, her
husband, is not in favour of Bharati donating her kidney. In fact, he goes
ahead and finds a commercial donor. When confronted by Bharati, Patel replied
rather sternly, without any cushion, that he does not want Bharati to donate
her kidney “because I do not want you to
have the satisfaction of doing it.” This one sentence is ponderable, and has
disturbing socio-cultural interpretations. Bharati is still insistent, and even
succeeds in her desire of giving Tara a part of herself, but she, her husband
and the society fail miserably in letting Tara live. As mentioned in one of the
essays on this play, Tara eventually wastes away and dies.
One of the
saving graces of Tara’s life is perhaps the kind of special relation she shares
with Chandan. Chandan refuses to join college unless Tara does. He recognizes
his sister’s interests and personality and accepts that she might be a stronger
person than him (“I’m sorry if I don’t
have your strength!”). He calms her in her moments of distress and
understands her more than is in the capacity of anyone in the world. A dialogue
which surmises Chandan’s love for Tara most aptly is, “No difference between you and me? That’s the nicest thing you have
said to me.” In Chandan’s words we witness a lament of
everything that cannot be. The relation between him and his sister is special,
but is ridden with emotional tribulations of the harshest kind. Metaphor and
perhaps prophecy for the separation of these two souls, so much in communion
with each other, is visited at the very beginning of their existence. Two
operation tables being put together and then pushed apart – two loving souls
brought close and then violently separated, never to come back together again. The
image of separation at the operation table translates into jarring emotional
parting between them, the effect of which is so profound on Chandan, that he
escapes his identity, becomes Dan and sets out to narrate Tara’s story,
essentially trying to find a completion to his own. The place where Chandan (or
Dan) falters is when he
becomes the agent of perpetuating the wrong done to Tara in her life. Chandan
had always been interested in writing, and when he sets down to write Tara’s
story, he writes it as his own tragedy. He apologises to Tara for doing this – “Forgive me Tara. Forgive me for making it
my tragedy.”
Dattani’s play,
as would be evident by now, has an overwhelming relevance to contemporary
realities. It is important to ask in this context, how appropriate is it to use
the medium of theatre to send across messages which are strong and which need
to be sent across. The function of the drama is not merely being to ‘reflect the malfunction of the society but
to act like freak mirrors in a carnival and to project grotesque images of all
that passes for normal in our world’ (‘Gender Discrimination and Social
Consciousnes Tara by Mahesh Dattani’, Khobragade Grishma Manikrao). “There is inseparable relation between the
play and the audience. Every setting, action and characterization in the drama
is performed keeping in mind the audience and viewers of the play as every act
has to be played live and in as it is manner.” – Writes Vivekananda Jha is
his paper on Tara, titled ‘Discrimination of Class and Gender: Mahesh Dattani’s
Tara. Jha also adds words of
appreciation for Dattani by stating “As a
playwright, Dattani has peerless power to transform his script into living and
natural performance.” Tara is
specifically relevant in our times of burgeoning foeticide, infanticide and
increasingly adverse sex ratio. When a sentiment is enacted on stage, there
lies more to it that mere words. Non verbal communication plays a great role in
conveying to the audience what readers might never be able to read in between
the lines. In an interview about Tara, Dattani clearly mentions that evoking
sympathy about Tara’s character was not the single-fold focus of undertaking this
writing exercise. It was also to shed light on the feminine side of males,
which when expressed, is met with disdain and disappointment.
When asked what
gave him the idea for writing Tara, Dattani mentioned it was a medical journal
elucidating on Siamese twins and goes onto add , “It was the inspiration but I think by then having written Dance Like
a Man, I was prepared to take on the gender issue head on, and I think that was
a powerful metaphor. Again, you know, the play is misread and, you know, people
tend to focus on the medical details but that’s really not what the play is
about. It’s a metaphor either for being born equal as male and female and
sharing so much more and with the surgical separation comes a cultural
distinction and prejudices as well, but on another level, it could also deal
with the individual having the male and female self and half the female self
is, whether your gender is male or female, is definitely given the lower priority.”
In this journey which Dattani undertakes to shed light on the way gender is
perceived and constructed in our cultural milieu, he more than succeeds at
touching the hearts of his audience (as well as his readers). He gives Tara an
identity, which is strong enough to become a metaphor for the various wrongs
perpetuated on women kind in our society, whether in infancy or adulthood. Or
even in after life.
REFERENCES
·
Mee,
Erin, Collected Plays by Mahesh Dattani,
Penguin
· Jha,
Vivekananda, Discrimination of Class and
Gender: Mahesh Dattani’s Tara
·
Mukherjee,
Tutun, ‘I do not write merely to be read’
– An Interview with Mahesh Dattani, The Hindu
·
Acharya,
Pankaj, The Socio-Psychological Aspects
of Discrimination in Mahesh Dattani’s Tara, International Research Journal
·
Manikrao,
Grishma Khobragade, Gender Discrimination
and Social Consciousness In The Plays of Mahesh Dattani: Tara
(This essay is an abridged version of the paper I wrote as a part of the optional course, titled 'Indian Writing in English', during semester I of Masters in English Literature at Jamia Millia Islamia)
