International Journal of English and Literature (IJEL) ISSN 2249-6912 Vol. 3, Issue 4, Oct 2013, 99-102 © TJPRC Pvt. Ltd.
EXPLORING IDENTITY: A READING OF MAHESH DATTANI’S TARA HUMA YAQUB Department of English, Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Lucknow Campus, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India
ABSTRACT Belonging to urban India Dattani is comfortable dealing with themes concerning urban middle class and upper middle class people, their hopes and fears, frustrations and desires, superstitions and prejudices. Tara is a play which depicts the emotional and psychological trauma of the forced separation of Tara and Chandan, the two conjoined twins. Dattani’s play Tara brings forward the question of identity itself. Identity is a social construct which brackets us in a specific category and stops us from realizing our true selves. It is the construction of gender identities and gender biases which have really maimed Chander and Tara rather than their physical incapacities and deformities. This article will analyze Tara as a work tracing Chandan’s search for unified self and how he relives his personal history and tragedy by writing a play in the memory of his twin sister.
KEYWORDS: Indian English Playwright, Mahesh Dattani, Identity, Social Constructs, Gender INTRODUCTION Having won the Sahitya Akademi Award for his book of plays Final Solutions and Other Plays, Mahesh Dattani has established himself as an outstanding Indian English Playwright. Dattani is a truly multifaceted personality and wears many hats, besides being a playwright he is also an accomplished actor, director, film maker, screenplay writer, teacher and a dancer. These various identities have filtered through his personality and have helped him to evolve into a writer of great sensibility. Dattani is comfortable writing in English. English is the language of his creativity, the medium through which he can best express and reach out to millions of people. In his book Theatre of Roots Erin B. Mee discusses that “assumption that plays written in English are not ‘Indian’ has led to the marginalization of several plays and playwrights.” Dattani is the example that he gives who has been the victim of such prejudice but Mee finally goes on to establish that “this attitude is changing” (TOR: 15-16). Dattani’s protagonists are usually different or differently abled, they might belong to the margins of contemporary society but Dattani subverts the equation and places them in the centre. They are either handicapped or gay, eunuchs, women who take up new challenges and dare to think and act differently in a patriarchal society. His themes and characters embody the changing face of India which is marching ahead in the global world and making its presence felt. Unlike Girish Karnad; Dattani is not looking into India’s mythical past for inspiration rather his characters are contemporary, unconventional and iconoclastic. Speaking about the kind of subjects and characters that are taken up by Dattani in his plays Erin B. Mee writes: Mahesh Dattani frequently takes as his subject the complicated dynamics of the modern urban family. His characters struggle for some kind freedom and happiness under the weight of tradition, cultural constructions of gender, and repressed desire. Their dramas are played out on multi-level sets where interior and exterior become one, and geographical locations are collapsed---in short, his settings are as fragmented as the families who inhabit them. (Erin B. Mee “A Note on the Play”, CP: 319)
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A Gujarati, Bangalorean, and an English speaking urban Indian --- Dattani is himself a man of multiple identities. This article analyses Tara as a work tracing Chandan’s search for unified self and how he relives his personal history and tragedy by writing a play in the memory of his twin sister. Dan (older Chandan) living in London, starts by dropping off different masks or identities that he has acquired in the course of his stay in London. “I am a freak”, he declares and frees himself to “Allow the memories to flood in” (CP: 324). The memories of his twin sister whom he had nearly forgotten are brought to the fore of his conscious mind when he decides to write a play in her memory. Reminiscing about Tara, Dan realizes that “maybe I didn’t forget her. She was lying deep inside, out of reach…” (CP: 324). Getting entrapped into the trance of memories Dan goes on to reflect that “we still are, like we’ve always been. Inseparable. The way we started in life. Two lives and one body, in one comfortable womb. Till we were forced out . . . And separated.” (CP: 325) Here we get an early clue that Dattani wished his play to be read from altogether different perspective. Talking about Tara in an interview with Erin B. Mee, Dattani says, “it’s a play about the self, about the man and the woman in self, but a lot of people think of it as a play about the girl child.” Further elaborating, he says that it is a play “about the male denying the female, and how the cultural construct of gender favors the male….it has to do with coming to terms with one’s own self in terms of the feminine in the self.” (Erin B. Mee, MDPCP: 158-159). Tara is a play which depicts the emotional and psychological trauma of the forced separation of Tara and Chandan, the two conjoined twins. The Twins were conjoined chest down and shared three legs between them besides other medical complications. The third leg naturally belonged to the girl’s side and chances of survival of the leg were better on the girl. But the operation performed by unethical and unscrupulous Dr. Thakkar, is manipulated to favor the boy over girl. The leg is risked to be given to the boy, but nature had its own design and ultimately the leg is rejected by Chandan’s body and had to be amputated: Patel. A scan showed that a major part of the blood supply to the third leg was Provided by the girl. Your mother asked for a reconfirmation. The result was the same. The chances were slightly better that the leg would survive . . . on the girl….I couldn’t Believe what she told me--that they would risk giving both legs to the boy….The Doctor had agreed, I was told….He had acquired three acres of prime land---in the Heart of the city---from the state. Your grandfather’s political influence had been used. A few days later the surgery was done. As planned by them, Chandan had two legs---for two days. It didn’t take them very long to realize what a grave mistake they had made. The leg was amputated. A piece of dead flesh which could have---might have---been Tara…. (CP: 378) The details of separation remain a secret for the twins for fifteen years. When the knowledge of this biased and unscrupulous separation dawns upon the twins it finally and permanently tears them apart. Particularly, Tara is unable to bear the truth of her mother’s compliance in this act. “And she called me her star !” (CP: 379), is Tara’s last heart rending utterance on stage. Tara, unable to cope with reality is in a state of daze but Chandan is totally crushed when his sister breaks all ties from him by not reciprocating his gesture of true concern. Here, Dattani skillfully depicts that how gender biases and identities based on gender can harm not only the female but the male as well. The tensions inherent in Patel household are evident from the very beginning of the play. The echoes of some past action can easily be felt in the present of the family. Bharati is over cautious and over protective towards Tara, the reason at this point seems to be her failing health. Patel, on the other hand is insistent on the patriarchal role that Chandan should take up. Tara’s observation in this regard that “men in the house were deciding on whether they were going to go hunting while the women looked after the cave”(CP: 328) mirrors the sentiments of her father Patel who insists that Chandan
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should join his office and not waste himself sitting at home. The very absence of concern for Tara’s future from Patel’s side speaks volumes about his vision and his perception of male identity. Later in the play when Patel finds Chandan helping out Bharati with knitting, he looses his temper, and accuses Bharati that she is turning Chandan “into a sissy --teaching him to knit!” (CP: 351). Patel’s anger and outburst is indicative of his commitment toward male hegemony. But in a brilliant stroke Chandan subverts this hegemony as he rebels against the established structure. Chandan is creative, sensitive, sensible and caring. He possesses all those qualities which are usually associated with the feminine. He refuses to join college without Tara, he refuses to get separated from his other half. But society cannot tolerate such ‘freaks’ and ultimately Chandan is forced to live a meaningless life. Dattani also deals with the notions of normality and beauty in the play. The twins want to assert themselves to show their repulsion for society. Particularly Tara looks back in anger towards the society which considers them (i.e., the twins) as abnormal and ugly. The society, represented by Roopa, fails to look into its own ugliness and its own blighted attitudes towards the ‘Other’. In a moment of sheer hatred and anger subverting the established notions of normality, Tara tells Roopa, “ I’d sooner be one-eyed, one armed and one-legged than an imbecile like you.” (CP: 369) Through Tara, Dattani reflects that our notions of normality and disability are hollow and ridiculous. Tara’s outburst makes us empathize with what she has experienced as a marginalized person. Tara and Chandan share a very special bond as young children. They are intelligent and witty and simply remarkable in their sense of humor. They derive the energies of life from each other and appear robust and full of life when they are together, but simply fade away and wither on separation. When Dan chooses to write the story of his twin sister, he in fact cannot help but ends up writing his own. In a moment of togetherness, Chandan and Tara realize that there is indeed no difference between them. Tara says, “You, Me. There’s no difference” and a little later when Tara laughingly calls Chandan “Bastard!”, his quick witted reply is “Vulgar girl! Calling yourself names!” (CP: 361). Dan is unable to come to terms with the separation and death of his sister. He carries the burden of injustice that was done to Tara who was denied a part of her own body. Paying for the sin of his parents, Dan isolates himself from society and much against the wishes of his father, wastes himself in London.
CONCLUSIONS In an interview with Angelie Multani Dattani says, “Ultimately all good writing is about character revelations and journeys.” (Multani, MDPCP: 166-167) Indeed Tara is a journey into the recesses of human identity and human self. The effeminate self of Chandan is his neglected half which has remained unexplored and unrealized. The play is about this continuous quest for self integration and self realization. Chandan and Tara are metaphors of fragmented identities. The double naming of Chandan as Dan further suggests the fragmentation of identify at a different level. The multi level set and the movement of action back and forth in time helps in portraying the fragmented consciousness of Dan. Towards the end Dan reflects on his helplessness and his inability to act; and realizes that he is only “An object like other objects in a cosmos, whose orbits are determined by those around. Moving in a forced harmony.” Tara desired freedom and thus was “hurled into space, doomed to crash with some unknown force.” (CP: 379) Finally, Dan asks for forgiveness from his dead sister and yearns for togetherness. The play ends with Tara and Dan walking without the limp. The two become whole and complete as they embrace and hug each other, recreating and reliving that state when they were one; inside the womb of their mother. Such completeness and totality of being can only be achieved beyond the boundaries of time, in the memory, in the creative mind of an artist like Dattani.
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REFERENCES 1.
Dattani, Mahesh. Collected Plays. New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2000.
2.
Mee, Erin B. “Invisible Issues: An interview with Mahesh Dattani”. Mahesh Dattani’s Plays: Critical Perspectives. Ed. Angelie Multani. New Delhi: Pencraft International, 2007.
3.
Mee, Erin B. “A Note on the Play” in Mahesh Dattani, Collected plays. New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2000.
4.
Mee, Erin B. Theatre of Roots: Redirecting the Modern Indian Stage. Calcutta: Seagull Books, 2008.
5.
Multani, Angelie. “A Conversation with Mahesh Dattani”. Mahesh Dattani’s Plays: Critical Perspectives. Ed. Angelie Multani. New Delhi: Pencraft International, 2007.