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A Socio-Psychological Analysis of Gender Identity in Tara

Mahesh Dattanis is the first Indian Playwrights in English to be awarded the Sahitya Academy Award for his remarkable contribution to world drama. Among his critically acclaimed plays include Where There is a Will (1988), Dance like a man (1989), Tara (1990) , Bravely Fought The Queen (1991), Final Solutions (1993), Night Queen (1996), and Thirty Days In September (2001). He has indeed added a new dimension to Indian drama in English since his play do not aim at mere entertainment, but deal with the issue of modern life like religious tension, discrimination, gender, and sexuality. Winner of many awards and Scholarships, Dattanis, besides being a writer, is an actor director screenplay writer and a teacher conducing work shop for young lovers of drama. He is also the founder of Playpen, a performing arts group which promotes English plays and translated plays from regional language. Tara First performed on 23rd October, 1990 as Twinkle Tara, and later popular as Tara, is Mahesh Dattanis third play. A modern play in technique which has left audiences stunned ever since its first performance, it is structured in two acts with multi level set and with characters often taking in groups. Thematically it is both novel and powerful dealing with the conflicts of twins who were conjoined at birth, but later separated both surgically and emotionally. However it does not center on twins and their life alone and reveals the elements of domestic tragedy involving grandfather, parents and children. The play revolves round four major characters the Siameses twins named Chandan and Tara and their parents Patel and Bharati. The central protagonist of the plan is Tara, a girl of fifteen, Chandans twin sister and a daughter of Patel and Bharati. The play reveals the birth and brought up of twins and marginalization of girl child of the conjoined twins. Mahesh Dattanis has systematically and laudably exposed determinism, sexism and parental hypocrisy in Tara.

The elements of social determinism gradually emerged from the play and make it even more realistic and compelling. Society assumes the role of the determinerforcingthat a girl childs life must be patterned in such and such way on account of her being a girl child and thus the dynamics of society for the boy and girl seem to be contrastive. Whereas the masculine has traditionally come to be identified as acquiescent, irrational and passive. In the process of their being specialized women are taught to internalize patriarchal ideology, to accept male superiority over female. As Simone de Beauvoir put it: One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman. It is civilization as a whole that produces this creature which described as feminine. Tara and chandan were conjoined twins like a fertilized egg, destined to separate and develop into different emboyos, fails to do so fully. Ironically it was not a simple surgery of two bodies which nature had made one, not only a battle between nature and medical science, but it was an emotional saperationof two lives. The process of discrimination against the girl child begins right from her birth. the political influence of Taras grandfather and his act of bribing the doctor for unethical surgery reveals not only the hurried face of the cultured lot, but also expose unequal social structure which ignores a girl child. The very nature of surgery was not only unethical but also in human since a limb and a vital organ from the daughter was taken to favor the son. Consequently Tara loses her strength hear brother thrives. Dattanis has artfully raveled the marginalization of the girl child in Patel family. Patel seemed to be the product of maildominant society who has succeeded in life without taking help from others. He imposes patriarchal ideology on his children often deciding what Chandan must not to do and Tara must to do. In scold in chandan for helping his mother in knitting and in refusing Tara as heir to grandfathers property Patel seems to strengthen assumptions of the male dominant society. Tara must fit in the social structure for her

survival and must passively receive what others give her. The irony of her tragic existence lies in: she is an object like other objects in a cosmos, whose orbits are determined by those around. And she lives in an empty world where there are: No shooting stars to make wishes on. Tara lives in a sexiest society which separates here even more from her brother Chandan. Despite the fact that Tara and chandan were conjoined twins, more similar than dissimilar, contrastive social reception which they get on the biases of their sex increases tension in the play. It is than the politics of difference which torches Tara and reduces her to be an unwanted thing in Patel family. Her health intellectual power, career, status as heir, even her welfare is ignored. Patel does not bother whether Tara takes milk regularly or not, whether she has put on weight or not. Roopa once informs Tara about the old practice among Patels to drawn the unwanted babies in milk. Now the replacement for the old practice of drawing the unwanted girl babies is turning a blind eye to them and thus rendering them loveless and lifeless. Tara always wins at playing cards and she has potentials to be a great business woman, but her father fails to recognize potentials within Tara. However, Patels failure is not that of an individual alone, but metaphorically it is of society as well. The grandfathers property would go to Chandan and Tara would not get anything because society cares for sons and grandsons too often at the cost of daughters and granddaughters. Patels quarrel with Bharati over the issue of donating kidney to Tara reveals her overbearing attitude. Rosemarie Tong observes: Sometimes women play their roles not so much because they want to, as because they have to in order to survive economically and/or psychologically. Virtually all women engage in the feminine role playing, Bharati who engages herself in feminine role playing and follows the sexiest society she lives in is also a tragic protagonist in the play. Earlier she had done what her father had told her to do and now she struggles to follow her husband. But gradually she feels the burden of what she had done earlier and what she is doing now. She tries to defy the

phallocentric pattern and is left at the mercy of a psychiatrist. Caxias notes: Either the woman is passive; or she does not exist. What is left is unthinkable unthought-of of. Once she had prepared herself for unethical surgery of conjoined twins in which injustice was done to Train order to ensure the physical strength of Chandan. Bhararis struggles to lesson Taras emotional burden seem to be compensatory. In fact Bharatis efforts to flatter Roopa with Charlie bottles, lipsticks and magazines so that the latter may come to play with Tara seem to work as compensations for injustice done to Tara. Bharati mollycoddles Tara which becomes intolerable for Patel: Yes! Look at the way you treat Tara. As if she is made of glass. You coddle her, you pet her, and you spoiled her. The mention of Lady of Shallot is very suggestive in the ply. It certain respect Bharati is no less tragic figure than Tara; she has suffered in life, has come across harsh realities of life and knees well that Taras future will be even worse. Its all write while she s young. Its all very quiet and comfortable when she makes witty remarks. But let her grow up. Yes Chandan. The worlds will tolerate you. The world will accept you but not her! Parental hypocrisy has been exposed in the play especially through the character of Patel who cares more for Chandan than Tara and therefore he does not like his son Chandan getting involved in mothers knitting. It is an irony that confidence of the daughters like Tara passes unnoticed in the sexiest society. Thus Mahesh Dattanis Tara is indeed a thought provoking play and its chief protagonist Tara interests us both for her survival instinct. Indeed she has developed many physical complications, has undergone surgical operations, yet she maintains courage to fight her own diseases and those of society as well.

What provides the elements of tragedy in the play TARA by mahesh dattani?
Tara ia through out a tragic play and its difficult to point out only few points for its tragedy, but even then i would say that besides Tara and Chandan's physical and mental condition, though they r mentally sound, Bharti is more tragic in comparison to tara and chandan, her demented behaviour, her demonstration of so much affection to tara is just a convincing attempt. Bharti has been feeling guilty for her partiality towards Chandan from the time of their operation in Victoria hospital in Bombay where she and her father favoured the saperation of these Siamese twins and giving the kidney to chandan while it had its major blood supply from tara/s body. And that's why her statement like " love can make up for a lot' and her turning the children against Mr. Patel strike much as they have the inner sense of guilty and overloaded feelings. Besides Mr. Patel, though never appeared in despair, always thought of his children but deep inside he was stung, Dan is also trying to recover from the tragedy of being Siamese twins and loss of tara just by writing he revives tara, his own part..............

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