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Diseased and Disabled Women:A Critical Analysis of the Degree of Marginality

in the Select Plays of Mahesh Dattani.Prakash Bhadury

Abstract: Dattani's plays abound thematic variation, plot dynamicsand after all engrossed entertainment reflecting not only the issues of marginalisedsections like eunuchs, women, g&y,minority community but also certain issuesthat apart from drawing our sympathies, it takes us to the presence of theprotagonists around us in everyday life who reverberate in our mind as modernmyth of suffering women. The situatedness of the protagonists, their strugglefor space, joys and solrows, their account of life gives others of their likes thestrength to make life more meaningful. Two ofthe plays fall into special category:Tara (1991) reflecting the condition of disabitity of Tara, crippled by birth andEkAtag Mausam(2005) that shows the plight ofAparna, another married womanfighting her double marginalisation of being a woman and her fatal disease ofHIV positive. The present paper investigates both the plays that deal with femaleprotagonists of the contemporary society who are pushed to extreme degree ofmarginality, yet how they fight the btights asAlka did in the Bravely Fought theQueen.Introduction: Dramatists of prominence in modern India have focused onmarginalised and suffering women of Indian society in vernacular literatures,but Dattani, by taking up the fringe issues of real lndia atatime of 80s and 90swhen postcolonial debate gained momentum, has taken the position of Avantguard dramatist reflecting the social dlmamics of evolving nation. Urban milieuand family units as his locus are brought on stage through technical deviceslike the stage setting, use of tropes,light, sound, music, and shifting narrative

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action between past and present to highlight 'conflict of conservation, root ofrelationships, attraction and repulsion, love and hate, association anddissociation, unity and diversity, fundamental and radical, ontological senseand ideological essence, bodily identity and sexual securiry generation gap andsexual map of common people'(Konar 2012) ."Both the plays, Tara and EkAlag Mausam, portrays marginality ofwomen on grounds of defect and diseasewith psychological insight and with a distinct difference with other playsinasmuch as the excruciating mental trauma in both the cases is caused by theforces beyond the control of human beings or are caused by sheer ignorance asTara's very birth, being a Siamese twin, is a curse what she fights even afterherdeath living behind her other half in the form ofDan andAparna is inconsolablycrushed to despair when she learns during her delivery of a baby in the hospitalthat she has got the gift (?) of HIV positive from her husband and she cannotmother the baby.

EkAlag Mausam (2005): This particular play deals with the harrowingtale ofAparna's marginalisation due to patriarchal domination, incurring HIVpositive for no fault of hers, social apafu and loss of her baby. The root of hertragedy surrounds her symptoms of HfV positive. Human ImmunodeficiencyVirus or the HIV positive causes AIDS which was first recognized in NorthAmerica in the early 1980s. HIV infection has become a worldwide epidemicand the cause of it, a health media mentions: 'HIV may be transmitted throughunprotected heterosexual or homosexual, vaginal, anal, or oral sex... HIV canalso be passed on throughprenatal infection,where mothers who have HIV areat risk of giving the disease to the baby during birth. (The Facts on HIV/AIDS:ree6).

In the case of Aparna, she received it from her husband and she wastotally ignorant of it until she faced the fateful moment in the nursing homedriving alone for her child's bfuth. The moments before is shown with the dramatictechnique of shuttling between the past and the present. Aparna steps into herpast talking to Paro who promised to be with her in her difficulty, especiallywhen she is dying. Paro, in her memory gets up and walks toward the bushesrepeatedly uttering, 'No, I want to be left alone when I go (CP II: 47 6)' heightensher life's existential questions that are ensuing in the sequence of events at acrucial time. Immediately after Paro's disappearance, the telephonic conversationof the present from Rosalynd Cooper from central hospital gives an advancecue thatAparna is going to face the toughest challenges of life alone.

Her gynaecologist Dr. Sanyal wanted to meet her and her husband, buthe declines to accompany her. Severely hurt, she moves on alone to see the

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dqctor. Already herblood samples weretested showingthe result ofHlVpositivewhat prompted the doctors to call in her husband together. Cooper's vaguesmile at her tensed her as she got the sense that she is going to lose the baby: 'Itjust can't be! ... I haven't had a sexual relation with anyone but my husband, Ihaven't had any blood transmission, I always make sure the doctor uses adisposable syringe...No it can't be (CP II: 478). The degree ofAparn's shockrenders her choked voice and the words come as stammering to justiff herinnocence. She was denied admission to the hospital on the grounds that itwould upset the nurses and other patients. This is another immediate shock shereceives of homophobia; instead she is referred toAIDS counseling centre byfixing an appointment with Cooper. She rushes out for help from another centreand Dr. Sanyal having understood her concern of saving the baby informs her:'Don't be fool... No proper nursing home is going to touch you. And either yourbaby or you will die soon' (p 480).

Shock aftershock bewilders her so much that she cannot board outfrom the lift until someone helps her. She even could not speak to her mother intelephone. Aparna questions her husband's contemptuous character: 'And how...do you think you got it? How often... All those business trips! Those latenights. How many women have you infected so far (482)?' Here, Dattani hasbrought a coflrmonality of thematic technique of giving a voice to the voicelessthe way Alka in Bravely Fought the Queen questioned her husband's cruelty,his gay relationship and after all deceiving her. At a height of mental traumaAparna continues to holds on to the Indian ideal of a perfect wife and a mother,for Suresh, her remorseless husband leaves the city stone heartedly leaving her

alone. Still she shows her concern for husband requesting him to stay for awhile. In every day news papers and electronic media, we come across numerous

of such licentious behaviour by men and the resultant atrocities on women.Dattani has made the character ofApama and Suresh as cofllmon faces of those

media reports which seriously questions the male domination and femaleexploitations. Again, Aparna stands the taste of her emotional battle by showing

a renewed interest of living the life meaningfully. She contacts theJeevonJyotiHospitalwhat she feels to be her new home with a ray of hope' An analogy ofShavian drama with Dattani shows that Aparna is among those who do not

suffer any existential dilemma; rather she celebrates life force, all the possibilities

of life in the endless alternatives. The Life Force for George Bernard Shawcontains the central idea that: 'Life is a vital force or impulse that strives toattain greaterpower of contemplation and self-realization. creative Evolution

is the manner in which the Life Force strives to reach this perfect state of

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contemplation as it continually creates something better and greater beyond the

life forms already developed' (Macintosh: Bernard Shaw).In this play, Dattani while focusing on the worst degree of Aparna's

marginality has also shown a woman's fighting spirit, her quest for life withsome light of hope for her in the bleak landscape of patriarchal domination,disease, and death. Aparna is such a character we keep meeting as one whodoes not passively resign to fate but accepts the challenges of life squarely byshowing an urge to survive. She overcomes the wrong notion of social prejudiceslike the implications ofAIDS and helps others to face the challenges of life.Life for her, is not despairing in misfortune, rather turning the misfortune tobow down to an indomitable will power by being fearless'

Tira: OtherwiseAbled girl: Invisible issues, for Dattani, galore in acountry like India with its diversified culture and vast expanses. Tara is thename of the protagonist of the play who is born to twinkle with her talents ashuman being, but the society marginalised her in series. She represents everygirl child who is discriminated as girls and as disabled. Her name is chosen asa pun on the societal discrimination against girl child. Already the country is onthe alarming stage of declining male female ratio per thousand of population.Tara unfortunately was born as twins with joint at the hips. Out of the threelegs of the twins, she had her both the legs functioning according to the reportsof Dr. Thakkar. Her mother had her complicity in the contemptuous act ofcrippling her with her maternal grandfather when both of them consented togive preference the boy child over her in the complex operation of separatingthem from their condition of hugging each other.

The gravity of the pain ofTaracaflbe understood by the news flash oflongest surviving Siamese twin that comes through Dan's monologue. Tara'sgrandfather crippled her by his absolutely reproachable decision of giving thelimb of Tara to Dan, and he left all his money in the name of Dan. Tara's leg asa gift to him is a revelation from Thakkar and the price is the burden of guiltridden angst. The tragic life of both the twins unfold as Dan in wants freedomfrom his memory as that pains him constantly like that bare live wire, yet it isdiffrcult to shun away! The voice over of Dan makes his ennui clear on thetragedy of marginalizationof disabled women as he realises we are all, 'movingin a forced harmony (CP: 329)' .Dattanipositions Dan in his category to deffthe gravity of others what makes Dan shrink into begging apology to Tara, forhe himselfbelongs to the legacy ofmale dominance, in his case indirectly though.

The knowledge of the blighted past continued to be a constant sourceof agony for Tara. She developed some kind of aversion to the world outside

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her family for being ill-treated through sympathetic gauze or questioning ofwhy and how of her tragedy. Thus, twinkle Tara lost all her gliuers and shrunkinto a narrow world of solitude in home. Her mother, being a woman, understoodher trauma and hence, requested Roopa to be her best friend, only to let herpurge the burden of emotion.

Physically challengedTaraof the real life has for the first time found aplace in mainstream theatre or the reel life through the craftsmanship of Dattani,or else, girls of her likes seldom survive, at least for a few years of life to leavesome traces behind, that she was born, as she is not to carry the family nameforward. It is only the privilege given to a boy, in Indian society. When in Indianscenario, a beautiful, educated and professional girl has to weigh her withcuffency notes and jewellery as dowry in marriage,Tara has no chance ofmarriage even with double the dowry ofherbody weight. She would be a burdenfor herself, for the family and the society. Otherwise, the genesis of Tara ortwinkle star is from the races ofmothers and goddesses , aracethat is worshippedin the form of Kali or Durga or hundreds of such names and forms, yet we turnout as hypocrites with loathsome difference in our preaching and practicing.Dattani as a humanist points out that all the girls or women are born asautonomous being, yet she is made to be subservient to men. Her identity isthrough amafi as Lalitha's identity inthe Bravely Fought the Queea is throughher husband. Tara is just not crippled physically; her independent self or ego iscrippled by the dominant male conscience to be reduced into an object of pityonly to be perished to stabilizethatego. Dattani echoes the concern of Beauvoirwho felt in a similar way of woman's inessentiality under the dominance of asituational compulsion as: 0... humanity is male and man defines woman not inherself but as relative to him; she is not regarded as an autonomous being...And she is simply what man decrees; thus she is called 'the sex', by which ismeant that she appears essentially to the male as a sexual being... He is theSubject, he is the Absolute

- she is the Other' (Beauvoir 1949: The Second

Sex).Conclusion: Daffani's stage setting, plot structure, indigenous English

and the sequence of events are so designed as to create a flux of images thatstire the insight of a reader or audience to the disturbing reality of thecontemporary sociefy. Reality of a worse degree of marginaliosation is soobjectively presented that the characters shown on stage is exactly the ones weencounter every day. Both the plays provide us a peep into modern Indian societywhich claims to be shinning and advancing into a developed nation against thebackdrop of male chauvinism and social discrimination. Women have been

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subjugated more by cultural differences than any biological differences' Disease

and disability are more of a male construct than any natulal phenomena' We

continue to ignore the trauma of a girl or woman being meted out discriminatory

treatment as if they have no value and import ance;they are not only freaks' but

also aburden on family and society. Dattani shows how insane we have been in

recognizing the hidden potentialities of such disabled people-and offering them

a bare minimum dignity deserved for human beings. Thus, he exhorts us for a

change of societal mindset in order to make India a place, known for its harmony

and a place for better living. IWorks Cited

Beauvoir, Simone de. 'The Second Sex' (1949), https://www'marxists'org/re ferenc e/ subj e ctlethi c s/ de -b e a uv oir l2n d - s e x/introduction.htm. Date of access-25 June 2014'

Daffani, Mahesh. collected Plays. Penguin books India Pvt. Ltd' New Delhi'2000.

'HIV/AIDS'. Canada.com 7 July 2014. http://bodyandhealth'canada'com/channel condition_info_details. asp Date of access- 24 |une2014.

Konar, Ankur. oDrama, Dattani and Discourse: Position and Exposition' . LapisLazuli, Autumn 2Ol2.http : //pintersociety. com/vol-2 -issue-2aufiimn-2}l2l.Date of access-26 Jrtne 2014'

Maclntosh, Jay w. 'The origins of George Bernard Shaw's Life Forcephilosophy., https ://www. smashwords. com/books/view/152348. Date of access-. 24 June 2014

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