Chapter I

Indian Drama in English: An Introduction

There is a paucity of drama in Indian writing in English. Compared to

other literary genres, its output has been scanty. There are many reasons for
this; but the most important reason is that English is not the mother tongue
of the Indians. It is a language learnt, as the second language. English is used
in India only for practical purposes by the urban elite. Natural conversation
is the most important aspect of drama. While conversing in the native idiom,
the vigour and the vitality of a spoken language naturally exhibit themselves.
This is not possible when two Indian characters speak in English on the
stage. Their conversation is bound to sound artificial and the impact on the
audience would be feeble, often comic.

Shanta Gokhale in her well documented chapter “The Dramatist” in a

book called Illustrated History of Indian Literature in English says that,
Krishna Mohan Banerji’s The Persecuted or Dramatic Scenes Illustrative of
the Present State of Hindu Society in Calcutta in 1837 was the first play
written by an Indian in English. She says, “It was less a play and more a
dramatized debate of the conflict between orthodox Hindu customs and the
new ideas introduced by western education.” (1837: 337)

Drama, as a developed or finished literary genre or type, presupposes

a long period of development not only in the literary expression of a people
but also in its fine arts, including architecture, sculpture, painting, music and
dancing. In India, from the earliest times in her history, at least more than
2000 years ago, the art of drama seems to have been well established. India

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has made significant contributions to the world’s dramatic literature.
Through a series of works in Sanskrit of outstanding merit and beauty
produced by the most talented dramatists in the ancient India and also during
the modem times under the European influence.

Drama is first and foremost, meant to be staged. It is an audio-visual

medium of expression. So, it is very effective and powerful genre in world
literature. In Bharatmuni’s Natyashatra, drama is hailed as the fifth Veda,
Natyaveda. Indian Drama has established itself as a unique phenomenon in
the literary world. Krishna Mohan Banerji’s The Persecuted (1831), is the
first flower in the garland of Indian English Drama, after too many prolific
playwrights tried their hands to complete this garland.

In English it will be easy to discuss the development of the Indian

drama in the context of the Pre-Independence drama, the Post -Independence
drama and the Contemporary drama.

Pre-Independence Indian English Drama:

The real journey of Indian English Drama began with Michel

Madhusudan Dutt’s Is This Called Civilization? which appeared on the
literary horizon in 1871. In the Pre- Independence era, stalwarts like
Rabindranath Tagore, Shri Aurobindo, T. P. Kailasam, A. S. P. Ayyar,
Lobo- Prabhu, Harindranath Chattopadhyaya and Bharati Sarabhai
contributed to the development of the Indian Drama in English.

Rabindranath Tagore, The Nobel Prize Winner dramatist and the

epitome of the Indian spiritual heritage, wrote primarily in Bengali but
almost all his plays were translated into English. His important plays are

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Chitra (1914), The Post Office (1912), Sacrifice (1917), Red Oleanders
(1926), Chandlika (1933), Mukta Dhara (1922), Natir Puja (1926), The
King of The Dark Chamber (1910), The Cycle of Spring (1917), Sanyass
(1884). All these plays are representative of the Indian ethos and display a
unique blend of simplicity and complexity, conventionality and modernity.
Tagore played the roles of interpreter and mediator between the East and the
West. His plays are famous not only for the careful knotting of the plot but
also for the music of ideas and symbols.

Chitra, an One Act play, is Tagore’s interpretation of an episode from

the Mahabharata. Chitra, a daughter and child of the king of Manipur, has
been brought up like a boy. She is proud of her prowess and manliness till
she falls in love with Arjuna who spurns her. The broken hearted Chitra
realizes the vain pride of her manlike strength and prays to the Gods for a
brief day of perfect beauty to ensnare Arjuna. Tagore has handled this
delicate story with great charm and at times the play is sheer poetry.

The Cycle of Spring is a drama associated with the festivals of

seasons. He gives his spiritual message to the king ,the royal metaphor he
uses in all his plays to symbolize his universal man. His most famous play,
Red Oleanders is a name of red flower. It is a tale of a king who lives behind
an iron curtain while his subjects have cruelty and death delivered upon
them at the slightest pretext. People are forced to work in the mines so that
the kleptocratic king and his cronies may render themselves even wealthier.
The play follows the heroine Nandini who leads the people and finally the
king himself towards the destruction of this artifact of subjugation.
However, this ultimate victory is preceded by numerous deaths, most
importantly that of Rajan, Nandini’s lover, and Kishore, a young boy

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devoted to her. Tagore’s Chandalika is modelled on an ancient Buddhist
legend describing how Gautam Buddha’s disciple Anand asks for water to
an adivasi.

Shri Aurobindo, writing between 1890 to 1920, was a major Indian

English playwright. His dramatic genius is reflected through his five
complete blank verse plays and six incomplete plays. His complete plays
are Perseus The Deliverer (1979), Vasavadutta (1957) , Rodogune (1906),
The Viziers ofBassora (1959), and Eric The King ofNorway (1960) each of
these plays is in five acts. His incomplete plays are The Witch ofUni, Achab
and Esarhaddon, The Maid and The Mill (1962), The House of Brut (1962),
The Birth of Sin and Prince of Edur (1907). Many scholars and critics have
generally found that Sri Auribindo was highly influenced by Robert Bridges
and Stephen Phillips in whose contact he came when he was at Oxford and
who wrote poetic plays in the manner of the Elizabethan playwrights. Sri
Auribindo’s plays can safely be called Elizabethan and romantic in nature,
though they are Victorian by chronology.

These plays are considered romantic because they often deal with
matters remote from the interests of the ordinary life. The people, they deal
with are illustrious, like Eric, Vasvadutta, Perseus ect. They generally make
no attempt to preserve the unity of tone or time or place found in the
classical or Neo- classical type of dramas.

The most noticeable feature of Shri Aurobindo's plays is that they

deal with different cultures and countries. Variety of characters, moods and
sentiments enhance the beauty of his plays. His Collected Poems and Plays
published in 1942. Perseus the Delieverer is grounded on the ancient Greek

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myth of Perseus. Vasavadutta is a romantic tale of ancient India, Rodogune
is a Syrian romance, the Viziers of Bassora is a romantic comedy, Eric The
King of Norway is a romance of Scandinavia, a story of love and war
between the children of Odin and Thor. Sri Aurobindo has handled all the
forms of drama- romance, heroic play, tragedy, comedy, farce etc. His
treatment of various themes, his flawless use of English blank verse and the
right tuning of the characters and situations contribute to the overall
impression of his plays.

Another playwright who has made significant contribution to the

growth of the Indian English Drama is Harindranath Chattopadhyay. Five
plays (1937), a collection of his social playlets contains: The Window, The
Parrot, The Sentrys Lantern, The Coffin and The Evening Lamp. He started
his career as a playwright with Abu Hasan (1918). The Window, the first in
the collection of the author’s five social plays, attempts a rather
melodramatic picture of the cruelty inflicted by capitalistic industrialists on
poor labourers and the consequent misery to which the latter are subjected.
The Parrot is a tragedy dedicated to “All those whose morality is not a
parrot-cage”. The theme of the play is man’s inner urge for freedom from
the bondage created by him in the form of customs, like marriage. The
Sentry's Lantern brings to the light the evils of imperialism as can be seen in
the playwright’s significant dedication itself: “To all the victims of
Imperialist Gallows”. The Coffin, a Two Act play satirizes a bourgeois artist
and his false world and highlights the responsibilities. The Evening Lamp,
the last play in the collection is a poetic evocation of life, and the picture
presented is that of a young man who queerly observes his own shadows. It
is dedicated “to those who may be able to light it towards the new dawn of

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realism.” Sidhartha: Man of Peace (1956) is an adventurous effort to show
Buddha’s life on stage. There are no dramatic qualities in Chattopadhyay's
plays which can make the plays stage worthy.

T. P. Kailasam, though essentially a Kannada playwright, occupies a

prominent place in the firmament of the Indian English Drama. His
knowledge of the ancient Indian lore and his long stay in England made him
substantially contribute to this field. Kailasam's published plays and playlets
are: The Vurden (1933), The Purpose (1944), Fulfilment (1933), The Course
or Kama (1946), Keechaka (1947) and A Monologue (1933). It is learnt that
some thirteen English plays were also composed by him and recited
extempore, but none of these has been published.

The next great contributor came forward was A. S. P. Ayyar, who

wrote six plays. His first play was In The Clutch of The Devil (1926) and the
last was The Trial of Science For The Murder of Humanity. Ayyar's plays
were didactic and plot and characterization were of secondary importance.
Another worth considering voice on the Indian dramatic scene is Bharati
Sarabhai. During the colonial era of Indian English Drama, she wrote two
plays, The Well of the People (1943) and Two Women (1952). The Well of
The People is symbolic, poetic, and significant contribution to the Gandhian
social order. It is based on a real story published in Gandhi's Harijan, in
which, an old Brahmin widow, unable to accomplish her desire to go on a
pilgrimage to Banaras and have a dip in the holy Ganges, decides to get a
well dug for the untouchables in her village.

J. M. Lobo Prabhu is the last great name in the Pre-Independence

Indian English Drama. Out of the dozen plays which he wrote, only two

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were published in 1956.The names of these plays are Mother of New India :
A Play of The Indian Village In Three Acts (1944) and Death Abdicates
(1945). Though, Lobo Prabhu is capable of writing dialogues with felicity,
his characters are not life -like.

While giving a brief survey of Indian English Drama, few more

playwrights may be taken into account though they have not made
substantial contribution to the Indian English Drama. Some are the important
writers who have squirrel's part in the development of drama. They are
Surindranath Ghosh, R. K. Narayan, K R S Iyengar, Balwant Gargi and
Mrinalini Sarabhai.

Post - Independence Indian English Drama:

The watershed in Indian English Drama came after Independence.

Compared to the other genres, drama did not make a noteworthy presence in
the Pre-Independence era. The main reason for this was that 'drama' is
essentially a composite art involving the playwright, the actors and the
audience in a shared experience on the stage. The drama has its own
problems from which the other literary forms are free. In the Post­
independence period foreign countries have started showing interest in
Indian English Literature in general and Indian English Drama in particular.
A number of plays written by playwrights like Asif Currimbhoy, Pratap
Sharma, Gurucharan Das were successfully staged in England and America.

Asif Currimbhoy is India's first authentic voice in the theatre. He is

the first modem Indian playwright who has shown great interest in
producing drama. His 29 plays are, first and foremost, meant for the stage
and he brilliantly succeeds in producing the actable plays. His plays are

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characterized by variety and versatility. His choice of titles is notable for his
coinage of new words. The Dumb Dancer (1966), The Doldrummers (1960),
The Hungry Ones (1966), Goa (1964), Refugee (1971) and Sonar Bangla
(1972) these are some of the notable plays written by Currimbhoy. The East-
West encounter, psychological conflicts, religion philosophy, art, social and
economic problems are handled successfully by Currimbhoy. Among the
plays with historical and political themes, Goa is a two-act play where
Currimbhoy presents a story of passion and violence of the period of the
Indian take-over of Goa. In his one-act play The Refugee, the playwright
shows his concern for the burning problem of the refugees of East Bengal
who poured into India during the 1971 war. In Sonar Bangla, the dramatist
deals with the conflict between the people of East Bengal and the Pakistani
forces. The play with its moving dialogue and fast action presents a realistic
picture of some horrible events of the war.

Tagore-Aurobindo-Kailasam's tradition of poetic drama was

continued by Manjeri Isvaran, G.V. Desani, Lakhan Deb, and Pritish Nandi.
Manjeri Ivasaran’s Yama and Yami (1948) is a dialogue in poetic prose,
dealing with the incestuous love of Yami for her brother. G.V. Desani's Hali
(1950), an entirely different kind of play, received high praise for its
originality, symbolism and rich imagery. Lakhan Deb's Tiger Claw (1967) is
a historical play in three Acts on the controversial murder of Afzal Khan by
Shivaji. His two other plays are Vivekananda (1972) and Murder at the
Prayer Meeting (1976). His use of blank verse is flawless and the last play
compels us to remind T. S. Eliot's Murder In The Cathedral

Pratap Sharma's association with the Indian National Theatre began in

1961 with the production of his first full length play Bars Invisible (1961).

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He has written two prose plays- A Touch of Brightness (1968), anc The
Professor Has a Warcry (1970). The Word (1966), Zen Katha (3004),
Sammy (2005) are these are the recent plays by Sharma. Sex remains the
prime theme of his plays.

Girish Kamad is a prolific writer, playwright, actor and movie director

in Kannada language. He is the recipient of the 'Jnanpith Award' the highest
literary honour conferred in India. For four decades, Kamad has been
composing plays often using history and mythology to tackle the
contemporary issues. It was Tughalaq (1972) his second play which
established his eminence. His other plays are Hayavadana (1975), Tughlaq,
Nag-mandala: A Play With A Cobra (1990), Tale Danda (1993), The Fire
and the Rain (1998). Tughlaq his second play had proved how Indian
*

English drama could revitalize itself by employing experimental models.

Kamad has added three more plays to his distinguished repertoire during the
last two decades. Nag - Mandala : A play With A Cobra (1990), Tale Danda
(1993) and the Fire and the Rain (1998).

Nag-Mandala is based on two oral tales from Karnataka. It is a story

of the newlywed Rani, Appana, her husband and Cobra. The Rani, Appana ,
o

and Cobra refer evidently to the allegory of the nexus between the world of
art and the world of mundane reality. Tale Danda deals with the final crisis
in the life of Basavanna, the great social reformer, in 12th century Karnataka
and the founder of the Lingayat faith. In The Fire and the Rain, Kamad has
given contemporary meaning to an old legend which stresses the dangers of
knowledge without wisdom, and power without integrity.

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 The next notable dramatist is Vijay Tendulkar, also a leading and
television leading Indian playwright, movie and television writer, literary
essayist, political journalist and social commentator, primarily in Marathi.
Many of Tendulkar’s Plays derived inspiration from the real life incidents or
social upheavals which provide the clear projection of the harsh realities. He
provided his guidance to students. Tendulkar wrote a play The Vultures in
1961; but it was not produced until 1970.The play is set in a morally
collapsed family structure and explores the theme of voilence. Sakharam
Binder (1972) deals with the topic of domination of the male gender over the
female gender. Ghashiram Kotwal (1972) treats the political violence. It is a
political satire set in the 18th century as a musical drama. Silence! Court is in
Session (1967) , The Rich (1956), An Island named Man (1958) , Kamala
(1981) , Kanyadan (1983), His Fifth Woman (2004) are some other notable
plays on to his credit.

Contemporary Indian English Drama:

It is very difficult to make watertight compartments like Modem and

Postmodern Drama in Indian English Literature. The term ‘post-modem’ in
the world of literary critical scmtiny is considered to be a highly debatable
and doubtful enterprise. In the contemporary literature, the evaluation of
literary work depends on the norms and the forms and the knotting and the
knitting of the subject matter. There is no any particular theory to apply to
the work of art. Structuralism, modernism, deconstmction, social realism,
and socio-psycho analytical criticism- all these theories gained importance in
the Contemporary Indian English Drama.

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 Nissim Ezekiel, Dina Mehta, Polie Sengupta, Uma Parmeswaran,
Mahesh Dattani, Manjula Padmanabhan- these are the praise-worthy
playwrights in the contemporary Indian English literature. The prolific
dramatist, Nissim Ezekiel also the pioneer of the Post-Independent Indian
Verse in English, a well-known, critic, broadcaster, and social commentator,
wrote the following plays: Don't Call It Suicide (1993), Three Plays (1969),
and Songs of Deprivation (1969). The theme of Songs of Deprivation is the
plight of a sensitive individual in this harsh world of stark realities. Three
Plays includes Nalini, Marriage-Poem, and Sleepwalkers. Nalini, described
as a comedy, is generally considered the most successful and more important
play, while Marriage Poem shines like a polished gem in very short setting.
It explores an upper-middle-class marriage in which the homebound wife
craves the attention and love of a husband who, if he ever loved her, is now
indifferent. The insecurity of her position drives her to alternate between
nagging him and trying to seduce him. On the other hand, he is trapped
between his dreams of another woman and his feelings of tenderness
towards his lonely wife.

Nalini concerns itself with precisely that class of westernized Indians

who were then beginning to express their guilt about being without roots.
Bharat imagines Nalini to be a svelte social climber who will allow him to
seduce her for his marketing services. But Nalini, with her intelligence,
sincerity, and doubts handle him at the end. Sleepwalkers is a One- Act
satire in a minor key on the Indian habit of always looking up to the United
States.

Brides Are Not For Burning (1993), Getting Away With Murder
(2000) are the award winning plays by Dina Mehta. Brides Are Not For

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Burning won the B.B.C., Radio Play Writing Contest in (1979) on a subject
of urgent contemporary relevance- dowry deaths. The later play Getting
Away With Murder is also devoted to the problem of women.

Uma Parmeswaran is also a notable woman dramatist. She has written

these plays: Sons Must Die and Other Plays (1998), Sita's Promise (1981),
Dear Deedi My Sister (1989), Rootless But Green are The Boulevard Tree
(1987). She has handled different subjects. Sons Must Die is a war play
against the background of the Kashmir conflict in 1948, it centers on the
experiences of three women. This play is influenced by her interest in Greek
tragedies, containing a chorus and stylized language of verse. Whereas,
Rootless But Green Are The Boulevard Tree is a social play with a modem
setting, presenting the problems of the immigrants in Canada. Meera and
Seeta ’s Promise, on the other hand set out to celebrate Indian art tradition
and at the same time to educate the outsider about our culture. Dear Deedi
My Sister describes the life and hardships of immigrants in Canada through a
variety of characters and the letters written by Sapna from Canada to her
sister in India.

Polie Sengupta is one of the foremost Indian writers in English,

especially well-known as a playwright and a writer for children. As a
playwright, her full length play Mangalam (1993) won the award for the
most socially relevant theme in the ‘Hindu Madras Players Playseripts
Competition’ in 1993. Since then, she has written a number of plays, for
both adults and children, including Inner Laws (1994), A Pretty Business
(1995), Keats was a Tuber (1996) and Yavamajakka (2003). Inner Laws is a
comedy dealing with many contemporary social issues and her concern for
the sense of humor make the play great. In Mangalam, Sengupta shows the

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members of a middle class Tamil Brahmin joint family commenting on a
play about the victim of a rape but ironically enough, the viewers themselves
are involved in domestic violence.

Mahesh Dattani is India’s best and most serious contemporary

playwright writing in English. He is the first playwright to be awarded the
‘Sahitya Akademi Award’. In 1984, he founded his play-group, ‘Playpen’
and in 1986 he wrote his first play, Where There Is Will. Since then, he has
written a number of plays such as Tara (1990 ), Night Queen (1996), Final
Solutions (1993), Dance Like Man (1989), Do The Needful (1997), On A
Muggy Night In Mumbai (1998), Seven Circles Round The Fire (1999), and
Thirty Days In September(200l).

Final Solutions has a powerful contemporary resonance. It is a

political play and it addresses an issue of utmost concern to our society-that
is the issue of 'communalism'. The play presents different shades of the
communalist attitude. It moves from the partition to the present day
communal riots. Tara, his third play, unravels the conflicts of twins,
conjoined at birth, but later separated surgically and emotionally. Where
There Is Will is a play about the promise of will and inheritance which binds
together the fates of a business tycoon, his family and his mistress. Human
relationships and family are at the heart of the Mahesh Dattani's Where
There Is Will. The play delves into the lives of an upper middle class desi
family, exploring with both humour and tragedy, the compromises,
sacrifices and dishonesty that lie beneath the cover of duty, loyalty, and the
personal identity. Thirty Days In September is a play about love and
betrayal. It treats the sensitive and generally taboo issue of child sexual
abuse. The play endeavors to lift the avail of silence which surrounds child

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sexual abuse unflinchingly. Bravely Fought The Queen, Dattani's fourth
play, is a rather disturbing picture of the relations between men and women
in a wealthy, isolated suburb of Bangalore. The play traces the lives of two
sisters married to two brothers living side by side in identical bungalows.
The play was partly inspired by Dattani's observation and he has used the
metaphor of a bonsai tree to express the condition of women in India.

Badal Sircar, the major playwright, uses the contemporary situations

to project the existential attitude of modem life. Popularly known as a
‘barefoot playwright’, Badal Sircar stands in the forefront of a new theatrical
movement in India. He has created Third Theatre. Procession (1972),
Bhoma (1974), and Stale News (1979) are based on the concept of the three
plays. The chief concern of the play is to show real way to a new society in
which each works according to his/her ability and gets according to his/her
needs.

Sircar’s Procession is about the search for a “real home”- a new

society based on equality. It is about a new society where man does not have
to live by exploring man and in which each works according to his ability
and gets according to his needs. Bhoma is dramatization of the life of the
oppressed peasant in Indian rural society through a series of scenes in which
he is socially and economically exploited. Stale News deals with the theme
of revolt, centering round a young man who is bombarded with biting bits of
information full of contradictions and contrasts which come to him as “stale
news”.

Badal Sircar’s Ivam Indrajit that went on to become an expression

of the modem Indian situation has perhaps lost its sheen in a globalized age

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with youngsters who are fortified in many ways than their ancestors were.
And yet, the play is as much about the existentialist question as it is about
the urban youth of the sixties then. While the stories of Kamal, Amal, Vimal
and (evam) Indrajit may superficially hold no meaning for today’s
’’Generation Next", their dilemmas, especially Indrajit’s will forever remain.
Badal Sircar did not merely write about the coming of age of four friends, he
actually wrote about the vagaries of existence itself and it is this quality that
makes the play a true classic, eternal in scope and magnitude.

Women in India as elsewhere, have generally preferred writing novels

to plays. The drama and the theatre, as a cultural products, hold different
place in the history of women's writing and cultural participation and
women's relationship with them has not been easy. As a more public art,
writing a play demands more from the writer; for women, the demands may
be doubled because they have also to deal with the assumption that they are
less capable of public and artistic responsibility. Women playwrights in
India have contributed to the genre from the late 19th century. The nineties
decade saw many more plays being written and the new millennium opened
with greater promise.

Manjula Padmanabhan: Life and Works

Manjula Padmanabhan was bom in Delhi in 1953. Her father being a

diplomat, her childhood was spent in Sweden, Pakistan, and Thailanc and
the boarding school in Kodaikanal and college in Mumbai. She now lives in
New Delhi. A playwright, a cartoonist, a novelist and artist -these are the
different facets of Manjula's personality. She has authored a collection of v
short stories called Kleptomania (2004). It has the underlying themes which

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the author compulsively steals from the lives of her friends and relatives. In
these short stories the author displays her superior imagination and her
boldness to deal with the unusual and disturbing themes, as evident in the
plot of the title story ‘Kleptomania’.

In this versatile collection of stories from the award winning author of

Harvest (1998) the reader encounters a range of themes, from murder,
mystery to science fiction. The author’s vision of a post- apocalypse future is
dark, but rendered with a rich vein of irony and humour and new shades of
meaning. Then there are the here and now stories of bodies turning up in
backyards of love, betrayed and sexuality discovered of bitter awakenings
and upbeat endings. This is a collection that defies limitations of time, space,
and imagination to conjure up new morality tales of our time.

Hot Death And Cold Soup (1995) is a collection of 12 stories from the
contemporary India. All these stories are humorous tales, which introduce us
to characters such as the disturbed young man Rakesh, disturbed young man,
who finds it hard to keep his hands to himself, particularly when travelling
on public transport, Mr.Sukhatme, old fashioned calligrapher who forced to
demean his skill, who finds a way to turn the tables on his employer and the
young mother -damaged engineer, whose devious plan to bum alive his
sleeping wife and child. Sally, an American in her desire to embrace
traditional Indian culture whole heartedly, decided to go sati. She enlists the
help of Mrs. Sen, a journalist from Delhi, to record the momentous event for
posterity. In this collection, Padmanabhan handles the problems that Indian
women have been facing from the past.

16
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 Getting There (2001) is her personal travelogue, a semi-
autobiographical novel. In this novel, she opines that there are two types of
journey - one that takes you outside yourself and another that serves as an
introduction to it. There are two instincts as well, one to be anchored,
another to let go, to be nomadic, to be homebound. Essentially it is a tale of
growing up tale disguised in the form of the question of identity, self- worth,
purpose, in a word, it is a discovery of self. Now there has been anything as
smashingly interesting as one's own self and writing about it can be an easy
pleasant exercise. This book is based on events in the author’s life between
1977 and 1978 Almost none of it is entirely factual; but as a whole it is more
true than false.

As a collection of Strips, This Is Suki (2000), is a neat idea where the

off -beat humour and the weird imagination vie for centre stage. Suki
struggles with her snake and confides in her frog. Her friend Sweetie
relieves her of the need for enemies. Her niece and friends are a delightful
bunch of monsters. Zany, brany, neurotic, egotistic, perfectionist, obsessive,
compulsive , paranoid, analytical, self indulgent whatever it may be,
Manjula hits the right spot with her writing like “a cool glass of bear on a
hot day”.(Online: http://www.gla.ac.UK).

Manjula Padmanabhan has penned six plays; but three of them are not
published. Her unpublished plays are: Against Her Will, Bedbugs, and
Matting Game Show. However, Against Her Will, Bedbugs were performed
in 2001 and Mating Game Show in 2004. Mating Game Show is a story of
six contestants, three women, and three men, preparing to face the final
round of a TV game show which is designed to help them to win a mate and
dowry, if they are lucky. If they are unlucky, they will have to face forfeits

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including torture and death, live in front of the audience of millions. The
theme of the play is the practice known euphemistically in Indian society as
'dowry death' in which young brides who have brought insufficient dowries
are murdered by their husbands and in-laws, frequently by burning alive, so
that men can marry again and again for fresh dowry.

Padmanabhan’s published plays include: Lights Out (1986), Harvest

(1998) and Hidden Fires (2003). Lights Out is based on an incident of a
gang rape that occurred in the middle class community in Santa Cruz
Bombay in 1982. Manjula Padmanabhan shot into fame as a playwright
when Harvest won the ‘Onassis International Cultural Competitions Prize’
for Theatrical Plays. The immensely significant and dynamic play presents a
dystopia where the rich of the developed world purchase healthy organs
from the poor of the Third World. Controlled by technology, the contact
between the two segments of the world is not physical but of the virtual
kind, the only way that the developed world can remain distant from the
Third World squalor. With the pervasive black humour Padmanabhan
emphasizes the business of 'organ harvesting’ or the way human body
becomes commodified, a tradable saleasble thing, and how it can be
controlled and literally owned by the means of technology and exploited.
This no longer remains a distant concept, with illegal organ sale, surrogate
motherhood and the hiring out of wombs having become grim realities. The
powerful play inspired Govind Nihlani's film ‘Deham’ released in 2001.

Hidden Fires comprises five monologues promoting anti-

communalism. In the play, characters confront the tragedy of the mindless
violence of communal riots from which no one gains and everyone becomes
a loser. In it a woman confesses that her husband has 'stamped out '

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countless hidden fires - human lives that were less than human to him ,
merely faceless threats to his own security and then finds himself on the
receiving end of the same ruthless treatment.

Manjula Padmanabhan is a free-lance illustrator. The interesting

aspect of her work is the handling of the feminist issues. She has
problematic relation with feminism in the sense that she consciously
explores feminist perspectives, but claim that she is not a feminist.