FAMOUS WORKS

Where There's a Will (1988)

Dance Like a Man (1989)
Tara (1990)
Bravely Fought the Queen (1991)
Final Solutions (1993)[13]
Do The Needful
On a Muggy Night in Mumbai (1998)
Seven Circles Round The Fire (Radio play for BBC) (Seven Steps around the Fire) (1998)[14]
30 Days in September (2001) [15]
The Girl Who Touched the Stars (2007)
Brief Candle (2009)
Where Did I Leave My Purdah (2012)
The Big Fat City (2012) [16]

Director
Mango Souffle[17]
Morning Raga
Dance Like a Man
Ek Alag Mausam

Awards
Dance Like a Man has won the award for the Best Picture in English awarded by the National Panorama in 1998

Sahitya Academy awardfor his book of plays Final Solutions and Other Plays
Sahitya Kala Parishad selected Final Solutions (1993), Tara (2000) and 30 Days in September (2007) as best
productions of the year, directed by Arvind Gaur.

He is the first Indian playwright in English who has probed deep into the sordid underbelly of modern
urban society to highlight the marginality of the most dehumanized community like of hijras of India.
Dattani's success as a dramatist rests upon his unique themes and unique way of presenting them.

Mahesh Dattani gives full description of rooms, persons and vital actions. In his plays the interior and
exterior locations become one and the geographical locations collapse. He was conscious of the fact that,
English theatre in India is still beyond the life experience of the masses and it was essential to capture the
sensibility through locating the dramatic situations in the real contemporary India. Dattani has
manifested his individual stamp in many ways on the Indian English Drama. The researcher has tried to
explore the specific contribution to the Indian Drama in English considering some special issues: Dattani’s
dramatic tensions arise from people who aspire for freedom from society. He doesn’t look for something
sensational which audiences have never been before. Dattani’s skill of presenting problems from real life
situation affecting on the individual and the society is uncommon. In this sense he puts Indian drama in
English to the level of world drama. His plays project something that is challenging and new. His thematic
concern differentiates him from the other Indian playwrights and places him on the higher pedestal. He
has his own style of saying what he wants to say. Dattani’s theme of clash between tradition and
modernity, identity crisis, gender discrimination, child sexual abuse, homosexuality, prostitution, domestic
violence, problems of Hijras and even communal tension presenting impartiality takes him to the Indian
dramatists in English.

Dattani’s Tara is an example of how technologically enhanced equipments are used to subjugate the
woman. Dattani is perhaps the first Indian dramatist who has thrown light on the pitfalls of advancements
of medical science and technology. Dattani has expanded the horizon of theatre by introducing the issues
that are deemed to be taboos. This has been a distinctive effort of Dattani in the realm of Indian English
Drama. He has tried to explore new possibilities in Indian theatre where each and every human experience
beyond the restraints of conventions can afford strong dramatic situations. The women images created by
Dattani in his plays are unconventional crossing the frontiers of the sentimental quest of feminism.
Placing the women in the background of familial relationships, Dattani presents them with their own
identity and self-respect. His characters are treated with understanding and sympathy. Dattani challenges
society’s stereotypical constitutions of male and female identity. He portrays women who are not only
denied persona space but also tortured and exploited. They are marginalized but they fight back. It may be
Tara or Dolly and Alka in Bravely Fought the Queen.

CONCLUSION

Dattani as a contemporary dramatist examines about socio-social preferences making his plays
provocative and reflective on the grounds that he manages that strata of society, that is confronting
personality emergency, feeling segregated and underestimated. He takes up courageously for the welfare of
individuals whatever has been pushed under the floor covering or ignored. the subjects of his plays are not
bound to a general public or a nation yet they are all inclusive in claim since his themes draw consideration
of the crowd in a flash as whatever he composes he is worried for humankind on the loose. Since his
themes are all inclusive they cross all social and etymological obstructions inspiring enthusiastic and
scholarly reaction from the crowd.

1. INTRODUCTION

This module is about the celebrated Indian dramatist in English Mahesh Dattani, and more
particularly about one of his plays “Tara.” You would be looking at a brief account of Dattani’s life
and work and his career which earned him international accolades and then would concentrate on
the play itself, exploring the different themes and concerns that revolve around it. This module
would also contain occasional interesting facts about the playwright and the play, with some self-
assessment questions to test your understanding of the play.

Written in 1990, “Tara” was initially staged as “Twinkle Tara” in the year of its writing in Bangalore.
However, the year after, it was staged in Mumbai directed by Alyque Padamsee and got its present
name. The play portrays the predicament of a girl child and the innate gender discrimination in our
social strata. Dattani takes up the so called “invisible” issues of Indian society makes an entreaty to
the audience for some emancipation from the social evils. The play explores the emotional distance
that grows between two conjoined twins, following the discovery that they share a total of three
legs, and one would have to be deprived for the other to be complete. The adults in their family opt
for the boy to have the leg, despite the fact that the girl child had a better claim on the limb, as the
blood flow in that limb was happening from her body. This brings into light the deeply entrenched
socio-cultural discrimination in expense of a girl child in Indian society. As an attempt to atone the
wrong done to his twin Tara, Chandan or Dan prepares to look back and confess the horror of the
past.

2. MAHESH DATTANI’S LIFE

Mahesh Dattani was born on August 7, 1958 in Bangalore, Karnataka. He was educated at Baldwin’s
Boys High School followed by St. Joseph’s College, Bangalore. After graduation, he briefly worked as
a copywriter for an advertising firm. In 1986, his first play, “Where There is a Will” surfaced. After
the resounding success of his first play, Dattani began to concentrate on his writing and came up
with an impressive oeuvre comprising “Dance Like a Man” (1989), “Tara” (1990), “Bravely Fought the
Queen” (1991), “Final Solutions” (1993), “On a Muggy Night in Mumbai” (1998),“Thirty Days in
September” (2001) and others. Since 1995, he has concentrated exclusively on theatre. He is the
only English playwright to be awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award. He got this award in 1998. He
also writes plays for BBC Radio and he was also one of the 21 playwrights chosen by BBC to write
plays to commemorate Chaucer’s 600th anniversary in 2000.

Dattani’s “Dance Like a Man” was adapted into a film in 2003 and won the award for Best Picture in
English at the National Panorama. Mahesh Dattani himself directed Mango Soufflé in 2002. He also
wrote and directed Morning Raga in 2004. Starring Shabana Azmi, this movie is about a Carnatic
singer whose life has been traumatized by the loss of her son and her best friend in an accident. It
earned Dattani an award for Best Artistic Contribution at the Cairo Film Festival.

CHARACTERS IN TARA

Chandan— He is the narrator of the play. An aspiring writer, he attempts to write a play
commemorating his conjoined twin Tara, now deceased. The play is narrated through his memories.

Tara— Chandan’s twin sister. Bright, with a wicked sense of humor, Tara has severe medical
concerns after her surgery which separated the twins. She is touchy about her limp and her
artificial legs, and defends her feelings from insensitive acquaintances by dismissing them as ugly
or stupid. She enjoys the fanatic attention of her mother, feels lost when her mother is
institutionalized and betrayed when she finds out about her mother’s role in the operation after
their birth.

Bharati—Tara and Chandan’s mother. Emotionally unstable, Bharati lavishes all her attention to
Tara, who she feels to have betrayed when she chose to deprive her of a healthy life in favor of
Chandan. In a mad frenzy, Bharati tries to coddle Tara making her too dependent on her and tries to
influence her against her father and brother to hide her guilt. She has a nervous breakdown and
gets institutionalized towards the end.

Patel—Tara and Chandan’s father. Strict and unbending, Patel apparently favors Chandan and has
elaborate plans for his future. He is indulgently affectionate towards Tara. He repeatedly confronts
Bharati pointing out that she has spoiled Tara and Chandan’slife by making them too dependent
and in the process has turned them against him. He ultimately breaks the news to Tara and
Chandan that during their surgery, Bharati and her father had chosen to give Chandan unfair
chance over Tara, by letting him keep two of the three legs, which ideally should have suited Tara
better.

Roopa—A shallow and malicious neighbor of the Patel’s. Bharati bribes her to be friends with Tara,
who she detests for being an amputee. She tries to lead Chandan on, but later complains of rape
when he touches her. She is forced to silence by Tara, who threatens to expose her secret about
having one breast smaller than the other. She is often the butt of Tara and Chandan’s joke, but does
not understand. She conspires with her friends Prema and Nalini to emotionally scar Tara by calling
her a freak.

Dr. Thakkar—He is the doctor who performs the surgery on Tara and Chandan separating them. He
sits with a God-like nonchalance in the highest stage level and often speaks deeply about the
surgery and the medical complications as if in an interview. It is later revealed how he conspired
with Bharati and her father to unethically deprive Tara of her leg, giving it to Chandan, in lieu of
three acres of prime land to build his hospital

6. PLOT SUMMARY OF TARA

The play starts with Chandan, now called Dan, feverishly typing a play “Twinke Tara: a Play in Two
Acts”, about his long deceased sister Tara in his London bedsitter. He talks about his memories and
a fanatic urge to record them to commemorate his twin sister, and how he finds himself unable to
find words to write. As he speaks, we see the Patel house in a flashback as young Tara and Chandan
walk in. They speak how they were joined in birth and should have remained so, but were forced to
separate. Bharati, their mother, enter asking Tara and Chandan to unpack as they have moved from
Bangalore to Mumbai for their treatment. She shows marked preference for Tara, as she worries
over her health. Patel tries to reason with her but stops when she hints how Patel is not as fond of
Tara as he is of Chandan and how he hates anything to do with their Bangalore house and their
maternal grandfather. As Bharati wheedles Tara into doing her bidding, Patel tries to take Chandan
to the office with him, which he refuses unless Tara goes. Their fifteen year old neighbor Roopa
comes to meet them with ulterior motives to report on Tara who she considers to be a freak, to her
friends. She intrudes on the twins as they bicker and play cards companionably. Patel is seen to be
chatting with an invisible neighbor in the alleyway out showing concern for her wife’s health, as the
children talk. Tara declares that she is strong enough to take on her life, as her mother has made
her strong.

In this point, the older Chandan breaks off as her mind is wondering, and he is unable to write a
word. He feels that he cannot do justice to the strong, gentle and kind Tara; their silent and angry
father; and even their mother. He chooses to start his play with Dr. Thakkar, the god-like creature
who had performed the crucial surgery separating the conjoined twins. He starts as if he is
interviewing Dr. Thakkar from his bedsitter. He introduces him as a talented surgeon associated
with some of the most prestigious hospitals in USA and India. When questioned, Dr. Thakkar replies
that the twins were three months old when the surgery was performed. He talks about their
conjoined condition as a “defect” and specifies how it is rare for such twins to survive and also to be
of different genders. The flashback brings young Tara and Chandan back as they talk about all the
doctors that they had, while listening to Brahm’s First Concerto. They talk about disparate topics
like their parents coddling Tara, and how Tara came across three mean girls – Prema, Nalini and
Roopa who stared at her limping, and were dismissed as she made light of her prosthetic leg. Roopa
comes to visit them and is bribed by Bharati to be Tara’s friend. She asks for time to think about
Bharati’s offer and goes on spreading the news to her friends maliciously.

Dr. Thakkar continues his jargon filled medical interview explaining how elaborate time-consuming
procedures had shown that Tara and Chandan can survive their surgery. Patel converses with Dr.
Kapoor over the phone and shows relief that Tara has found a commercial donor for her kidney
transplant. Bharati protests fiercely saying that she wants to donate her organ, but Patel stops her
forcibly saying that she is in no condition to donate her organ. As Bharati becomes agitated, Patel
hints that Bharati is overdoing her concern for Tara to cover something up. When Bharati breaks
and attempts to confess everything to the twins, Patel stops her by saying that for their good, the
secret should remain so. The twins and Roopa watch films together and discuss “The Mirror
Cracked from Side to Side” and their sympathy towards the Lady of Shallot, who was confined in her
tower. Bharati comes in and talks to Chandan about her fears and insecurities about Tara’s future,
while Chandan tries to comfort her. In the alleyway, Roopa confides in Tara the myth she has heard
about the practice of the Patel community of drowning unwanted girl children in milk, so that they
can tell that they have choked in their milk. As Chandan helps her mother with her knitting, Patel
arrives home to find Roopa and Tara watching films. He shows his anger towards what he considers
banal occupation for Tara and effeminate practice for Chandan and discloses his plans about
Chandan’s future. As Bharati protests, Patel confronts her about her ‘unhealthy’ obsession with
Tara and her repeated attempts to turn their children against him. As Tara approaches them,
Bharati tries to stop Patel from discovering the dreaded secret, and Patel decides against it in the
last moment assuring her that both her parents lover her much. An overwhelmed Tara has a seizure
and as Bharati breaks down ineffectively, Patel resuscitates an almost comatose Tara with sugar.
The older Chandan finishes his tale halfway, as the first Act ends.

The second Act starts with Bharati demonstrating her affection for Tara. There is a curious
intensity in her behavior towards Tara who obviously enjoys her attention. Bharati is overwhelmed
when Tara says that she has everything in her life as she has her mother with her. The older
Chandan is seen researching an old scrap book with paper cuttings on Dr. Thakkar’s take on the
various complications about their surgery. It is also disclosed that the twins will always be sterile. In
the Patel residence Tara returns after her transplant with Patel and is welcomed by Roopa and
Chandan. She is later informed by Patel and Chandan that her mother had a breakdown and had to
be institutionalized. She is shattered and silent as Chandan tries to cheer her with jokes. Chandan
refuses to apply for college as Tara does not want to go. Patel firmly asks him to get on with his life
as, in his opinion, Chandan has to earn his living unlike Tara. It is further disclosed that their rich
maternal grandfather has left his enormous house to the twins, but the money to Chandan. Patel
displays his barely concealed hatred for his father-in-law and advises his children to burn the
house rather than living in it. The twins have a poignant moment as Chandan wishes for stars for
Tara, and Tara wishes for real legs and a healthy life for her brother.

Roopa comes in to spend time with Tara and Chandan and ends up discussing the film “Sophie’s
Choice” with Chandan as he talks about a mother choosing between her son and her daughter. As
she leads him on a little, Chandan ends up trying to initiate his first sexual encounter. Roopa stops
him and accuses him of mollestattion. As Tara enters, Roopa tries to convince her that Chandan had
tried to rape her. Tara forces her to silence by threatening to disclose her secret of having uneven
breasts. Roopa swears revenge and runs away after disclosing that she became her friend after
being bribed by Bharati. Tara bemoans the futility of money and effort to treat her. She also
resolves to spend her life treating the underprivileged people with health issues. Chandan tries to
comfort her and is rebuffed as Tara angrily shows her contempt for Chandan and Patel. The older
Chandan is seen making a phone call to his father and being informed of his mother’s demise. He
displays a decided lack of concern and refuses to return.

Tara is surprised as she is kept away from her mother. She discloses her suspicion to Chandan that
Patel is deliberately keeping the twins away from their mother to keep her from disclosing
incriminating secrets about him. As Tara confronts Patel, he finally confesses about the
secret which Bharati has been keeping all these years. He reveals that Bharati’s father was an
extremely wealthy industrialist and an influential MLA. Patel had to go against his family to marry
Bharati. They had a happy marriage and were happy about having twins. But when they were born
conjoined hugging each other, the family decided to recruit Dr. Thakkar for surgically separating
them. The twins had three legs between the two of them and only one of the twins will have two
legs. The medical reports had revealed that Tara will have better chances of carrying both the legs
than Chandan. But Bharati and her father bribed Dr. Thakkar with three acres of prime land for his
hospital, to give the two legs to Chandan. The leg was rejected by Chandan’s body and had to be
amputed. After this, Bharati has always dreaded the secret of her favoring Chandan over Tara
coming out and had tried to make it up for Tara by lavishing attention on her and turning the twins
against Patel lest he discloses the secret. Tara is bewildered and shattered in learning of her
mother’s betrayal and fades away slowly as Roopa and her cronies shouts insults at her in the
alleyway.

Chandan banishes Dr. Thakkar with all his greedy ugliness from his memories and informs the
audience that he needs to atone for his guilt against his sister by writing this tragedy of Tara. He
expresses his deep anguish that his family had favored him over Tara and begs her forginess as his
life was saved at her expense. As he speaks, Tara comes and faces him and they hug tightly in the
manner they were born.

7. CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF TARA

7.1 Chandan and Tara’s relationship in Tara

The title “Tara” symbolizes the temporary brilliance of a shooting star. Tara’s appearance in the play
is through memories as short-lived and as brilliant as a shooting star. Tara is remembered and
depicted through Chandan’s carefully chosen memories of togetherness and then separation. In
spite of their physical separation, they are spiritually inseparable. With the demise of Tara, Chandan
experiences a sense of identity crisis. In their childhood there was also a curious reversal of gender
role, where Chandan preferred a home-bound life with preoccupations which their father
considered ‘effeminate’ and Tara was more aggressively dominant of the two. They are born as
‘inseparably fused’- hugging each other symbolizing their emotional coherence at the very outset.
Chandan envisages their reconciliation towards the end of the play as they get together in a tight
embrace, back to their prenatal connection. “…And me. Maybe we still are. Like we’ve always been.
Inseparable. The way we started life. Two lives and one body, in one comfortable womb. Till we were
forced out…” (325). They remind us of Rahel and Estha in Arundhuti Roy’s celebrated novel God of
Small Things, twins separated through fate, yet connected metaphysically.

7.2 Gender Identity in Tara

Dattani sees “Tara” as a play about the gendered self, about accepting the ‘other’ gendered side of
oneself in a world that favors always what is ‘male’. Chandan’s interest in a domestic life and
‘feminine’ occupations displeases Patel. The twins, especially ‘Tara’, are repeatedly referred to as
“freaks”, not just because they were once conjoined twins but also for their non-conformity of the
social expectations. Tara’s forceful character and wit is considered to be un-feminine by all. She is
the possibility that is ‘crippled’ in favor of the male, her brother. Here she is symbolically similar to
the bonsais in “Bravely Fought the Queen”, which symbolizes the deliberate stunting of the natural
growth and development of a woman in our society. Tara’s leg is callously separated from her to
render her twin brother ‘normal’ and ‘whole’. Tara’s victory at the card game is seen as thorough
cheating and Chandan is ashamed to admit her victory. He sees her as a good business woman as
she cheats at cards; not attributing it to her business acumen, but to her shrewdness. Even Patel
ignores her future prospects and the need to engage her in any meaningful endeavor. She is forced
to conform to the stereotype of the Indian woman, meek and mild, devoid of any intellect, deemed
fit only to perform mechanical household chores. Tara quips at this: “The men in the house were
deciding on whether they were going hunting while the women looked after the cave.”(328) She
highlights the plight of women who were presumed to be suitable for the domestic domain only.
Consequently, we find out that the maternal grandfather and Bharati represent tradition, and
prefer the male over the female as the perpetuator of familial legacy.
7.3 Mother and Daughter Relationship

Though Bharati obsessively dotes on her daughter Tara, she insensitively attributes a piece of her
daughter to the son. The Woman causes the deformity of another woman in favor of a Man. All her
fanatic attempts to create an accepting world for Tara is apparently an attempt to ease her guilt of
destroying Tara’s life by depriving her of her leg. She means to make up to Tara for her initial
injustice and make her dependant on her mother unconditionally. She attempts to bribe Roopa into
being friendly with Tara, to augment her loneliness. She also tries to establish her moral superiority
over Patel to justify her actions and to create a way out for the eventuality in case, the sordid
episode of the surgery comes to light. She also attempts to donate her kidney for Tara, which
ultimately becomes futile. Her relationship with her daughter becomes grotesque under the
influence of patriarchy which moulds them by determining the values, roles, gender perceptions
and expectations.

3. MAJOR THEMES IN DATTANI’S PLAYS

His plays deal with the social and contemporary issues which often go unrepresented in our
society. Dattani adopted different forms of drama as a medium to represent the real depth and
vitality of human experience. He considers theatre as the medium to manifest the cause of the
unprivileged segments of our society. His plays authentically externalize the problems and pent up
feeling of the subalterns. In his plays, Dattani visits the unexplored soil of homosexuals, HIV victims,
eunuchs, physically challenged populace etc. These rather radical themes of his drama, have
separated him from the traditional Indian playwrights.

3.1. Gender Discrimination

Dattani’s plays have been acclaimed for their social realism and for portraying the uncomfortable
truths of social evils. One such evil is the much discussed belief that a woman should always be
insubordinated by a man. This female subalterneity has been explored by novelists in India, but
Dattani was the first playwright to take up the crusade seriously in “Tara”, and to a certain extent in
“Bravely Fought the Queen.” These plays depict how in spite of all protestations of modernity and
liberalization, a woman in India is still considered secondary.

“Tara” poignantly talks the injustice perpetuated by the victim’s own mother whose preference is
for a healthy male child in the expense of the female conjoined twin, makes the play more powerful
as it does not simplistically dumps the blame on men but suggests that it’s women under the
influence of patriarchy who often continue the chain of injustice. In “Bravely Fought the Queen,”
the women remain at home much of the time, where they take care of their ageing mother in law
Baa and their husbands. The type of cruelty perpetrated on Baa by her husband is revealed every
now and then in the play. It is also often hinted how the two women were often confined under the
intricate expectation of their imagined social roles. The recurrent image of the bonsai effectively
showcases the stunted condition of the women in the household.

Nevertheless, Dattani cannot be accused of partial treatment of the theme of gender

discrimination. In “Dance Like a Man” he explores the ways in which our idea of “masculinity”
severely constricts the options for men, which in turn is enforced by both the male and female
populace of our society.

3.2. Sexual Marginalization

Though there are subtle hints of Nitin’s homosexuality in “Bravely Fought the Queen,” “On a Muggy
night in Mumbai” is widely considered to be the first Indian play boldly dealing with the subject of
homosexuality. It deals with the themes of homosexual love, the vulgarity among the youths in a
materialistic world, the disapproval of same-sex relationship and consigning any such relationship
to trivial vulgarity, fear of ostracism and prosecution, partnership, trust and betrayal. But
traditionalists consider such a relationship as something unnatural, obnoxious and disgusting one.

Dattani successfully picks up sensational issues of the society like the status of the third gender in
his play “Seven Steps around the Fire”. The play involves the marriage of a beautiful hijra (eunuch)
‘Kamla’ to a son of a wealthy government minister named Subbu. But the shocking revelation
transformed into the murder of Kamla. Uma Rao, a sociology scholar brings this into focus the
hypocrisy and repression of this ‘high sophisticated class’ who are beyond the reach of the Law
ever for calculated homicide. Mahesh Dattani depicted the appropriate reflections of society
regarding the eunuch community as in the beginning of the play we see how eunuchs are treated
like non-living things, they are given the pronoun ‘it/its’ by characters like Munswamy who has a
strong grudge against them. On the other hand, Uma, the protagonist and mouthpiece of
playwright, always accords the words ‘she/her’ for them.

3.3. Familial Discord

The concept of ‘home’ and ‘family’ do not carry their usual comforting connotations in Dattan’s
plays. It is the space, where most of the discriminations, abuse and systematic dehumanization
occur. Most of his plays show some sort of a dysfunctional family, where love and familial loyalty
have become strangely distorted. In “Bravely Fought the Queen,” the mother in Law was
systematically abused by her now deceased husband, and in turn gave all her love to her younger
son who resembled her more than the elder. The two sons enter a love-less marriage with two
sisters. While the elder son is abusive like his father, the younger is a closet homosexual. The two
women of the house have a stunted existence and a mentally handicapped daughter. In “Dance Like
a Man,” the patriarch of the household maneuvers his daughter in law Ratna’s ambition to be a
famous dancer to thwart the dancing career of his son Jairaj, which he considers effeminate. In the
play, in order to keep their infant child out of her way, Ratna unconsciously overdoses him with
opium, accidentally killing him. In “Tara”, the girl child of the family is discriminated against by her
own mother who prefers to have a healthy male child and separates the conjoined twins in her
daughter’s expense, thereby disabling her and causing her premature death.

3.4. Communalism

Dattani’s “Final Solution” explored the much debated subject of communalism. It was first staged in
Bangalore in 1993, focusing on the problem of communal disharmony between the Hindus and
Muslims in India, especially during the period of the post- partition riots. Dattani’s purpose in
depicting the post partition communal violence in India is not to convey the actual events that took
place, but to present the psychological fear that has been inculcated in our minds. The play also
argues that love is not restricted by religion, caste and creed, as is evident from Smita’s love for
Babban. The juxtaposition of love and hatred complicates the uniform and unhindered violence that
is promoted in a communal riot.

4. STAGE DIRECTION AND SETTING

Dattani describes the setting as a multi-layered one. The lowest level, representing the Patel
residence occupies the major space of the stage. It is described as plain and with minimum props. It
also has an L shaped passage downstage representing the alley way outside the Patel residence,
highlighted through cross lighting. The next level is the suburban London residence of the older
Chandan. It is a bedsitter—with a small bed in a corner and a writing table placed more prominently
with a typewriter and a sheaf of papers. Dattani points out how a portion of the wall covered in
faded wallpaper can also be made visible. The highest level, a little removed from the other two
stage spaces, contains a chair where Dr. Thakkar sits in a detached God-like manner throughout
the play.

There are stage directions strewn minutely throughout the play describing the narrative jumps,
lights, actions, facial expressions and also pause

GENDER DISCRIMINATION IN TARA

Mahesh Dattani is a dramatist, actor, dancer, director, and mentor. In 1998, his play Final
Solutions got the Sahitya Akademi Award for Indian English drama. Although he has
written several plays in English, he hails from such a background with hardly any literary
aromas. Some of these plays have been considered and are now part of the curricula of
Indian and international universities. He was born on August 7, 1958, in Bangalore, and
attended Baldwin's High School and Bangalore's St. Joseph's College of Arts and
Science. His mother tongue is Gujrati, but he received English language schooling along
with his siblings, which enabled him in learning English as a second language. He holds a
bachelor's degree in Arts and a master's degree in Marketing and Advertising
Management. He began his work as a copywriter for an advertising agency before joining
his family's business.

Dattani writes plays about scintillating issues that are relevant to today's society. He
focuses on the issues that some of his predecessors have addressed in their plays, such
as gender discrimination, child sexual abuse, patriarchy, and taboos that are not allowed
to be acknowledged vociferously, such as homosexuality and the plight of eunuchs, and,
of course, he writes vis-à-vis communalism, which is an apple of discord among various
castes, classes, and colours.

In Where There's a Will and Dance Like a Man, Dattani depicts patriarchy's constitution
and authoritarian attitude, gender discrimination in Tara, and the heart-wrenching topic of
child sexual abuse in Thirty Days in September, as well as the contemplated status of
eunuchs and their marginality in society in Seven Steps Around the Fire, homosexuality
and LGBT issues in On a Muggy Night in Mumbai and Bravely Fought the Queen, and Do
the Needful, respectively. Communalism in Final Solution and Some other predicaments
blur the tension and the prejudice of superiority in The Tale of a Mother Feeding Her Child,
in which a foreigner feeds her breast milk to almost an orphan child having forgotten the
condition of her child, believing in humanity and having firm faith in God, because HE is
omniscient and helps kind-hearted human beings.

The objective of this paper is to discover the girl child's ordeal in a culture dominated by
male chauvinism. Tara by Dattani is a drama that addresses the issue of gender
discrimination in contemporary Indian society. Woman in a patriarchal society is "the
image of the woman holding the mirror to her face is the typical feminine image. In a male-
dominated society, a woman is valued for her beauty and sex appeal. She is always afraid
of her beauty withering with time and therefore she holds up a mirror which tells her of her
youth, beauty and sexual attractiveness remain intact" (Satwana Halder, 62).

Since the dawn of civilization, women have grappled with a myriad of subjects. They have
been stereotyped as sex objects and vulnerable members of society. From dawn to dust,
they have been given to do numerous domestic chores to accomplish. And they are
obligated to do the assignment within the time constraint, irrespective of whether they are
suffering from a headache or backache. Paula Kaplan, in her book, The Myth of Woman's
Masochism, asserts, that the myth that “women enjoy their suffering” becomes
“responsible for profound and far- reaching emotional and physical harm to girls” (1).

Dattani's play Tara is a two-act stage play that was first performed by Dattani's Playpen
performing Arts Group on October 23, 1990, at the Chowdiah Memorial Hall in Bangalore
as Twinkle Tara. It was subsequently performed as Tara by Theatre Group, Bombay on
November 9, 1991, directed by Alyque Padamsee, and received the Sahitya Kerala
Akademy award for the same year.

Tara is the story of Siamese twins who were conjoined from the hip down and had three
legs. They were surgically separated, and one of them may have two legs. The two legs
were suited for Tara's body because Tara's body supplied the majority of the blood, but
they (legs) were given to Chandan, albeit the linked leg was eventually flaked off because
it could not sustain as dead flesh. The premise of the play Tara is the emotional separation
that develops between two conjoned twins after their mother and grandfather manipulate
their physical separation to favour the male (Chandan) over the girl (Tara).

It has been seen that boys have been given more chances to survive than girls have.
Whenever the opportunity comes to choose between boys and girls, the preference will
come for the boy to the girl. Society has been always giving supremacy and superiority to
men over women. In Tara, Dattani beautifully depicts how patriarchal attitudes,
authoritarian conduct, and social norms controlled girls. Tara has a better chance of
surviving if she has two legs, but in the absence of a property heir, the patriarchal system
favours a boy (Chandan) over a girl (Tara). According to Santwana Halder: "It is a society,
in which an influential politician has a nefarious deal with a renounced physician who
forgets all about professional ethics for more material comfort. It is society, again, in which
girl children are provided with equal opportunity: the boy and the girl receive the same
education, medical treatments, etc. - but the girl is never actually the heir of the family and
so making any plan for her is superfluous…" (66).

Dattani is an experienced and expert dramatist to mirror us to see the deep-rooted face of
gender discrimination in society that is very difficult to shrug off. Rome cannot make it in
one day; therefore, it is not easy to crack the shackles of discrimination against girls based
on gender where they are born, live, and die. It is not only the notion of contemporary
society but it has existed since ancient. Gender discrimination is the notion that men do
but women have an equal part in this- women also discriminate women from men. They
also will prefer males to a female when the chances come. When Chandan asked Roopa
to choose between the two, she chose male:

CHANDAN. What would you do if you had to choose between a boy and a girl?

Who would you choose?

ROOPA. A boyfriend definitely? CHANDAN. Definitely?

ROOPA. Yes. It's bad enough studying in a girls' school. I would definitely want a
boyfriend.

CHANDAN. No, no. I didn't mean that! ROOPA. Oh, boy child and girl child. Say that!
CHANDAN. What would your choice be?

ROOPA. Mmm … I would be happy with either one.

CHANDAN. That's not the point. In the film, I mean- the Nazis will only allow her to keep
one child. The older one would be taken away to a concentration camp or something.

ROOPA. How nasty of the Nazis!

CHANDAN. Would you send your girl child to the concentration camp?

ROOPA. Definitely not! I think it's more civilized to draw her in milk if you ask me (365).

In an interview with Lakshmi Subramaniam, Mahesh Dattani admits "I see Tara as a play
about the male and the female self. The male self is being preferred in all cultures. The
play is about the separation of self and the resultant angst". In society, women have long
faced discrimination. They have been living in the most deplorable conditions, regardless
of their social background, class, colour, race, or culture.

Tara is the daughter of a middle-class, self-professedly educated family. They (Tara's

parents) are highly regarded in society because of their education, but when it comes to
choosing between the conjoined twins, they prefer the boy without evaluating that Tara
could survive easily and comfortably with two legs because Tara's body had a better
chance of surviving than Chandan's. However, the social milieu played a pivotal role in the
surgical separation procedure. Bharti's father, who is an affluent politician who has respect
and dignity, is the owner of a large property and needs an heir, which is why he interferes
in the selection of a boy successor (Chandan). Bharti's father, who never appears on
stage, plays a malevolent role in the play, and he is to blame for the Patel family's
awkward predicament of gender discrimination. He is the one who pays Dr. Thakkar to do
surgery in Chandan's favour. When he left money for only his grandson, Chandan, and
nothing for Tara, it was a social concern that boys are given the golden opportunity, and
this tendency for male chauvinism persists unabated.

Dattani's Tara illustrates another reality: money, which is seen as more powerful than
anything else. Dr. Thakkar's choice to take a bribe for completing unethical work by
denying Tara's leg, which was related to her blood circulation in her body, was swayed by
money. The third leg was joined to Chandan's body, but it was unable to draw blood and
was soon severed. Dattani's drama teaches us that someone who has no place in society
cannot be deemed exceptional. His drama intends 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" (K.G. Manikrao).

Dattani's Tara teaches us that most of the time, girls subordinate their wish for their
parents to see their brothers happy and established. When girls marry, they depart to their
in- laws' house, but boys reside with them, which is why parents prefer to spend more
money on boys than on girls. Girls, on the other hand, are more intelligent and
accomplished than boys. "Millions of girls who are allowed to live are fed and educated
less than their brothers… By starving millions of girls so that their brothers can eat
marginally, better… The treatment of little girls moulds the psyche of their brothers, who
internalize the view that their needs- as males have preference over those of their sister"
(The Hindu).

Bharti, Tara's mother, who played an equal part in making Tara crippled and depriving her
of normal life, accepts that "she (Tara) must make more friends. Chandan is all right- he
has his witty, but she… He is different, he is somewhat self-contained, but Tara… She can
be very good company and she has her talents. She can be very witty and of course, she
is intelligent. I have seen to it that…more than makes up in some ways for…" (21). Bharti,
Tara's mother, a daughter of a prominent politician and the wife of an educated man,
having forgotten everything in her wish for a son, colluded to make Tara's life the worst it
could be, depriving her of every happiness. However, afterward, she felt embarrassed
about the sin she committed against Tara, and a repentant expression appeared on her
face. She attempted to alleviate it by donating a kidney to Tara. She, as a woman, made a
distinction between man (son) and woman (daughter), preferring the son to the daughter.
Women are perpetrating violence on women in this situation. Satyabrata Pal asserts: "the
extent of the violence against the girl as a fetus, and infant shows how deep the bias in
India is against women and why women will be secure only if we as a nation introspect
and change" (The Hindu).

Tara lives in a society where society itself creates the canon and code of demeanor for
girls to live. Tara is an illustration of such a victims where a girl has to sacrifice her
endowment and intelligence on the altar of gender. Her life has been sacrificed on the
altar of gender. Women always have been doing this practice and Tara is no more
exception. "Since time immemorial, the 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 the female body is also seen as an instrument for alleviating male
deficiencies and deformities" (Web Source). Tara is crippled to make Chandan complete.
Tara is deformed to improved Chandan deformity. Moreover, it is very sad to say that none
could have dared to oppose when this iniquitous task was taking place.

Mr. Patel, Tara's father, was only against it, but he sat still, waiting for the process to begin,
the horrific crime against a daughter whose only offense was that she was a girl. Tara was
paying the price of being a girl with her life. It appears that Mr. Patel's latent yearning was
also at work. He, too, is made of the same blood and flesh, so how could he be against it?

Mr. Patel who has an oppositional attitude, an uncouth and an authoritarian; and a caring
husband simultaneously, says, "Maybe I'm expecting the worst. It may never happen
nothings are getting out of hand. I must worry about her. Yes. I am worried about my wife"
(336). It is Patel who discloses to Tara and Chandan the intrigue which was constituted by
Bharti and her father. He says:

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 than the leg would survive… on the girl. Your grandfather and your mother
had a private meeting with Dr. Thakkar. I wasn't asked to come. That evening, your
mother told me of her decision. Everything will be done as planned. Except- I couldn't
believe what was told me that they would risk giving both legs to the boy…maybe if I had
protested more strongly! I tried to reason with her that it wasn't right and that even the
doctor would realize it was unethical! The doctor had agreed, I was told. It was only later
that I came to know of his intention of starting a large nursing home the largest in
Bangalore. He has 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. It didn't take them very long to realize what a great mistake they had made.
The leg was amputated. A piece of dead flesh that could have might have been Tara. I-I
was meaning to tell you both when you were older, but…" (57-58).

The above excerpt from the text encapsulates the play's whole theme: Tara's untimely
death was hastened by Bharti's father's villainous and imbroglio work, Bharti's full consent
and desire to have a complete son, Dr. Thakkar's avaricious compels him to do this
unethical job in need of money and three acres land in the prime heart of Bangalore city to
begin his own nursing home, all of which contributed to Tara's untimely death. And Mr.
Patel's answer was passive as if he was just a man witnessing everything and not daring
to speak out against what was going on. He tried to escape from all actions and wanted to
prove himself a nobleman and a loving and caring father. Dattani also presents the role of
a doctor in society. A doctor who is supposed to be a God of Earth and whose job is to
save the life of people can commit such types of crimes in want of money. Dr. Thakkar's
faux pas and his Faustian deed with Bharti's father which society will never forget him for.
It seems as if he could be reasoned and tried to make Bharti's father aware of the
consequences of separation as he (Bharti's father) wanted, conceivably the scenario of
the play and the life of Tara and Chandan would have been something different hoping a
happy life after being surgically separated. Nevertheless, in contemporary times money is
counted more than any morality, ethical job, or standards of society. In an accumulation, of
course, the society, Indian contemporary social value of authoritarianism and having male
chauvinism and having a male heir played a major role in depriving Tara of everything. A
society set off the social notion to have a boy child to control over the family. The males
have been the powerful and ruling status in society. Tara says, "The men in the house
were deciding on whether they were going haunting while the women looked after the
cave" (328). Here, Tara justifies the plight of women who were presumed to be suitable for
the domestic domain only and were confined within the four walls to look after the need of
every member of the family. Virginia Woolf asserts, "Imaginatively, she (woman) is of the
highest importance; practically she is completely insignificant, She pervades poetry from
cover to cover; she is all but absent from the history" (53).

Dattani has shown the middle-class society that is supposed to itself well educated and
has a respectable status in society. He is an expert in mirroring the real conditions of girls
who have been living in a crucial society where they have no respect and honor. When
Tara wants to know how the girls were being treated in the Patels' family, Roopa, Tara's
neighbour, says, “Since you insist, I will tell you. It will not be true. But this is what I have
heard. The Patels in the old days were unhappy with getting girls babies. You know dowry
and things like that so they used to draw them in milk… they could say that she choked
while drinking her milk (349)”.

Chandan is profoundly affected by Tara's death, as he was completely innocent and

unaware at the time this action (surgical separation) was planned. That could not have
occurred to Tara if Chandan had been aware of it. Chandan grew enraged when he
discovered his parents had made a mistake that had a negative impact on his life. To get
away from it all, he traveled to London and changed his identity to Dan, intending to create
a drama about his twin sister based on memories of isolating himself in London "in a bed-
sitter in a seedy suburb of London, thousands of miles from home". The guilt that
Chandan recognized was tormenting his thoughts, as he understood that his sister Tara
did not receive a fair deal from nature or society. Chandan was the only one who actually
helped Tara with her difficulties, yet it appears that he was the one for whom everything
had occurred to Tara. He, on the other hand, is the one who feels Tara's suffering. Had it
been in his hand, it would not be befallen over them what they have now. Chandan does
not want to go to university until Tara goes.

Tara was born and lived in a paradoxical society where women have no important role, if
they have anyhow, it goes to nothingness. Dattani, on the question of where did he get the
idea from, wrote the Tara play. He answered:

Well, basically, it began with, you know, reading an article in a medical journal about
Siamese Twins being separated, and of course, they were invariable of the same sex and
there was the thing about a fused leg and which had the quantities of left and right so
there had to be some careful consideration as to which twin was supplying the blood to
the leg and the journal went into the detail because obviously, it was a very unique
operation and separation. Although that was the inspiration 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 to 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 self (female) whether your gender is male or female definitely given the lower
priority (Interview with Sachidananda Mohanty)

Dattani elucidates that he himself prefers male superiority to a female and his plays are
not "to be seen and heard, not literature to be read". His play Tara has twofold intentions;
first, to expose the modern educated urban family whose adherence to the conventional
attitude of favouring anything that is masculine, the second purpose is to expose the
corruption prevalent in the bureaucratic society and the ethical deterioration of the medical
profession. Basavaraj Naikar says that some of Dattani's plays' themes "are
embarrassing, irritating and shocking the puritanical sensibility of Indian audience, his
courage, condour and honesty in depicting the sensitive issues of life is appreciable"
(132).

Tara and Chandan are physically separated, but they are still emotionally intertwined. Tara
emotionally touches Chandan more than anybody else does. They are as "two peas in
one pot", and it is unblemished when Tara says, "May we still are. Like we always been.
Inseparable. The way we started in life. Two lives and one body, in one comfortable womb.
Till we were forced out…" (325).

Tara is not the story of only Dattani's Tara but is the story of every girl child who is born in
contemporary Indian society. What is done to Tara is happening everywhere and to every
girl like Tara. Though they (girls) have proved themselves in every sphere of life, they are
still being discriminated against everywhere based on gender. They have touched every
border of success but they are still tightened to the shackles of the age-old, deep-rooted
notion of gender discrimination. Gender discrimination is the most heart-piercing
discrimination against girls. They sometimes sacrifice themselves and succumb to their
desire for their brothers' welfare. It is undoubtedly, gender discrimination is a common
issue that we encounter in most of Dattani's plays.

Tara's sparkling charm has been contaminated by society owing to gender prejudice. She
is left in society to deal with all of the unpleasant realities. There are several setbacks that
are sufficient to asphyxiate any girl's passion, yet despite having faced numerous
difficulties in her life, she maintains an optimistic outlook on life. She is content with her
existence. She is looking for a nice approach to be remembered by individuals who are
similar to her. She says, "I will spend the rest of life feeding and clothing those…starving
naked millions everyone is talking about. Maybe I can start an institution that will… do all
that or I could join Mother Teresa and sacrifice myself to a great cause. I will be very
happy if I could because that is really what I want" (370).

Tara disclosed the quality of a girl though she is a crippled girl; she can incinerate herself
for others' welfare. She compares men to women and says to Chandan, "Women grow
mature faster". She added, "We (women) are more sensitive more intelligent, more
compassionate human beings than creeps like you…" (51). Tara secretly longs for her two
legs when she expresses her desire for real legs:

TARA: I would wish for both… I would wish for both… I would wish for two of them.
CHANDAN: Two Jaipur legs?

TARA: No, silly. The real one (266).

Tara is an innocent victim of society's injustice, which is what she suffering from, has to
carry the burden of being physically disabled all through her life. Satwana Halder reveals
Tara's condition “If Tara were like any crippled girl (like Laura in Glass Menagerie) her
story would be a pathetic one, drawing sympathy from others. But Tara's case is tragic as
it is revealed to her that there was a conspiracy behind her deformity and that her mother
whom she has loved most and who has so long expressed her concern for her daughter,
contributed to that conspiracy” (58).

Dattani says that parents are the finest protectors of their children, but what happens if
parents themselves are involved in a plot against their children? Tara's mother, maternal
grandfather, and, of course, Mr. Patel, who are meant to be Tara's guardians and
defenders, all play a role in plotting against her. Dr. Thakkar and the concept of society
both contribute to Tara's crippling and deprivation of all nice things in life. Tara's
delineation has been made in this case for the sake of a boy child. G.J.V. Prasad aptly
remarks: "This is a play about the injustice done in the name of construction of gender
identities- this hierarchization and demarcation of roles does as much harm to men as to
women" (141). Bharti, Mr. Patel, and, of course, Chandan all had regrets on their faces in
Tara. When Bharti realized her transgression to Tara, she burst out laughing. She was on
the verge of becoming agitated because of it. It's a common occurrence that decent
people's decisions may haunt them for the rest of their life. One of them is Bharti. She now
suffers from chronic schizophrenia because of the sin she committed against Tara. She
played a part in Tara's early death and deprived her of the chance to live. She wants to
relieve herself of her guilt by lavishing her with her mother's love. Tara wants to donate her
kidney, and she wants to donate it to her. When Mr. Patel objected, she grew agitated.
She realizes her sin leads to stigmatized motherhood, consequently suffering nervous
breakdown and metamorphosis. Whatever it is, it is her motherly love when she showers
over Tara: "Tara! My beautiful little girl. Look at her smile! Smile, Tara. Smile again for me!
Oh! See how her eyes twinkle. You are my most beautiful baby" (58). Now Tara became
an apple of her eyes. When Tara herself became aware of her deformity, she longs for her
two natural legs. Bharti expressed Tara's helplessness when she tries to console herself
and talks to Chandan, "Yes, Chandan. The world will tolerate you. The world will accept
you but her! Oh, the pain she is going to feel when she sees herself at eighteen or twenty.
Thirty is unthinkable. And what about forty and fifty" (349). Dattani's goal with Tara may be
to highlight societal concerns such as gender discrimination, patriarchy, male preference
over females, political power and money, greed, and superiority, all of which are prevalent
in society. A crippled and incomplete boy child is considered more vulnerable than a
complete girl child is. Anish Rajan aptly remarks, "Tara is sacrificed because she was a girl
and had no right to have a better life than her brother. The idea of a complete girl child and
an incomplete male child is so socking that the sacrifice of girl is accepted than a
handicapped male child" (69). Tara and Chandan would have lived happily if Dr. Thakkar
had denied doing such an operation as Bharti's father claimed, and if he had done his
work ethically and according to medical reports. Everyone contributed to the creation of an
uncomfortable environment in which the family's joy and harmony had vanished. Subhash
Chandra comments, "Tara is not killed by any individual, but the socio-cultural system
which is responsible for her death", "the beliefs, the attitudes and the prejudices that are
deep-rooted in the collective cultural psyche become instrumental in taking Tara's life"
(157). In Tara, Dattani breaks every relationship. Because no one cares for Tara except
Chandan, her brother; a little bit later, her mother Bharti, when realized her mistake but it
was very late and all her effort to show motherly love was in vain, no more use of it. There
is neither family nor society, and, of course, Nature has not played a fair deal with Tara. It
seems women always have been marginalized since ancient times. Manu, the powerful
Indian sage, said, "In childhood must be a female be dependent on her father, in youth, on
her husband; her lord being dead, on her sons, if she has no sons, on the near kinsmen
on those of her father; if has no paternal kinsmen, on the sovereign; a woman must never
seek independence" (V. 148).

It would be preferable to end this paper with the phrase that "Dattani takes the family
setting again and again and uses the family home as his locale and fragments them" (ix).
Dattani portrays a conflicted Tara family, in which cultural beliefs are involved in creating a
situation in which a girl's life is sacrificed on the altar of gender. She gets murdered just
because she is a woman. Even today, most females do not have the opportunity to select
their own careers. For them to walk, talk, and chalk their abilities, society creates rules.
Tara and Chandan are physically separated by society, but mentally they are inseparable.

Tara and Chandan are Siamese twins who are conjoined at the hip and have three legs.
Dr. Thakkar undertook unethical work for money and land in the center of Bangalore city
to create his own nursing facility, therefore they were surgically separated. Dr. Thakkar
undertook unethical work for money and land in the centre of Bangalore city to create his
own nursing facility, therefore they were surgically separated. He surgically separated
them and amputated two legs from Chandan's body, which was soon cut off due to a lack
of blood supply. Dattani fails to provide a fair environment for girls (women) to have a
happy life in Tara.