12: Pradeep Mondal

Abstract 12: Pradeep Mondal

Voice of Dissent:  A Study of Tendulkar’s Silence: The Court Is in Session and Dattani’s Dance Like a Man

The voices of dissent are tangible in a wide spectrum of literary productions of Indian sub-continent. My paper focuses on conflict of opinions and judgements of the characters as reflected in Vijay Tendulkar’s Silence: The Court Is in Session and Mahesh Dattani’s Dance Like a Man.

Tendulkar has always been a rebel against the established values of fundamentally orthodox society.  In Silence: The Court Is in Session, he grapples with the relationship between individual and society. The play and its structure wholly revolve around the idea of a game and include the essential ingredient of peripety or reversal of fortune. Benare, who is innocent in the beginning, finds herself trapped at the close of the play. The members of the dramatic troupe make accusations against Benare that are based partly on conjecture, partly on heresy. They carry hidden venom and hurt Benare deeply. What begins as a game, gradually evolves into a hunt. The claustrophobic atmosphere inside becomes the kind of setting where social masks are stipped off. The play exposes the social sham and its dubious double standards.

Dattani’s play Dance Like a Man deals with the modern and ancient history of India in personal terms, probing three generations of conflict against a background that evokes the highest achievements of classical religious dance and ancient Sanskrit theatre. Jairaj and Ratna, a couple who have been Bharatanatyam dancers since youth, but not amazingly successful ones, put all their aspirations on the imminent dancing debut of their  promising daughter Lata. But as the story develops, Ratna reveals a deep jealousy of Lata and an almost acerbic contempt for her husband. Jairaj’s life was disastrously distorted by his rebellion against a father who was strongly opposed to the son's taking dance as a career and that too a dance which is traditionally performed by women.

In both the plays, the intensely dramatic and powerful personal conflicts move onto a broader plane. Life in both the plays is full of theatrical activities and theatre is perceived as a device of infallible weapon not only to discover the conflict that prevails in society but also to measure it. This paper attempts to explain how modes of articulation and ways of expression in social as well as in personal lives are shaped up by the voice of dissent.