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Unit 21: ‘Chitra’ by Rabindranath Tagore: Theme and Plot Construction

The scene shows the development in Arjuna’s character whose mind is now full of the thoughts of Notes
hunting and he reminisces. He thinks of a home where kind hearts wait for his return. His heart is
dissatisfied and he expresses the need to hold on to something permanent. The year is not yet complete
and he is tired. All this shows that indulgence in sensuous and physical pleasures leave a man
dissatisfied. Chitra is wayward. She has no name and fixed destination. She has no ties with the
world and when the time comes she droops silently without feeling sorry, for she has had the fullest
in her life.
The seventh scene witnesses another interlude. Madana grants Chitra’s wish that her beauty shall
flash brightest on the last night of Spring. The playwright wants to suggest that the spirit of beauty is
eternal. It never dies. It only changes shapes. Similarly the beauty of the spirit is also eternal.
In the eighth scene, the real Chitra comes to light. Arjuna hears from wandering villagers about the
princess Chitra now gone on a journey. So he ponders about the real Chitra, whose arms with beauty
of strength is a fright to the robbers. He throws the formidable task that they too—he and the beautiful
woman by his side—should leave the unbearable thicket of love and race on their horses to the field
of action. And this challenge provokes the appropriate response.
In this scene, Arjuna’s mind is fully occupied with the thoughts of princess Chitra. He sees in her a
goddess of victory, dispensing glad hope all around her. She is like a watchful lioness that protects
her villagers with her fierce love. Arjuna is a changed man now. He accepts Chitra, the same from
whom he had recoiled in the earlier part as she is in actual life, a warrior, denuded from womanly
graces. The action shows progression and is gradually reaching to its climax.
The ninth scene leads us from falsehood to truth. Chitra returns to Arjuna as she had been when she
first met Arjuna. Yet she is not quite the same, for she is also the prospective mother of Arjuna’s son.
Arjuna is satisfied, and has a sense of complete fulfilment and even Chitra has no remorse.
Thus, Chitra reveals herself to Arjuna in this scene and reminds him of her first meeting with him.
She clarifies that woman is a helpmate of man and is not merely his plaything. This is what Tagore
has visualized in the character of Chitra. Arjuna and Chitra fully wake to reality at the end of
the play.
Chitra musters up courage and successfully persuades Arjuna to take the course which he thinks is
the best and the truest. However Arjuna expresses satisfaction and a sense of fulfilment at what has
happened. When finally they part towards the close of the play real love emerges from the ashes of
their transient love. The denouement is just mentioned and the play ends. Chitra has a poetic beginning
and it has an abrupt and unexpected end. The revelation of the real identity of Chitra does not make
Arjuna feel sorry but makes him filled with a sense of contentment. Chitra and Arjuna realize that
mere love and beauty cannot be the ultimate value of life. The playmate of the night claims her place
as the helpmate of the day. The two together make up the complete wife. Thus, complete love is a
fusion of both sensuous enjoyment and life’s sterner duties.
There is no complexity in the plot. Various moods of Chitra and Arjuna are drawn sharply. The
beauty of the play lies in its presentation and message than in the story. The play is not only a thing
of beauty in itself but reveals to us what artistic possibilities lie in the Puranas, the Ramayana and the
Mahabharata. If only we have in us the selective and creative genius of great poets like Kalidasa,
Bhavabhuti, Aurobindo, and Tagore can we learn the message of such stories in the right spirit. One
can then seek to steep in these stories the light of one’s imagination and reveal them to the world for
its uplift and delight. The great peculiarity in the case of stories of India is that they are still a living
force in the hearts of men, that the persons dealt within them are still our ideals who dominate and
direct our lives and our thoughts; and that a new interpretation of such stories in a vivid manner will
help to unify and intensify our national life and make our land full of dynamic love and achievement.

21.3 Dialogue

The dialogues of the play express the ideas and emotions of the characters and thereby the intention
ol the playwright. “Dialogue becomes an essential adjunct to action or even an integral part of it. The
story moving beneath the talk and being staged stage by stage, elucidated by it.” The dialogues in

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