Page 248 - DENG503_INDIAN_WRITINGS_IN_LITERATURE

Indian Writings in Literature

Notes Ramnik, too has never revealed the guilt of the post of his mother, saving her the weight of the
burden than he has had to carry all alone.
The mob/chorus comprising five men and ten marks on stick five Hindu and five Muslim marks,
is the omnipresent factor through out the play, crunching on the horseshoe shaped sump that
dominates the space of the stage which is otherwise split up 4 into multilevel sets. The marks lie
significantly strewn all over the ramp, to be worn when required. Dattani carefully uses the same
five men in black to double for any given religious group when they assume the role of the mob,
which they do in a stylized fashion. The living area is not furnished except for the realistic level
that functions as the kitchen and the Pooja-room and another period room suggesting the 1940s
where Hardika/Daksha are to revisit the past. The play infect begins with such a visit through the
opening scene where Daksha sets beginning the process of recording lived history. Criss-crossing
a whole gamut of memories that are to construct the character that she is to become- Hardika
"After forty years - I opened my diary again. And I wrote. A dozen pages before. A dozen pages
now. A young girl is childish scribble. An old women's shaky scrawl. Yes, things have not changed
that much," Things have indeed not changed much. The space of the stage is thick with ominous
cries that reverberate and the same hatred and intolerance for the other still sents the air stones
had come crashing down on Daksha's records sheltering Shamshad Begum, Noorjahan, Suraiya,
"Those beautiful voices. Cracked…" like her friendship with Zarina. Forty years hence, her son
Ramnik attempts to sight a few wrongs taking in Babban and Javed and protecting them against
the fury of the mob and meanwhile, the audience witnesses the dialogic rational of both the sides
"should we swallowed up? Till they can not recognize us? Should we melt into anonymity so they
can not hound us? Lose ourselves in a shapeless man? Should we? Can we? "What must we do? To
become acceptable? Must we lose our identity? …oh what a curse it is to be losing in number!"
"Why did they stay? This is not their land. They have got what they wanted. So why stay? They
stay to spy on us. Their hearts belong there. But they live on our land." and soon. Until the
distinctive identities vanish in the ambiguity of the mask less mob asking for blood, a threat to all
parties. The work of Frantz Fanon, the influential thinker on the effects of racism and colonization
may be found relevant here. In his analysis of the struggle of the Algerian population against their
French put forward the idea of photogenic. Where he explore how mechanisms of othering influence
the self. How does phobia the irrational fear of the other, grip one's mind? The inclination is to
detach oneself from the other. Such a distancing is achieved through objectification reducing the
other to on object upon which it is easy to inflict violence. At many places in the play Dattani
would have us inflict pain on the other would be to look written oneself and recognize the fear for
it is and hence resist the need to displace it. In the play Javed gives voice to the individual
participating in such riots. "To short and scream like a child on the giant wheel in the carnival. The
first screams one of pleasure of sensing an unusual freedom. And them - it becomes nightmarish
as your world is way below and suddenly you come crashing down and you want to get off. But
you can not. You don't want it any more. It is the same feeling over and over again. You scream
with pain and horror but there is no one listening to you. Everyone is alone in their own cycles of
joy and terror. The feelings come faster and faster and they confuse you with the blur created by
them speed. You get nauseers and you cry to yourself why I am here? What am I doing here? The
joyride gets our and you get off. And are never sure again". At this point we could also consider
the forcibility of competing versions of history and the tensions between different communities.
While the hatred is all too real it is also true that brutality and compassion co-exist and give
resonance to one another. The riots saw people a faulting each other. But they also jeopardized
their own safety to save the others. With in these inteve and remove pressures of clashing cultures
are embedded pressures of a different kind. Time and spaces merge and intermingle, as histories
are relived.
The mercenary gains that one party derives from the communal riots of the past is the baggage of
guilt that Rammik has caused for long, this is revealed to a crushed Hardika, who seemed secure

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