Page 249 - DENG503_INDIAN_WRITINGS_IN_LITERATURE

Unit 30: Mahesh Dattani: Final Solution—Plot Construction

in her hatred of the other party, Sheltering her same of being in the right. It also explains the Notes
reasons for Ramnik's extreme tolerance. The smug and often parsimonies Aruna is Shaken out of
her compliancy through Smita's out bur. St against her rigid and restrictive practices that have for
long choked her. Dattani here manages to intricately interweave the individual strands of family
identity into the larger picture. "It stifles me! Yes! I can see so clearly how wrong you are. You
access me of running away from my religion. Would you have listened to me if I told you were
wrong? Again, do two young boys make you so insecure? Come on, Mummy. This is a time for
strength. I am so glad these two dripped in. We would have never spoken about what makes us
so different from each other. We would have gone on living our lives with our pretty similarities.
The diminutive Smita suddenly gains stature and individual identity. Unafraid to speak up for
what she thinks is right maintaining that she had kept her silence only to remain non-partison, to
both her parents. So does the initially unassertive Bobby (Babban). Who hides behind a name that
conceals the identity into which he was born, and with which he has always been uncomfortable.
Playing the role of a pace fest between Ramnik and Javed.
Dattani does explore some existented angst here what, this? A sandalwood garland? When my
father died i used to put fresh flowers everyday for a whole month-(takes a final look at his
picture) so then's it. That is how the world will remember me. Until my son locks me up in a
trunk—"Now you are prowking me! How dare you blame your violence on other people? It is in
you! You have violence in your mind. Your life is based on violence. Your faith is based-(He stops
but it is too late) (Act Two) "Why did they stay"? "This is not their land". Their hearts belong there.
Print they live on our land". "Drive them out". "Kill the sons of swine"! (Act one) The title of
Dattani's play on communal violence and tensions in contemporary when India itself calls to
attention. The apparent evolutionarily of this situation. Dattani interestingly sticks to the plural-
'solutions' which implicitly undermines the pooril of the meaning of the first word- 'final'. Are
there any solutions for a cycle of violence. Which has continued in some form on the other even
since most of us can remember? Is any final solutions horrible at all? When each community
section clan of our society has its own solution to the crisis?
It is indeed this very search for the final solution. Which in many ways perpetuates the cycle of
violence and hatred. The other interesting thing about idea that there are as many solutions as
there are realities to choose from. Each one however turns out to be temporary. Final solution was
actually commissioned before the destruction of Babri Masjid in 1992, but was performed only the
following year in 1993. Written and performed only the in a period of high torsion and violence in
When India! We look back at this tech more than 10 years late in 2007. Reeling from the after math
of the Gujaret carnage and the smaller ripples of violence since all can ask is 'What has changed
in more then a decade? Has anything changed at all? And the itself answers our question in the
very fast scene …"Things have not changed that much" says Hardika reading her diary written 40
years before thinking back on the roots that exploded in 1947. When her father was killed. (Act
one) Dattani places history as an active character in his play. Opening with the main figure of the
Hardika as a young girl- then known as Daksha, the first scene shows us the wetting of history.
Past and present are fused on stage through the figure of Daksha and Hardika. The play opens in
fact with the young Daksha writing in her diary. This simple act, of a young girl creating a diary
in order to use the fountain pen discarded by her father-in-law operates at varicres levels of
representation unveiling the construction of history the manipulation that all written texts including
allegedly personal ones go through. There is no need to be that honest… (Act one) Daksha's diary
establishes the history of division the serve of 'us and them'. The link between personal experience
and political belief/social hatred. A communal riot is invoked in the very first scene of the play a
riot in which Daksha's father was pilled a riot which firmly creates for Daksha the them "that
night in Hussainabad In our ancestral house… When I heard then outside…I knew that they were
thinking the same of us". (Act one) History is present trenchant the action of the play. Sometimes
repeating itself directly through statement made by Daksha/Hardika some times indirectly through

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