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Unit 30: Mahesh Dattani: Final Solution—Plot Construction

their ideas a three slave's family forced to realize the partition of the other, they are also forced to Notes
articulate to respect and tolerance.
When smita clears her difference from her mother, and tells her that she does not shame her blue
for her faith, Aruna is shattered even when so more Ramnik also his daughter why she his not
articulated her feeling before, and smita tells him because it word have been a victory for him ever
Arena suddenly, Aruna realizes the portion of an outsider. Smita; How easy it world have been to
us for us to your forces and made her feel she was in the wrong. How easy to just push her over
because you will have me telling her exidity what you wanted to tell her yourself to 'Arena' when
would you have done? Shut yourself from us we would not have let you off so easily. We would've
harmed you we wouldn't have let you forget that the spirit of liberalism now in your blood and
you were the oddity... you were the out sides. What would wappents you them? How weak and
fused traded would you feet you do get what i men don't you. Mummy? [Act Three]
It is this different prospective that makes Aruna actually change her stance on the 'Outsiders'. She
remains silent when Smita asks her to help with the felling of the water, or else 'they' will help. In
this tacit stretching of the taboos. Aruna is changed but not crushed - she remains stead fast to her
faith. But changes with the times 'they' an help with the general water but 'not God's vessel' [Act
Three] it is only Javed. The other believes who is able to recognize and accept Aruna's portion. In
fact, he tells her so - 'you said the same thing to her. What I told Babban. You told her - you said
you wouldn't listen to her criticism because she was not proud of her…. What did you call it?
Inheritance, I said religion. Same thing. I suppose [pause] we are not very different. You and me.
We both feel pride. "[Act Three] when Smita hands him the 'God's Vessel' to prove it wouldn't fly
off into the heaven when he touched it. Javed recoils and refuses to 'fool around' with it. Finally
allowing the 'other' religion the respect they demanded for their own. Javed and aruna make an
unexpected alliance in this text, offering one possible 'final solution'. But how this is the live
between respecting religion and denying another's faith? Bobby and smita are another such pair
- they are similar is that they both reject their communal identities - smita because she feels stifled
'and bobby because he feels ashamed. This puts each of them in a weaker portion vis-à-vis the
'other - Javed and Aruna. This however, is another 'final solution' - to deny any context to attempt
to live on your own terms, to reject the past and any other social framework of identity and self
formation. How possible is this solution?
Smita rejects the possibility of relationship between her and bobby - "it was just one evening - a
conversation that got a little personal. Nothing more". [Act Three] When bobby asks her if that
was a personal decision or one of convenience, Smita's reply is that it was entirely personal "it is
wonderful to know that the choice in yours to mala". [Act Three] This may be a truly 'humanist'
solution. But the entire text has consistently subverted the idea of a distinction between the personal
and the public and decision that is based on 'personal' consideration is shown to be at least partly
motivated by 'the political' and vice versa.
These are not airtight categories as Dattani repeatedly reminds us, through the actions of Hardika,
Javed and even Ramnik Gandhi. What then is the 'final solution'? Is one even possible? Would at
be better for us to stop trying to find the final answer and just try to make our own peace with
ourselves and those around us? Is it possible to atom for the past? Can the personal be separated
from the public? Is Aruna's and Javed's faith the answer? Or does the solution lie in the rejection
of bobby and smita? In the last scene, bobby picks up the idol of Krishna from the pooja room in
the Gandhi home and holds it in his hand. He defies Aruna's cries and the anger of the Mob and
arrests his faith in 'humanity'. Bobby : See Javed : He doesn't humiliate you. He doesn't cringe
from my touch. He welcomes the warmth of my hand. He feels me. And he welcomes it! I hold
him who is sacred to them but, I do not commit sacrilege. [to Aruna] you can bathe him day and
night, you can splash holy waters on him but you can not remove my touch from his form. You
can not remove my smell with sandal paste and attars and fragrant flowers because it belongs to

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