Saptarshi Mallick

“What a Man! Is he a man!” 
The Constructs of the Patriarchs and the Deviants: Re-framing Mahesh Dattani’s Where There is a Will and Dance Like a Man

 

John Beynon in “Understanding Masculinities” observes:

The [still] widely accepted view among the general public is that men and women fundamentally differ and that a distinct set of fixed traits characterize archetypal masculinity and femininity. This is reflected in popular sayings such as ‘Just like a man!’ or ‘Just like a woman!’ and in the kinds of features found in popular magazines along the lines of ‘How manly is your man?’, with a list of attributes to be rated or boxes to be ticked. Masculinity and femininity are often treated in the media as polar opposites, with men typically assumed to be rational, practical and naturally aggressive and women, in contrast, are held to be expressive, nurturing and emotional.(56)

The society at large has never been able to re-define the notions of masculinity and femininity. Since time immemorial, men had been viewed ad the source of support and had been seen as a protector of the women race. He had been the chief bread-earner of the family and therefore, the unwritten familial law had put the onus of being the head of the family on the males. This is especially true of the Indian society which has always been steeped into stereotypes. Be it in literature or in visual art forms, we have always found men to be at the zenith of power and hegemony. The women, it is needless to say, had always remained at the background, either as a moral support to their men or as an innocent confidante, of course with certain exceptions. Indian society had always been therefore a phallo-centric one where any deviations on the part of gender or sexuality had been a source of ridicule or scorn.

It is difficult to find writings in Indian English literature where the deviations and the deviants are celebrated. Sometimes in the garb of humour and sometimes with ‘philosophical twists’(Raina 449), there has been very little focus on the subversion of patriarchal stereotypes. Commenting on the choice of setting and the themes of Dattani’s plays, Asha Kuthari Chaudhari observes,

… Dattani unambiguously chooses his location within the dynamics of a pre-existing structure of the contemporary urban Indian family which then turns into the site of the ensuing conflict, within his narrative. With newer realities piling on the older, ‘acceptable’ realities, his plots and subplots often work to destroy the very edifice in which they situate themselves, blasting the given stereotypes that shape the structures.(25)

Dattani treats men as victims of their own fates, shows them as powerful authoritative pillars of the family and at the same time, he creates other male characters that question the normative roles of the men or become social deviants, raising questions on the hegemonic social structure and in a way subvert the socially constructed stereotypes.

In an article “Men will be men… stuck in patriarchal role”, Nandita Dasgupta writes, “She may have got rid of her meow, but he’s stuck with his alpha roar. For men there seems to be no other way to be. Sure he may wax his chest and do the washing up today, but he’s still trapped by patriarchal stereotypes and continues to play protector, procreator and provider.”(Dasgupta) Dattani’s male characters are as much interesting as his female characters are. Be it in Dance Like a Man, Where There is a Will, Do the Needful, On A Muggy Night in Mumbai, Bravely Fought the Queen or Tara, the men in his plays are presented in different shades. On the one hand there are men who are stuck in their roles of power and authority while on the other, there are other men who do not fall in the line and choose to be fall-outs or deviants from their stigmas of normative heterosexual roles. Dasgupta in her article quotes Roop Sen, who conducts workshops on gender imaging and roles, “We question the stereotype. Because if you’re not in the mould, every part of you is questioned. If you’re anything else, you’re demasculinised.”(Sen) Therefore when we find the reflections of the aggressive, heteronormative portrayals of men like Amritlal Parekh and Hasmukh Mehta, we also find the ‘demasculinised’ Jairaj and Ajit, or a Nitin and Alpesh in his plays. But the most significant factor that remains underneath these portrayals is that it is actually a subversion of the masculinity that the heterosexual men represent and finally we are made to realize how futile their ‘alpha roars’ are.

In his Where There is a Will, Dattani’s dramatic art weaves a rare tapestry of philosophical insight and social consciousness. The play focuses on the authoritative figure of a staunch patriarch, Hasmukh Mehta, in the first act, who is seen working within the traditional roles of a patriarchal society. Sita Raina in her ‘A Note on the Play’ inCollected Plays says,

Where There is a Will has several interesting aspects. Mahesh described it as the exorcism of the patriarchal code. Women – be it daughter-in-law, wife or mistress – are dependent on men and this play shows what happens when they are pushed to the edge. What interested me particularly was its philosophical twist. To be the watcher of one’s self is to make intelligent changes in this life. … Consequently, when he became the watcher of his actions, he perceives that his desire for control has led him to be victim of his own machinations unlike Kiran who uses power play to essentially improve her relationships. (449).

The play, set in a lavish house of Hasmukh Mehta, portrays an elite society of a Gujrathi family, where the father is seen to be the dictator. Each of the four characters in the play, Hasmukh, his wife Sonal, his son Ajit and his daughter-in-law Preeti, ‘provides an appropriate foil to his/her counterpart.’(Agarwal) However, from the beginning of the play, we find Hasmukh Mehta exercising his hegemonic control over the family and its members to establish his own conception of ‘self’ which he has imbibed from his father. He thinks that it is he who had made a living for his family. He scorns his son Ajit and he continuously curbs his right at home; does not allow him to speak to his friends on business matters nor does he allow him to talk to government officials. He claims that he is ‘trying to fill up empty spaces’ (458) in Ajit’s mind but actually he allows no freedom. He proclaims: “I, Hasmukh Mehta, have every right. It’s my phone you are using in my house, and it’s my business secrets you are leaking to government officers, and my typists your friend is flirting with” (458), but he is perhaps unaware that he himself has jeopardized his own life as he had been himself in an affair with Kiran Jhaveri who, as Ajit says after the death of his father, is ‘… not a who-is-he, she’s a who-is-she. . . Yes. Yes. She’s a marketing executive turned company director – and my late father’s mistress.’ (485) Hasmukh Mehta is in control of the two distinct spaces in his life; his public and private domains. The former being his successful business career and the latter his family and his relationship with his wife and son which is apparently complete and perfect. However he has his grievances:

Why does a man marry? So that he can have a woman all to himself? No. there’s more to it than that. What? Maybe he needs a faithful companion? No. if that was it, all men would keep dogs. No. no, I think the important reason anyone should marry at all is to get a son. Why is it so important to get a son? Because the son will carry on the family name? (Pause) Why did I marry? Yes, to get a son. So that when I grow old, I can live again through my son. Why did my father marry? To get me. Why did I marry? To get Ajit… (An expression of distaste appears briefly on his face, then he coughs.) Then I should be a happy man. I’ve got a loving wife who has been faithful to me like any dog would be. (475)

To him, his wife is nothing more than a faithful dog although it is Sonal who keeps a track of everything in his life, his blood pressure, his tablets and his heart attacks. But Mehta is perhaps no exception. Beena Agarwal therefore rightly comments, “Hasmukh’s statement (regarding his wife as quoted above) strikes a tone of sarcasm and sexual colonialism”(109). In Taratoo we come across a similar man Patel who too nurtures similar thoughts regarding his wife:

PATEL. Bharati, put down that phone!
BHARATI. How dare you run my life!
PATEL. Oh, for God’s sake! You’re getting out of hand! (343)

The wives, in Indian society can perhaps only do the household chores and remain a ‘faithful’ follower of her husband. It takes only a few characters like Jaya (in Shashi Deshpande’s That Long Silence) to realize that “Man and woman… I realized the deep chasm between the two. They are separated for ever.”(Halder102). Mehta is no different from the likes of Amritlal Parekh, Jiten and Sridhar. A man becomes a ‘man’ as a result of the sociological processes as soon as he starts growing. They imbibe their masculinities as soon as they enter the wide arena of the social life. Beynon says, “Men are not born with masculinity as a part of their genetic make-up; rather it is something into which they are acculturated and which is composed of social codes of behaviour which they learn to reproduce in culturally appropriate ways.”(What is Masculinity? 2). It is the order of the society which makes Mehta a victim of the ideology that he has perhaps been subjected to. He accuses his wife of her incapabilities: “When we were newly married, I used to joke with her and say she was as good as gold. But that was when we were newly married. I soon found out what a good-for-nothing she was. As good as mud. Ditto our sex life. Mud. Twenty-five years of marriage and I don’t think she has ever enjoyed sex. Twenty-five years of marriage and I haven’t enjoyed sex with her.” (473)  He has his wrath against his son too whom he considers nothing: “If you are you, you are nowhere. You are nothing just a big zero. No matter what you do, you’ll remain a zero. Over the years you’ll just keep adding zeroes to your zero. Zero, zero, zero.” (461), but that is not all for him. The mercenary Mehta means nothing more than money, “On their own, the zeroes don’t mean a thing. But if there’s a number one standing before all those zeroes, then they really add up to a lot”(461), and we realize how ‘Money has made him stubborn’ (472), and he rests his power play on his money and on his being a man just as Amritlal Parekh in Dance Like a Man, who resists his son from taking up dance as his career because for him, ‘It doesn’t give you (his son, Jairaj) any income” (415). In a recent Hindi film 3 Idiots , we find how a father almost forces his son to take up engineering as his career whereas he wants to pursue Literature. In the long run, he succumbs to his own patriarchal image when his son commits suicide for not being able to cope with the pressure that his father has been exercising over him. To most fathers, as to Mehta, sons are sources of investments and they want their returns of their own investments: “Who is Ajit? Isn’t he my son? No. he’s just a boy who spends my money and lives in my house. He doesn’t behave like my son. A son should make me happy. Like I made my father… happy. That is what I wanted my son to make me. (Gets a little worked up.) But he failed! Miserably! He has not a single quality I look for in a son! He has made my entire life worthless! He is going to destroy me!” (475) But these father figures do not realize that their sons are different. They do not want to grow under the timeless shadows of their fathers, as their fathers had always been. The collapse of the traditional world as it comes in conflict with the modern sensibilities is also Dattani’s perception of subversion, which has time and again cropped up in his Dance Like a Man. Referring to John MacInnes’s work, The End of Masculinity (1998), Beynon argues that “Young men are no longer happy to be defined solely by their occupations, as were their fathers, certainly their grandfathers before them. They are instead (or so the rhetoric would have us understand), happy to swap domestic and other roles with their partners, while both heterosexual and homosexual men can now adopt an extended range of lifestyles (if, of course, they have the resources.)”(What is Masculinity? 5) Therefore, when Hasmukh Mehta dies in the play, Ajit nearly breathes a sigh of relief, because at the core of his heart he knows that he has no father who would now try to mould him according to his whims and fancies and there would be no one on whom his life can be modelled any more. In Dance Like a Man, the situation too, is no more different. Amritlal has always detested his son’s decision to take up dancing and that too under the guidance of an effeminate guruji or teacher. According to him, dancing is an arena devoted entirely to women and he relegates it to a “craft of the prostitutes’. Amritlal, like all fathers in the society had expected his son to be a ‘man’.

AMRITLAL. I thought it was just a fancy of yours. I would have made a cricket pitch for you on our lawn if you were interested in cricket. Well, most boys are interested in cricket, my son is interested in dance, I thought. I didn’t realize this interest of yours would turn into an … obsession.
JAIRAJ.Didn’t you have your obsessions?
AMRITLAL. If you mean my involvement in fighting for your freedom, yes, it was an obsession.
JAIRAJ. You had yours. Now allow me to have mine. (414-15)

Within the heterosexual matrix, playing games is supposed to construct a man as he leaves his boyhood and enter the stage of adulthood and this is especially true for the Indian society. When Chandan (in Tara) helps his mother in knitting, Patel vehemently opposes his act: “But you (Bharati) can think of turning him into a sissy - teaching him to knit!” (351), and when Chandan says that’s ‘unfair’, he is ordered to go to his room. Any representative from the patriarchal sphere is strongly opposed when there is any sort of role reversal. The fathers fail to understand that post independence with the breakdown of the agrarian setup, there has been an exodus from villages to towns which indicate that with the growth and development of education and the employment opportunities, the young men today have become individuals and can make their destinies without their support.  In a recent Hindi film Paankh (2010), the protagonist, Charlie, a boy, is made to act in films as a child artist as a girl. In the film, his mother, who is actor, past her prime, makes him do this. As a result, he never indulges in sports and becomes a victim of ridicule. As he grows up, he is stuck in a limbo, he cannot understand in which domain does he fit best: is he a boy or a girl? His father vehemently opposes his wife, but in vain. No one ever asks him, what he wants to be and he too is left with no freedom to have his obsession fulfilled. However, Chris Haywood and Máirtín Mac Ghaill observe:

In western schools, boys’ identities may be worked out in age-specific ways that may not correspond to society’s manly ideals. For instance, in research with younger children in a primary school, we found that many of the young boys were not interested in (hetero) sexual relationships. (72). It was intriguing that not only did many of these boys find sexual relationships with girls boring but expressing an interest in girls was itself a sign of femininity. Instead ‘boyness’ was often demonstrated through ‘playing’, in the classroom, playground or at home. Fascination with cartoons, computer games and board games that contained a high content of violence, aggression and toughness were juxtaposed but carried with it a ‘benign boyness’ that was inclusive of girls and other boys…. Therefore ‘boyness’ may not be necessarily captured by the adult-defined and applied category of ‘masculinity’ (72).

While Connell in Masculinities talks about the importance of sports which enhances the masculinity:

The construction of masculinity in sports also illustrates the importance of the institutional setting. Messner emphasizes that when boys start playing competitive sport they are not just learning a game, they are entering an organized institution. Only a tiny minority reaches the top as professional athletes; yet the production of masculinity throughout the sports world is marked by hierarchical, competitive structure of the institution (35).

The son in the family is supposed to be the harbinger of peace and prosperity which is in tune with his traditional roles of a protector and provider. Even today, the society, represented by these patriarchs, denies accepting any deviations on the part of a son. To Amritlal, his son’s decision to grow long hair ‘to enhance his abhinaya’ (416) is ‘abnormal’. In an encounter between the two,

AMRITLAL. I have never seen a man with long hair.
JAIRAJ. All sadhus have long hair.
AMRITLAL. I don’t mean them. I meant normal men.
JAIRAJ. What are you trying to say?
AMRITLAL. All I’m saying is that normal men don’t keep their hair so long.
JAIRAJ. Are you saying that he is not …  (Realizes the implication.) Are you saying…?
AMRITLAL. I’ve also noticed the way he walks.
JAIRAJ (angrily). This is disgusting! You are insane! (417)

Amritlal’s concern has always been to make his son a ‘man’. He questions Ratna (Jairaj’s wife), ‘Do you know where a man’s happiness lies?’ and he immediately answers ‘In being a man’. But Dattani creates a parody of the fact of being man. Later, in the second act of the play, Jairaj converses with his daughter Lata regarding an ‘erotic numbers’, we see that Jairaj has hardly accepted his father’s proposals.

LATA. Daddy, you make it sound so crude. ‘Erotic numbers’?
JAIRAJ. There’s nothing crude about it. I danced the same item. For the army. A friend of ours arranged a programme and the money was good. Your mother was too scared and they only wanted a woman. So I wore your mother’s costume, a wig and… whatever else was necessary to make me look like a woman, and danced. They loved it. They loved it even more when they found out that I was a man. (435)

The male playing the role of a woman is found in the puranas too. Ruth Vanita observes that the medieval Hindu scriptures bear testimony to the fact how God Ayyappa was born out of the intercourse between Lord Shiva and Lord Vishnu when the latter took the form of a woman. She states,

The story of Shiva’s attraction to Vishnu’s Mohini form is related in at least three puranas which date approximately fro 850 to 950 AD. …

The traditional interpretation of the story is that Vishnu’s leela (play) is to make Shiva forget that Mohini is Vishnu and thus become attracted to Vishnu’s Mohini form. , it is noteworthy that in this version, as well as in Telegu versions, it is Shiva who asks Vishnu to assume his Mohini form, because Shiva missed seeing it earlier and heard about its beauty. So Shiva is aware of the ambiguous nature of this male-female form. In the context of religious drama where men and boys traditionally played, and still often play, female roles, audience awareness of and response to the man disguised as a woman would be comparable to Shiva’s. … The stories suggest the fluidity of gender in sexual interaction. (Vanita 80).

It is noteworthy here that Mahesh Dattani himself played the role of Dolly in North London rehearsal room in 1996. Michael Walling, the director, writes:

Because this was a male body, the element of performance was even more pronounced. And clear than it was with a female actor. Moreover, the fact that a male actor was able to portray the female character was deeply subversive of the gender norms which the play dissects and questions. … the characters are men and women because they are playing roles.(69).

But the irony remains in Jairaj’s leaving his paternal house to carve a niche for his own but unfortunately he and his wife come back ‘defeated’. Amritlal accepts them but his acceptance is tinted. “I have been wise enough to invest my money in the right places. But don’t think you have a right to all my wealth. I have far better things to do with it than hand it over to you.” (425) The authority of a patriarch is always in terms of his wealth. And transaction he makes, he always equates it with monetary aspects. This is true for Hasmukh Mehta as well. However, if Amritlal’s happiness was to make his son a ‘man’ snatching him away from the clutches of dancing, Hasmukh’s happiness lies in perverse domination. He says to his son: “Just polish my shoes every morning and I’ll be happy” (458) In asserting his power and wealth, Hasmukh Mehta never leaves a stone unturned to criticize his wife and son. For an apparently well-established business man, his private life seems to echo sense of waste for him. In his solitude he recalls his bygone days:

We made money! I remember we used to spend half the night going through our accounts and counting our profits. The other half of the night we would dream of being millionaires! (Puffs on the cigarette again.) Then when I was twenty-one, the greatest tragedy of my life took place. I got married to my wife, Sonal.  . . . the following year Ajit was born. Tragedy after tragedy. . . .  Forty-five years old and I’m a success in capital letters. Twenty-three years old and he’s on the road to failure, in bold capital letters! At his age, I was a mature responsible man, not eating my father’s head and nibbling at papads! (464)

Hasmukh Mehta’s soliloquy echoes the basis of patriarchy as does Devraj Gowda’s (inDo the Needful) when he readily accepts his wife’s inability to have been a perfect housewife. When Prema Gowda says that “I should have been a proper housewife” her husband replies, “Good. I am glad you realize your mistakes.” (121) If we consider Hartmann’s definition of patriarchy as “a set of social relations between men, which have a material base, and which, though hierarchical, establish or create interdependence or solidarity among men that enable them to dominate women. ” Again, if we consider that “Control is maintained by denying women access to necessary economically productive resources and by restricting women’s sexuality”(German), we find that Sonal and Preeti are rendered almost unproductive, if not otherwise productive in their domestic ‘labour’. The likes of Sonal and Preeti (in Where There is a Will), Kusumben Patel and Prema Gowda (in Do the Needful) or Dolly and Alka (in Bravely Fought the Queen) represent the silent victims of patriarchy. A similar set-up is also noted in Tara. As German observes, “The greatest disadvantage that the housewives suffer is not that they are exploited by men, but that they are atomised and cut off from participation in the collective action that can give confidence to fight back against the system”[German].  Thus it is the complete assertion of patriarchy and their masochistic claims on their women and their sons that these characters seem to implement their rights and powers. For patriarchy in Indian society still refers to the “father (the ‘patriarch’) ruled not only the women in the family but also the younger men. . . . The patriarch’s power derived from his possession of wealth produced. . .”(German). In the play Do the Needful, although we do not come across a staunch patriarch as Amritlal or Hasmukh, yet the fathers in the play, Chandrakant Patel and Devraj Gowda, are always exhibiting their respective catalogue of personal property to get their daughter and son married, not knowing their wishes and not considering whether or not they want to participate in their dealings. It is later that we come to know how, Dattani makes Lata and Alpesh, not just victims of the institution of marriage but how they remain in the wedlock only to make a mockery of it.

John McRae in his essay “We Live in the Flicker: Reflections in Time on the Plays of Mahesh Dattani” observes that the playwright has the ability to laugh at himself and therefore his plays have no pretences. He writes,

He knows where he stands and has no need to pretend that he is any other than who he claims to be- no pretence: he sees himself as he sees the society he lives in, from within, and for all its good, bad and indifferent qualities and flaws. Who else would dare to put the two different taboos of our times, money and death, together in what purports to be a romantic comedy? He did it effectively in Where There’s a Will. . .(62).

Dattani himself in an interview with Abhijit Sen said that he was not placing himself on any particular side of the characters that he creates. He said, “I place myself on the side of truth.” (Interview with Sen). Therefore he proclaims to write about the truth that he perceives. And the truth that comes out of his portrayals of the patriarchs is that although they assert their rights on the family, they hardly realize how hollow their rights are. It is here that Dattani succeeds in depicting not only the claims of the males over others but he subverts them either comically or in the garb of a philosophy, for the readers to unearth or the audience to note.

Dattani’s dramatic strategy comes to a crescendo in the second half of Where There is a Will. The first act has seen Hasmukh Mehta in his self-proclaiming role revolving his wand of control. It is in the second half that Dattani utilizes his creative potential to the fullest. The man who was so dominating in the first act is reduced to the figure of a ghost in the second after his death. In his invisible self he becomes an observer of his actions and in a way this illumines his realization of the self deeply. Hasmukh is a diabetic and has a high blood pressure, he suddenly dies and the scenario at home changes overnight. He realizes that the ‘garb of authority maintained… was a method to save his own inner self from the clashes of the outside world”[Agarwal 110]. It is only after the death that his nature comes to light and the comments present a mockery and subversion of his parental authority. Sonal, the naïve wife of Hasmukh, hardly realizes that her husband is dead and is instead anxious for his tablets. The second part of the first act begins with the ghost of Hasmukh Mehta. He says, “It feels good to be dead” (479) and the audience/readers are expected to see through the death as the decline of the patriarchy in the household. A dead man, Hasmukh still refuses to admit the natural behaviour of his bereaved wife: “She cried at all the appropriate moments. I even got a mention in the newspapers. (Picks up a paper cutting.) ‘Garmrnt Tycoon Dead’. That felt good.” (479) Even after being dead he exercises his rights to judge his wife’s emotions and the news of his death in the papers makes him satisfied. But he hardly realizes what he has done to the family. It is his ‘will’ that runs havoc. He asserts, “What about all my money? ... I don’t think they deserve all that money. None of them have worked it, especially not my son. Neither he nor my daughter-in-law will get what they were after – my wife is also in for a great shock. You see, I have made a special will! (Laughs.)  They are going to hate me for doing this to them!” (479) The ‘special will’ leaves no room for his family members to enjoy his wealth. The otherwise naïve Sonal too has to cry out, “He has ruined us!” (480). The new order in the play is introduced with the entry of Kiran Jhaveri, who has been appointed as the trustee of the will. Kiran is like Lalitha in Bravely Fought the Queen, whose microcosmic intrusion depletes the macrocosmic family of Hasmukh Mehta. Mehta realizes how his authoritative control has been reduced to nothing. He comes to understand that his measures to control the economy of his family with his invisible presence only break the wall of his illusions in the responses of Sonal, Ajit and Preeti. Sonal becomes conscious of her own freedom; Preeti’s concern has only been money. Mehta’s place in the family is taken up by Kiran, almost as the matriarch who is in control of the Mehta family.

KIRAN. My main duty is to run the Mehta group of industries on behalf of Ajit Mehta. I have the authority to make all the major decisions in the interest of the companies. My duty also extends to training Ajit Mehta and eventually delegating most of my responsibilities to him in places. (492)

But Kiran, who had earlier won the heart accolades of Mehta comes up with the shocking revelation to Sonal: “Mrs. Mehta, no woman has an affair with an older man, especially a married man, for a little bit of respect and trust. It was mainly for money.”(506) Preeti, the otherwise naïve and calm daughter-in-law of Mehta is thwarted by the mistakes that her husband has committed which has left them paupers especially when she is conceiving: “[And] I hate you for that! Oh! I curse you! Look what you’ve done to your wife and child! Made them paupers! All because you answered back your father! Doesn’t that hurt you?” (502), but we realize later that Ajit’s resistance has been his blessing as Kiran observes, “He may not be the greatest rebel on earth, but at least he is free of his father’s beliefs. He resists. In a small way, but at least it’s a start. That is enough to prove that Ajit has won and Hasmukh has lost” (510) echoing Foucault’s observation that “Where there is power, there is resistance, and yet, or rather consequently, this resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power.”(95). Thus the collapse of patriarchy becomes visible with Kiran’s declaration. Women have always remained in the periphery as far as the patriarchal society is concerned and “Neither education nor economic independence would help them in gaining their dues unless male ego undergoes complete change and transformation.”(Vishnu 150). Samita Sen observes, “The independent Indian state considered the granting of equal political and civil rights to women adequate. But without questioning the family’s authority, women cannot assert and realize their rights”(224). Thus when Kiran shares her past with Sonal and tells her that she is lucky as she is ‘educated’, we learn the agony of a woman caught in the web of a man’s world:

KIRAN. … I learnt my lessons from being so close to life. I learnt my lessons from watching my mother tolerating my father when he came home every day with bottles of rum wrapped up in the newspapers. As I watched him beating her up and calling her names! I learnt what life was when my mother pretended she was happy in front of me and my brothers, so that we wouldn’t hate my father…. Yes, Mrs. Mehta. My father, your husband – they are weak men with false strength. (508)

The ‘will’ in the play therefore is both the legal document and Hasmukh Mehta’s wish to control the lives of his family members even after his death. But his authority is toppled and ‘amidst the complicated confabulations that are necessary for the comic design of the play, (as) the protagonists begin to search for the self’, (Chaudhari 82-83) Hasmukh Mehta too realizes the futility of his efforts. Asha Kuthari Chaudhari observes, “The will, here, becomes the iconic instrument to power (through wealth), and shapes and reshapes the destiny of the family/familial relationships after his death. But the irony is that Hasmukh, to give the devil his due, transfers this controlling power to a woman and changes the entire fabric of the monolith that he is trying to preserve; immediately opening up the spaces for the individual identity he has all sought to deny.”[83]. Sonal and Kiran come together and their “collective force born out of long annals of exploitation and suffering, is an effort to abolish sexual colonialism. Their collective voice is a declaration of woman emancipation against the ‘will’of Hasmukh”[Agarwal 114] and in the liberation of all these characters, Subir Dhar finds, is also the defeat of Mehta. He adds,
This domineering husband, heavy father and tyrannical boss is gradually dwarfed and diminished to the point of insignificance. Of course he never quite loses our sympathy for he is given an engaging comic vitality and verve (both in the flesh as well as a spectre), but we cannot help being unused when we hear that his erstwhile family has made plans to cut down the tamarind tree in the garden – his last terrestrial haunt. The truth underlying the comedy is serious enough: the man who could rule over his family even after his death is exposed at the end to be what he really was – a comitragic weakling who had constantly quested for a father-substitute, a man who was rude to everyone because he was insecure himself, an unfaithful husband who didn't really want a mistress “… [but] a woman who would father him.”(80-81)

The reversal of patriarchal order marks Bravely Fought the Queen too. Baa takes over the reigns of the family after the death of her husband and becomes the patriarch in the guise of a woman. Nagpal observes, “She (Baa) has become a repository of all the male values in the family. This is why she urges Jiten to beat up Dolly even though she is pregnant.”(89). Dattani is a ‘craftsman’and not merely a writer (as he himself said in an interview with Anita Nair) 5 and therefore what emerges out in his plays is not a one-dimensional aspect of patriarchy but patriarchy in its ‘varied manifestations’ (Nagpal 89). Baa has internalized the male violence that she had been a victim of and so is Bharati in Tara who could say nothing to her father who being an influential person had ruined the life of little Tara. Chandan and Tara had three legs when they were born and the blood supply to the third leg was from Tara. But Bharati’s father and Bharati herself instructed Dr. Thakkar to “risk giving both legs to the boy” (378) and to this the doctor readily complied for his own mercenary interests. The wish for a grandson and an heir makes Tara a victim of gender discrimination and here it is not only the men involved but Tara’s own mother who too agrees to the unethical decision to see her son survive. Dattani thus brings out the role played by women in inflicting pains on the women too through his various dramatic strategies and it is here that his subversions are revealed. Santwana Halder quotes a famous anthropologist: “The supposition that a society’s rules of conduct are exclusively or predominantly male-made is preposterous. The fact that the codification of the rules and the supervision of their observances very often are male prerogative should not lead us to make the mistake of the cock parched on the hedge crowing because the hen laid an egg.” (107)

What therefore starts as a portrayal of staunch patriarchy in most of the plays, opens up new domains of study. In this chapter, I have tried to highlight the face of patriarchy as stereotypically presented and then tried to show how Dattani subverts the norms to present the alternative views. Thus, what emerges out is a new definition of masculinity not merely as an antonym of femininity but paves a way for men to break their ‘alpha roars’ and do what they would perhaps like to do. And as for the females, they can opt for a path of their own too, breaking their silence and the performative roles that they have always played, knowingly or unknowingly; willingly or unwillingly.

Observing on his play Tara, Dattani argues,

The play is misread and people tend to focus on the medical details but that is not really what the play is about. It is a metaphor either for being born equal as male and female and sharing so much more and with the surgical separation comes a cultural distinction and prejudices as well, but on another level, it could also deal with the individual having the male and the female self is, whether your gender is male or female, is definitely given the lower priority (Qtd. By Halder 110).

Dattani also argued that the biological polarities between males and females are necessary for the union of one another but the cultural differences that society creates are artificial and these demarcations actually “hinder the natural unions of male and female whether it’s body-to-body or within oneself.”(Halder 110). Dattani criticizes the ‘forced harmony’ between the two sexes and his plays are an expose on the doctrine of Ardhanarishwar, which finds place in Brihadaranya Upanishad too:

He (self, Viraj) was not at all happy. Therefore a person [even today] is not happy when alone. He desired a mate. He became the size of a man and wife in cold embrace. He divided this body into two. From that (division) arose husband (pati) and wife (patni). Therefore as Yajnavalkya said, the body (before one accepts a wife) is one half of oneself, like the half of a split pea. Therefore this place is indeed filled by a wife. He was united with her. From that (union) human beings were born.(190)

Thus it is the societal pressures and prejudices that create the division between the sexes and in complying with the norms, men and women suppress their innermost desires which get silenced in the long run of performance of their gendered scripts and as a result when one gets prioritized, the other voice becomes inaudible. Dattani portrays the dilemma of the ‘men’ caught in the web of the self-created images of patriarchal roars.

 

 

References

Agarwal, Beena, “Where There is a Will - A Comic Caricature of Patriarchal Authority”, Mahesh Dattani’s Plays: A New Horizon in Indian Theatre. (Jaipur: Book Enclave, 2008)

Beynon, John, “Understanding Masculinities”, Masculinities and Culture. (Buckingham: Open University Press, 2002)

Beynon, John, “What is Masculinity?” Masculinities and Culture. (Buckingham: Open University Press, 2002)

Brihadaryanaka Upanishad. (I, iv, 30) The Upanishads, Swami Nikhilananda. (Kolkata: Advaita Ashrama, 2008)

Chaudhari, Asha Kuthari, “The setting: The Constructed/Deconstructed Family”, Mahesh Dattani: An Introduction. (Delhi: Foundation Books, 2005)

Conell, R.K. “Social construction and gender dynamics,” Masculinities.  (UK: Polity press,  2nd ed. 2005)

Dattani, Mahesh, Collected Plays. Vol.I (New Delhi: Penguin, 2000). The further citations from the same book have been put in parenthesis.

Dattani, interview with Abhijit Sen at Ramkrishna Mission at Narendrapur, Kolkata on 29th of April, 2010.

Dhar, Subir,  “Where There is a Will and Bravely Fought the Queen: The Plays of Mahesh Dattani”. The Plays of Mahesh Dattani : A Critical Response, R.K. Dhawan and Tanu Pant, eds. (New Delhi: Prestige, 2005) 

Dasgupta, Nandita, “Men will be men… stuck in patriarchal role”, TNN, March 8, 2010. 22nd May, 2010. <http:// timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/men-will-be-mem-stuck-in-patriarchal-role/articleshow/5656040.cms>

Foucault, Michel, “The Deployment of Sexuality: Method”. The History of Sexuality. Vol.I: An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley. (New York: Vintage Books, 1990)

Haywood, Chris and Máirtín Mac an Ghaill, “Troubling School Boys: Making Young Masculinities”. Men and Masculities. (Buckingham, Philadelphia: Open University Press, 2003)
Halder, Santwana, “Gender Discrimination in Mahesh Dattani’s Tara: A Study of Prejudice in Patriarchal Society” The Dramatic World of Mahesh Dattani: A Critical Exploration, Amar Nath Prasad, ed.  (New Delhi: Sarup Publishers, 2009)

McRae, John, “We Live in the Flicker: Reflections in Time on the Plays of Mahesh Dattani”. Mahesh Dattani’s Plays: Critical Perspectives. Angelie Multani, ed. (New Delhi: Pencraft International, 2007)

Nagpal, Payal, “Consuming and Selling Women: An Analysis of Gender Play and the Politics of Capitalism in Mahesh Dattani’s Bravely Fought the Queen” Mahesh Dattani’s Plays: Critical Perspectives, Angelie Multani, ed. (New Delhi: Pencraft International, 2007)

Raina, Sita, “A Note on the Play”. Collected Plays. (New Delhi: Penguin, 2000)

Sen, Roop, is a counselor in Kolkata and the quote is from his byte in Dasgupta’s article “Men will be men… stuck in patriarchal role”, TNN, March 8, 2010. 22nd May, 2010.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/men-will-be-mem-stuck-in-patriarchal-role/articleshow/5656040.cms

Sen, Samita, “A Father’s Duty: State, Patriarchy and Women’s Education”. Education and the Dispriviledged: Nineteenth and Twentieth Century India, Sabyasachi Bhattachaya, ed. (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 2002)

Vanita, Ruth, “Bhagavata Purana : The Embrace of Shiva and Vishnu (Sanskrit)”. Same-Sex Love in India: A Literary History, Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai, eds. (New Delhi: Penguin, 2008)

Vishnu, Ashwini Kumar, “The Man, The Mistress, The Will: The Motifs in Mahesh Dattani’s Where There is a Will”. The Dramatic World of Mahesh Dattani: A Critical Exploration, Amar Nath Prasad, ed. (New Delhi: Sarup Publishing House, 2009)

Walling, Michael, “Everyone will be in Costumes! And will have Masks on! : Gender and Performance in Bravely Fought the Queen.” Mahesh Dattani’s Plays: Critical Perspectives. Angelie Multani, ed.  (New Delhi: Pencraft International, 2007)