CHAPTER IV

The social and psychological disorder in the plays of

Ramu Ramanathan and Vikram Kapadia
4.1. Introduction
Present chapter again includes three plays by two playwrights.
Ramunathan’s Collaborators and Mahadevbhai, and Vikram Kapadia’s
Black with Equal have been focused through social and psychological
perspectives. Collaborators and Black with Equal again set in the typical
atmosphere of Mumbai. These plays focus on the family in the social contact
and, Mahadevbhai comments on the family in the national contact. All these
plays portray the social and psychological disorder of the characters in the
play that represent typical social members.
4.2. Collaborators
Collaborators are concerned with the nature of self-destruction,
emerging through various forms of power, corruption, repression and abuse.
The strength of the play lies in the ability to fluctuate between the fragility
of the past and its place in an equally elusive present. According to Kristeva,
the past oscillates between visibility and invisibility in the sense that
characters names or place in the world carry a whole range of cultural and
social significance and are historically contextualized; invisibility in the
sense that the characters find the notion of loss a force to contend with a loss
which stems from the past and of which they are fully aware but can’t seem
to process. The theme of abjection, as attributed in Julia Kristeva’s Powers
of Horror: An Essay on Abjection is the throughline that links each scene of
the play. The play is divided into scenes; the playwright violated the

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traditional technique of dividing play into Acts and Acts into scenes because
the playwright thinks easy to portray typical Indian situation after 1990s.
Like Maursalt from Albert Camus’ The Outsider, the protagonist of
the play, Kranti rejects his identity and such a rejection is nothing but a kind
of psychological disorder. The rejection of self that occurs during the
process of objection is the act that establishes identity through absence. The
loss of unity as a result of separation is for the abject being, the incentive to
drawn back to this stage to this stage, confusing the boundaries between the
self and mother’s body. The process of sublimation is the individual way of
structuring their sense of self out of the loss accrued by separation in order
to restore a degree of value and purpose.
The play lies particularly in playwright’s ability to shape
characteristic traditional Indian theatric at form and content demonstrate the
position of marginalization in the relationship between the individual and the
greater world. It demonstrates the complexities involved in gender
hierarchies, sexual inequalities within familial and social dynamics and the
repression involved in the painful processes of personal, familial and cultural
identity. The play could be defined as a piece of post-modern sensibility in
the sense that it exposes the dislocation of the individual from a received and
shared sense of community, society and culture in terms of value systems,
together with the resonance of a post-colonial consciousness that carries
elements of insecurity and mistrust. Ramanathan’s complex blend of the post
colonial and post-modern presents a volatile and self-anihilating subjectivity
demonstrated within the interior world of the characters. Representations
and aspects of identity in the play weather that of the middle-class woman
Arundhati, corrupt industrialist Arundhati’s father, traitor or displaced
mother Shivani, present the subject occupying a peripheral position. This is a
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condition of Kranti where he experiences an analogous culpability and
exclusion. The play depicts the confluence of contradictory forces, with
characters seeking to belong and yet to be bereft of the spiritual and
emotional capacity to dose. The characters are astutely aware of their
isolation, but it is their journey towards self-destruction that carries with it a
peculiar self-confidence. Shivani knows that her husband is engaged with
Gayatri, henceforth she travels to self destruction by marrying Himanshu.
The new Indian climate of self-confidence, cosmopolitanism and
economic wealth, which typically marked the rhetoric of the 1990s intrusion
of liberalization, privatization and globalization, sought to promote mind
sets that served the needs of a market. Such a focus defined way to serve the
present from the past, failing to acknowledge the forces of the past that had
shaped India’s coming of age. India’s contemporary culture is seen as an
eloquent expression of new found confidence where the liberalization of
internal markets is matched by the celebration of individual rights and
liberties, with muted attention given to social and cultural disorders. The
speed at which India has changed suggests a cultural ambivalence over how
to process some of these changes and bears the implication that camouflages
have been placed over the cracks that must accompany such rapid social and
cultural development. Ramu Ramanathan suggests through this play that
India’s tendency to leave its old culture behind and to embrace the new
should be viewed cautiously.
The play depicts many of the problems that lie beneath the
camouflages of the liberalization, privatization and globalization, locating
them in the contexts of repressed identities and cultural disillusionment and
placing them centre stage. The influences of genealogy, memory, history,
and the absence loss all coverage in worlds of short term hope undercut by
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despair. For Ramunathan, processes of identity are ingrained in the past, but
their impact is always present and significantly powerful. The cyclical nature
of the play depicts how issues and concerns are literally and metaphorically,
repeatedly drawn from history and memory. The play commands a
consideration of difficult issues such as suicide, murder, incest and rape.
While tradition and history are explored in Collaborators, it demonstrates
that we are not merely passive prisoners of our past, but rather that the past
is the fruit of power and self knowledge and its analysis is always necessary.
The play employs to varying degrees notion of family and home, which
provide both literal and metaphorical borders and boundaries that define the
space between self and other. As with other contemporary playwrights such
as Ninaz Khodaiji, Anosh Irani, Anil Abraham and Gautam Raja, family and
home with their pitfalls, dangers and challenges act as a catalyst which can
allow the self to undergo a kind of process of self formation. Anosh Irani’s
plays, for example, demonstrate a dramatization of the present, haunted by a
moral crisis in the past, in an effort to consider different forms of sexual,
political and cultural identity. The world of Gautam Raja’s plays, with
family and home as sites of never ending physical and emotional feuds, is
cruel and violent, but softened by vicious comedy. Anil Abraham’s
protagonists regularly confront their pasts, enabling them to move towards
some personal acceptance. With Ramu Ramanathan, such crises are fraught,
with a greater degree of viciousness with little room for a sense of hope.
Collaborators examine the repressed identities propelling the
protagonists mapped by a conflictual continuum of personal and social
paranoiac and phobia. This living reflects not only journey of the
protagonist’s individual disposition, his personal anxieties, concerns and
fears, but also his relationship to the familial and social world, which tries to
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protect its boundries through mechanisms of exclusion. The central self
destructive protagonist of this play is not a member of a family and a home
in the conservative Indian sense; he is challenging and subversive familial
figure trapped in a partly self-constructed and socially constructed labyrinth,
where all movement is prohibitive and self defeating.
The play articulates the experience of self-displacement abjection
from the contemporary Indian viewpoint, expressive also of a peripherals
female subjectivity. It depicts the condition of Kranti’s subjectivity which
takes place during the early stages of individual identity, where borders and
boundaries of identities are formed. These borders constitute how the
characters see themselves in the world which comes to reveal a disruption to
the margins of their identity, a disruption that places subjectivity continually
on the verge of collapse.
While the theoretical cornerstone of this study draws upon Kristeva’s
notion of abjection, it will also use of Freudian psychoanalysis as well as
post-colonial theories to explore the social and psychological displacement
articulated in Ramunathan’s play. Selfhood is presented as tenuous, through
central concerns of incest and suicide, as subjectivity is either threatened or
in fear of being threatened by the power that denies a discrete identity for the
characters. The play offers grounds as to why the characters are alienated
from themselves parental abandonment, familial abuse or entrapment within
the confines of social roles of motherhood. It reveals the reaction to the
break down of such borders through, for example, murder, violence, self
harm or the blurring of received notions of gender and sexual boundries,
thereby drawing attention to the vulnerability of individual, familial and
social laws and indeed to the fragility of life itself. The play reveals that the
characters are metaphorically speaking, repeatedly drawn to this earlier state,
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despite the self-destruction and harm accrued in doing so. The return to the
nascent phase of individual identity, which is always looming presence for
the individual, recurs throughout the work, confronting the characters in
various abject ways. The sphere of abjection is the in-between, the
ambiguous that which doesn’t respect border, rules on systems.
The beginning of neo-liberalism concerning Indian economics and
sociology saw tradition, spirituality and the connection to the land
compromised in exchange for a fractured society, whose belief system pulls
away from rather than unites people. In Collaborators, a society is shown at
the stage where economic improvement has come at the price of social
dislocation. The play is not formed in the narrative of the past but by the
predicament of the ‘here and now’ and its consequences for the future. Thus
individual action taken by Ramanathan’s characters in this context is of and
for itself still working with concerns of absence and loss, Ramanathan is
now without the demands of sacrifice and the realm of the mythic is
tentatively drawn upon as the impending sense of doom, which pervades the
play. Thus, Collaborators does not carry intimations of the inevitable set
down in classical proportions. The play contends that subjectivity in post
liberalization India, shaped by an individual and social malaise, can recover
or at least be acted upon, whatever the consequences of that recovery or
action may be.
Collaborators are deeply concerned with the inadequacy of day to day
leaving and the inability to articulate experience. The most powerful single
dimension of the play’s world for its spectators is its continual reference to
the nature and significance of human society. When Shivani though married
and have a baby named Purushottam decides to leave her husband, family
and a home and to confront her dream, abandonment and the individual is
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also a kind of victory, in refusing to submit to the demands and interdicts set
down by society.
Ramanathan’s imagination is oriented towards presenting human
connection as a fragile web of ties that influence characterization, action,
language and theme. Even the stage setting outlined by Ramanathan
prevents characters from having a presence of their own, which ironically
works to demonstrate their lack of a shared experience. Issues of
overcrowding and of personal privacy which emerged during the explosion
of the homogeneous, tight living spaces that populated India’s urban
landscape after 1990s. Ramanathan sets up from the beginning, the Freudian
postulate of a two tiered world, one in which Kranti and Arundhati get on
with their living practices under the pressures of daily existence, and the
other an inner psychic world which refers back to the repressions and
frustrated desires of their past. Typically of the former but in Collaborators
Ramanathan dramatises this possibility. It is the movement between the real
and hyper-real backgrounds and conflations. That Ramanathan dilates this
family story into a story of the society in all times and places.
As individuals, the characters show the diversification of struggles
within themselves, to exhibit a range of human potentiality that tends
towards destruction. Arundhati resists living by strategic measurements of
daily ritual and repetition. Her conditions of drudgery are carefully observed
to counter act her suicidal tendencies. The social world in Collaborators in
terms of boundary crossing is presentative of the forbidden and is related to
identity, exile and displacement. The portrayal of melancholy in this play
manifests through interior spaces that disrupt subjectivity. The repetitive
monologues and symptomatic of melancholy portray mechanisms such as
identification, loss and incorporation. The content of the asides displays the
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tension between the characters governing self-image and their performance
in the world. The characters in Collaborators display a composite sense of
emptiness, depicted by the dissolution of subjectivity, and the play
dramatises how this emptiness becomes more manageable. The drama
played out within the melancholic ego sees itself critically judging the lost
object reinvesting that loss back into the self. Ramanathan, once again,
portrays resistant subjects created out of loss, the process of subjectivity in
which the ego becomes aware of itself through its consuming desire for a
lost object, place or ideal.
The pattern of the melancholic sensibility, repeated throughout the
play, traces the characters’ attempts to deal with their individual lack of
fulfillment and also suggests dislocated community at large. Ranmathan’s
depiction of wealth as success in the play in the conversations surrounding
work and in the details of the contemporary home, works to contradict the
myth of success associated with money and its relationship to the individual.
In this context, the characters constant and repetitive playing bridge reveals
their attempts to negotiate subjectivity within the boundaries of a society
defined by the prior loss of a preferred past.
Collaborators in this context, explores the possibility of agency for
the subject who comes into being through the melancholic sensibility in
terms of the relationship between subject and object, between the
melancholic and the idealised object of loss. For most of the play, characters
engage in self-abnegating ways, their actions and articulations framed as
their attempts to deal with the limitations set upon them by themselves, their
family and their society. The characters unstable subjectivity is shaped by
the material effects of social commitment and is reflexively related to the
psychic ambivalence that marks their melancholic outlook. The material
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conditions that shape Arundhati, Shivani, Himanshu and Kranti’s
consciousness as subjects point up an internalized loss; they lack any reliable
external arrangement which might alleviate the sense of loss.
The first scene of the play exposes the mentality of the protagonist,
the secret behind his name Kranti. Even he introduces his wife along with
how he has changed since he has returned from the prison in Faizabad. In the
second scene, the protagonist is calm; only a man named Himanshu and
Kranti’s wife Arundhati are sharing communication. Himanshu had sent
three letters from Switzerland, Amsterdam and Brussels respectively, but she
didn’t give any response on his question; she is just taking on different
issues at a time in pieces. While coming to Arundhati’s home, Himanshu
finds “things have changed since the last time. The slums have proliferated.
The yuck- and-muck. The number of people.” (74) But Arundhati’s speech
touches to the kinds of tea and his divine tie and her father’s greatness. “I
wish all men were made like Daddy” (74) shows her nervousness to be in
connection with other men. She admits that her family has a history of
diabetes and even she is not option for it so she cycles at 33 km per hour for
fifteen minutes minimum.
When Srikanth, their colleague was recalled by both of them, they
stuck the subject and exposed how he was living just on Betacard,
Combiflam, Alprax, Digene, black coffee and particularly cigarettes since he
had divorced Tanya. On the behalf of his death the office organized a
condolence meeting, the other day. “Everyone paid their tributes. Everyone
wept bucket of tears,” (76). Their communication jumps from Shrikanth to
their usual habit of having wine and Arundhati suggests him to peep through
the windowpane and see the baobab and the days gone by still she brings a
chateau petrus. Their overall communication is tied together with mysterious
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bond and complex attraction of each other. They are dissatisfied on their
forceful imprisonment into the social system. Both of them wish to break
this prison and meet physically and spiritually, but they neither do either of
the things nor break their causal relationship. The idea of Arundhati’s
touching of many subjects at a time and Hinanshu’s incapacity to catch any
of these shows how they have lost their mental balance. Whatever they talk
or perform shows the disordered picture of their mind. They think
excessively on their past on one hand and observe the changes being held in
the society that is around them. On the death of Shrikath, the method of
condolence is a kind of celebration and it shows how society is disordered. It
is a fine example of the psychology of group disorder.
The third scene doesn’t deal with direct communication among the
characters; there is two sided communication at one level Himanshu is
talking to Kranti and at the same time, Kranti is sharing what Himanshu said
with the audience. He knows that Kranti was arrested so Himanshu asks him
if he is ok. Then he continues that their company wanted to set up a plant in
Malabo meanwhile he jumps from the plant to the disappearance of the
people who had participated in the morcha. The government of Malabo
doesn’t allow anybody to protest or oppose, and if anybody tries, he is
buried without his testicle and brain. It is capitalist view of Himanshu which
doesn’t suit to the country like India where democracy is worshiped and
everybody has a right to raise a voice against the government or capitalist;
yet he prefers to live in the country like India and set a plant to the country
like Malabo where there is no democracy at all.
The three characters are there on the stage in a silent position sitting in
idleness, and everyone is sighing loudly and the sigh of each one exposes
how dangerous the situation is around them. Even it highlights on their
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complex and unexposed relationship, which again carries to a kind of break
or disorder.
In the fourth scene, Ramanathan highlights on academic failure of the
current age. Shantanu has attended a seminar related to the Indian economy
which comments on the emptiness of the great personalities. Even
Ramanathan doesn’t miss to expose the hollowness of industrialists. The
idea of compressing has been displayed through the play that the hall of
seminar includes only 275 people while 367 participants have been allowed
to sit in such a clumsy place. Even there is corruption in booking the hall
because Mr. Surana gets 10% commission on the hall booking. The
characters in the play even don’t sure about the national song. Shivani
adores ‘Vande Mataram’ as lovely tune; it seems so catchy, so hummable for
her. There was a nonsense question-answer session which carried the theme
of a seminar to nothingness. Himanshu admits that it became so much
troublesome to listen to the experts for seven and half hour as he thinks; it is
not his pea-sized brains capacity to understand all this. So he came to the
conclusion that, “probable, the maternity ward is the only manufacturing
unit which has been speared from the clutches of excise duty. Which is why,
producing babies is duty-free.” (84)
Scene five deals with the ironical focus on the middle class habits of
consuming drinks, the expensive and faulty education system, the political
issue of Great Bengal famine in 1943 and the intellectual contribution of the
economist like Satyajit Ray and Jyoti Basu, how Shivani is pessimistically
happy with her son Purushottam and Shivani’s attempts of maintaining her
body. These are only the surface issues the playwright shares with the
audience and readers. He intends to put up something different. He wishes to
focus on the social and individual behaviour of boneless society or the
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society whose bones are melted in the acid of Neo-liberalism, privatization,
and globalization. The following pieces of communication emphasise on
contemporary faulty education system.
The education system is so faulty. The problem, I think lies
with the students. They don’t value the thing. Its all this
subsidy. Look at the IIMs and IITs. (85)
Next week Aditya and me plan to get Purushottam admitted
into a pre-school. Its very good. There’s such a huge waiting
list. We intend to pay seven lakhs as donation. The office is
soon… supportive. One has to plan these things right away, no.
Got to give the child a proper education. And Purshattam is so
clever. He can even say ‘Paapaa’…. you know. Good no? (89).
The image of an over fed Shivani and a general life of indulgence is
far from the life of moderation and sacrifice which the typical Indian system
advocates. There is an identifiable direct relationship between the
characters’ loss of subjectivity and the role of them. Parenthood recurs as a
through-line in this play, particularly in relation to the idea that parents
cannot fulfil the conventional roles expected of them. In this play, Shivani
looks at her son as a baby looks at its doll. The repressed passion of Aditya’s
being a failed father is made a place in Shivani’s mind. Both Arundhati and
Shivani decorate the picture of an ideal man, Arundhati, through her father
and, Shivani through her son naming him Purushottam, a greatest man.
These two males are tied with these two females, and it is their
psychological slippage that both women fulfil their desires through the
different males. Arundhati had to marry to Himanshu, but she couldn’t
marry due to some situational circumstances. She got married to Kranti, who
failed to satisfy her appetite so she began to find out the qualities of
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satisfying her in her father and even she succeeded to substitute her husband.
The concept of Electra complex coined by Freud doesn’t suit in this
circumstance. It can be said that it is a new kind of electra complex when
there is not a direct physical attachment but it is a kind of slavery of life
protocols. She was brought up under the influence of her father so whatever
the values either good or bad of life in him directly percolated in her and in
her married life, she expected the same life values from her husband but
failed. So she turned to her father to satisfy her mental desire. Her being
dissatisfied with Kranti carried to the attempt of committing suicide but
failed. Almost the same thing happens with Shivani. She is not satisfied with
Aditya. There is a cause to be dissatisfied with him. The first reason is that
Aditya is engaged with another woman Gayatri. She fills up his absence,
substituting him with her son. She expects all those qualities in her son
which she failed to find in Aditya. It will not be awkward to call it an
example of Oedipus complex, because Mrs. Morel expects from Paul, her
son in Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence; the same thing Shivani expects
from her son.
Arundhati’s intellectual slavery of her father and Shivani’s mental
dependence upon her son to fulfil her passions, expose the psychological
disorder of these two women. They try to reestablish the new psychological
order through keeping contact with father and son respectively.
The sixth scene deals with the game of cards. It highlights on the
disturbed mental situation of every character. The scene ends with the
demand of ‘some brownies’ and ‘French fries with cheese batter’ to remedy
on their disturbed mental situation. This game deeply explores their rejection
of social restrictions. When Shivani expects no cheating in the game, she
indirectly wishes to suggest that she is already engaged with Himanshu and
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either Himanshu or Arundhati should not attempt to share each- others
ideology. The game has a symbolical significance; at one hand it signifies
their way of killing time, on the other hand it shows the mock trial to
disclose their changing relationship. The game is continued in the next
scene. While playing Arundhati opens her darkest room of subconscious
mind where she finds the things have become so hectic but at the same time
Himanshu drags her from her subconscious mind to conscious mind and says
that “city is so crazy. So many meetings. Running from one appointment to
another. Ridiculous.” (91)
Himanshu comes to know from Shivani that she has again changed
her dog’s name. It seems that she is in the mood to change everything, even
her wedding partner too. The new name of the dog is ‘Underdog’ which
echoes ‘underworld’. It means she tries to follow and accept the situation
around her and wishes to be a part of that world which is black, cruel and
unkind. That is why she gave her dog such a shocking name. She finds silly
smile on the face of her dog. It is in heat, and they have planned to neuter it.
“Neutering is very much fascinating; you know in fact we should neuter all
males in this country… especially those in heat. It will solve the population
problem” (91), shows how she is burning in the fire of revenge. Here the
symbolical significance of dog disposes how her husband is in heat as he is
in a love of another woman. Her idea of neutering all males who are in heat
shows her desire to neuter her husband, Aditya so that he would be sexually
unfit and he would, and then, be her personal property. The naughty smile
on the face of dog equals to the disgusting and shameful smile of her
husband’s face.
Himanshu shares another subject of Oswal Jain, who is not satisfied
with current Indian situation as they are never treated properly in India.
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Shivani’s praise about Arundhati’s celestial house contributes Arundhati’s
detail information about how she gained such a celestial look and how her
father helped to give this new look to her house. It is her wish to make the
library as she has got chairs made from teaks but the problem is that there
are no books to keep in the library. Ramanujan, then, turns to expose how
middle-class people look at the life of downtrodden people. The following
dialogue of Arundhati exposes the hypocrisy of the middle class.
Oh-Oh-Oh, that must be a message from the bai. There’s been a
death in her family. TB. Apparently thirteen TB deaths in the
past seven days in the slums. It’s a crime. Did you know,
instead of a doctor, these poor people consult the panwallah for
medicines. We must do something for the poor people. And the
newspapers don’t even report it. (93)
It seems that this class wants to help the poor but expects somebody
other than them should help as this class doesn’t have time. Arundhati feels
affinity about the family of her house maid, but her father doesn’t have time,
so she requests others to give a job to her maid’s husband. Shivani is ready
to donate her old chiffon sarees. The most striking statement of Himanshu,
“Yeah, right, we must do something. Absolutely. No question about it” (93)
discloses the most hypocritical nature of this class which just feels the
problems, talks about these problems but nobody dares to perform any
action against the problems like poverty, rigors of communalism, social
disparity, apathy and the rarity of perfect procedural justice.
Scene Eighth comments on typical Indian jail system. Kranti had been
arrested in Faizabad when he had gone for company’s work. There was no
specific cause behind his imprisonment, but his imprisonment deeply
affected on his wife Arundhati. She is vulnerable, scattered brained and
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“lawfully-awfully wedded” (95) woman. So Himanshu has ‘an Arundhati
obsession’ as it was told that he had to marry to her but it failed; so he shows
his deep concerns about her. In the same scene, Kranti shares his experience
of imprisonment. There was mutilated a body in one corner of the jail. In the
midnight, someone came, urinated on the body, sliced its ears and oiled them
to lure red ants, and there were hundred, thousands of red ants on his face.
Himanshu asks him if he got any facilities like Nehru or other fighters who
had got all kinds of facilities. But Kranti is aware that he is neither freedom
fighter nor a criminal so there is no expectation for him to get either any
trouble or any facility. Himanshu is firm on the opinion that he should be
supportive with his wife.
Scene nine is most striking and dissolving. It deals with the death of
Mr. Mahalnobis but Arundhati doesn’t know his floor number. She prohibits
other characters for not making any loud voice or increase the voice of
music. It is a condition of her mind like the hero in the novel, The Outsider
by Albert Camus who is not sure when his mother exactly died. She shows
the ignorance of the people of who don’t feel necessity know who their
neighbours are. “You know there are people who live in the same building
for god-knows how many years and do not know who their neighbours are.
It’s such a shame. I am different in a nice sort of way. In fact of late, things
are becoming important to me (97). As a responsibility of neighbour, she
feels the necessity to send condolences and commiserations. “I need to show
people that I care when they are alive. Often my behaviour borders on
indifference even though I think I am what can be called an affectionate
person” (98).
Shivani shares her experience of her grandfather’s death and how she
successfully managed everything. As though the death of Mr. Mahalnobir
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influenced so much on them and all of them are under the depression,
Arundhati presents a new CD of Baazi which her daddy has brought from
Toronto and even she shows some of the furnishings in the bathroom. She
has a beautiful stained glass, cast – iron wash-basin. She could place an
order of some food.
She diverts the attention of the fellows and tells them to look at the
full moon. She thinks that the moon is a poor thing, ‘alone and isolated’
trying to create a space for himself.’ The frail nature of Arundhati and
supportive nature to her frailty by Himanshu and Shivani shows how the
modern generation in losing the human values and just giving the value to
formalities. Their internal complicated relationship made them mentally and
socially hollow and empty.
Next scene comments on the failure of electricity and Himanshu,
“Hey, its an overload on the grid. Plus there’s pilfering and theft. Something
must be done quickly or else Mumbai will become like a Bihar” (100)
discloses the reality of almost all metrocities in India. Shivani is searching a
torch given by her husband, Aditya. The failure of electricity discloses
various angles of every character. Arundhati thinks that the city is going to
the dogs, which shows how her surrounding is passively changing. On the
other hand, Himanshu just feels fear of becoming his city like Bihar.
Arundhati has been asked about candle, but she is not aware where she kept
it. As candle is a symbol of sex, her ignorance of missing candle shows her
negligence about her sex partner; in darkness she is very difficult to find out
her biological husband. Kranti experiences the mental situation of Humayun,
who was sandwiched between a mighty father Baber and a mightier son
Akbar. In the same sense, Kranti is sandwiched between the dominance of
Arundhati’s father and excessive expectations of his wife, Arundhati. He
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finds a nice way to get rid of such a prisonlike condition through the songs
of Bade Ghulam Ali. It seems that how everybody uses the darkness to
resettle an order because it is impossible for each one to be normal in the
light.
In scene eleven Kranti shares his father’s experience when he had
been called to give a key note on the occasion of Birth anniversary of Lala
Lajpatrai. After a key note, the organizers had arranged Lunch. His father
couldn’t bear their custom to serve women after men. So he decided to break
down such a disgusting custom by arranging another new custom. He was
not called for such a programme, but he succeeded to establish a new order
to allow women to have lunch along with men. He didn’t bear the
discrimination between man and woman so he broke down the custom of
serving women after men and established new order where women have
been served before men. The orthodox people thought that breaking previous
convention is disorder, but the father thought that he established new order
breaking old disorder.
In the some scene, they played a game of bridge but the game was
only for a name, it helped some space to disclose what is hidden in their
darkest room of the heart. First of all, the two streams of thoughts of Kranti
and Arundhati began to blow in the past similar to each other. When they
were single and had an attraction of each other they thought to blow in a
single stream. Arundhati’s father was not ready to give his daughter to
Kranti; even Himanshu was asked how Kranti was. As Himanshu was in
love of Arundhati, and it had long family relationships of them, he was so
suitable to get marry to Arundhati. But both Kranti and Arundhati declined
the system and came together physically by the bond of lawfully wedding.
The scene is just repentance on the past of every character. The four various
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streams of thoughts of Kranti, Arundhati, Himanshu and Shivani mix in each
other and make such a poisonous remix which doesn’t suit to the
surrounding system. Nobody is happy with their partners. Himanshu expects
a divorce of Arundhati from Kranti, so that he can get marry to her. While
Shivani is not happy with her husband Aditya; she expects to get marry to
Kranti. At last, she decides to marry to Himanshu. In this way, these four
poisonous streams try to resettle physically and mentally and establish a new
order.
Scene twelve begins with husbands’ free confession about their
devastating relationship as “And so, that’s how things are when we meet.
We play, we chit-chat, we corroborate, and we collaborate” (108).
Meanwhile, she shared how the day was common. Kranti intended to sign
the deal and return. There was no water in the house and the kitchen stank.
Their pea-green dustbin, the one she had purchased in Singapore, had not
been emptied for days. There was a municipal workers strike. In the old
apartment blocks in Pydhonie, Arundhati’s father used to topple the contents
of a bin, which, then would rush through the vertical disposal ducks,
plumming down to the dark vaults at courtyard level. They were living with
well known drawbacks of evil smelling accumulations like rotten eggs,
bloody sanitary pads and stale food. Throughout the play, Kranti is a
character who shows extreme alienation. The following quote from Kranti
comments on the middle-class mentality at one hand and the upper middle-
class hypocrisy on the other hand.
Ah yes, bloody rascals. BMC, BEST, banks, the unions.
Always going on hertals. Constantly disrupting the lives of
decent citizens like us. Why do we pay taxes so that this lot can
feed off us!!! I say all bandhs must be declared illegal. Lock up
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 these chaps for a few weeks, and then they will come to their
senses. (109)
The remaining scene is totally devoted for how Kranti was imprisoned
in Faizabad, how police treated the people in the jail and at last he came to
the conclusion that in this world all of us have no rights, and perfect
procedure justice is rare.
Next scene includes the rules of Bridge, which suit to human life.
When Kranti departed for Faizabad, there were many problems in the city.
The municipality had gone on strike for a few days, and rubbish was piled
up at the doorways. The city was transformed into a corrupted dunghill. It
comments on the reciprocal relationship between Himanshu and Shivani.
After discussing the matter of Kranti, both expect something different from
each other. Himanshu expects a divorce of Kranti to Arundhati so that it
could be easy for him to get marry to her while Shivani will find out her own
way in two conditions: in first condition, she discloses that there is no any
relationship between Gayatri and Aditya she will continue her life with him
happily and in second condition if she loses Aditya, she will remarry to
Himanshu as she is sure, Arundhati will adjust with Kranti in any critical
condition.
After his arrival from the jail, Kranti was so much mentally troubled
by his wife. She belittled him by blaming for her father’s all kind of loss and
her loss of peace; Himanshu tries to pursue him saying,
Forget what happened. The poor people do exist. They always
have. But that’s not our fault is it? A person experiences the
way a person lives. You cannot change that. Ok, there is
injustice in one corner of the world, and you feel shit about it.

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 But that’s life, you know. I mean this is an existing time in the
company. (120)
Freedom, equality and human rights are fine words, but they also
serve the primary bonds, the attachments. Shivani shares Kranti’s sorrow
from the heart and even she discloses the secret that she was engaged with
Kranti when they were in college. The same scene discloses that Himanshu
and Shivani have decided to live together and get married. Their bond
doesn’t expose the passionate love; it is just the kind of adjustment and a
revenge on the circumstances arise around them.
Scene fifteen focuses on how Kranti was treated in the jail
inhumanely. He acquired the characteristics of the group. They were petty,
quarrelsome, wallowing in self-pity. In prison, no one acknowledged the fact
that Kranti was director of Business development. There was no consistent
philosophy of life, no political or social integrity. Then he talks about what
the mutilated body said in the jail,
The mutilated body did not speak of wars, or the repression of
woman and children or about the number of children who fled
their blends. The mutilated body is merely narrated stories.
Until finally it stopped speaking. The next day, there were red
ants. Hundreds, thousands. Red ants. (124)
The scene ends with their decision to have a meal in Rotiserri and Sea
Grill hotel so that it would be a relief from their day-to-day tension. The last
scene deals with the death of Mr. Mahalnobis and the naughty and kindless
reactions on his death. The death of him doesn’t make any change.
Ramanathan’s characters strongly react against the social situations in
which they live. The play is concerned with the infiltration of the past upon
the present and it explores the self sabotaging nature of the characters, the
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fluid forms of identity, the struggle for communication, the politics of
gender and the incapability of the sexes. As the play includes two male and
two female characters, the idea of a woman as paired with its concomitant
femininity is a dominant concern, but considerations of masculinity also
feature in this play. The play moves from the absurd style to a more
naturalistic mode of expression, yet still retains elements of the absurd and
the playwright shows how the assimilation process would appear to have
occurred quite extensively and indeed has led to the success. However, the
mainstream elements of the play are usually framed by other worlds of myth,
dreams and fantasy and they typically deal with incest, rape, patricide,
matricide, filicide and suicide in multiple and dynamic ways.
4.3. Mahadevbhai
Mahadevbhai is a first and most appreciative play by Ramu
Ramanathan. He lights on the historical characters Mahadevbhai and
Gandhiji through the conventional history; the history came through the
chains and false history which is written to fill up specific purposes of the
specific group of the country. The play exposes how man’s lifestyle changed
from simplicity to complexity; how global issues created a force to turn
Gandhism to anti-gandhism mode. It is a biographical play based on
Gandhiji’s life. It is a two-hour monologue in which the protagonist plays
the role of more than twenty different characters sharply selected from
Indian history and current life. Ramanathan had a zest to put up something
different that the books of history failed to display. Even only history is not
enough to know the life of Gandhiji. As C. Rajagopalachari calls
Mahadevbhai a second heart of Gandhiji, his dairies and Gandhiji’s
autobiography, My Experiments with Truth have been so crucial to our
knowledge of Gandhiji’s life and works.
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 The play explores the relevance of Gandhian principals and ideology
to our times, at the same time turns the spotlight on to the little known,
modest, self- effacing scholar, Mahadevbhai whose diaries became most
authentic proof of real history. He was the most beloved companion and
personal secretary of Mahatma Gandhi from 1917 till his death in 1942. He
was an only real witness to many historical moments in the life of the nation,
even he went everywhere with Gandhiji and the jail was not exception for it.
He was not just an idle follower of Gandhiji; he maintained a diary during
these years in which he recorded all his conversations and correspondence
with the Mahatma. His dairy has literary and historical value; literary in the
sense that it inspired a plenty of writers to know the life of Gandhiji and
historical in the sense that it kept even minor notes very carefully. Ramu
Ramanathan found the material in those diaries that had ability to transform
some dying Gandhian human values and wrote a play named Mahadevbhai
to transform the decaying India on the threshold of 21st century. He opines
about the play Mahadevbhai as an attempt to contextualize the freedom
movement and the birth of a democratic nation with what is happening
today. The plays against Gandhiji’s principles flooded Mumbai theatre in
last few years, and even Ramanathan was a witness of this situation. He
couldn’t bear the idea of destroying principles of Mahatma Gandhi and sow
the seeds of casticism and communication. So he attempted to reestablish
and expose the Gandhian principle through his play Mahadevbhai as he is
concerned with the devastating situation of India. He wants to free the
middle-class society from the false ideology putting up through the new
coming plays. This drama is his attempt to set the record straight. The
protagonist of the play takes the audience and readers through several
historical acts and moments that decided the fate of the nation such as Dandi
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March, Champaran and Bardoli Satyagraha. The playwright in the veil of the
protagonist in Mahadevbhai himself is a passionate believer in Gandhiji’s
views on Hindu-Muslim unity, removal of untouchability, improving the lot
of women promotion of cottage industries, labor welfare, truth and non-
violence but he is not a blind follower of Gandhiji’s ideology. He articulates
them with the conviction that touches the heart.
The writers of history committed a crime of spreading misconceptions
but Ramanathan’s authentic account of Gandhiji’s interaction with leaders
such as Ambedkar, Jinnah, Sardar Patel and the Nehru family helps to clear
prejudices and several popular misconceptions.
The play is written into two acts that skillfully blends the historical
narrative with Mahadevbhai’s personal life and the present moment. The
personality of Mahadevbhai was humble, sincere and unassuming which
brought out even in the way the actor introduces himself and in his highly
ironical forward of Mahadevbhai ‘s story being narrated to a Bollywood
producer. The Bollywood is engaged to churn the lives of freedom fighters
like Bhagatsing, Rajguru and Sukhdev and its aim is just to achieve money
and attitude is just materialistic so it violated many ideologies and principles
on which our country is stable. As the structure of the play is so systematic
that the bits of drama and comedy, inserted every now and then, break the
monotony of the narrative and help the audience and readers to be conscious
about what is going on the stage.
Gandhiji has been labeled as a corruptor of youth. The same charge
that was leveled against Socrates in Athens. But Jawaharlal has signed the
non-cooperation pledge in protest against the Rowlatt Act. This was against
Motilal Nehru’s wishes; Bapu tried to calm the mother and father (28).

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 Ramanathan comments on the vulnerable method of reaching history
as madam Priscilla, the Anglophile history teacher makes history most
boring subject and personifies the typical colonial mind set. Madam Priscilla
is just an example; there are other thousand of history teachers who
stigmatized the real nature of history through their ill method of pronouncing
historical incidents. Madam Priscilla, a young Americanized MBA graduate
is a product of the new economic colonialism. The role of Dadaji into this
play is most important because he acts as a living link between Gandhiji,
Mahadevbhai and the present situation.
The play is fine bondage between the present situation and past reality
so these dramatic episodes which seem diversions, but are carefully tied up
with the narrative and take it forward. There are many suitable comments
Ramanathan deliberately introduced between the lines that expose the
difference between Gandhiji’s dreams and present reality. Since the rise of
Shivsena at state level and BJP at national level, the communal riots have
been taking place almost all over the country. Ramanathan mentions a
meeting held in Godra on the communal harmony seems a kind of irony as
Godra became a victim of communal riots in which thousands of Hindu and
Muslims are murdered by each-other where once upon a time Gandhiji had
held a meeting on the communal harmony. Ramunathan brought this
incident out without any erect reference to the recent carnage, through just a
slight tonal variation in the repetition of the name. While writing the play
Ramanathan had an ideology in his mind; he is profoundly ambitious yet the
production is endearing in its utter simplicity. It is not the aim of the play
just to talk about Gandhian principles but to give them life. There are a lot of
elements which function both to evoke Mahadevbhai’s commitment to the
Gandhian way of life and to be remedy on the social and psychological
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problems of the current typical Indian middle class society such as the
modest design, the simple props pulled out of the old trunk, the persona of
the young unassuming actor taken on by the artist tidying up the stage after
using the props, with the dignity of labour of a true Gandhian, the ambience
created by the music and the lights etc. Being both a writer and director, he
managed to have flowers on stage so that it would create a feeling of
reverence for Gandhiji, as well as Mahadevbhai.
As the play includes only one performing character who plays various
roles from the historical personalities as well as the present live
personalities, it could be better to know how he performs his role. This is the
only character and protagonist who seems cut out for the role and gets under
the skin of the character he plays. He is impressive and moves easily from
one role to another indulging in any flamboyant display of histrionics. The
playwright deliberately used three languages in the play. The first is a
language of the play, English, second is our national language, Hindi which
is used slightly to maintain a national touch and the third language is
Ghandhiji’s mother-tongue Gujrati which is used at many places in the play.
But the actor moulds all these languages equally. The English used by him is
comfortably Indian and never intrusive. He deliberately maintained an
informal, chatty tone and the touch of humour that livens up the narrative.
In the diary, Mahadevbhai jotted down the innumerable letters to and
by Gandhiji as well as conversations and bantering, lectures and discourses.
These diaries proved Mahadevbhai’s commitment to satyagraha and the
struggle for independence and even they helped him to be a key witness to
Gandhiji. As it is difficult to bring Gandhiji’s ideals into our life, he either
was put on a pedestal or critically evaluated his principles. That doesn’t

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mean they are inconvenient, irrelevant and difficult, it only shows that we
fail to understand and attempt to do so.
But just because I’m out of work, you must not undermine my
breed. Because like everyone else, I too have a Gotra. Yes, a
Gora. An ancestry. Like everyone else. I’ve a father who has a
father who has a father who has a father….ad nauseam, ad
infinitum, etc., etc. As many fathers to fathers as there are stars
in the milky way. But wait a moment.. I’ve gone ahead. Where
was I? Me, My father, My grandfather, ah! My grandfather had
a brother. Yes, that is to say my granduncle of sorts. (9)
The play Mahadevbhai makes this awareness among the audience
and readers that we, being clutched in the false modern and materialistic
attitude to see at the life, totally failed to follow the ideologies of Gandhiji in
our day to day life; it asks us to reflect on this very fact. The actual play
starts with the question ‘who is Mahadevbhai and the next one and half
hour is the unfolding of Mahadevbhai constant association with Gandhiji
and his unwavering faith, respect and devotion to Gandhiji’s struggle in
making India Independent in every sense. While playing various roles such
as the role of Gandhiji, Ambedkar, Patel and Mahadevbhai, the actor
successfully exposes the selfless nature of Mahadevbhai to help reach
Gandhiji’s message to the nation. But it is not either playwrights aim or
actors attitude to prove Mahadevbhai to be better to Gandhiji but it is their
humble attempts to understand both personalities equally who were
depended on each other. Since Mahadevbhai had joined Gandhiji. The play
is not only a journey into India’s freedom struggle, but also a sincere
observation of Mahadevbhai, who regularly studied, read, observed and
translated writings and thoughts of Gandhiji and others. The play indirectly
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forces us to see Gandhiji through Mahadevbhai’s eyes. It strengthens us to
understand into Gandhiji’s philosophies of non-violence, Gandhian
economics, removal of untouchability, Khadi movement, uplifting the status
of women and self-reliance. The play reflects on the urge of Gandhiji on the
use of Khadi, the protection of villages, and just to fulfil a need and not
indulge greed. It speaks about Gandhiji’s belief in the weapon of satyagraha,
despite facing innumerable challenges and his capacity to move the British
empire in India with intelligence and nonviolence. The extremists who
didn’t believe in silent protest widely appreciated ‘Dandi March’ Gandhiji
understood that with so many years of discrimination only contempt and
hatred had bred in the heats of untouchables. He was under the impression
that Hindus don’t expect to destroy untouchability.
The history of Indian freedom always talks prejudicially about Pune
pact held between Gandhiji and Ambedkar, which in this play touches on
Gandhiji’s relation with Ambedkar, which is also an eye opener. The two
things regarding Godhra; first a meeting held in 1917 under Gandhiji’s
authority for communal harmony and second the Godhra massacre in 2002
shock the humanity and express that human beings don’t learn anything
from the history; even it is interpreted misleadingly and the same incidents
occur again and again on the dais of the world where history repeats itself
and the historians write the same things shamelessly but the people don’t do
anything to aster the future history. The play exposes the same thing that
only Gandhiji had such power to think over the future calamities and to find
out a preventing remedy from such calamities in the present. Thus, the play
not only runs through history but, makes references to India then and India
now. Mahadevbhai was only prompt witness of Gandhiji’s vision; Gandhiji

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was building a nation through transforming lives, independence was his
secondary vision.
The play reflects on how today’s youth has entrapped in socially and
mentally disordered position. He doesn’t feel any worth of the freedom
fighters, the love for the country is just celebrated only on 15th of August
and 26th of January every year by hoisting flag and signing a national
anthem in a chaotic voice. The concept of nation and love for the nation are
day by day getting to be outdated itself. Everything is being misinterpreted
in the changed canvas of modern and aristocratic life. The youths are
engaged in the vulgar activities so they are totally disassociated and
disinterested with the independence movement, our freedom fighters and the
efforts put in by them so that we the future generations live in independent
India. The teachers like Madam Priscilla and the packages of history in the
most mundane manner in schools and colleges kill the curiosity to look at
the history with a fresh aspect. Mahadevbhai is a central protagonist of the
play not Gandhi. The history has had Mahadevbhai’s character of legendry
during the course of his alliance with Gandhi, never missed a dairy entry. He
was so dedicated to his task, that he missed to record one of his son’s birth,
but never failed to chronicle the happenings in Gandhi’s life.
The first meet of Mahadevbhai with Gandhiji left Gandhiji stunned
when he had gone to discuss the details of his book; their conversation went
on for ninety minutes, and this meet established an unbreakable bond
between the two. He was also known to have heated debates on literature
and theatre with Gandhi and an article written by him was hailed as a poetic
master piece by Ravindranath Tagore himself. His work was prolific; he
wrote twenty-seven volumes of diaries, recording his life with the legend.
He stopped writing a day before his death. His entries remain the most
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comprehensive documentation of Gandhi’s life. The play’s other concerns
are the dry, colourless way, history is taught or the youth’s trivialization of
important historical incidents. It is a play whose beauty lies in its nuances.
Onkar Govardhan rightly says, “It’s important to know that Mahadevbhai is
not propaganda of the Gandhian philosophy. We are far from having found
an answer to the question; can his ideas be used today?” We don’t believe
they can be recreated in their exact form in today’s world. But we do want
people to think about which parts of it could be retained or how could they
be modified to fit modern day politics. Mahadevbhai is being touted as a one
character play; the truth is its up to one man to depict layers and layers of
social foibles. Ramanathan in his one of the interviews freely talks about
Mahadevbhai,
For me, Mahadevbhai is a response to the politics of our times. To
start with, anti-Gandhism is rampant and then there is the systematic
discrediting of democratic institutions. As I see it, there are a couple of
reasons for this. For one, our politics has been communalized. This
automatically makes Gandhiji an easy target. Since these days, anyone who
has been perceived as pro-muslim will be attacked. Then there are the caste
politicians, who are constantly playing the anti-Gandhi card.
In this sense, Ambedkar and Gandhi became foes without their
politics being understood. The point is, the modus oprandi of the criticism
against Gandhi is cloaked in subterfuge. As we aware, there have been 3-4
anti-Gandhi plays and even mainstream films in the past decade. And all of
them became very popular. Mahadevbhai is Ramunathan’s attempt to set the
record straight, in a small way. In this sense the playwrigtht was clear about
devising a play that would reach out to the uninitiated, and those members of
the audience who are hostile to Gandhiji and his tents. For the playwright,
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Mahadevbhai became a tantra to reach that tatua. Next to it, he says that
Mahadevbhai has made an impression on his mind, for twenty-five years.
Mahadev Desai assiduously recorded the details of Gandhiji’s life. As his
constant companion his secretary, he enjoyed a unique vantage point to look
at the man that lay inside the image of the father of the nation. A lot of youth
today pride themselves on dismissing the Gandhian thought. The anti-
Gandhi sentiment is very vocal on social networking sites. There is
especially true in Maharashtra more than anywhere else in India, though we
also have many activists and social leaders who follow the Gandhian way.
So Ramanathan thought to revisit Gandhi and know what he stood for, what
made him the man that he was. This is not a propaganda play. It is an
attempt to untangle the man from his persona that seems to be stuck in
political battles on partition, Gandhi verses Savarkar or Ambedkar. The play
is Mahatma Gandhi’s confidante, friend and assistant Mahadevbhai. It
teaches the illiterate people so many things about a person who always
remained a shadow to the father of the nation. It brings forth his
accomplishments, his talent and his complete devotion to Gandhi. This is
obviously interspersed with India’s struggle for independence. So we are
tickled with the memories of those boring history classes when we first
learnt about quit India, Dandi March, Non-violence, etc. This time they are
all woven into Mahadevbhai’s story and what an effect has that. History is
often lost in wrong perceptions that either glorify or mortify its characters. It
goes into detail like how Mahatma Gandhi strategized his use of press and
ideals like self-dependency. Mahadevbhai narrates many incidences that
elaborate these principles through Gandhi’s actions. Ramanathan believes
that “you can’t separate art and politics because politics is life. It’s also a

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fact that life is political and art is about life, so it is inevitable that an art
should be political”. (An interview taken by Deepa Panjani).
The play highly comments on the destruction of the political system
and the way how sweet poison of anti-Gandhi is spread in the society by the
political leaders who think that they are running the country. Through this
play, Ramanathan expresses in his one of the interviews as, “in India the
bigger issue is about the nature of complicity in an artist. That is what
constitutes complicity? Is it one’s responsibility always to act out against a
tyrannical regime or to, in perhaps more subtle ways to beat the system?
India is the caste driven society. What is worrying is, India has become a
theatre of the upper-caste. If you scratch the surface, the directors, the
playwrights, the critics, all full upper-class caste. I think it is very exclusivist
elitist and campish.”
Men like Mahadev Desai are a symbol against the dominant ideology
of capitalism. Today, in the age of globalization, there is no context within
which one can situate Gandhian philosophy. In the past decade, industry has
grown and so has consumption. Automatically, Gandhian methods have lost
their significance. People do not aspire for single living. And even if so, they
realize it’s not very easy to achieve.
4.4. Black with ‘Equal’
The play Black with ‘Equal’ is a presentation of An Annual General
Meeting of a Housing Society, which collapses into mayhem, with a
generous seasoning of communal prejudice bigotry and violence thrown in
seemed to capture the order of the day, not only in particular city, but all
over the world. The play includes typical characters living in an apartment in
the metro city, Mumbai. None of the characters bears any heroic qualities.
All of them have engaged in the materialistic life. The main aim of the
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dramatist is to expose and analyse the greedy, selfish and mean aspects of
middle-class society in urban India. The main concern of the play is to
depict the human mind descending to abject evilness. A general body
meeting at Jagruti Cooperative Housing Society beings with auspicious
atmosphere and ends with awakening devil who lives in every heart.
The entire play takes place in the drawing room of Ramnik Patel’s
Apartment. He is a Gujarati stock broker. The play is written into two acts
including two scenes each. Though it bears the features of both domestic and
kitchen sink drama, it is none of these. This play expresses and focuses on
the realistic everyday life of a middle class in a certain society in Mumbai
generally referring to the 21st century. This drama refers to a dramatic story
containing an emphasis on its character’s intimate relationships and their
responses to the unfolding events in their lives. Everybody tries to keep
mum about the darkest side of the individual life, but it is disclosed by other
characters. Rashida tries to prove herself to be honest, sincere and morally
high merited but when Amar Chaudhari talks about her daughter’s immoral
behaviour as she was caught at the sea, Rashida exposes her evil power
through her bitter words.
The characters, their lives and the events that occur within the play
are, usually, classified as ordinary events, lives and characters, but this
doesn’t limit the extent of what this drama can represent. This drama takes
the approach in which it concerns people much like us, taken from the lower
and middle classes of society, who struggle with everyday problems such as
poverty, fight for bread and butter, sickness, crime and internal strife. The
purpose of all these characters to gather at Ramnik’s house is to discuss the
issues of Jagruti cooperative housing society. All these are from different
religions and follow their religious rituals blindly without thinking of their
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troubles to others. It is a serious story of relating to the household. The play
contains a sense of domestic drama within a fundamental plot line. There
had been a sense of ordinary people’s struggle with their lives. It touches to
the more realistic plot line. Though this describes the events of middle-class
ordinary people, the play tends to stretch realism, focused mainly on the
artificial relationships of the urban. The plot line has become more realistic
and centered on characters, relationships and their actions towards each
other. Every character seems exposing middle-class morality, but none of
them except Manisha is true and realistic. All of them are trying to prove
themselves as they are well cultured and honest but in a real sense they are
purely wild and barbarians.
What nonsense! Nobody is ever listening to our problems. The
committee on its own is deciding what to do. Who asked
anyone about what colour to paint the building? Ten years ago
they put up those small stripes on the walls and took everyone’s
opinions. And even then, we were not told who asked for what.
And they did not point what I wanted. They why ask! This time
there were no stripes, samples, nothing! Suddenly the building
was pointed yellow and black. What, we are living in a taxi or
what? (20)
Though the play is less philosophic, it is more serious because of its
focus on typical weaknesses of human beings. It emphasises the more sordid
and pessimistic aspects of life of the current middle-class society living in
particular Jagruti Society. What G.B. Shaw and Henrik Ibsen did at the end
of Nineteenth century in England and Norway, Vikram Kapadia is doing in
21st century in India. It is his new experiment to handle social theme
exposing character’s social and psychological disorder. The play
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incorporates such disorders through the devices like minimal scenery;
telegraphic dialogues and characters portrayed as types rather than
individuals. The play is a fine example of a combination of naturalism,
expressionism, existentialism, absurdism and psychological affairs. Every
character in the play is alienated, but their alienation is different from the
alienation of the western world after first and World War II.
The drama, usually, revolves around psychological, social and
political affairs, and its roots find in domestic drama. The present work uses
interpretive ideas such as distinctive voice and vision, stark settings, austere
language in spare dialogue, meaningful silences, the projection of a powerful
streak of menace and outbursts of real or implied violence; even this also
carries the implications of current affairs with society such as civil rights,
feminist psychology and current political and sociological disputes. The
subject of concern vastly ranges from family life to society life, from civil
rights to economic injustices. The play follows a fairly linear, structure and
has a sort of the patriarchal figure as a representative of the family. Except
Rashida, all male figures represent patriarchal system even Ramnik too.
These patriarchal figures provide a model of every individual of the play.
The language used in this play relates with the ordinary subjects to reinforce
the realistic impression of the play. It expresses the ideals of caste and
religious systems. The characters are dissatisfied with their lives and the
world ground them. Ramnik and his daughter-in-law are dissatisfied with the
meetings held in their house and the water leaking from the ceil due to Amar
Chatterji’s love for garden. Amar Chatterji has bought new Mercedes, and
he is dissatisfied with the problem of parking. Jayati and Rashida are
dissatisfied with their present condition while Shanti, Usman Ali, Sukhbir
Singh, Hodiwala and Bajrang are dissatisfied with their present condition in
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the society. None of them wishes to bear each other. Many of them are
social alienated characters. For instance, Jayati doesn’t feel any affinity with
social welfare; she is a victim of the claustrophobia and frustrations of a
provincial life on low incomes and she is running a massage centre in the
apartment to fulfil her minimum expectations.
You are the one who is an agent for LIC and all the insurance
nonsense. How people trust you. I don’t know, when you want
to break the law yourself. It is against the law to have goat
slaughter in the building! You want to bring it up at every
meeting! (20)
The play raises the consciousness about social problems like gender,
race or class prejudice though all of them belong to the same economic class
living in the same apartment; they vary only by their religion. The religion
matters at big level and all of them begin to be the patients of social and
psychological disorder. Though the play directly doesn’t touch to the
problems like poverty, conditions of factories and mines, the plight of child
labour, violence against women rising criminality and epidemics, the
characters selected in this play directly or indirectly are related to these
problems, so they are influenced by all these problems. These problems have
been created in the metro cities like Mumbai due to overcrowding and poor
sanitation. The playwright tries at both level; to suggest the ideas for social
change and to expose the social status and mentality of the society living in
the clumsy apartments of Mumbai. This play is the fine example of
depravity and corrupt behaviour of individuals which cause their
devastation. This drama arose out of the social and political upheaval which
followed 9/11 bomb blasts of world trade centre. Though the dramatist
expects to create sympathy and promote the change at the middle class, he
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doesn’t miss to exhibit their follies and weaknesses which cause self-
devastation.
Why should we help him out? What has he done to help us?
Poor people like us have been helping the committee all our
lives for the interest of the building. If he is so rich, has he
helped the society in any way? No. Has he donates anything to
the society? No. (22)
Black with ‘Equal’ seeks to engage directly with the contemporary
social and political issues with a focus on the representation of class, gender,
and their internal relations as well as on social unrest. It portrays the picture
of the hatred, fear and violence that have crippled and may yet destroy our
culture. It fictionalises fundamental personal questions and dilemmas amid
complex social and psychological pressures thwarting the equitable
integration. It deals with agonies, anxieties, and tensions of the Urban,
middle-class people. It highlights on the conflict and confrontation between
individual and society. All the characters in the play are frustrated and the
victims of harsh circumstances. Though they make a show of their belief in
their concerned religion, they are just pretending of their being religious;
they are not less than the animals in the zoo. They reject the traditional
values and norms and whatever performances; it is just the kind of fashion.
Both Rashida and Usman Ali belong to the same religion and on the
occasion of Bakari Eid they bring a goat in their apartment and cut it for the
religious purposes but this behaviour of them is not preferred by other
people like Amar Chatterjee and Sukhbir Singh. Their word ‘goat slaughter’
is not accepted by Usman and Rashida. Instead, they think it as a goat
sacrifice.

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 Even Rashida complains about the shouting and loud voices in
Ganeshotsva, she thinks that her mother died due to sound pollution created
in that ceremony. The cruelty treakles through every incident she cites; that
discloses her hatred of other religions. Even the cruelty of some other
characters is a kind of perverted humanity, and their desire to conflict
miseries on others is a kind of revenge sought against society. They prefer
such a world which is a set of social attitudes that are anti-establishment
anti-cultural, and even anti-humanitarian in the existential sense, as opposed
to the established, cultural and humanitarian values. Though they struggle
for existence, they lack bravery and sense of humanity.
While projecting the wrath of the middle-class society living in an
urban area, Vikram Kapadia explores the human mind and its complexities
in all depth and variety. Like Vijay Tendulkar, he presents man-woman
relationship in terms of sensuality and violence rather than love and
affection. It is playwright’s rebel against the established, conventional ideas
and values of society from the presentation of Black with ‘Equal’. The aim
of him is not only to break down the present system, but also to establish a
new system which will suit to all human beings, even if they belong to any
caste or religion. The aim of the playwright to present vulgar reality is not to
just show the futility of society, he expects something beyond it. He wants to
make a strong system which would not allow anybody to be weak and a
victim of social and psychological cruelties. The purpose to write the play
which is itself in disordered or fragmented manner is to show how present
Indian typical society’s old system has either decayed or clutched into the
mud of modernism.
Manisha is very sensitive, generous, calm and tender hearted while
other members who gather at Ramnik’s house from the same Apartment for
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the General Meet are aggressive, violent and sensual. When the question of
coming of all kinds of people into the building with their cycles and creating
a nuisance-generally dudhwallah, breadwallah, courierwallahs and
bhajiwallahs come and create chaos; Rashida is first who opposes Ramnik
and Chatterji as she knows that she would be unable to answer to every call
of intercom if she is working in the house and even she knows that it is
Chatterjee’s plan to avail a garage to park his new Mercedes though he has
already three garages. She destroys Chatarjee’s excessive desire to snatch
one more garage.
All these are voyaging by a same ship, but everyone is directly or
indirectly trying to make a hole to the ship so that others would drown, but
they are beyond the idea of their sinking. There is neither sharing nor
harmony in their relationship. Everybody’s life is entrapped in the net they
spread for others. All of them are trying to dispel the false notions in their
head about the nature of society. All of them are extremely selfish, lustful
and dominating, in their manifest conflict and in their latent conflict they are
weak, coward and senseless. None of them cares the world around them;
they expect to enslave the world around them. It is not a total fault of them;
the surrounding turned them into masochists who seek pleasure in inflicting
pains and miseries on others. At surface level, everybody is violent
aggressive and rebellious but at deep level they are mentally incomplete men
and women.
The play exemplifies the power struggle at the group level. Norman O
Brown, a psychologist, sees in primitive man a perfect harmony between
mind and body. However, in the process of civilization, mind and body are
divided and alienated from each-other. And the ultimate result is social and
psychological disorder. In this naturalistic play, Vikram Kapadia projects the
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crude perversion of individuals, caused by social and psychological disorder.
Each of these characters is abnormal in his or her way. However, they are
the victims of circumstances and not of any inherent wickedness. It is said
that the people in this world reveal their innermost thoughts in the language
they speak the playwright selected some characters’ mouth language which
helped to him to portray what they really are. The dialogues they used tend
to destroy subtle sensibility. The playwright is conscious about the condition
that the audience as well as readers not completely alien to the world around
them, so he deliberately put the naked reality of middle class urban life
which shocks at one hand and at the other hand it awakens their moral
consciousness. The cruelty and violence of the characters arise from their
own greater misery. All of them are suffering a constant humiliation they are
responsible for their misery. The playwright successfully maintains a total
objectivity in portrayal of the characters. Each character in the play is a
combination of less good and eviler, less strength and more weakness to suit
the current typical life in a particular Jagruti apartment in Mumbai. At the
beginning of the play, all characters seem free minded, religious, kind,
generous and tenderhearted but as the play develops their veils of human
being begin to drop and at last they remain wild, brutal and pitiless wolves.
Rashida likes to comment freely on anybody, but her moral sense is outraged
when Amar Chatterjee mentions her daughter’s entrapment at the sea. She
doesn’t prefer of the arrival of police at her house to investigate the murder
of Suldanah.
The play includes two murders; one is off stage, and another is on
stage. Nobody knows who stabbed Saldnah. He comes at Ramnik’s
apartment and falls down for not getting up again. Shantibhai has been
handed over the duty to vanish the dead body of Saltanah. The police visit
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everybody’s house in Jagruti apartment to investigate the murder, but the
real criminal is not unveiled throughout the play. It is one of the silent
features of post-modern Indian English drama to carry the problem to either
readers or audience to solve it. But the murder of Shantibhai done by
Usmanbhai promotes a gang war between mansoorbhai and his people and
Shantibhai’s ruffians.
Shantibhai is portrayed apparently as gross and violent. Nevertheless,
there are the kinder aspects to his nature that we notice when he takes a risk
to destroy the dead body of Saldanah and even he gives respect to Manisha
and Jayati from his heart. No doubt, he is aggressive, but it seems that his
violence is not without any reasons. Hence, his ruthless murder by Usman
Ali evokes sympathy for him in the audience.
The characters in this play are types, changing in the course of action
according to the necessity of circumstances. Some of them are sensitive,
submissive and tender hearted. They rouse sympathy in the minds of the
audience from the beginning to the end. But even the characters that are
wicked, violent, and aggressive win their sympathy. Their fall creates the
sense of pathos that evokes the feelings of pity, sympathy and tenderness.
The characters’ actions and other events in the plays are determined by
forces, which are inevitable and over which human beings have no control.
Heredity and environment are the determining forces that shape their nature,
character and behaviour; Shantibhai inherits barbaric tendencies. The bitter
circumstances in life leave Rashida aggressive and violent. Jayati and
Manisha became the victim of circumstances. Suffering is their lot; they are
predestined to suffer. Thus, the play reflects the precariousness of the
balance between human free will and predestination. It further throws light
on the grim accounts of doings and misdoings of the characters trapped in
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the grip of their animal nature and sordid environment. It can be noticed that
Vikram Kapadia in this play rejects idealised portrayal of life and attains
complete accuracy in realistically presenting details of the details. So that it
would be easy to show social and psychological disorder of the individual
and whole system. He displays disinterested objectivity and frankness in
depicting life as a brutal struggle for survival. Ramnik, who at the beginning
of the play seemed most hopeful and generous person, became most nervous
and hopeless person and decided to leave India as most unsuitable country
for the persons like him. He prefers to go to Newzealand so that he can
easily mix in the culture and system of that country. The playwright neither
praises do not blame any of these characters, for the actions within or
outside their control. All the characters in the play are typically middle-class
people who have engaged to see self-oriented dreams and to follow them, we
come across in our day today life. They are easily motivated by such
animalistic drives as sex, hunger and fear and play their predetermined roles
in an atmosphere clouded by depravity, sordidness and violence.
Have I ever interfered with anybody? Or spoken about their
personal lives? Or discussed anybody’s private affairs? Or sex
life? Have I ever not paid any monthly rent? Have I ever
created any noise or played loud music? Then why is that
bastard threatening to lodge a police complaint against me for a
massage parlour? I am doing my own private business without
disturbing any one. So what is his problem? (27)
The play, though, is not refreshingly new in terms of its content and
form; it rightly catches the middle-class life of people living in Mumbai. It
involves three female characters; Manisha, a daughter in-law of typical
Gujarati Stockbroker, Rashida, a talkative woman and elderly insurance
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agent and Jayati, a young sensual woman who is running a massage parlour.
All of them have their world and not ready to allow anybody in this world.
Manish is living happily with her father in laws and not eager to go to her
husband even she doesn’t tolerate the garden of Amar Chatterji. Rashida is a
widow and living in Jagruti apartment along with her daughter. Her son is in
Dubai, and nobody knows what he does there. Like Usman Ali, she is
religious and doesn’t care other society members when she brings a goat to
sacrifice on the occasion of Bakari Eid. Jayadi had once upon a time a wish
to be a heroine due to her beauty and generosity, but, unfortunately, she
didn’t get a scope anywhere, and at last she started a massage parlour.
Almost all male characters mentioned in this play are her customers, so she
keeps mum on every personal and social issue. Rashida is jealous about her.
She openly attacks every male and female character and tries to prove
herself morally as white as light. They do not rebel against a patriarchal
system, and they prefer to dissolve in the same traditional system. To
destroy the old system and establish a new system which is strong and ideal
to carry whole social ship to the proper direction. It could be called a
positive disorder which terns slowly in the acceptable form. The negative
disorder deals with the fundamental system which harms social, political,
religious, moral, and a whole society becomes victim of amoral pollution.
Who said this had anything to do with religion? Anyone said
this has anything to do with religion? You people need any
excuse. This is the limit! We will know if it has anything to do
with religion only if one more person belonging to the same
religion as Saldanha dies correct? (39)
At sociological level, we find especially cultural and economic
disorder; cultural in the sense that the characters have been chosen from
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various castes and religions. They even like to preserve their culture by
celebrating the ceremonies which are the impartial part of the culture. But
one’s culture is for others trouble Rashida claims that she lost her mother
due to a loud voice during the Ganeshotsawa ceremony; on the other hand,
Chatterjee and others do not bear goat slaughter in their apartment. It was a
bright picture of India before 1990; there was an equality in diversity; people
would well-come and invite each other on the religious occasions, but the
materialist attitude turned people more cruel and communal. Even the
political leaders through their poisonous speeches always try to destroy the
equality and equity of the people. The social events affect more on the
middle-class life and less on a high class and low-class life. The destruction
of world Trade Centre of America affected on Indian Economy and Sukhbir
Sigh spoiled due to particular Aluminium Company’s destruction. Middle-
class man is like thirsty deer that runs after the illusion of water created due
to the heat of the sun. It is not fault of Jayati who is running the massage
centre; it is the fault of the circumstances created around her which
repressed her from her aim of becoming the heroine. Shantibhai’s way of
achieving money, Rashida’s being insurance agent and Amar Chatterjee
buying new Mercedes though he has already two or three vehicles and his
attempt to snatch one more garage though he has already three garages,
show the degradation of human values.
Everybody is fighting! First the riots! Now a war! People have
no kaum dhandha? And Pakisthan is saying that Bombay is first
on the list? Why? Delhi is the capital! Delhi should be first on
the list! (60)
At political level, the political circumstances like changing or unstable
governments and vulgar decisions taken by governments and changes in
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political and economic field at international level affect much more on the
minimum degree of common man’s life. It is shocking that the destruction of
world Trade Centre affectedly more on Indian economy. The chains of bomb
blasts, or communal riots took place in Mumbai and Gujrat. It shows that we
have accepted the economic and political slavery of America. We can’t rebel
against this situation nor can we fight for our rights due to our social
disorder.
At psychological level, each is mentally devastated. All of them are
suffering from at least one kind of psychological disorder. The dynamics of
power manipulation has been the subject of great interest since ancient
times. Plato’s description of the decline of the ideal state and the rise of the
deposit is reflected in every character’s life. He rightly focuses on the
present condition of a man thus:
He (the deposit) is fatally bound either to be destroyed by his
enemies or to change from man to wolf and make himself
tyrant. And if he is exiled and then returns a finished tyrant..
And if they are unable to banish or kill him, they form a secret
conspiracy to assassinate him. (Plato:397)
Thinkers in a later day like Machiavelli, Nietzsche, Hobbes and Adler
concluded that man’s nature and the origins of society could be explained
by the strivings of power. There is good and bad power. Good power leads
to leadership and guidance. Bad power leads to authoritarian dominance,
coercion and tyranny. The driving force of power can be attributed to the
singleness of motivation. Black with ‘Equal’ is a play in which the audience
is alienated by good and bad characters alike. It presents a raw, real and
therefore largely unsympathetic group living in the same apartment;
Ramnik, a Chairman of Jagruti Apartment, tries to humanise them into more
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liberal ways of thought but he also comes under the bad influence of Amar
Chatterjee and creates a question of security from the outsiders to avail a
garage to park, Chatterji’s new Mercedes.
See! See! See! What happened in New York! It is the biggest
tragedy on this earth on this planet! Why? Because it had
hundred floors? Our building which was the house of Good was
brought down in our country and by our people! What do you
have to say about that? (50)
When Shantibhai is called to settle the account of Salina, he makes his
murder a prestige point because the underworld people will think about his
being womanliness. When it was decided to make Shantibhai a chairman of
the building committee, Usman thinks that Shantibhai might have murdered
Saldnah as he was the minority. Rashida supports Usman’s reason saying
Shanti is connected to groups that hate people like Saldanha as majority
always dominates minority. She feels that one of them would be murdered
one day, and that would be a proof of Shanti’s crime. Even Sukhbir and
Amar Chatterjee belong to a minority group, so they feel the same fear, but
Hodiwala is totally out of this circumstances; he handles every situation
lightly. He thinks that he is like a sugar in the milk of them; so nobody will
kill him.
Ramnik suggests everybody to observe one minute silence for
Saldanah. As he was their neighbour and the secretary of the Jagruti society,
Ramnik thinks, it is their duty to tell Bajrang to bury him properly. Rashida
suspects if they give money to Bajaranga for a high quality of coffin, he
might buy the cheapest one. The scene ends with fear of death in everyone’s
mind of death.

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 At the beginning of scene one of act two, we seem Ramnik’s mental
disorder. The fear and anxiety are developed in his nature due to the death of
Saldanah and the bitter arguments about minority and religion among the
people. He feels that the members living in the society are two faced. He
suspects on the next door neighbour of his being ISI agent. Even he is not
sure about Usman as he doesn’t know his past. He knows that momedians
have so many wives and children, but Usman Ali is living alone, and even
he thinks about Rashida that she might be the mother of a terrorist. He has
lost the balance of his mind and thought that things are not safe in this
apartment because anymore, anything can happen.
Though Saldnah hadn’t any affinity with his religion, Usman provided
information about him that he was a very nice man and that he used to read
the Bible five times in a day. Further, he mentions the name of Singh as
Saldanha was involved in some business with him. He had supplied some
furniture to his studio and then there was some issue about money. As it is a
part of his religion, Sukhbir Singh carries a knife all the time, and it is a fruit
of Saldanha’s murder. But Sukhbir takes an objection on Hodiwala, because
Saldanha was a regular his gambling club and was lending money to a lot of
people.
Sukhbir Uncle, I’m just thinking. What if – what if everyone –
do people ever want the same thing? Like in coffee; some
people waiting milk and sugar and some black with… I am
talking nonsense no. (65)
They are upset on the arrival of Rashida as all of them aware of her
nature. Meanwhile, Chatterjee and Hodiwala come, and Hodiwala expresses
surprise saw all others alive. He informs that he settled the account of police
giving him a bribe. Hodiwala’s this dialogue highlights on the political
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disorder. The disease of corruption has been clung to the whole political
system, and the play rightly focuses on the situation.
As Ramnik is under impression of everything is under control.
Rashida informs that all the people from Bandra area held a demonstration
to protest against the murder of Saldanha. They marched from linking road
via MacDonald’s to Juhu church. But Hodiwala is not serious on this matter.
Chatterjee doesn’t like the nature of these people like Saldanha, who are
exploiting the uneducated in the villages. Almost all of them engage on the
subject of religious conversion and blame each others religious principles.
When the conversation goes on the peak point, and Usman warns Hodiwala,
Ramnik Patel stops their argument and thinks that he doesn’t need to bring
to their notice that they respect every religion in the Jagruti society. He
further informs that on the landing of every floor, are tiles with God’s
images on them. Even outside the compound wall they have tiles of every
religion. Hodiwala suggests not giving these Saldanha-type of people a flat
in this building to avoid any further tension. But Rashida opposes Hodiwala
comparing him with Hitler, and he ironically asks if they came there sitting
on a magic carpet! Amar Chatterjee supports Hodiwala exposing
momedians’ arrival in India by looting and killing people even they have
kept continue their killing in New York. Rashida doesn’t bear Chatterji’s
claim against her society. She thinks that both Amar and Hodiwala show
their hesitation to live in an area where there is a majority of momedians.
Silence, I want pin drop silence! It was different in the past.
Princes would kill their fathers to usurp the throne. Does that
mean that we do the same thing today, or we have to account
for it? And how far into the past do you want to dig? The Pre-
Aryan civilization or the palaeolithic age? (52)
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 Amar Chatterji contributes that it is reality and hundred years ago they
ransacked their temples. From Somnath temple to Tajmahal they are arguing
about the destruction. Rashida collapses on Bhagwatgita in which she thinks
there is nothing except family quarrels. Manisha shocks to see this madness
and suggests to be silent. Their argument slips from religion to the region
and what their ancestors did for the country. Manisha points out that all of
them have gone mad. At this rate, every state would want its country. Then
would need a visa to go from Maharashtra to Goa and then from
Chinchpokli to Byculla.
When Usman claims Shantibhai for the cause of political destruction,
he overestimates him that he is the principal where Usman has education.
Shanti surely feels that Usman would have told the matter of Saldanha’s
assassination. The claim of Usman about Saldanha’s murder on Shanti leads
to the dual between the two and in this duel Shanti is murdered. Bajrang
thinks that Mansoor is responsible for his master’s assassination, so he
leaves declaring the revenge. Hodiwala is most political person, and he
thinks that let the two parties fight and perish the bad elements. But the
scene ends with mental degradation of Ramnik Patel and he like any
Shakespeare’s tragic hero speaks to himself and tries to get relief from the
repressed tension.
The last scene of Act II is the aftermath. It takes place at Ramnik’s
house. Ramnik is reciting Shanti Shloka sitting on the floor. He listens to the
intercom speaking Amar Chatterjee urging for the parking an armed tank
fully loaded with AK 47. After cutting the intercom in middle, he argues
with Manisha to leave this country for New Zealand. He proves how New
Zealand is the better place to live. They can’t go to Srilanka as Srilanka
would think that they are Tamil tigers. They neither want to go to
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Afghanistan and Nepal nor to Palestine Israel and Iraq. Even he doesn’t
prefer South Africa. He urges her to pack up their bags. Manisha knows how
Ramnik has lost his mind since Saldanha and Shantibhai are murdered.
When Manisha leaves for the kitchen, Ramnik begins to mutter with himself.
He exposes every thread of his mind. He imagines the price of an armed tank
if Mercedes costs twenty-five lakhs. He recalls Usman’s threatening if
anybody touches him, it will be a disaster. He asks a question to himself how
is possible of being entire city police force on his side though he belongs to a
minority. He thinks if Usman had died three weeks back instead of Shanti,
all this would not have happened.
There is a sudden deafening noise of gunfire and all other members
come one by one to Ramnik’s house. Even Hodiwala is being pursued by the
gaundas; he doesn’t know whom they belong. Hodiwala blames for all this
to Bajrang who told Shambhi’s men about Mansoor and Shambhu’s men
told the police and the police told the politicians and the politicians took the
help of the government and made an issue of international dispute. All of
them show pity for the death of Rashida. Sukhbir thinks about her as she was
honest and would speak freely. She didn’t say anything behind anyone’s
back. Such people are rare to find these days. Hodiwala didn’t like her
participation in March. He prefers to stay at home, shutting the windows and
locking the doors. Sukhbir knows that the new film of Amitabh, Abhishek
and Aishwarya Roy is being released, and it is golden opportunity to him to
meet Aishwarya Ray. Manisha finds a space to disclose the matter of Amar
Chatterji’s garden that their balcony has been leaking for the past many
months. She appreciates her interest in a greener world, but it has been a
nuisance to their meghbours. Ramnik wished to leave India as early as
possible. Hodiwala comments on him that he is a Patel, and all Patels go to
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America only though his daughter is in America, having education. Like
Satan, who was happy to be king in hell instead of being slave in heaven
Amar Chatterjee expects. “I’d rather be a king here than to be a second-class
citizen somewhere else.” (65).
The play ends with Manisha’s optimistic attitude towards life. It is her
attempt to reestablish a new order so that it would be peace, unity and
perseverance in the society.
The action of Black with ‘Equal’ is bound together by the views of
Ramnik Patel and Manisha, the idealists who have unselfishly tried to save
the life of all those members living in Jagruti apartment. It is their
misfortune that all other characters just argue with each other on nonsense
elements which don’t help them to live happily. Three deaths occurred one
by one in the play carry the remaining characters to the absurdity and
alienation. Ramnik, who is so willing to tear up the weeds and unmask the
horrors of his fellow neighbours, is then terrifyingly unmasked himself.
Even the voice of Manisha, who treats all others equally becomes
outstandingly a source of full of life. For the very reason Black’ with ‘Equal’
is a play of indirect communication of social and psychological disorder, it
can infect us and leave us aghast with the fear of the half apprehended. The
internal oppositions of illusion and reality, innocence and experience are
seen in the shuddering light of delirium.
In his preface to Man and Superman, G.B. Shaw declared, “It annoys
me to see people comfortable when they ought to be uncomfortable and I
insist on making them think in order to bring them to conviction of sin.” It
seems the same purpose of Vikram Kapadia to recognise certain issues. That
is why, the play remains very much alive because it displays the sure touch
of typical middle-class life in the cities like Mumbai. The exquisite meet of
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Jagruti society is felt to be the crux of the play – it is certainly the crux of
seriousness. We cannot fail to notice in retrospect that our seriousness is
here directed equally against the simplicity and incongruity of Manisha Patel
in her new social role. Almost all characters are unashamed puppets
speaking the fractured language of middle-class society. The scenes of the
play are built up as contrasts and contests of attitudes to life in which neither
side is necessarily in the right. Only two person Ramnaik and Manisha
sustain a social philosophy which is turned into a sweet rotten fruit after the
intrusion of liberalization, privatization and globalization. Their dead
ideology of life though drifting towards a rugged catastrophe, give some
strength to live following a changing way of life. Hodiwala is only character
in the day who neither loves others greed nor hates their brutality. Like
Ramnik, he is deeply influenced by social disorder.
In this chapter, Ramanathan’s two plays and Kapadia’s one play are
focused through the social and psychological pint of view. Both playwrights
rightly keep the finger on the changed situation of India after 1990s.
Collaborators, a play by Ramanathan exposes moral devastation of two
couples due to their excessive expectations from the life. They have
mortgaged their social roles and became slaves of changing moral and
ethical atmosphere. In the same sense, another play, Mahadevbhai by him
comments on human madness to misinterpret history and just to blame it and
not to learn anything from it. Ramunathan commented the way by which the
history is percolated to our generation. Black with ‘Equal’, a third play
discussed in this chapter is a masterpiece by Vikram Kapadia in which he
portrays middle class people who worship decayed ethics and ruthless
morals and at the end become the victim of the social and psychological
imprisonment which they have arranged to entrap others. Thus, these plays
focus on the social and psychological disorder of the contemporary middle-
class society.

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