Social Issues and its Effects in Mahesh Dattanis Tara free essay sample

SOCIAL ISSUES AND ITS EFFECTS IN MAHESH DATTANI’S â€Å"TARA† Mahesh Dattani, the writer of the play Tara is an actor, playwright, dancer, director, teacher and screenplay writer. Dattani has won prestigious Sahitya Akademi Award for his play†Final Solutions† and that play deals with Communalism. Mahesh Dattani is a spokesman for all the marginalized people. The play â€Å"Tara† was first performed as â€Å"Twinkle Tara† at the Chowdiah Memorial Hall, Bangalore, on October 23, 1990. Tara is a play which exposes the current social issues such as Gender discrimination, Ethical deterioration of medical Profession, female infanticide and money and property minded society†¦ We can see the results of this corrupted society in this play itself. Tara and Chandan are conjoined twins. They are joined at the hip and have to be separated surgically. In the three months they need an operation in order to get separated. They have got only three legs and the blood supply to the third leg is from Tara’s body. We will write a custom essay sample on Social Issues and its Effects in Mahesh Dattanis Tara or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Injustice and discrimination starts here. Though the girl has bright chances, she is denied of the leg as she is a female. Mother and grandfather with the influence of politics manipulated the operation to favour the boy [Chandan] over the girl [Tara] by giving two legs to the boy to make him perfect. Unfortunately, chandan had two legs only for two days which would have been Tara’s if it was operated correctly. From the very birth, girl children are discriminated as they are female. Parents fail to give proper attention to the girl children. They consider male as superior to female. It is so sad that even the female characters itself involve in discrimination i. e. her own mother Bharathi. How can a mother differentiate her own children who are born from her own womb? Bharati’s father has willed more money and property for Chandan but not for Tara. Both are his grandchildren but nothing is given to Tara. Patel plans to send his son to London and educate him but he does not have any plans to Tara though she is smarter than Chandan. Right from the beginning we can see the difference between male and female. Like, in first scene Bharati has finished her pooja, and Patel is getting ready to go to work. These are stereotypical gender roles and Dattani makes full use of them. Another example is when Tara explains to Roopa about the conversation between father and son, â€Å"The men in the house were deciding on whether they were going to go hunting while the women looked after the cave†. This describes us that Men are meant to go out and wherein a woman is to sit at home and look after household things. Tara is very smart girl; smarter than her brother Chandan. Tara always used to win in the cards game. Not only that when Patel calls Chandan to engage his holidays in his office, Chandan disagrees and tells his father that he would come only if his sister comes with him to office. When his father calls him he tells his father that he would take Tara with him as she will become a great business woman. The lines are† You can take Tara. She’ll make a great business woman†. Tara has very high ambition in her life. We can see this from her words. TARA. Oh! What a waste! A Waste of money . Why spend all the money to keep me alive? It cannot matter whether I live or die. There are thousands of poor sick people on the roads who could be given care and attention, and I think I know what I will make of myself. I will be a carer for those people . I - I will spend the rest of my life feeding and clothing those. -starving naked millions everywhere is talking about. May be I can start an institution that will - do all that. Or I could join Mother Teresa and sacrifice myself to a great cause. That may give purpose to my existence . I can do it . I can do it , can`t I ? I will be very happy if I could , because that is really what I want . That is really [with emotion]. Oh! , bullshit! I don`t care . I don`t care for anyone except mummy! Her words describe her very bombastic work she is going to do in future. There are few people who come forward to help poor and needy people who need love and care. Instead of all her illness and weakness, she utters those words. This proves that she has very high will power and ambition. If her parents have given her moral support she would have shone like a star as her name describes. If she has given the opportunities she would have dazzled the whole world. When Chandan asks his mother about her plan in Tara’s life. She tells him that she plan for her happiness which is not appropriate. His father also does not have any plan for Tara. We cannot leave girls who have high ambition as it is; instead we should motivate them and give them moral support. If we give importance to girls then for sure our country will become one of the developed nations. Not giving preference to girls is like not giving preference to half of the world. If we unite hands together and work surely we will get rewards for our works. Dattani portrays the money minded society through Dr. Thakkar. Dr. Thakkar is the famous doctor of that period in separating conjoined twins through surgery. We consider Doctors as ‘God like’ but we see corruption exists in their area also and they are also money minded. Dr. Thakkar has agreed to favour boy child as Chandan’s grandfather promises to give him a land in the main town of the city. He also used his power of politics to do this injustice. But the third leg was useful to the child only for 2 days which would be Tara’s. From this we can see the ethical deterioration of medical profession. All the good values in this world are lessening day by day. Days have come, when we have money we can achieve anything. We can see a thread of female Infanticide in this play. In Roopa’s conversation we can come to know that on those days Patel families used to kill the female infanticides. Many parents consider their girl children as burden because of dowry and other things. On those days many girl children are killed by their own parents. This corruption is still happening in the current society. As a result of this, female birth rates are lessening and female babies deaths rate are rising. As a consequence of this partiality and injustice, Both Tara’s mother Bharathi and her brother Chandan suffers from guilt. Guilt torments them a lot. Bharathi is unable to come out of the guilt and so she tries to compromise his wrong deeds by showering lots of love upon her daughter Tara. She even comes forward to donate her kidney to her daughter. But in between these actions she becomes mentally ill and so admitted in the hospital and at last faces pitiable death. His father calls Chandan for the death of his mother but Chandan hates his father and does not go to the death as he lost all loved ones. Chandan, her brother also suffers from guilt and so he confesses like this in the below lines. â€Å"Forgive me, Tara. Forgive me for making it my tragedy. † As Tara doesn’t get good attention and care, she also faces pitiable death. Thus the whole family ends in a tragedy. Dattani very clearly and beautifully has brought many of the social issues and its consequences in the play Tara.