Gender Deformity in Vijay Tendulkar’s Kamala and Kanyadaan

Jaisingh treats both Kamala and Sarita not as human beings but as objects of the fun. The former brings him a promotion in his job and reputation in his professional place and the latter provides him with domestic comfort, social companionship, and sexual pleasure. The play puts a satire on the institution of marriage. Jaisingh brings Kamala for Rs. 250/- only, but received Rs. 700/- as a dowry from Sarita‘s father years ago, in addition to Sarita‘s services as a woman-servant in the name of wife. That only Sarita quite rightly, bursts forth: Listen to the story of how he bought the slave Kamala to use of her. The other slave he got free – not just free – the slave‘s father shelled out money a big sum. Arundhati Banerjee, in her Introduction, states:

center of the plot.”4 Women have been exploited for centuries in Indian society. They are impaired of freedom ofspeech and action. They have neither rights nor justice. They cannot even shout. If at all theyraise a voice of rebellion, it is immediately suppressed. Kanyadaan (1983), a controversial play has two acts, five scenes with a limited number ofcharacters. The actions of the play revolve round the theme of inter-caste marriage. It showshow unequal marriage can be a cause of unpredicted complex problems. Having the historical background of the play Kanyadaan shows how the low caste is struggling in Maharashtra; Brahman vs. Dalit. Joyti marries in Dalit and suffers a lot by the hands of Dalit husband. Jyoti and Nath are seen suffering a lot in the life of their efforts to convert the ideal into the real. The play Kanyadan centers round the theme of marriage. Jyoti, a daughter of the Brahmin activist couple, Nath and Seva, marries Arun, a Dalit poet. She ignores the conditions laid by her mother and brother who fear that she will find it difficult to cope with her marital career. Arun‘s in human treatment to Jyoti, despite her pregnancy, breaks her father Nath. Her father‘s former admiration for Arun changes now into dislike. But the inhuman beating by Arun becomes a routine affair with Jyoti. Her marriage turns into a nightmare. The failure of marriage changes her from a simple, sensitive girl intoan assertive, determined lady. The play ends with the accusation of her father that it is he whohas made her mentally crippled. Jyoti becomes the object of audience‘s sympathy and Arun that of antipathy. The play Kanyadaan also depicts the senseless wastage of Jyoti in fulfilling her father‘sdreams or idealistic values into reality. The play Kanyadaan portrays a middle class progressive family. Impressed by her father‘s social work, Seva, her mother and Nath, her father Jyoti takes a decision of an inter-caste marriage. Both, her father and mother, are very sincere in their social commitments. However, they differ in their views, opinions, and approaches. Seva works for the problems of Dalits with a conscious mind. She is well aware of the reality of their lives. She objects Jyoti‘s decision of marrying a Dalit boy and tries herbest to give her a caution about the risks in it. But Nath hardly cares to think of the prospects of such a marriage. With her father‘s permission, Jyoti marries Arun and later on faces the evil consequences of her decision as feared by her mother. She follows the dictates of her sentimental, idealistic father and ignores the warnings of her cautious, rational mother and invites serious threats to her marriage. play roles as important as Tendulkar shows them exploited, oppressed and humiliated. Even education does not incur substantial change in their miserable condition. Instead, it provides sophisticated woman like Sarita or social victims like Benare. Suffering is their lot, their inescapable fate. It is so because-

Tendulkar‘s plays churn the public opinion as they present life in all its aspects. The characters portrayed in these plays are angry and frustrated, and achieve their desired goals in their lives. Most of the characters in Tendulkar‘s plays have tragic dimensions for one reason or another. However, they differ drastically from Shakespeare‘s in that their suffering is due to the environment in which they are born and brought up or due to their wickedness shrouding completely their otherwise good nature. In Shakespeare, we see the hero‘s inherent weakness or some chance which is the root cause of his sufferings. Thus, all the characters in Tendulkar‘s plays are the victims either of their evil nature or ofhostile circumstances and bitter experiences in their individual lives leave them frustrated, harsh and crude and others tragic. The simple, sensitive, tender hearted characters suffermiseries calmly and quietly and the violent, aggressive characters suffer miseries on others asa part of their revenge on society. In the sadist tendencies of the characters can be seen thedeterministic overtones of the plays. So, what is remarkable about the Tendulkar‘s play isneither the story nor the character but the extreme situation reflected of the fate,circumstance, or chance. However, one may see that the characters are, to use existentialistjargon, ‗condemned to be free‘ while they are facing their entrapment or predicament. To sum up, Vijay Tendulkar saw the society as an operation theatre where he did surgerytools to see the inner side of man. Being a psychoanalyst, he presents before the society the dark image of modern man. He is preacher of equality and representative of modern exploited young man in hegemonic society. Vijay Tendulkar is obviously a writer of modern generation to depict the human problems and sufferings in a skillful and realistic manner. Thus we can say that everything goes on changing; only women‘s position remains the same as showcased in both the plays Kamala and Kanyadan. sensational journalism", The Sunday observer, October, 1982. 2. Dharan, N. S. (1999). The Plays of Vijay Tendulkar. Creative Books. New Delhi, pp. 41. 3. Tendulkar, Vijay (2003). Kamala, Translated by Priya Adarkar Collected Plays In Translation. Ed. Samyak Bandopadhya. New Delhi, OUP, pp. 35. 4. Banerjee, Arundhati (1992). Five Plays of Vijay Tendulkar, OUP, Bombay, pp. 17. 5. Beauvoir, Simone, De (1972). The Second Sex, Penguin, London, pp. 16.

Research Scholar, Department of English, School of Social Sciences, IFTM University, Moradabad