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Tara: Mahesh Dattani

Mahesh Dattani has presented the bizarre reality of the woman playing second fiddle to man. This play opens with Chandan changed into Dan in order to absolve himself from the guilt of killing his sister. He has to bear the brunt of his grandfather’s and mother’s cruelty .He considers himself responsible for his sister’s death. In this play Dattani plays with the idea of female infanticide that is prevalent among the Gujratis and also suggests Patel`s hegemonic patriarchy when he insists that proper division in the gender roles be made Tara gives us a glimpse into the modern society which claims to be liberal and advanced in its thought and action. In a society which claims that its mothers are educated today and have `Devis` like Durga, Kali, Saraswati , Lakshmi etc whom not only women but men also pay obeisance , differentiate between a male child and a female child. All the propagandas of equality between male and female, equal opportunities to women in all the fields are belied. Dattani’s deep preoccupation with gender issues leads to the emergence of the idea of the twin side to one`s self –quite literally embodied in one body and the separation that follows Mahesh Dattani mentioned in one of his interviews with Lakshmi Subramanyam: ``I see Tara as a play about the male self and female self. The male self is being preferred in all cultures .The play is about the separation of self and the resultant angst`

Erin Mee writes in the note of the play,``Tara centres on the emotional separation that grows between two conjoined twins following the discovery that their physical separation was manipulated by their mother and