Proceedings of the 5th Arts & Humanities Conference, Copenhagen

UN (VEILING) THE SILENCE: A PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDY OF MAHESH DATTANI’S THIRTY DAYS IN SEPTEMBER

BINOD MISHRA

Abstract:

Mahesh Dattani, an Indian actor turned playwright, doesn’t face the problem of language as other Indian creative writers. Performance being one of the subtlest mediums, Dattani touches upon various social issues not only to provoke his audience but also enable them to ponder over and find remedies for the social ills worldwide. Unlike other Indian writers, he neither writes in regional languages nor translates them for wider audiences. His involvement in theatre provides him an edge over other dramatists of his time. The first Indian English playwright who got Sahitya Academy Award, Dattani is credited with several notable plays, which at times, may be considered controversial but are not devoid of the speck of truth. The present paper which is based on Dattani’s play Thirty Days in September, apart from presenting the painful episode of child sexual abuse, explores psychologically the predicament the characters suffer from. The paper unveils the helplessness of a mother’s attempt to camouflage the modesty of her daughter’s incestuous affairs. Both the daughter and the mother are able to expose the criminal clothed in a lamb’s attire. An attempt will also be made to unplug the repressed emotion that darkens the prospects of both the mother and the daughter, making them inimical to each other. While the daughter’s anxiety over the thirty days of the calendar acts as her biological discomfiture, its outlet may prove to be cathartic. The disturbed childhood falls heavily on the growing child sandwiched between being and becoming. The ‘return of the repressed’ paves the path towards violence alone so as to smoothen the bruises of the soul. The heavy atmosphere of the play finds its release in the proper communication between the mother and the daughter who seem to share the same crooked fate.

Keywords: Theatre, sexual abuse, repression, anxiety, communication

PDF: Download