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Tara

The play "Between the Lines" by Mahesh Dattani depicts the lives of conjoined twins Tara and Chandan who were surgically separated at birth. Chandan struggles to write a play about their experiences. It is revealed that they were born with three legs, and Tara's leg was given to Chandan, though it did not survive. This politicization of the surgery highlights issues of gender identity. Tara rejects her family and society due to the double standards faced. In the end, Chandan comes to understand how separating him from Tara and promoting only his male identity has been problematic, and he wishes for Tara's forgiveness.

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179 views2 pages

Tara

The play "Between the Lines" by Mahesh Dattani depicts the lives of conjoined twins Tara and Chandan who were surgically separated at birth. Chandan struggles to write a play about their experiences. It is revealed that they were born with three legs, and Tara's leg was given to Chandan, though it did not survive. This politicization of the surgery highlights issues of gender identity. Tara rejects her family and society due to the double standards faced. In the end, Chandan comes to understand how separating him from Tara and promoting only his male identity has been problematic, and he wishes for Tara's forgiveness.

Uploaded by

taniya.in
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© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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c  

  c 

͚A metaphor for being born female͛, as    himself calls it, c  depicts the life of the
eponymous protagonist and her brother. It begins with Chandan writing a play about Tara. But he
cannot proceed with it and feels disgruntled at his own inability to ͚spit out the result of his memories͛
to the world that has failed him. In a moment of vexed anguish Chandan reveal that he and Tara were
Siamese twins separated surgically. They were actually born with three legs, the third of which belonged
to Tara. But since there was a strong possibility that the leg would survive on Chandan, the mother
Bharati decided to give it to him. These efforts however proved futile, and the leg did not survive on
Chandan. Once this politicization of the surgery is revealed, the play immediately becomes a major
statement in gendered identity.

Throughout the play, Tara lives on terms of ͚uneasy, masochistic coexistence with her own
demanding consciousness͛. Initially she tries to cope up with her family but the realization of the double
standard of society proves too much for her. Unable to mask her anger and frustration Tara lashes out at
almost everybody. As the social names and norms gradually loose meaning for her, she outrightly rejects
not only the love of her mother who is trying to reverse her own ill-chosen decision by
overcompensating Tara with attention, the worries of her father who is regretting his failure to
intervene in the past by showing unwarranted intervention in all subsequent decision making, but also
the god-like Doctor Thakkar who as an agent of the patriarchy performed the miraculous surgery and
separated the twins.

In fact, the revelation of the skeleton in the cupboard is the typical action of a Dattani play, says
   , and in c  , the skeleton points towards the gender issue. It is highly significant to
understand that Dattani wrote c  not merely to show how the social construction of femininity
debilitates the identity of Tara by depriving her of the leg and giving it to her conjoined brother Chandan
as a symbol for its predisposition towards the male, but also to see how such a biased society
destabilizes the identity of Chandan too who feels incomplete without the ͚other͛ of his ͚self͛, who
happened to be the female Tara. It is worthwhile to quote    in some detail:
The play is misread ͙ people focus on the medical details but that͛s really not what the
play is about. It͛s about the self. About the man and woman in self͙about the male
denying the female, and how cultural constructs of gender favours the male.

Here c  draws upon the concept of ͚androgyny͛. Dan fails to write precisely because of the
violence done to his identity first by separating him from Tara and then by his own rejection of Chandan,
the self of which Tara is the other. He has repressed the female in him to promote the male as his family
had once done by giving the leg to him. However as the play nears its end Chandan, unable to remain
satisfied in his cocoon of make-believes, understands his own problem and shedding the self of Dan
wishes ͞But somewhere, sometime, I look up at a shooting star Ͷ and wish. I wish that a long forgotten
person would forgive me. Wherever she is͟

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