Dance Like a Man by Mahesh Dattani summary, Indian Writings in English| B.A English Literature 1st Year 1st Semester

 B.A English Literature

[1^st Year, 1^st Semester] 

Core Paper IV: INDIAN WRITINGS IN ENGLISH 

UNIT 4: Drama

Dance Like a Man by Mahesh Dattani 

About the Author:           

            Mahesh Dattani was born on 1958 and he is one of the most celebrated playwright of India. His plays are well-known for addressing issues that society tries to hide or turn their face away from. In his plays he talks about homosexuality, he talks about HIV positive people, talks about physically challenged people and touching these radical themes like gay, child abuse, homosexual, he is expanding the new horizons for Indian English Drama.

          He created a theatre group named Play Pan in 1984. Dattani has written 11 stage plays, 7 radio plays and 3 screen plays. His notable works are Where There’s a Will (published in 1986, it is an example of Black Comedy), Dance Like a Man (1989, it deals with patriarchy), Tara (1990, it deals with gender discrimination), Final Solutions (1993, it deals with partition, communal violence) and The Big Fat City (2012).

About Play: 

The play ‘Dance like a Man’. It is a stage play in two acts. It is one of the most wonderful dramatic creations of Mahesh Dattani. The play was first performed at Chowdiah Memorial Hall, Bangalore on 22 September 1989 as a part of the Deccan Herald Theatre. 

The play depicts the clash between issues such as marriage, career and the place of a woman in patriarchal social set up. It deals with the lives of the people who feel exhausted and frustrated on account of the hostile surroundings and unfavourable circumstances. The story is unfolded in time past and time present. 

Dattani focuses on the conflict and clash between three generations, their conflicts and individual struggle. It tells the story of three generations; their personal ambitions, sacrifices, struggle, compromises, internal conflicts and the way they try to cope up with the life; and mainly focuses on a dancing couple. 

Characters:

1. Jairaj - Ratna’s husband, who wants to become a dancer.

2. Ratna - Jairaj wife

3. Amritlal - Jairaj’s father

4. Lata - Jairaj and Ratna’s daughter

5. Vishwas – Lata’s husband, Jairaj’s son-in-law.

Summary:    

The story revolves around three generations. Jairaj and Ratna want to develop their career as a dancer. Dance for them is not only their passion but also their life and soul. They want to develop their careers in this field. The stereotypes of gender roles are set in the society and in spite of that Jairaj goes on to pursue his career as a dancer. This is the twist that the playwright gives to the stereotypes associated with ‘gender’ issues that view solely a woman at the receiving end of the oppressive power structures of the society. The play flips open in the opposite gender’s point of view and shows that even men can be a part or a victim to such circumstances by being oppressed, and suppressed by the opposite gender and society. 

Jairaj and and Ratna have to live within the domain of the ‘patriarch’ Amritlal, father of Jairaj. Dance for Amritlal is a profession of a prostitute and which is why he cannot accept his daughter-in-law learning it and is unimaginable for his son to learn it and make career out of it. Mostly this is also because he was a reformist and people would laugh at him for Jairaj’s actions and his reputation would be sacrificed. 

He cannot tolerate the sound of dancing bells in his home and his son roaming around with the tinkling of bells in his leg during the practice session. His father also hates the effeminate guru that comes to their house and also the long hair that he and his son both have kept. So Ratna goes on to learn the dance from a lady who lives in a brothel. Amritlal thinks that the temples have slowly turned to brothels as they practice dance there. He forbids Ratna to visit the old devadasi who teaches her the old forms and techniques of ‘Bharatnatyam’ which were slowly extinguishing. 

Here there are subtle signs that learning dance and having a guru like that would definitely make him an effeminate man which suggests the idea of homosexuality though it is not explicitly mentioned anywhere in the text. 

As he cannot accept his son pursuing his career as a dancer, he tries all the possible means to stop him from seeking his ambition. He removes them from his house and his property, not giving them a single penny to survive. 

Jairaj, leaves and take Ratna along with him. But the results are disastrous. They stay at Ratna’s uncle’s house and he tries to take advantage of her and so they leave the house only to return. 

He then later makes a deal with Ratna. He says that he will allow her career to take off only if she helps him pull Jairaj out of his passion and make him a more ‘manly’ man. 

The character of Ratna can be called as that of a selfish one because she agrees to her father-in-law’s demands and also considers that there would be one less person to compete with. She constantly misguides him and plays with his emotions in spite of being his partner. Though Jairaj was a male member, he never forced his opinions on anybody and instead of that Ratna would always dominate and take decisions for herself, for him and now their daughter as well. 

She wanted her own career to prosper and so she is willing to sacrifice her husband’s career in the process. She was blinded by her passion so much so that she joined hands with Amritlal. This subtly displays the relationship she herself shared with Jairaj which was more for her own personal motive than anything else. She married him because Jairaj himself was a dancer and he would never stop her from dancing even after getting married. Had it been that she would have married another man, there was a possibility that she would be deprived of her career and her passion and she would be helpless. 

When Jairaj possibly knew about her motives, the purpose was already achieved, that he was a failed dancer and that he did not make much out of his life. He had become an alcoholic. She constantly took advantage of Jairaj’s love for her and being his wife. She pushed him into the world of dance though she knew that he was not a great dancer himself, and would not reach the place among the top dancers, as he was just a mediocre dances. She was responsible for Jairaj’s undoing as a character as well as a dancer. 

Ratna here did not stop but went on to make her daughter Lata, also a Traditional dancer. She used her daughter too, to earn fame and money all over the world. She schemes and manipulates and uses all her contacts to put her daughter’s career on the right track right from the start. She also uses the contacts to get appreciative reviews for her daughter’s performance. Lata here is seen as the younger Ratna who succeeds with the help of her mother. 

Later, in the play Jairaj blames his wife for their son’s death as she wanted to be successful and she had left him home along with a nanny. The nanny had given him a sleeping dose so that he would stop crying and that she could also sleep peacefully but unfortunately, she gave it too much in quantity which ultimately led to his death. Jairaj blames her for his unsuccessful career. 

Dattani uses the technique of Traditional Dance as a medium to portray the conflict of gender issues in the play. Hence his plays are relevant and will be relevant even for years to come. Amritlal would never accept his son becoming a dancer, Ratna misguided him, Jairaj was blamed to be not being a man enough to earn and support his family. All these things led to the circumstances that show how gender stereotype works in the Indian society. 

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