Consider ‘Kamala’ as a
social drama. /How does Kamala represent the major concerns of Vijay Tendulkar
as a playwright? / Kamala is a play of sex & gender discrimination. Discuss.
/Discuss role and character of Jaisingh.
Vijay Tendulkar’s Kamala
is a realistic play in the sense the middle class characters figuring in them
are obsessed with mundane issues who find life rather dull and unhappy. This is
also a discussion play as the social issues discussed in it are not organically
integrated into its plot, but expounded in the dramatic give and take of a
sustained debate among the characters. In Kamala Tendulkar does not
merely stop with ridiculing the urban middle class society alone, but also
raises his voice against the discrimination of women. All the female
characters- Sarita, Kamalabai and Kamala suffer gender discrimination. Through
the portrayal of these three women exploited and tormented, Tendulkar succeeds
in depicting the status of women in present day society in comparison to the
male chauvinistic world of today. Besides social institutions like marriage,
politics and journalism are also subjected to satire in the play. He holds them
all to ruthless sarcasm.
Jaising, a well-known young
journalist associated with an English daily published by an unscrupulous press
baron Seth Singhania, is an insensitive opportunist who buys kamala an Adivasi
women, at the flesh market of Luhardaga beyond Rachi for two hundred and fifty
rupees to prove that such auctions are taking place but as soon as his purpose
is served, he disposes of Kamala as a wasteful commodity when he buys Kamala he
does not give her an inkling of his objective. Besides he encourages her to nurture
such hopes by asking her to think of his house as hers. He exhibits ignorant
and illiterate Kamala at the ‘press conference’, as proof of the existence of
flesh trade in some villages in Bihar. Overwhelmed with the feeling of having
accomplished an adventurous task at the risk of his life, he celebrates his
triumph with Jain, his friend. Both Sarita and Kakasaheb are shocked at the way
kamala has been treated at the ‘press conference’. Jaisingh inebriated and
annoyed, tries to convince both Kakasaheb and Sarita of the social ‘purpose’
behind the ‘press conference’ saying, “I did n’t hold this press conference
for my own benefit. It was to drag this criminal sale of human beings into the
light of day”. At this Kakasaheb, in a satirical tone tinged with extreme
sarcasm, says: “And you sold a woman to them to do so,” referring to Kamala
who has been ‘sold’ in the market of communalistic journalism. Thus, he drives
home the fact that Jaisingh has been more inhuman than the perpetrators of
‘flesh-trade’.
