A Play “Tara” is written by famous Indian Director and writer, Mahesh Dattani. Tara By Mahesh was written in 1990 and it was originally published in 1995. The story of Play, “Tara”, is set in Mumbai and London. The drama was awarded with Sahitya Kala Award in 2000.
Tara By Mahesh Dattani
Tara By Mahesh Dattani Characters
Tara : Tara is our protagonist of Drama who is a victim of gender discrimination and inequality in male dominating Indian society.
Chandan : A conjoined twin brother of Tara and a son of Mr Patel and Bharti.
Mr. Patel : A father of Tara who favours Chandan as compared to Tara.
Bharti : A loving mother of Tara who loves her with all her heart.
Roopa : A good friend and neighbour of Tara.
Dr Thakkar : Dr. Thakkar is a doctor who suggested Tara’s parents to separate Tara and Chadan as they were conjoined when they were born.
Summary of Tara By Mahesh Dattani
The story of the play begins with Tara’s mother, Bharti and father, Mr Patel who had a love marriage. Mr. Patel belongs to Gujarati family and his family was against his relationship with Bharti. As Mr. Patel was in love with Bharti, he married her by going against his family. Mr. Patel ends up shifting in Bharti’s home and starts living with her family.
He eventually became financially dependent on Bharti’s father who was a powerful politician of Karnataka state. After some time, when Bharti was pregnant, she gave birth to conjoined twins, a twins whose lower body was attached with each other and had only three legs instead of four.
Two legs were attached to Tara’s body, while one leg was attached to Chandan’s body. But Bharti’s husband and father decided to give two legs to Chandan as he was a boy. Dr. Thakkar was against their decision because the middle leg was more suited to Tara’s body but they forced him to do it by luring the land to him. When Tara grew up, she became very weak. Therefore, Tara had to depend on others for little-little things.
On the other side, we have Chandan who was given two legs out of which one leg technically belongs to Tara. Just after two days of operation, Chandan loses his second legs because that leg wasn’t for his body. Due to so many operations and surgeries, Tara loses her life. After Tara’s death, Chandan shifts from India to London where he becomes a writer. He also changed his name from Chandan to Dan as feels guilty for his sister’s death even though it wasn’t his mistake.
Six years after Tara’s death, Dan who is a writer now decides to write a story about his sister, “Tara”. He named his story “Twinkling Tara”. Through “Twinkling Tara”, Dan is going to narrate to us his family and especially his sister’s story.
The story of Twinkling Tara begins with the city Mumbai, it’s morning time, Chandan and Tara are playing a game with cards. Tara is an intelligent girl, she easily defeats his brother, Chandan in a card game. After losing the game to Tara, Chandan starts teasing her sister in a friendly way. There comes Bharti after finishing puja, she sees Tara hasn’t finished her milk yet.
Therefore, Bharti sits near Tara and starts feeding her milk in a loving way. As Bharti was feeding milk to Tara, Mr. Patel comes and asks Chandan to come to the office with him. Chandan responds to his father that he has no interest in going office with him. He suggests his father to bring Tara to his office as she is very intelligent and would surely help him in growing his business.
Mr. Patel first scolds Chandan in front of Bharti and Tara, but he agreed to bring Tara to his office as Chandan wasn’t ready to go office without his sister, Tara. The story now jumps to Roopa, who starts making fun of Tara and Chandan. To entertain herself, Roopa goes to Tara’s house and starts talking with her.
Mrs. Bharti comes, takes Roopa aside and requests her to be friends with her daughter, Tara. Roopa tells her that she can’t become Tara’s friend as she already has two best friends named Prema and Nalini. Afterwards, Bharti persuades Roopa to be her daughter’s friend by giving her a bribe. So finally, Roopa agrees to become a friend of Tara.
One day, Chandan was doing some kind of sewing work with his mother, Mr. Patel came into the room and saw Chandan doing sewing. Mr. Patel gets very angry and starts scolding Chandan as he was doing lady work. He also yells at his wife, Bharti. At the same time, Tara comes in and asks her father about Chandan. Mr. Patel responds to Tara that Chandan is going abroad soon to complete his graduation. So Mrs Bharti asks what about Tara. She asks him about Tara’s future plans.
As Bharti and Mr. Patel were arguing with each other, Tara faints and falls on the floor. Mr. Patel and Bharti immediately take her to the hospital. In the hospital, Bharti learn that Tara’s is facing some kind of serious problem in her Kidney. Bharti decides to donate her kidney to Tara to save her life.
Afterwards, Tara goes through an operation and receives a kidney from her mother. During this time, Bharti had a nervous breakdown due to overstress and she was hospitalised. When Tara returns home after her operation, Mr. Patel informs her that her mother had a nervous breakdown and she is hospitalised.
Tara requests her father to see her mother but her father denies her request. Tara becomes very sad after hearing all of this. Tara in frustration decides that she will neither go to any physiotherapy nor she will study in college. After hearing Tara’s decision, Chandan also decides that he won’t go to college without his sister.
One day Tara, Roopa and Chandan were watching a movie together. As soon as the movie ends, they start discussing the movie character, Sophie. They were discussing whether Sophie would sacrifice her daughter or her son. Roopa taunts Chandan and Tara by telling that if she were in Sophie’s place, she would sacrifice her daughter just like Patels. Tara gets very angry at Roopa’s comments and tells her to go back to home.
Thereafter, she asks Chandan why her parents are wasting so much money on her. She added that she dont’ want anything in life and just wants to meet her mother, nothing else. One day, Tara skips her physiotherapy and goes to the hospital to meet her mother. There she meets her father who tells her the truth about her birth and how she and brother were born. How they forced the doctor to provide her leg to her brother. At this point, when Chandan was writing Twinkling Tara, he received a call from his father who informed him about his mother who is no more.
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