One Problem, Three Solutions

A Comparative Study of the Plays of Nissim Ezekiel,
Shiv K. Kumar and Rama Sarma

Prof. M. N. SUNDARARAMAN
St. Joseph’s College. Tiruchirapalli

Indian drama in English is not so well-developed a branch of Indo-Anglian literature as the Indian novel or poetry in English. It has also not come up for as much scholarly and critical attention as the other two. However, Indian drama in English is not devoid of excellence and even numerically there are neatly four hundred plays–full-length plays, short plays and playlets –­ as listed by Dr. Krishna Bhatta in his “Bibliography” appended to Perspectives on Indian Drama in English.¹ .While these plays are on different varieties of themes like the classical; mythological and legendary themes, historical themes and political, socio-econo­mic themes, most of the playwrights have shown a good grasp of the demands of the theatre and have attempted to present the themes in terms of conflict and tension which make them truly dramatic.

It is in the post-independent period that there has been a conspicuous attempt to deal with political, economic, domestic, psychological and other problems as themes in drama. Especially playwrights like Nissim Ezekiel, Asif Currimbhoy, Girish Karnad, Badal Sircar and a few others have built enjoyable plays around some of these subjects. Though the themes dealt with by these writers are different from one another, occasionally one can come across plays on the same theme written by different authors. Instead of producing a feeling of monotony, a study of such plays becomes quite interesting and rewarding in as much as such a study makes us look for the differences in the treatment of the same subject and also analyse the reasons, if any, for the variations in the treatments. The present article is an attempt to make such a comparative study of three plays based on a common theme.

The three plays under consideration are Nissim Ezekiel’s Marriage Poem, ²Shiv K. Kumar’s The Last Wedding Anniversary³and M. V. Rama Sarma’s Towards Marriage.⁴The theme of all these plays is the domestic discord due to the temperamental differences between the husband and the wife and also because of the extra-marital relationship of the husband. It is interesting to note that, though there are striking similarities in theme and even in characterization among the three plays, they differ from one another in the general tone, in the dramatist’s attitude to the problem and in the solutions they offer to the problem.

Naresh, the protagonist of Ezekiel’s play, Marriage Poem and his wife, Mala, are of different temperaments (“Our temperaments are very different”, p. 79). Mala is the typical suffering, nagging sort of wife who just does not know what to do to keep her husband to herself. She has a strong feeling of being neglected and humiliated by Naresh. Hence, even insignificant and uninten­tional lapses on his part like forgetting to pose a letter given by her or failing to ring up her sister, etc., provide Mala with opportunities to pick quarrels with him. Mala complains to her neighbour, Mrs. Lall that he is “efficient except when he has to do something for me” and is sore that he does not remember important occasions like her birthday or their marriage anniversary, etc. This feeling of neglect is intensified by her suspicion that her husband is running after other women. When Naresh, for instance, shows her an invitation for dinner from the Guhas, her immediate reaction is, “I am not coming. I don’t like Mrs. Guha. When Naresh hits , “You don’t like any of my friends, do you?”, she twists his words and retorts, “Is Mrs. Guha one of your friends? I didn’t know it.” Later when Malati and her husband, Ranjit, call on them, Naresh talks to them freely and eloquently and particularly to Malati. When the guests are gone, Mala tells her husband, “I don’t trust Malati, the way she looks at you” and later complains sarcastically, “You never want to say anything to your wife. But when visitors came, you know how to talk. What long speeches!” (p. 77) There is a touch of pathos and innocence when she asks Mrs. Lall, “What would you do if your husband became attached to another woman?” Mrs. Lall’s spirited account of how she would harass the other woman and also her own husband makes Mala resolve not to give up her husband: “I won’t give up my husband either. He’s married to me. He is my husband. We have two children. I’ll never give him up.”

Mala’s suspicion about Naresh’s involvement with other women is not baseless. On one occasion, when Mala leaves the room in a huff after one of her usual skirmishes with him, Naresh goes to the dream-world, where he meets his sweetheart, Leela. Leela is jealous of Mala because she has Naresh all the time, whereas she (Leela) could have him only” once a week, sometimes only for an hour.” This Leela does not mind “the secrecy, the lies, the danger of scandal” involved in her relationship with Naresh. However, Naresh’s amorous games do not stop with Leela. When Malati with her husband visits him, Naresh, after flattering her on her charming looks, adds meaningfully, “We should meet oftener.” Her reply is equally significant: “It’s up to you. I am accessible.” On this occasion, when Mala expresses her contempt for Malati, as usual, the argument between the husband and the wife begins on a mild note but grows into a heated exchange of words. When Mala becomes hysterical, Naresh cools her down by kissing and making love to her. As he embraces his wife, Naresh goes to the dream-world and meets Leela. This dream is interrupted when the couple is awakened by the knocking on the door by the children – Naresh wakes up from his dream and Mala from her sleep. Chetan Karnani has a very valid point when he comments on the ending of the play:

Ezekiel somehow can’t do without the interplay of dream and reality. After Naresh makes love to his wife and she sleeps peacefully, this should have been the end. But the dramatist once again gets theatrical and rather contrived when we are told that Naresh “talses his arms slowly in the crucifixion (sic) pose against the door. Leela enters slowly, dream-walks towards him, wipes his face lightly with a handkerchief”.⁵

Marriage Poem which is described as a one-act tragi-comedy has more of comedy than of tragedy. The tragic element is to be found in Mala still being in love with her husband and clinging to him with increasing desperation. Lighting and sound effects play a very important part in this play: may be, as a technical device to depict the light and shade that constitute the life of the couple. The dream-sequences which cut, into the realistic scenes not only reveal Ezekiel’s ingenuity in the matter of technique but also serve to show Naresh’s attempts to escape the naggings of his wife by seeking the company of other women. The scenes also provide a little variety to the action of the play. The dialogue in the play is more crisp and less prolix than than in Nalini, another play of Ezekiel in the collection. However, the characters are stagnant and less than real. Only Naresh, who, according to Prof. Anniah Gowda, reminds us of “Henry Harcourt Reilly of The Cocktail Party”shows some life. Mala, who frequently insists on her husband kissing and making love to her as a mark of his constancy, appears to be more a lustful than a loving wife. The other characters just look like puppets. In spite of these defects, with its brevity, its smart dialogue and the visual and audio effects, the play “may click as a fine visual and verbal piece on the stage.”

Shiv K. Kumar’s The Last Wedding Anniversary presents a profile of the marital incompatibility as depicted by an upper middle class couple–Lalit, a sauve and sensitive editor of a popular magazine and his wife, Rupa, a shrewish and ambitious socialite. The scene is a party to celebrate their second wedding anniversary but because of the many stresses and strains that have developed in their relationship, the second anniversary turns out to be their last wedding anniversary. Though the immediate cause of the problem is the appearance of Lalit’s first love, Neela, the root cause is a “basic clash of wills, of personalities which are too headstrong to abide together.” The opening scene is laid in the drawing-room of Lalit Khanna’s house. The room is decorated with festoons as a mark of celebration of the marriage anniversary, but the external decorations ill accord with the bickerings of the couple. While Rupa finds undercuts and insults in most of her husband’s remarks, Lalit asks her to control her “fiendish” temper: “Will you control your fiendish temper–my soft and gentle wife? I know you can’t stand my friends But you could at least try to be civil. If this weren’t our wedding anniversary, I would have walked out this minute.” ⁶ This tension and strife go on increasing during the course of the evening. The guests begin to arrive. When Vinod, Lalit’s friend, tells him that Neela is in town, Lalit tells him, “But that’s not a surprise. I know she’s here” and adds “she sent me a greeting­ card-gold-laced and heart-shaped. Came by the morning mail. Such a bitter remembrance though.” (p. 5)

Rupa, Lalit’s wife, is upset with him for many reasons. She is sad that her husband has no ambition, no drive, no nerve. She is angry that he is not interested in cultivating the friend­ship of Ved Aggarwal who might help him in starting a magazine of his own. She is unhappy with the acquaintances of Lalit. To cap it all, she has seen the greetings sent by Neela and has also understood its significance. In Scene 2, when Lalit is search­ing for the card, she pulls it out of a book-rack and flourishes it before him. The dialogue that follows this situation shows how their relationship has reached the brink. After accusing him of lying to her, Rupa bursts out and asks him, “Then, who is she? This Neela!”

Lalit (regaining his composure): Just an old classmate. And what’s wrong in her sending me greetings on my wedding anniversary?

Rupa (sneering): Ours! Pardon my interruption, please.
Lalit: Yes, ours! What’s wrong with this card?
Rupa: Nothing whatsoever. Except that it’s heart-shaped and a woman’s instinct knows better.
Lalit: Okay, then howl and scream. Do whatever you like if you are to sniff out all this in a perfectly innocent card.
Rupa: I guess we have played enough patience and innocence.
Lalit: Time for action now?
Rupa: Precisely. (P. 20)

Finally they agree to part. Next morning Lalit meets Neela in her room in Hotel Plaza. When Neela feels sorry for the problems she had created by sending the greeting-card, Lalit consoles her saying: “No, you’re not to blame for it, it would have happened sooner or later.” When they are in a reminiscent mood, Rupa knocks at the door. Lalit hides himself behind the partition. The door is opened and Rupa enters introducing herself as Mrs. Khanna, Rupa tells Neela that Lalit was really mad the previous night and had tried to hit her with a paper-weight. She also refers to Lalit’s flirting with Gulmohar. When Rupa is gone, Lalit comes out of his hiding and is faced with some jealous questions from Neela about his relationship with Gulmohar. But when he explains that Gulmobar is one of the “egoistical fools” one has to suffer in life and that he is feast interested in her, Neela is satisfied and agrees to accept him as her husband, adding half-humorously and half-seriously, “But no wedding anniversar­ies, please!”

The play in a realistic way presents the conflict between the husband and the wife as a clash of two strong-willed persons. The temperamental differences between them are the cause for the severance of their relationship, though Lalit’s extra-marital interest in Neela acts as the proverbial last straw on the camel’s . Both the characters and the dialogue are convincing enough. While the elements of satire and humour are, found in the characters of Vinod, Gulmohar and Inder Bhan, there are certain interesting situations in the play. The last scene is one such where, hiding behind the screen, Lalit listens to the complaints of his wife against himself. Moreover Neela who does not find anything wrong in her own relationship with Lalit becomes jealous of his supposed flirtations with Gulmohar. The dramatist has treated the theme quite competently and it is said that when this play was put on boards in Hyderabad in 1974, it was a tremendous success.

As against the objective and modern approach of Shiv Kumar, Prof. Rama Sarma’s attitude towards the same theme is subjective and traditional. According to the playwright himself, this play Towards Marriage attempts to convey the message that the solution to the problem of the breakdown of the marriage system lies not in dissolving the “inviolable bond” but in the husband and the wife making “an effort to understand each other sympatheti­cally and not critically”.Rama Sarma in his Preface to Towards Marriage, P. ii). Prof. Sarma goes on to say that a man and a woman are bound to get on well in their marital relationship as long as they realise that no man or woman can be a god or goddess and are “intelligent and willing enough to accept marriage with certain limitations” (P. ii). He illustrates this theme with three characters-Prakash, the idealist, Lalita, his simple and unimaginative wife and Jaya, the young woman in whose company Prakash finds joy and comfort. This triangular placement of characters is similar to that in Shiv Kumar’s play but the treatment and the denouement are different.

Prakash, the idealist, marries Lalita, the modest and innocent girl. After the initial aroma of sex is over, in a few years, cracks begin to develop in their relationship because temperamentally they are poles apart. She cannot understand his poetical aspira­tions and considers him “an intellectual snob, an egoist” who does not care for her. When he complains of her indifference to his emotions, inclinations and talents, Lalita becomes furious and throws a tea-cup at him. He avoids it and the cup falls to the ground and breaks to pieces. Again, this is parallel to Rupa in Shiv Kumar’s play, at the height of her bickering with her husband, smashing a flower-vase on the floor. In both the cases, this act may be taken as a symbol of the break-up of their relationship. Prakash attributes his unhappiness to the “defect of our marriage system that men and women of totally different tastes and temperaments are joined together in wedlock.”

Towards the end of the first Act, their disharmony reaches the breaking point and Lalita leaves the room in haughty disdain. Prakash, who is indifferent to this development, once goes to the City Club and there meets the young woman, Jaya. Jaya has read some of the poems of Prakash and compliments him on his achievement. This satisfies the emotional hunger of Prakash for recognition and appreciation. Gradually he finds a great intellectual and emotional affinity towards Jaya and she too feels drawn towards him. This affinity slowly matures into deep understanding and love. However at this stage Prakash behaves in an extraordinary manner. He tells Jaya that he feels guilty in making love to her and that he wants to inform his wife about his affair with her. When Jaya points out that it will create problems, he replies: “We are members of a society. We have certain obligations to fulfil.” He assures her that he will not for­sake her because they are “indisrensable to each other’s happiness Jaya, however, feels uneasy and has a premonition that life is an intricate affair. It offers us happiness and promises a brilliant future and then withholds us from enjoying. It almost tantalises us.” During a bout of quarrel with his wife, Prakash tells Lalita of his friendship with Jaya. She has nothing but contempt for “these so-called enlightened women.” But in Act III, Scene I, which is laid a few months after the events of the earlier scene, we are told that the love of Prakash and Jaya has grown deeper and that Lalita has made the situation easier for them by going away to her parents. Prakash and Jaya, by now, have moved from the intellectual to the physical plane, though both of them agree that “physical attraction is not an end in itself. It is only a means to an end.” The scene ends with Prakash inviting Jaya to his house the next day.

The last scene of the play takes place late in the evening the next day. When Prakash is lost in imagining the pleasures of that night which is going to be the “best moment” of his life, Lalita enters. As he is deeply engrossed in his thoughts about Jaya, Prakash mistakes Lalita for Jaya and blurts out his love for the latter. While his shock is great on realising his mistake, it becomes greater when she, tells him that she has come to stay with him. She pleads that she has undergone a complete change: “Nothing is left in me of my former self.” When her husband tells her that he has promised to marry Jaya, her unhesitating reply is: “You can marry Jaya; I have no objection to it. I too will stay with you, but you need not treat me as your wife. Let me watch you two; that will give me happiness.” To Prakash’s objection about the awkwardness of the situation, Lalita’s prompt answer is: “Only one is living with you; the other is staying.” With this reply she conquers him. Prakash admires her noble sentiments and takes her hand lovingly. Just at this moment, Jaya enters and is taken aby what she sees. Prakash feels embarrassed, but recovering himself, intro­duces Lalita to Jaya and adds significantly that she has come to stay with them. But Jaya is sensible enough to tell him “I don’t think that I am justified in ruining her happiness. Better take her and leave me alone.” The pleas of Prakash and Lalita do not move her. Jaya rings the curtain down on the play by withdrawing from the life of Prakash with the words “You may call me wife, friend or anything, but I am quite sure I can make you happy. You can’t have everything. Love means sacrifice.”

Prof Rama Sarma’s play, by and large, successfully conveys the message which the author intends to, namely, that tempera­mental differences between a husband and a wife need not ruin their domestic happiness, provided they adopt a give-and-take attitude. However, this play lacks the convincing tone of Shiv Kumar’s work, mainly because the dramatist has not integrated the theme well with the demands of drama. The inadequacy is apparent, in particular, with reference to characterization. The transformation of Lalita towards the end of the play is abrupt and unconvincing. This is more so in as much as she has been portrayed in the earlier part of the play as a woman of volatile temper. Here it will not be out of place to compare the situation in this play with what happens at the end of John Osborne’s Look in Anger. Jaya making way for Lalita, her decision to part from Prakash is almost similar to Helena making her exit from Jimmy’s house on the arrival of Alison. But in the latter situation there are complexities which are absent in the Lalita-Prakash-Jaya triangle. Here it is a case of simple rivalry which culminates in a rather unexpected turn whereas in Osborne’s play there is no such rivalry between Alison and Helena. Though the element of surprise is equally dramatic in both and will be equally effective on the stage, the situation in the ending of Towards Marriage does not carry the weight of irony which the ending of Look in Anger carries with it. Still the similarity itself is interesting. Also, while the motivation for Alison’s return is clear enough as it arises from the psychological emptiness she suffers on account of the loss of the child, Lalita’s return is typical of the woman’s lot in the Indian society. Lalita’s return to her husband has a number of parallels in Indian fiction, as for instance, in Savitri’s return in R. K. Narayan’s The Dark Room. Not all Jayas will make room for the lawful wife but most Lalitas do decide to go hack to their husbands, whether or not the Jayas make way for them. From this point of view Prof. Sarma’s play is true to the social conditions.

The three plays under consideration, namely, Nissim Ezekiel’s Marriage Poem, Shiv Kumar’s The Last Wedding Anniversary and Rama Sarma’s Towards Marriage, throw up a significant point, namely, the approaches of different writers to the same theme. As has already been pointed out, the theme of these three plays is the same; domestic disharmony due to the temperamental differences between the husband and the wife and also because of the attachment of the husband to another woman or other women. But, significantly, the three plays offer three different solutions to the same problem. Rama Sarma’s play says that marriage is a sacred and inviolable bond between the man and the woman and that harmony depends upon the mutual under­standing and an attitude of forget-and-forgive between the couple. There are also the subtle suggestions that the husband must mend his ways and that no other woman can take the place of the wedded wife. All these ideas have the touch of orthodoxy and reflect Prof. Sarma’s attitude towards life in general and marriage in particular.

Shiv K. Kumar’s play seems to imply that if a couple cannot get on well and smoothly in life, the honest and best course of action is an honourable divorce between them and this is preferable to a hypocritical life of superficial adjustments. Shiv Kumar’s solution is modern in as much as it does not consider marriage as a holy or indissoluble bond but introduces the idea of divorce which is still to get total acceptance in Indian society Nissim Ezekiel’s play; on the other hand, appears to give a solution which is rather a compromise between the other two extreme solutions. In Ezekiel’s play the husband enjoys the best of both the worlds–the domestic and of love. Neither would his wife give up her hold and right over him nor would he sacrifice his involvement in other women. The play seems to give a hint to husbands in the predicament of Naresh that while they could find emotional and sexual satisfaction with other women, they should be tactful and clever enough to keep up the facade of loyalty by humoring their wives. The solution given by Ezekiel is neither conservative nor modern but one of compromise and expediency.

Though it may not be quite right to conclude that these solutions have been consciously worked out by the respective playwright, one cannot help thinking that the solutions arrived at should have been moulded unconsciously by the social, moral, cultural and family ground of the respective writer’s character. Dr. Johnson’s Preface to Shakespeare excuses Shakespeare’s lapses on historical and personal grounds. In that context Johnson observes: “Every man’s performances, to be rightly estimated, must be compared with the state of the age in which he lived, and with his own particular opportunities”.⁷ Shall we add that every man’s performances to be rightly estimated must take into consideration the writer’s own attitudes towards the social economic, moral and religious question of the society of which he is a member, perhaps an articulate member?

References
¹ M K Naik and S. Mokashi-Punekar, ed., Perspectives on Indian Drama in English.(Madras: Oxford University Press, 1977)
² Nissim Ezekiel, “Marriage Poem,” Three Plays. (Calcutta: Writers’ Workshop, 1969)
³ Shiv K. Kumar, The Last Wedding Anniversary. (Delhi: Macmillan, 1975)
⁴ M. V. Rama Sarma, Towards Marriage. (Delhi: Kingsway Press, n. d.)
⁵ Chetan Karnani, Nissim Ezekiel, Indian Writers Series 9. (New Delhi: Arnold Heineman Pubiishers, 1974) p. 120.
⁶ The Last Wedding Anniversary, P. 3.
⁷ Walter Raleigh, Johnson on Shakespeare.(London: Oxford University Press, 1916) P. 30.