Ratna In Indian Dance

Ratna who is the predominant woman character in the play, is a south Indian married to a Gujarati. She is particular that the food served in the house will be south Indian delicacies such as coffee, dosas, idlis or other. Totally she controls the lives of her husband and daughter Lata. Lata too marries outside the community like her mother;

. . . Moreover both the women are ambitious and outspoken. Nonetheless Ratna is a failure. But she is confident that Lata can soar to the heights which she could not achieve because of Amritlal’s opposition. She accuses Jairaj’s incompetence and stifled masculinity, and holds his spinelessness as the prime reasons behind her frustrated ambition . . . . Jairaj sees dance as worship, a passion that is ‘more’

She has many disputes with her husband, but both of them realize their dream only after their death.The character of Ratna is quite different from Jairaj who suffers the most in the drama and feels isolated in the play. She identifies herself with Lata and derives satisfaction in the realization of her dreams of desires.

Lata is vibrant and realistic. For the sake of her parents she undertakes to dance. To citeher words to Viswas,“When I was a little girl, I used to stand near the door and watch mummy and daddy practice. It was magic for me, I knew then what I wanted to be” (CP 389). She takes dance only as a pure art form. Her marriage with Viswas is also important to her and she is very clear that she does not want to sacrifice her love for the dance.

In the play Tara, Tara is a conjoined twin, deformed but cheerful and a good spirited young girl. She loves her family and dotes on her mother. The role of the mother in her deformity devastates her. The mental agony that she undergoes eventually leads her to death.Bharthi is Tara’s mother who falls a prey to the societal expectations. Out of guilt rather than motherly affection, posthumously she showers love on Tara. She kills herself unable to bear the self-reproach, after Tara comes to know of the