Vijay Tendulkar's The Cyclist

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Theme of the Play:
The Cyclist was intended to be Tendulkar’s last play. It was his ultimate comment on himself and the reality surrounding him. It deftly unveils the complex and mulish attitudes that permeate our middle-class society. This play is quite different form the other plays written by Vijay Tendulkar so far. It is skilfully crafted, uninterrupted piece about the adventure of life told through ‘a cyclist journey’. That is why, some critics call this play an allegory about the ‘Journey of Life’. Some other critics contend that the play is metaphor of Contemporary Indian realities. Though the theme of the play is complex, he tackles it with a simple form and language-an episodic structure and naturalistic dialogues. Life’s complexity can perhaps be best understood when told in simple terms.
The Cyclist is not about one but three journeys, the geographical journey in the protagonist, an historical journey of the bicycle and a psychic journey of the cyclist submerging into his sub-consciousness. A young man is about to start a “world trip” on …show more content…

Romantic Dreams: Now he finds himself lost in the romantic dreams. He gets a beautiful scenery before his eyes. The Sun is ready to set over the blue hills in the west. The Sky is dropped in crimson red. The birds are returning to their nests. This diversion was only a temporary relief to the traveller. However, soon he was caught by two lords- the lord of heaven and the lord of earth who consider him as trespasser. He was given 10 years of imprisonment without caring for his idea of world tour. It indirectly denotes the encroachment on the resources of nature and man’s passion to commercialize the resources of nature. In one more encounter, the cyclist comes across a bandit who wants to rob of cyclist’s alarm clock instead of his precious valuables. It is like a comic scene. During this scene, the cyclist gets rid of his nervousness and gathers confidence to continue his journey with a new vigour of

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