An actor, director and playwright of a different generation, Mahesh Dattani, 42, reveres Tendulkar. Winner of India’s highest literary prize, the Sahitya Akademi Award, Dattani writes in English about contemporary issues; has his own theater in Bangalore; and teaches at Portland State University.
During their New York visits, both talked separately to NEWSWEEK’s Vibhuti Patel. The interviews follow.
Vijay Tendulkar
Newsweek: What brought you to the theater? Tendulkar: My father was an actor, director, playwright in the ’30s, working with amateurs in a dilapidated hall in a small Bombay lane. He’d take me to night rehearsals. I was four and would fall asleep watching them. There was no electricity, no actresses. Men rehearsed female roles by lamplight, without costumes, with unshaved mustaches. On opening night, dressed and made up as women, they acted with exaggerated mannerisms. Sitting in the audience, I witnessed that metamorphosis. After the performance, I went backstage and saw the actors turn into men again. It was a dream world.
Had you thought of a career in the theater? One did not think careers in those days. Writing was in my family, I grew up playing with books. Much later, I became a journalist. Journalism fueled my curiosity. My earliest plays were autobiographical; then, my concerns widened. What happened a thousand miles away affected me. News items inspired me, I felt that what was happening out there belonged to me.
Nearly five decades ago, you were called “the angry young man of the Marathi theater.” Disturbing real-life experiences make you want to change things until you see that you can’t make an impact.
Your plays champion women’s issues. To what do you attribute that? There’s a woman in every man, there’s definitely a woman in me–I lack the desensitized attitudes of many men. Things that don’t affect others disturb me. Also, the state of women–conditions that existed when I was a boy–affected me deeply. My mother was an influence.
Did you see her as a victim? My earliest memories are of the strain between my parents. My mother had to fight to stay in my father’s house. My first memory is of clinging to her during a fight. I could feel the fear go through my body. The women in my life had to fight for basic things. My sister was brought up to be so dependent, she couldn’t make decisions. My father refused to arrange her marriage so she ended up a single woman in a society that insisted on marriage. Then, during a bad economic situation in our family, she had to become the second earner. She spent the end of her life in an old women’s home. She could have been creative, she did translations for a magazine I edited. I saw her and my mother as victims–one in marriage, one outside.
Other influences? The economic struggle in my family. My sensibilities are rooted in our lower-middle-class situation, in serious economic pain. At 15, I dropped out of high school. I had to struggle. Reading, writing and an immense curiosity were my skills. I apprenticed in a bookshop, then I was a proof reader. I managed a printing press before I got into journalism, which did not require academic qualifications then.
Did the lack of a formal education affect you? I don’t consider that lack a disadvantage; it made me look at life differently from other writers. I did not have the grooming that school gives. I missed the discipline of Sanskrit and I missed Shakespeare. I had read Marathi adaptions of Shakespeare, but no originals until ten years ago. Without formal schooling, one is shaped differently. I’m more rooted in my own culture.
What’s the source of the sex and violence in your work? “Vultures” was the first play to deal with both. It had to do with what was in and around me. I was commissioned to write a play that would have a good run and make money. It just wouldn’t come. Then some hidden anger exploded and emerged in an unexpected way. I wrote day and night and finished “Vultures” in three days.
Talk about the Western influences in your work. Tennessee Williams’s play “A Streetcar Named Desire” made a big impact on me. I translated it into Marathi. I was most impressed by Arthur Miller. Williams and Miller were indirect influences. There’s anger in their plays, to, but though my anger came from another place. I love Ibsen’s social concerns and the poetic elements in his work.
What are you working on now? In the last 10 years, plays have stopped coming to me. Until then, everything came to me in the shape of a play. Now, I’ve stopped thinking theater. I’ve written my first novel. It’s about the disintegration of a middle-class family.
How do you feel about India at the millennium? I have a love-hate relationship with my country. We’re so overburdened with traditions, so stuck. I’m envious of America’s openness to change. Refusal to change is harming us. At times, I’m in pain.
Mahesh Dattani
Newsweek: What led you to play writing? Dattani: Starting out as an actor and dancer (ballet and Indian classical), I was naturally interested in theater. I became a writer because there were no plays in English on contemporary Indian issues.
Was your family supportive? My father was concerned. Could I support myself? He’d known poverty; after years of struggle, he was successful. He wanted me to have a middle-class life. I joined his business and worked with him for 10 years. But I’m not cut out to be competitive. Business made me uncomfortable. Early on, I also knew I didn’t want to marry and have children.
How did your parents react to that? It bothered my mother initially. But she’s come around. I spend time with her; when she speaks, I listen. My significant others were my parents, not sexual partners.
Your play “On a Muggy Night in Mumbai” deals with homosexuality. Is it autobiographical? My plays are drawn from personal experience, but they’re not autobiographical. Gender issues interest me. In India, there’s a growing awareness of sexuality, but alternative sexuality is still an invisible issue. Up to ten percent of any population is homosexual; even the “Kama Sutra” has a chapter on homosexuality. Still, it’s not something people talk about. It was time to write a play about the emerging gay identity.
How do Indians deal with that? There’s no condemnation, no violence. But because of ignorance, homophobia in India translates into pity: gays are “victims,” they’re not “normal,” they can’t have family life. Most gays in India marry to avoid being pitied–that’s the conflict my character Ed faces in “A Muggy Night.”
Have gays finally come out in India? They’re visible, but not accepted. Many marry to protect themselves. Everyone knows; it’s not something you can hide. But there’s a contract of silence. Everyone agrees–without saying a word–not to speak about it. It’s a great strain on a closeted man’s wife. Not to be attractive to her husband affects a woman’s whole life.
Your film on AIDS is the first of its kind in India. It’s a mainstream movie to begin an AIDS dialogue, to overcome people’s fears. HIV transmission is explained, but AIDS is not a gay issue in the film. The focus is on the human story and love interest. In Indian marriages, sex is for procreation so there’s no emphasis on protected sex. My heroine gets HIV from her husband.
You have a theater in Bangalore? My father gave me some land on which I’ve built a studio and a small amphitheater. The focus is on developing new voices in theater, on helping aspiring playwrights to workshop their plays, on training actors to explore new scripts and present them to audiences. It defrays my expenses; I invite others to work there.
What’s next for you? I’d love to direct in America, to develop a new play and stage it in New York. For now, I’m writing the screenplay for a film–“A Walk with Mr. Williams”–which will be released internationally. Mr. Williams, an Anglo-Indian, is Prospero and Caliban rolled into one. He has the blood of the colonizer–and of the oppressed.
