Vijay Tendulkar’s a Friend’s Story: A Social-Psychological Perspective of a Lesbian in Homophobic World

Abstract

Abstract

Tendulkar has always shocked the society with his controversial themes and stark commentary on current burning issue. His works cover the strong ethical concern exploring and critiquing the relations of power in their entire complex ramification. His A Friend’s Story, written on an experimental topic, also criticize this relations of power along with the complex struggle to achieve the dominant position. The different power?blocks keeps on changing their strategies to achieve what they want. His works have generally awakened people of their long sleeps. The publication of his A Friend’s Story also brought a turning point in Indian theaters as they shocked the sensibility of the conventional audience by projecting the realities of life, human relationship and existence. The play depicted the tension between individual identity and social existence. Though he remains a detached observer and exposed vices and weakness of society and individuals, he has some compassion for the victim of circumstances. He is an individualist and presents individual versus society. He stands for individual freedom and his Mitra is also working hard for it. The play deals with a bold theme of lesbianism and peoples got surprised to witness a lesbian on stage that left her to flow with the stream and rebel with the society. The action of the play moves round the central character of Sumitra Dev, i.e. also Mitra in the play. Mitra is a carefree girl with a loud laughter and dares to see directly into eyes. She is quite careless of social norms and moral values but got trapped by society with its norms to dominate.