Symbols of the songs by Leela Benare in Vijay Tendulkar’s play Silence! The court is in session

Abstract

The current study explores and sheds light on the trials and tribulations of an independent Women, Miss. Leela Benare, in Vijay Tendulkar’s play Silence! The Court is in session. Here Tendulkar dwells on gender Discriminations. Till the commencement of the mock- trial, Benare is the most cheerful, talkative Character. She makes comments on her own independent life, on the behaviour of her fellow actors, she Sings and shows her vitality and assertiveness even in the second act when the mock trial with her as the Accused begins. In this context her songs are relevant to the structural design of the play as well as these Highlight the mental agony and pangs of a deep rooted mother. In Silence! The Court is in Session, though the dialogues of the characters are set in unvarnished prosaic terms, four songs and one poem have been used in order to add lyrical flavour to unvarnished language of reality. Tendulkar has these songs sung by Benare, the protagonist of the play, not by other characters. A song is no doubt a lyric that expresses a set of emotion, feeling and ideas and thereby exposes the psychic life of the speaker. The four songs in the play, of which two are derivative and the other two are composed by the dramatist, are set in Benare’s mouth in order to equip the woman with the right to narrate her life in lyrical terms.