HYPOCRISY. GENDER PLAY. DENIAL. INDIGNATION.
One of the early plays that bore the brunt of Indian bureaucratic hypocrisies as a banned play, Partap Sharma's A Touch Of Brightness. Sharma's indignation comes out through each and every character. The flesh trade that has its tentacles spread in every society but in the Indian society somehow goes deeper in its shunning.
Worst still some believe it as a necessity to maintain a balance in society so that the "good women" would walk safely on the street and hence denying basic human dignity and introducing a new urban sort of casteism.
The book jacket itself says that the book is overflowing with optimism but what also surprisingly exists is humility, even in the most adverse of situation people can find fondness in each other, and not just in a character called Vatsala, which means maternal, but virtually all characters find in themselves compassion.
In creating Rukmini from a Devdasi background were you making a statement of devdasi casteism and Indian attitude that still has to get over the concept of caste and fate? OR Why couldn't Rukmini have been a careless by-product of the high class society's vanities?
There is an almost invisible line of double segregation where one the girls, Suraksha, is often taunted as
being the way she is because she is a sweeper's daughter. Many other factors also come in play, like the constant unease that Rukmi's devdasi status brings. The others have a way of saying that the people here might be doing what they are doing due to unfortunate circumstances where as Rukmini was destined to be what she is. Basanti also expresses her mistrust by saying, “The boy who loves her, she turns into a brother, and the man who wants to marry her, she keeps as a lover.” This might mean that Rukmini is incapable of knowing the difference in a relationship of a brother from a husband.
Somehow the ten year knows this as an instinct the man she claims she spent a time travelling and being his companion, the same person who made pregnant, she doesn't know his name. As if she is capable of knowing that his name would not make a difference to her because her child would still be called illegitimate and would not be allowed to take its biological father's name.
