Mahesh Dattani’s The Big Fat City (2014) is a representative work of contemporary Indian English Drama that explores the changing mindscape due to urban conditions. This paper is an attempt to evaluate the performance and performativity of the urban inhabitants and their consequential transformation. The paper explores the play at the cross-section of performance studies and urban theory to highlight the influence of ever evolving and fast paced life of city on its inmates with high aspirations, who gradually get stuck in the labyrinthine life with its compulsions. City as a social force works as an organic entity and presents an ambivalent vision of human relationship. Whenever characters fail in realising the pulse beat of time and the changing social system, they meet their predicament that ends in miseries and sufferings. Keywords: Urban Materiality, City Space, Performance Studies, Contemporary Indian English Drama, Mindscape
The Bengali short story Stanadayini or ‘Breast Giver’ by Maha Swetadevi and the Malayalam short story Maratthottil or ‘The Wooden Cradle’ by Lalithambika Antherjanam outline and explore women’s identity as a mother and how the romanticism of motherhood for some woman is nothing more than a successful ploy to misuse and exploit her. Both Jashoda and Nangelipennu spend their lives rearing the children of their masters only to die after being rejected by the families. The stories acts as a window to the caste, class, gender, sex, culture, identity, body, and power that plays its role in the society. The status of both the women as care giver or mother collapses as soon as her material worth to the family fades. They swiftly revert to a normal woman who, as a result of her illness, becomes a liability. This research paper attempts to explore the vulnerability of a lower class/caste women by the hands of the upper class/caste custodians, thus making them vulnerable to exploitation and thereby negating her identity.
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