Locating Sexual Dissidence and Body Politics in Mahesh Dattani’s on a Muggy Night in Mumbai

Abstract

Mahesh Dattani, a Sahitya Akademi Award-winning dramatist and a prominent voice among modern Indian dramatists, has been utilising his theatrical talent as a weapon to inflict fatal blows on the traditional conservative notions of Indian culture. In his plays he endeavours to dissect the prejudices and hypocrisies of so called ‘civilized society’ towards the weak and vulnerable. This paper will attempt to study how the characters with sexual deviation in Mahesh Dattani's acclaimed play On a Muggy Night in Mumbai negotiate with several social and cultural imperatives. Dejected by his boyfriend Sharad, Kamlesh is unable to cope with the circumstance, so he invited his gay friends to his apartment to get rid of his struggles against the mental anxiety and trauma of being gay. Attempts will be made to explore the private conversation between the characters as a symbolic reflection of the deep-rooted body politics and how far Surveillance and stringent homophobic gaze, implemented through numerous restricting mechanisms, endanger the existence of people who do not fit into the normative system