Summary
Karnik announces he has something important to say regarding the case, so he is asked to proceed to the witness-box. Karnik says dramatically that the evidence given by Rodke is incorrect and that he was a witness of what was said and done at that time. Kashikar orders him to come to the point, as Karnik appears to be descending into philosophical flourishes, so Karnik states succinctly that Rodke did not slap the accused; rather, Rodke told Benare he would have to talk to Mrs. Kashikar, and she told him he’d lack for nothing and she would support him, and Rodke then told her he could not be with her in a condition like this because the “whole world’ll throw mud at me,” (79), so finally Benare slapped Rodke.
Sukhatme ventures icily that this is simply further proof that Benare was pressuring Rodke to marry him, and he ushers Karnik out of the witness-box. Karnik says he has more to say; while he does that, Rodke tries talking to Mrs. Kashikar, but she tells him not to speak to her.
Karnik states that he happens to know a cousin of the accused, as they have a common friend. He says the cousin told him the accused attempted suicide once before due to a disappointment in love at fifteen—with her own maternal uncle. Everyone is floored, and Kashikar shakes his head that this is “just one step away from total depravity” (81). Sukhatme volunteers that now it is clear Benare’s “past, too, is smeared in sin” (81).
Benare gets up heavily and tries to go to the door, but Mrs. Kashikar holds her tight and forces her back. Kashikar seems struck by something and bangs his gavel to announce that he is breaking with tradition and offering evidence himself, as this case has “great social significance” (81). He asks Sukhatme to ask his permission; Sukhatme agrees grandly and invites him into the witness-box.
Sukhatme asks if he knows the accused; Kashikar replies that he does and that these adult unmarried girls are “a sinful canker on the body of society” (82). Sukhatme chides him not to give opinions and asks for his evidence. Kashikar explains that he often has cause to visit the famous leader Nanasaheb Shinde of Bombay, and once, he heard a conversation in the next room. But first, he explains how Nanasaheb told him there was a teacher from the high school there who wanted them to drop an inquiry into her behavior. He’d brought her here for a quiet talk. This was when Kashikar realized he recognized Benare’s voice. Also, this very morning, he’d brought a garland over to Nanasaheb and heard him on the phone with someone, telling them it was a sin to be pregnant before marriage and thus immoral to let the teacher teach in such a condition. He said she would be dismissed, and called for the order for his signature that day.
At this, Benare is shocked. Samant wonders aloud if she will lose her job, and Sukhatme tut-tuts that it is the law of life. When Kashikar is asked how he knew it was about Benare, he says he just knew and has no doubts.
Benare grabs her pill bottle and moves to put the contents in her mouth, but Karnik dashes forward and knocks away the bottle. Samant is shocked.
Sukhatme announces that the testimony for the prosecution is complete, and rests. He then pretends to be the counsel for the accused and calls for the witnesses of professor Damle, Nanasaheb, and Mr. Rawte, but none are present, so the case for the accused rests. Kashikar asks for the closing statement of the prosecution.
Sukhatme explains how the charge here is dreadful, and Miss Leela Benare “made a heinous blot on the sacred brow of motherhood” (84). Her character is disgusting, devoid of morality, and her conduct has “blackened all social and moral values” (85). She is “public enemy number one” (85) and if behavior like hers is allowed, it will mean the ruin of the country. Unmarried motherhood is an even more serious crime than infanticide, and if she brings up her child he fears “the very existence of society will be in danger” (85). All moral values and traditions will crumble away, for the accused has dynamited them. Woman “bears the grave responsibility of building up the high values of society” (85) and Benare is thus not fit for independence. He urges the judge to bestow the severest punishment upon the accused.
Pleased, Kashikar calls the counsel for the accused, and Sukhatme, in this guis,e says simply that youth leads people astray and to regard the accused with compassion and mercy. Kashikar addresses Benare, asking if she would like to say anything about the charge. She has ten seconds.
Music sounds and the light changes; all the other figures except Benare freeze. She stands up. She loosens her arms and says that, for years, she has not said a word. No one could understand her and storms raged in her heart. Everyone around her seemed stupid, and she wished she could laugh at them all. Instead, she cried her guts out and her life was a burden to her. But when she almost lost her life, she realized what a gift life was. Everything was new, wonderful, and meaningful; “there’s great joy in a suicide that’s failed. It’s greater even than the pain of living” (86).
Benare strikes a classroom manner, speaking of what life is—such and such, a book, a drug, a poisonous snake—and then a courtroom manner, saying life ought to be hanged, ought to be sacked from its job. Why, though, she asks, was she in trouble with her work when she poured all of herself into it? She taught her students beauty and purity. While she cried inside, she made them laugh. She taught them hope while she despaired. Her private life is her own business and no one else’s, so why are they trying to take her job, her “only solace” (87)?
She wanders around the still statues of the others, mocking their “mortal remains of some cultured men of the twentieth century” (87). They have ferocious faces but unsatiated desires.
A school bell rings and children chatter. Benare loses herself in it. When the sounds recede, she becomes frantic and does not want to be left alone. Then she crumbles and admits that she committed the sin of being in love with her mother’s brother. He was the only one who loved her and was close to her. She was barely fourteen and knew nothing. She wanted to marry him so she could live her dream openly, but all were against it and the uncle fled. She threw herself off their house in her rage and despair, but she did not die. Then, as a grown woman she fell in love again and offered her body up, but “my intellectual god took the offering—and went his way. He didn’t want my mind, or my devotion…He wasn’t a god. He was a man for whom everything was of the body, for the body. That’s all! Again, the body!...This body is a traitor!” (88.) She claims she hates her body, writhing in torment, and then realizes it is all she has in the end. Now this body carries a “tender little bud” (89), and it will be her whole existence. This son must have a mother, a father, and a good name.
The light fades, and there is the sound of a watch ticking. Benare is back in the dock, the others where they were. The lights come back. Kashikar intones that the accused has no statement to make; her time is up. He asks Rodke for his wig. He makes his ruling, announcing Benare must pay for her sins. Social customs are of utmost importance and “marriage is the very foundation of our society’s stability. Motherhood must be sacred and pure” (89). Criminals and sinners should know their place; tomorrow’s society will be deleteriously impacted by her behavior. He rules that she shall live but the child in her womb will be destroyed.
Benare starts shrieking that she will not let them do it. She sobs and sinks down before the defense counsel. In the silence and darkness, the door opens and a few villagers’ faces look in. One asks if the show has started.
The group is surprised and quickly returns to normal. Samant tells the audience that it will start in just a few minutes and they can wait outside. Everyone chides Rodke for not being aware of the time, and Kashikar urges them to quickly get ready.
They look at the motionless Benare on the ground. Mrs. Kashikar strokes her hair and calls her a poor, sensitive child for taking it to heart. The others agree that it was just a game, and Karnik tells her to get ready because their show must go on. Mrs. Kashikar shakes her and tells her it was all obviously untrue. Ponkshe tells Samant to get some tea for Benare.
Kashikar notices the bottle of poison on the ground and looks at it for a second, then briskly tells the others to get ready. They withdraw and Benare remains alone on the ground. Samant shyly comes over to her and does not know what to do; eventually, he places the stuffed green parrot in front of her and leaves. She moves feebly. From a distance, her own voice sings a song of a sparrow whose nest has been taken away.
Analysis
After its unrelenting persecution and unsolicited exposure of the private life of Benare, the play comes to a shattering end with the “verdict” of her guilt and the “punishment” of her child being forcibly aborted. The fact that none of this is ostensibly “real” does nothing to mitigate the overwhelming discomfort and horror the audience/reader feels as Benare endures the trial.
One of the most conspicuous reasons that “justice” is not served is that Damle is not only absent from the proceedings but is also never blamed in the slightest for the situation with Benare. Sharmila Jajodia writes, "Thus evidence after evidence is piled up against Benare to prove her guilty. But Damle, who has also his share of guilt in the situation, is not even held an accused at all and left scot-free.” This is clearly extremely hypocritical. Agreeing with Jajodia, Arka Pramanick notes that “The frustrated male members of the society try to subjugate women to prove their power and superiority in the social hierarchy. They praise motherhood with bombastic phrases but try to destroy Benare's infant in the womb. Benare is stigmatized and sacked from her job. But Prof. Damle, the man responsible for her condition, escapes scot-free for he is a male.”
Tendulkar makes it clear that for Indian society, it doesn’t matter that Damle is married or a father or is an educator: he is a middle-class man and he can do as he pleases. On this, Pramanick quotes the scholar Subha Tiwari in his article: “The whole responsibility of morally upright behaviour is bulldozed on women. Men are by nature considered to be willful, wild, childish, innocent and mischievous. Their sins are no sins at all. The society has a very light parental and pampering sort of attitude when it comes to sexual offences of men. In case of women the iron rod gets hot and hotter. No punishment is actually enough for such a woman. There is no respite, no shade and no soothing cushion for a sinning woman. She must be stained and abandoned. Her femininity, her needs, her very existence must be ignored or rather destroyed. She must be cornered and brutally killed both in physical and psychological senses. This play is about the pathetic position of women in the male dominated Indian world.”
It is telling that when Benare gets to respond to the accusations, she is given a mere ten seconds, which is essentially an act of silencing. In their article on the play, Garima quotes Arundhati Benerjee, who writes of how Benare’s “defence of herself against the onslaught of the upholders of social norms in a long soliloquy, has become famous in the history of contemporary Marathi theatre” and “it is important to note here that Tendulkar leaves us in doubt as to whether or not Benare at all delivers the soliloquy, thus, suggesting that in all probability what she has to say for herself is swallowed up by the silence imposed upon her by the authority. In fact, during the court providing on several occasions, her objective and protestation are drowned by the judge’s cry of silence and the banging of the gravel (ix).” Garima concludes that “Benare’s long but unspoken soliloquy symbolize [sic] that women are not allowed to voice out their thoughts, feelings in our male dominated society.”
Benare’s soliloquy is anguished, honest, and powerful. At times halting, and at other times forceful and articulate, she gives voice to the myriad of ways women are subjugated. She is seduced by a much older uncle and then abandoned and chastised. She is made to feel responsible for this abuse and thus tries to take her own life. Later, after surviving her suicide attempt, she once again falls prey to a man—Damle—who tells her he loves her but really only wants her for her body. Her sterling reputation as an educator is in jeopardy due to her illegitimate pregnancy, despite the fact that her private life should not affect her employment. Her “friends” are erstwhile and capricious, happy to judge her with abandon as they ignore the planks in their own eyes. Every single thing she says and does is scrutinized and then used against her not only to disparage her character but also to explain why the nation as a whole is flawed. It is no wonder she collapses on the floor at the end, which makes sense both if she did give the monologue or if she didn’t—giving or not, it is what she thinks and feels, and it is overwhelming.
