Indira Parthasarathy Three Plays : Comforting Illusions, Rain, Shrouded Bodies

The three plays reveal Indira Parthasarathy's abiding interest in the nature of the human self as multilayered and problematic. Comforting Illusions makes a brilliant use of the mode of the Absurd Theatre to examine the loss of meaning in the most enduring institution in Indian society, namely the family, and especially conjugal relationship. Rain creatively adapts the insights of Freudian psychoanalysis to problematize our naive understanding of kinship relations. Shrouded Bodies, which displays an androgynous imagination to an even greater degree, offers a detached, often witty analysis of the motivations that force men and women into illegal relationships. Indira Parthasarathy everywhere demonstrates his ability to delve into issues of self and society and formulate his perceptions in cool, argumentative intellectual structures.

Indira Parthasarathy, pseudonym of Padma Shri (Dr) Ranganathan Parthasarathy (b.1930), is a creative writer, literary and cultural critic and historian who started his career as an academic. Widely acknowledged as one of those who have revolutionized modern Tamil drama, he has so far authored nine full-length plays and seven one-act plays. The best known of these are Mazhai, translated here as Rain, Pasi, translated here as Comforting Illusions, Aurangzeb, a historical play, which won a Tamil Nadu Government Award, Nandan Kathai, a subversive retelling of a Tamil legend about a Dalit saint, and Raamaanujar (1996), a play about the great Vaishnavite saint, which was awarded the K.K. Birla Foundation's Saraswati Samman in 1999.

Besides his dramatic output, Indira Parthasarathy has also published sixteen novels, six anthologies of short stories, four anthologies of short novels and a volume of critical essays. He was honoured with the Sahitya Akademi award for his novel Kuruthi-p-punal, which has been translated into all the major Indian languages, and the Sangeet Natak Akademi award in 2004. He is the only Tamil writer to have been honoured with both the awards. He was given the Lifetime Achievement Award last year at The Hindu Literature for Life event. (jacket)