Graduate Course

B.A. (Hons.) PROGRAMME, ENGLISH 1 YEAR

Paper II—Twentieth Century Indian Writing
HALFWAY HOUSE
Aadhe-Adhure
Study Material : 3B

Prepared by :
Dr. Seema Suri

SCHOOL OF OPEN LEARNING

UNIVERSITY OF DELHI
5, Cavalry Lane, Delhi-110007
Academic Session 2012-2013 (900 copies)

School of Open Learning

Published by : Executive Director, School of Open Learning, 5, Cavalry Lane’, Delhi-110 007
Printed at: Nutan Printers, F-89/12, Okhla Industrial Area, Phase-I, New Delhi-110020
 INTRODUCTION

1. A note on the text

2. Aims
3. Objectives
4. Tutorial Support
A note on the text
Written in 1968, Aadhe-Adhure was first published in Dharamyug in three parts, on 19 and 26
January and 2 February 1969. A month later it was performed by Dishantar in Delhi, during the annual
festival of the Sangeet Natak Akademi. The play made a powerful impact and even thirty one years later
continues to draw packed houses. It has been staged many times all over India and even in small towns
where plays are staged only once a year.
Aadhe-Adhure has been translated into almost every regional language, including English. Well
known playwright Vijay Tendulkar has translated it into Marathi and Samik Bannerjee into Bangla. Bindu
Batra’s English translation first appeared in Enact, 1971. It was carried out under Mohan Rakesh’s
scrutiny and had his approval. It differs from the original Hindi text in terms of ommissions of certain
lengthy stage- directions. Exchanges between characters have been abridged at a few points. This was
apparently done to retain the stageability of the play. For instance, before the play begins there are
descriptions of age, dress and personal appearance. The description of Savitri in the Hindi version,
includes this line which has been deleted from Bindu Batra’s version :
Woman Approaching forty; traces of a glamorous youth on a face that is not without passion. This
is a significant foregrounding of Savitri’s character. Another important section that has been abridged is
the dialogue between Savitri and Binny where the latter discusses her marital problems with her mother.
As you will observe, these changes detract from the overall impact of the play.
The students are advised to refer to the following edition which has been prescribed by the
university. It includes some useful essays.
—Rakesh, Mohan. Half-Way House: A Translation of Aadhe-Adhure tr. Batra, Bindu. ed. Basil,
Dilip K. Delhi-Worldview Publications. 1999.
All textual references in the study material are to this edition. A more literal, word for word transla-
tion has been done by Steven M. Poulos and RamaNath Sharma. Rakesh’s ‘A Self-Portrait’ which is an
autobiographical piece on his childhood is available in this edition:
—Rakesh, Mohan. Aadhe-Adhure tr. Poulos, Steven M. and RamaNath Sharma, New Delhi. Rupa
& Co.. 1993.
It may not be possible for all of you to read the original Hindi text. But if you can you must read it
before reading the English version as no translation could ever do justice to Rakesh’s superb dialogue
writing in Hindi. The flavour of colloquial Hindi, peppered with Urdu and English words is not available
to the reader of the English version. As a follow-up exercise you could compare the two English
translations, of Aadhe-Adhure and make notes on the differences.
Aims
Any literary work is bound to generate a wide range of responses. Considering the different social,
economic, gender and cultural experiences that shape individuals there will always be a multiplicity of
viewpoints, perspectives and interpretations. The broad objective of this study-material is to assist you in
developing and evolving your individual understanding of the play. In addition attempts have been made
to.
 — Introduce you to the author Mohan Rakesh and his sensibility.
— Sensitize you to the major issues that have occupied critics since it first appeared.
— Acquaint you with English essays on Aadhe-Adhure.
— Highlight the literary significance of the play.
Objectives
After reading the play, at least a couple of times, and going through this study material you should
be able to
— Summarize the plot of the play.
— Present different points of views on Aadhe-Adhure.
— Articulate your own perspective.
— Write the assignments at the end.
Tutorial Support
—The department of English organizes classes for a few days in each academic year. the schedule
for which will be sent to you by post. Study the play carefully and identify your problem areas before
you attend the Personal Contact Programme.
—There-are some assignments at the end of this study material. You must attempt at least two
questions and send your answers to me for evaluation.
—Any other questions you may have can be sent by ordinary mail or at the following e-mail address
: seema_suri@hotmail.com
Dr. Seema Suri
Reader
Department of English
 2. MOHAN RAKESH: A RUDIMENTARY SKETCH

A Brief Biography
List of works
Mohan Rakesh Interviewed by Rajinder Paul
A Brief Biography of Mohan Rakesh
There has always been a mystique around the author of Aadhe-Adhure. People close to him have
projected him in puzzling terms-sometimes as a messiah and at others as a self- destructive personality. A
well known biographer uses a very evocative image to describe Rakesh -’ like a drop of mercury on the
floor; trembling and disintegrating into pieces in an attempt to attain stability. Even a cursory look at the
major events in his life points to an impatience with the world and a restless temperament. He was
notorious for throwing up jobs and scoffed at people who continued with professions simply for financial
security. A favourite prescription of his was, “you need five hundred to live? Then borrow three thousand
on interest and work for six months and earn six thousand.” It was only after throwing up innumerable
jobs, punctuated by periods of unemployment and financial crises that he settled down to full-time
writing.
Rakesh was an emotionally intense person, generous towards his loved ones. He loved to .spend
money on his friends, frequenting the restaurants and coffee-houses of Connaught Place. A friend of
Rakesh narrates an occasion when he frantically hunted around in Karol Bagh looking for a toy for his
son and when he eventually found it, kept buying toys till he ran out of money. This same man would
haggle with ungenerous Indian publishers and editors for a particular price which he felt he deserved. He
fought for his rights and his writings, and this attitude was unprecedented in the Hindi publishing world.
Sentimental and idealistic, he was a stubborn individualist and hated pretentiousness and hypocrisy. He
invited charges of irresponsibility and indiscipline by running away and living in isolated dak-bunglows
in remote hill stations like Dalhousie and Srinagar. But Rakesh felt at his creative best in these places. His
friend, the well known writer Kamleshwar wrote, “my friend did lead a disorganized life but deep
underneath there was that fantastic discipline, the discipline of the mind of the creative spirit.”
The process of his writing was always well ordered and organized. Behind the cigarette-puffing,
carelessly dressed Bohemian personality was an enviable clarity of artistic purpose. Rakesh wrote in his
Diary.
The writer’s true commitment is not to any particular philosophy but to his self, his times and the
life of his times. If the artist is truly committed from within, then like a blind man groping alone in
the dark with a stick, he hits out at the powers of terror and darkness with his entire self.
Mohan Rakesh was born in Amritsar on 8 January 1925 into the family of a lawyer, Karam Chand
Guglani. He was named Madan Mohan Guglani, later called Madan Mohan and finally Mohan Rakesh.
His father was a prominent citizen of Amritsar - a social worker, holding offices in various literary and
cultural organizations who took a keen interest in his children’s academic activities. Rakesh inherited a
taste for music and literature from his father but not any money. His father died leaving behind many
debts and Rakesh along with an elder sister had to shoulder the responsibility of his family. He was
sixteen years old at that time. After his primary education in Amritsar he did his MA in Sanskrit from
Lahore. In 1947, after the partition of India and Pakistan he, along with his family shifted to Jallandhar
and continued with his studies. He did his MA in Hindi, topping in the university.
Apart from his father Rakesh was also influenced, albeit in a negative manner, by his grandmother’s
character. She was of an extremely superstitious nature, restricting his movements and forcing him to stay
indoors in dark and damp rooms. There was a fetish for discipline and order and this fostered in Rakesh a
deep dislike for both. Thus the seeds of revolt were sown early in life. Forced to rely on his own resources
he passed the time creating imaginary worlds of his own.
In the house, our energy is suppressed, when I am kept inside, I cry for a while and make myself
sick. Besides the world of the house and street. I have my own private world. Sometimes I travel
with the rows of big black ants through holes in the dark. Sometimes I make tiny atoms fight with
each other in the sun. [A Self Portrait]
After completing his MA he taught in Elphinstone college, Bombay from 1947 to 1949. He lost his
job and after a spell of unemployment in Delhi he taught for a short while in Jallandhar. Again due to the
intrusion of politics into teaching he lost his job and taught for awhile in Delhi. He also taught at a school
in Shimla for two years but resigned from there. After that it was back to teaching in Jallandhar and
quitting in 1957 to pursue writing. He briefly edited the Hindi journal Sarika. from 1962-63, gave it up as
he felt > confined.
Rakesh was a versatile writer, experimenting with many genres. He breathed new life into plays,
short stories, novels and travelogoues - but it is as a dramatist that his work gave respectability to Hindi
theatre. His first play Aashadh Ka Ek Din (1958) received the Sangeet Natak Akademi award for the best
play in 1958. He wrote two more full length plays Lehron Ke Rajhans (1968) and Aadhe-Adhure (1969).
For his eminence in the field of drama and his contribution to its development he received the Sangeet
Natak Akademi award for play writing in 1968. Along with Dharamvir Bharati’s Andha Yug he gave a
new dignity and self-respect to Hindi theatre. All of Rakesh’s plays have been performed by lead ing
theatrical groups. Rakesh is also regarded as an outstanding short story writer. In the last years of his life
he received the Nehru fellowship to do research on .’The dramatic word”: a subject that passionately
engaged him. But he could not complete, what would have surely been a major academic exercise and
died in December, 1972. He was only forty-seven years old and it is alleged that excessive drinking led to
his untimely demise.
It is ironic that a man who could portray the pain and complexity of human relations with sensitivity
and understanding was, in his personal life, such a bad reader of people. He first married in 1950, a girl
whom he had met briefly a couple of times. It was an arranged match and Rakesh did not try to verify
their compatibility. The girl was egotistical, proud of the fact that she earned more than her husband.
Rakesh admitted that “marriage means adjustments and compromises but it has to be made by both. Bat if
both want to live life on their terms then the barriers are insurmountable and there is revolt”. They
separated m a couple of years and Rakesh managed to convince his wife to a divorce in 195". His quest
for happiness led him to a second marriage in 1960. This time he married the sister of a friend, a girl he
had met only twice. This alliance lasted shorter than the earlier one. His second wife had erratic
behavioral patterns with extreme and volatile reactions to situations. Tired of his home he shifted to the
office of “Sarika” but abandoned it when his wife came and created a scene in the office. This chapter
too, ended tragically and he ended his second marriage. Both times the initiative to separate came from
Rakesh and earned him the tag of a home breaker. The bourgeois mindset viewed his failed marriages in
an uncharitable light. He lost faith in the institution of marriage. Finally he found a companion Anita,
who shared his convictions and lived with him till his death in 1972, on the basis of sheer commitment.
Rakesh once told Anita, “You have third place in my life; in first place are my writings and in
second place are my friends.” He moved amongst an illustrious literary circle. Amongst his friends were
Kamleshwar, Rajendra Gupta, Rajendra Paul and Om Shivpuri. Everyone remembers his intensity and
warmth. Kamleshwar narrates how Rakesh would go to the airport to see off friends going abroad. Maybe
this was unfashionable among the educated elite but “damn it, I’m Hindustani”, was what he said.
Individualism, sensitivity, a deep dislike for a mechanized existence and the pain of relationships
that have failed. All these elements in Rakesh’s life are present in his plays and short stories. Aadhe-
Adhure explores a middle class marriage that has turned sour and Rakesh does it with a great degree of
success.
List of Works
Mohan Rakesh (1925-1972) Plays
Aashadh Ka Ek Din (1958) Lehron Ke Rajhans (1968) Aadhe-Adhure (1969)
Posthumously published
Pairon Tale Ki Zameen (1973) (Left incomplete, later completed by Kamleshwar)
Ande ke chilke, any a ekanki tatha beej natak (1 973)
Raat beetne tak, tatha any a dhwani natak (1974)
Novels
Andhere Band Kamre (1961) Na Aanewala Kal (1968) Antaraal (1912)
MOHAN RAKESH : An interview by Rajinder Paul
This is the first part of a series often or more tape-recorded conversations that Rakesh and I had
planned a couple of months ago. He wanted them to be as ‘leisurely’ as possible, ironical as it now,
seems. Ambitiously, I had wanted to print these ‘conversations’ in book form—on such varied and
general topics as Love, Friendship, Marriage, Literature, Theatre, Cinema, God, Death etc. I started like
this, maybe because I dared not start on a ‘dialogue’ topic before getting warmed up. So I chose the easier
way of asking him questions about his life when I didn’t know him.
Unfortunately, we could tape only one ‘conversation’. He has left so many things unfinished. To cap
the misfortune, I can’t even locate the spill-over of this tape to another tape that I used. In that he talked
of his life after he left Sarika.
R P Your writings, especially your plays, show an extraordinary sensitivity to the emotions of
people under stress. Would it be right to trace back this sensitivity to your childhood ? In plain terms, was
your childhood unhappy ?
M R So far as my childhood is concerned I don’t think I can call it unhappy. Till the age of 16, i.e.
so long as my father was alive, we were quite well provided for. He had, by the standards of those days a
quite comfortable practice though he gave most of his time to other activities. I must say 1 was quite the
introvert type and, in my introversion, may also have been quite sad. In our house, or due to the
atmosphere of the house, the people-my grandmother, my mother, my uncle, my aunt, my sister (my
brother was born much later)—all of us lived in a sort of constant tension. I think the tension was part of
the class to which we belonged. In most of the families that I knew at that time—my other relations, my
father’s stepbrother, his family, other families that we knew-all of them lived in some state of conflict,
and it seemed to me that very small things caused this tension. I mean, probably the reason for this
tension could be traced to money. The sort of things my father was expected to do, and he thought he did
to support the family and also some other relations, gave rise to all sorts of misgivings that he had more
money than he would let on. That was the way most of the lower middle class families lived at that time,
and still do. As a child I always felt he could not really flower out. You have to hide a few things. You are
expected to be a hypocrite in certain things. Even if I possessed something which was nice and with
which I could be happy as a child, I was supposed not to reveal it to others, treat it as a secret source of
pleasure. It was that secrecy which marred all the pleasures for me. Then, since my father lived to a great
extent beyond his means, which was not all because of his own spendthriftness, there was constant
financial crisis in the house and of course hysterical situations, that one witnessed between the two great
ladies of the house, i.e. my grandmother and my mother. All this kept me on edge.
R P You realized you had to live with this kind of tension and developed your own responses to
them?
M R I think the consciousness of these things came much later. At that time there was only a day-
dream of being able to escape all that one day. A tendency was growing in me in which I wanted the
present around me to change into something else. For example, I always dreamt of living in another house
and in other surroundings. Even the slightest suggestion of our shifting made me very happy because
probably, subconsciously, 1 felt that new surroundings would impart some freshness to life, bring about a
change in the climate around me. I was all for shifting, changing and it was a constant source of irritation
to me that till his last day my father stayed on in the same house. I was born in a house in a small street in
Amritsar, but I was hardly two when we moved to another house. That was actually also the office of my
father where he practiced. I don’t think the capacity to analyse the situation was in me. I was merely an
introvert, dreaming and feeling sad, wanting to change the situation somehow.
R P Your father unfortunately died when you were still a boy. Did you fend for yourself after that?
Or where you helped by anyone ?
M R Actually, my conscious life starts after the death of my father, because it was a sudden change
in the whole environment. As I said he was always over-spending and he left us not only penniless but
under certain debts and there was no other adult male in the house. My younger brother was four and a
half years old. So for some time it was my sister who took over. She was a year and a half older than me.
She worked in a school and looked after the family till I finished my M.A. But partly I looked after my
own affairs, that is I took tuitions to pay for my studies. Then in the final year of my Master’s degree, the
family circumstances were such that my sister could not support me any longer and I had also lost the
tuition job. I was almost going to pack up and look for a job when my Principal, the late Dr. Laxman
Swaroop of Oriental college. Lahore, came to my rescue. During the whole of my final year in M.A. it
was he who was paying my expenses.
RP Did your father influence your life in any Way ?
MR He was a person who took a lot of interest in his children, in their education and everything.
When I was 12, he almost started treating me as a friend, but today I know he was all the time talking to a
child and trying to make me feel that he was talking to a friend. But he tried to impart whatever was in
him to his children. He took a lot of interest in my sister going to debates and such things. He was also
much interested to know that I had composed verses in Sanskrit at the age of about 13.
R P Were other people around you responsible, then, for the tensions you mentioned, and not your
father with whom, you say, you had a good understanding ?
M R I think I admired my father, but for one failing, that he did not leave us a bank balance, I think
in all other respects I have no grudge against him and even this one grudge I cannot carry because 1 have
the same temperament myself. I cannot try to collect money. But I do feel sad about the pattern of
relationship that I experienced at that time. I think it was quite inhuman, the way people tried to eat off,
chew off whatever was good and soft in others. The small economic demands or some small superstitions
or smai! jealousies take such a vital part out of what is good in human relations that I fee! I cannot lead
the sort of life my father led.
R P What would you say about the formative influences in your boyhood ?
M R 1 can tell you of one particular formative influence which has determined my attitude to human
relationships. My father, who led a very tense life inside the house because of the oppression of the
demands of all the people around him, found real relaxation among a set of his friends who gathered in
his ‘baithak’ ,(sittingroom) as we called it. Every evening, after his clients had gone, his friends would
start arriving one by one and for about 2 to 3 hours the house would become a place of warmth. Lively
discussions took place on literature. They listened to music. They laughed a lot. And, you know, it
seemed that was the only part of life that was liveable. And not only my father, I think I also as a child
looked forward to those evenings that I spent among adults. In a way it was precociousness. I don’t think
I really liked the company of children. While that precociousness may have hampered me in many other
ways, which I may not be able to analyse yet, it gave me a real sense of belonging with human beings
which comes from communication with them. The real family of my father was the people with whom he
had a personal communication and, I think, that attitude I have not only inherited from him but it has
grown deeper in my life.
 R P What sort of jobs did you take up ? Did you visualize yourself as a creative writer who could
live off writing?
M R That dream was very much there. After I did my M.A., even before my result was announced,
because of the sort of regard or wrong estimation my Principal, Dr. Swaroop, had of me, 1 was awarded a
research scholarship for two years. I did some routine reading of manuscripts and also prepared certain
catalogues of religions from the Brahmans as directed by him. But I don’t think I took any real interest in
the work. All that period for me was a period of looking around, trying to find some adjustment which
would not take me to a routine job in a college.
The first job I took up on the expiry of my scholarship term was with a film concern, and even at the
age of 21 I was able to talk someone into accepting a short story for a film. It was a difficult film story but
I knew that I could sell it and I succeeded in selling it. 1 was not given any lump sum for it but I was
appointed on the staff of a mushroom film concern which had come up in Lahore at that time. For about a
year and a quarter I was associated with it as an ‘intellectual’. I drew a salary for about 15 months. The
film never got to be made and it was actually at the time of the partition that I had to accept the realities of
life. For three and a half years after my M.A. 1 had done almost nothing. That was the period of false
intellectualism in coffee houses. It was just going to the office for half an hour or one hour during the day
and for the rest of the time I was supposed to be indulging in the “intellectual” part of my work. It was
after partition that I found I was left with none of the old associations of Lahore which could have given
me some sort of a start in life. I went to Bombay. But my going to Bombay again was motivated by the
desire to find an opening in films. I had some correspondence with film directors like Vijay Bhatt who
made Ram Rajya. He had admired the letter I wrote to him, naturally since the letter was written to
impress him. But soon after arriving in Bombay I discovered to my dismay it was not possible for me to
have any sort of rapport with that set-up. He wanted to give the job of rewriting dialogue and that sort of
thing, but the genius that I thought myself to be thought it was too sma. a thing for me to undertake.
That was the end of my connection with films at that time. And then there came a period when I
remember I was thinking of leaving Bombay because I had no way of supporting myself. My family
needed aH my help. I had made my sister give up her job when I got the scholarship. So, at that time, I
was experiencing great economic pressure. I applied for all sorts of jobs here and there and it so chanced
that almost at the time when I was packing up I received an appointment letter. !t was a small job worth
Rs.75 in the Sydenharr College of Commerce as a part-time lecturer. But even that made me stick on to
the city because the job came after a period when I had known hunger once for 72 hours at a stretch. I
took up that job and soon it was made a full-time job, with a lectureship in Elphinstone College also. I
think I worked there for less than two years. When the question of confirmation arose and I was sent for a
medical test I was disqualified because of my eye-sight. The prescribed limit of eye glasses for
government servants was—0.6 and mine were 0.10. So I was relieved of that job.
Then I still decided to stick on to the city with whatever little money I had in hand. I started an
independent venture. It was a translation bureau. I sat in an office for a month or more waiting for people
who would bring stuff to be translated so that I could make some money off them, but nobody obliged in
spite of 2 or 3 advertisements in The Times of India. Ultimately, when I was left with less than a hundred
rupees. I decided to leave Bombay. I came to Delhi. By that time I was quite a regular contributor to
Sarika and I thought I could get a job on the magazine. The editor, who admired me a lot at that time,
promised me a job. He first asked me to edit an annual number for him and then also promised to take me
on the regular staff. But again, while I had cordial relations with him when I knew him through
correspondence or casual meetings in Delhi, after my introduction to Delhi I started feeling I could not
accept this new equation of working under him.
Then I applied for teaching jobs in Punjab and elsewhere. I was appointed in the D.A.V.
College,Jullundhur, and I took up a job there as fifth man in the Department of Hindi where I was for five
months. Iwas not confirmed because they wanted me to teach Scripture as Part of a Hindi Lecturer’s job,
which Irefused to do. They were willing to gulp that. But then came the sudden senate elections and there
was a,candidate from the Teacher’s Union whom I decided to support against a candidate put up by the
Principal andthat decided the matter. I was not confirmed and I thought the Teacher’s Union would fight
for me but to my disappointment they took no action. Then I again found myself looking for a job. This
time, someone told methere was a job in a school at Simla. When I needed a job. teaching was job that
was first suggested. I went to Simla to be interviewed by the Head Master. The school was Bishops
Cotton’s School. Well, I got that that, job and stayed on in Simla for two years. It was during this period
that I seriously started thinking of living on writing, maybe because my first collection of short stories
had been published by that time and it seemed it was just a matter of taking the decision one day and once
one took the plunge everything would look after itself. Because during those two and a half years in
Bishop Cotton’s School, I resigned twice but was persuaded by the Head Master to carry on. By the end
of 1952 1 finally resigned and this time resolved to devote all my time to writing.
RP Did you do that ?
M R For about 8 months. It was after leaving Bishop Cotton’s School that I went on that trip of the
West Coast. I made that trip between December ’52 and February ’53.1 wrote Akhri Chattan in March-
April 53; it was published in July “53. But by the time this book was published I found it was easier to get
a book published than to get any money out of the publishers. Well, for quite some time I kept hovering
around those people asking for small bits of the money they had promised but I found it a very
humiliating experience.
One thing which I have not yet mentioned. About two and a half years earlier, I got married at the
end ? of 1950. When I had resigned my job, the feeling was that my wife who was teaching in the
Women’s Training College, Dayalbagh, Agra, could support my family, that is my mother and brother
who were entirely dependent on me and who were living at Amritsar. And then, maybe, I could make a
scanty living from writing and things would be managed that way. But even this scanty living 1 could not
manage for myself from writing and I also found my wife was not quite adjusted to the idea of supporting
my mother and brother though she was sending a certain amount to them at that time. But that was out of
the deposit that 1 had made with her of my provident fund. And that money was getting exhausted. 1
found that she was becoming rather fidgety so I decided to take up a job again and I applied here, there
and everywhere. I went for interviews at a couple of places where I knew people who had qualified much
later than myself were holding senior posts by now. But, unfortunately for me, or I should say ironically,
the job that 1 got was that of the Head of the Hindi Department in the same D.A-V. College, Jullundhur,
where I was not confirmed a few years earlier. This was mainly because of Dr. Inder Math Madan who
was Head of the University Hindi Department. Since he knew me at Simla, and admired me a lot, and by
that time I had also done M.A. in Hindi, getting a first class first, he persuaded Principal Suraj Bhantotake
me. I think that is the longest job I have done in my life. I was there for four and a half years till the end
of ’57.
R P Why did you leave that job ?
M R One reason was the basic restlessness which I felt all the time. I was planning out ways in
which I could live by writing. The most important reason probably was my divorce in August 1957. In
that small city people were quite conservative. 1 found the pupils and my Principal still liked me for my
work, but there was hostility in the minds of the people in the city as well as among the staff. So I decided
to resign. But when I resigned I had made up my mind that this time as far as possible I would not take up
a job. I thought I could reduce my demands on life. My short stories had started bringing a little
remuneration. I made all those calculations which every one of us makes in such a situation, that I will
write, I will produce at least 2 or 3 short stories every month and then I will be able to publish a book
every six months and that way be able to earn about Rs.200 per month and live within that amount.
R P Did you take up any other job 1 If so what were the circumstances which made you decide
against your earlier decision?
M R The job that I took up after that was after almost four years. ’58 to ‘611 did not do any job. I
somehow managed to make a small living on my writing. When I took the next job, it was because of the
temptation of the job, not the need. 1 was offered the editorship of Sarika. I did not apply for the job. The
proprietors of Bennet Coleman & Co. wired me to come to Calcutta and they straightaway offered the job
to me. It seemed quite lucrative in the sense that for Hindi literature or anybody connected with the Hindi
language a job which would bring in emoluments to the tune of about two thousand rupees was quite
lucrative at that time. So it was, I think, the temptation of being editor of a literary magazine as well as
being economically comfortable that made me take up this job. But within months of sitting in that office
I again started feeling very uncomfortable. I was temperamentally unsuited to this life of sitting in an
office room, say 10 to 5. One handicap with me is that I could not take a job casually. So after doing that
job for six months I resigned. But I was relieved after another five months. So in total I spent about 11
months in that office and that was the last job I did.
R P You say you continued working for 5 months after deciding to quit. Were you not confident
enough of being able to live by writing”?
M P I was confident enough. As I told you, I was living off writing even before that, that is four
years prior to taking up this job. It was a scanty living. Sometimes you felt there was a crisis, but still 1
could manage to pull on. It was this very calculation which made me resign the job. I really did not need,
I thought to myself all that I could buy with extra money. Whatever my needs were could be met by
whatever I could earn by writing. I must say I have passed through financial crises many times after that.
It is 9 years now. But I have never regretted. Even if asked to I could never go back to doing a job.
RP You didn’t have a family to support at the time you took the plunge ?
M R I don’t know what I would have done if I had a family to support. But I think I would have
resigned a: the same, though maybe a little later, because I could not reconcile myself to sitting in that
cabin. I was trying to do the job well but I was doing it under strong protest from my inner self. I knew
that there was some satisfaction in the job also, but still my mind was rebelling. I needed my mornings,
for example, for writing That is the sort of feeling I had. Not that all these years after leaving the job I
have been sitting down to write every morning.
R P Don’t mind my asking one or two personal questions. You mentioned that you got a divorce
from your first wife. It is not so very easy for a middle class marital relationship to get severed even if
you don’t like it Somehow you live with it. How did you handle the situation ?
M R Actually after marriage, i.e. in 1950, it was only for a year and a half that my wife and myself
stayed together. That was in Simla. Then she did her B.T. and got a job in the Women’s Training College
in Agra. We had discovered, at least I had discovered (I can talk with confidence only about myself) that
we were temperamentally so different that we had absolutely no meeting ground. It was a life which was
a source of constant tension, if not for both at least for me. I think she had much stronger nerves than I
had. It was a sort of living arrangement that was struck. We both worked at two different places. After
Simla, I took up a job at Juliundhur. She continued working at Agra and we carried on like that from the
middle of ’52 to the middle of’57 that is five years. For about five years we were living away from each
other, working at our respective places, and meeting off and on. To cover up the estrangement we used to
pretend that it was a modern way of living, that we were two separate entities, that each of us was
cultivating his personality. But the real reason was that right from the beginning we had been strangers to
each other. She as a Hindu woman found marriage an unchallengeable reality; so it had to stay, it was to
stay just because we were married. But I had quite a strong ego and she had both a strong ego and a
stronger personality any! there was nothing on which we did not clash. So we carried on with this
arrangement for five years. Then I came to kaou that she bad conceiv ed. That was in spite of my best
efforts not to let it happen. After I got this new si suffered from another mental dilemma. Whetir-1 will
not have to accept this marriage as a life-time reality because of emotional reasons. So, I thought I should
take a decision before the child was born and I told her. “You and I cannot live together. When the child
is born one of us can take the entire responsibility for bringing it up.’ She thought I was only talking in
the air and that after the child was born everything would be all right. Well, the child was born. After that
we met once or twice ; we talked about things; she resisted the idea of divorce vehemently at this stage,
particularly because of the child, and said she would fight upto the Supreme Court if I took any such step.
I could persuade her ultimately that it was no use because we could not under any circumstances live as
husband and wife.
R P Continuing on that personal note you may or may not answer this. Did you have any other
female company ? Were you unfaithful to your wife ?
MR Very much, yes.
RP Was it one of the reasons that took you to this drastic step?
M R No. That wouldn’t lead me to any drastic step. It was not for the sake of that I needed a
divorce.
Actually, much of that clandestine life was the result of this bitter married life in which we stayed
away from each other. Well, I must confess, I needed female company very much in whatever
arrangements I could make. I did make those arrangements.
R P Did your wife know about this and what did she think of it?
M R She might have suspected a little bit but not much.
R P Could you describe your life after you left Sarika and were divorced to the time you got happily
married?
M R After I left Sarika 1 roamed around for a couple of years. Then I met Anita, the girl I’m living
with now. 1 must mention here, as you may also be knowing, that in between I got married to one of my
friend’s sister. I couldn’t even live for a day with her. 1 needed a home, a wife, a female companion;
maybe for that very reason 1 plunged into the second marriage without much thought. But we weren’t
suited to each other at all. I would have gone mad if I had continued. It was a nightmare - and I just
decided to walk out on her and marriage once again.
R P Rakesh, I hope you don’t mind my asking you these delicate personal questions. You’ve been
often accused, rightly and wrongly, of having been a home-breaker, and rather restless with your women
and jobs. How is it that you have what to me seems a happy home now, shacked up with Anita for nearly
8 to 9 years?
M R Whather I mind it or not, you’ve asked them. So I might as well answer. And as I answer them,
I’m not afraid of their being made public. Yes, I know I’ve been accused of being a home breaker. I’ve
broken two homes. I’ve been called a person who shifts from inn to inn or from wife to wife. I can’t stop
other tongues from wagging. I only do what I think my conscience allows me to. And 1 should say I’ve
always done that. At least consciously. I’ve broken homes, and that in a middle class Hindu society, is
unpardonable. I know that. But I’m not the type who goes on having a superficial or surface relationship
with anyone. I cannot be a debauch and pretend to being a model husband at the same time.
Whatever you may call this present relationship with Anita, you know I’m not married to her. 1
admire her for her boldness and love her for her infinite love for me. I’ve never felt so settled in my life.
She is really a noble girl - naive at times, but full of love and innocence. We’ve had hysterical situations
in the house. But there’s been nothing to make me walk out on her. Whatever I may do, I’ 11 never leave
her. When she came away with me 1 told her I was morally committed to her for the rest of my life.
Contrary to what people have been thinking or might think of me, I feel very settled now. I love Anita
very much and my kids Purva and Shelly. You were in Simla with me when 1 used to phone Purva every
evening at 8. She misses me too much. You know....
Early Responses to Aadhe Adhure : What the presswailahs said.
“Of all the plays published in Hindi, Aadhe-Adhure has been the most fortunate as it has been
appreciated and staged many times in different cities,” wrote Mohan Rakesh soon after the play was
published in July, 1969. Even after the initial excitement that it generated has settled down it is
acknowledged as a milestone in not only Hindi, but Indian theatre.
 One of the first reviews of the play appeared in The Hindustan Times ; J.D. Sethi initiated a discus-
sion by calling Aadhe- Adhure “the first complete modern Indian play.” This critic found elements of
existentialism, Brecht, Miller, Ibsen and O’Neill in the play. He feels the play succeeds in depicting the
Indian middle-class, who have “completely lost touch with tradition, history and any value system that
could-motely be called Indian.” Other aspects underlined are its simple and realistic language and
establishing .-trend in Hindi theatre.
After the play was staged for the first time in Delhi during the annual festival of the Sangeet Natak
Akademi a number of reviews appeared. The drama critic of The Navbharat Times (4 March, 1969;
wrote, ‘the play is enjoyable. But it is the story of a particular middle-class family-one which is adversely
influer by Western openness and chracterized by mutual distrust. It is not the story of an average middle
family.”
In The Hindustan Times (6 March, 1969) Rajinder Nath felt it was the first significant Hindi p.&
because it “exposes the utter rottenness of the value system which governs the middle class and with
relenties logic he brings us to the point of utter despair. It reminds you of O ‘Neill’s Long Day’s Journey
into Ni: and its brutal bickering of Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. He found the dramatic
innovatic making one man play five roles interesting and able to convey the point of interchangeability of
character. ‘-he doubted the audience’s ability to comprehend the significance of this device. Moreover, he
admitted, it difficult task for any actor/director to sustain the sense of suffocation and tension throughout
the per: mance. But whether these shortcomings are those of direction or acting or limitations in the text
of the play is a thought -provoking topic.
Saaptahik Hindustan (30th March, 1969) also carried a review of the play’s first performance. The
critic found the play well crafted, the action pacy and the dialogues sharp and well regulated. He says that
even if one were to side-step the play’s philosophical implications, on the basis on sheer realism Aadhe-
Adhure deserves to be placed in the category of significant plays. Unlike the reviewer in The Hindustan
Times he feels that the device of having one actor play five parts only exists to prove the saying of the
man .. the black suit in the Prologue, “I can be any one.” Take this gimmick and the Prologue away and
the play could be the tragedy of an urban middle-class family. The reviewer feels it would be unjust to
blame the director for any shortcomings in interpretation because it was staged under the supervision of
the writer himself.
Frank Thakurdas (in Enact. April 1969) found the Prologue superfluous, involved and
contradictors’. He says it is unrelated to the events in the pbv. But he praised Rakesh’s stagecraft and his
effective use of the language familiar to the common man fn this respect Rakesh is a ‘modeF for aspiring
dramatists.
Aadhe Adhure has alwaj s been at the center of literary debate and discussion. Elaborate commen
taries, presenting two diametrically opposite viewpoints, appeared in Dharamyug (11th may 1969) and
Saaptahik Hindustan (11th may, 1969). These two articles by K.L., Nandan and Nemichander jain
respectively, illustrate two significant ways of interpreting the play. K.L. Nandan was impressed by
Rakesh’s portrayal of declining urban middle class values and described its language as original. This
critic is singular in his parise of the Prologue and the device of one actor, five roles is a challenge for any
actor and it also underlines the theme of fragmentation of personality, Nemichander jain, a venerable
name in criticism, feels the ply is well suited for performance. It captures the contemporary sense of
despair and present modern life in modern idioms. But it fails on many counts :
The play succeeds in presenting only the misunderstandings and discord betsveen two people or at
most the inevitability of their friction... It does not delve deep enough into the conditions that arise
between two human beings or even between man and woman. It manages to establish neither the
universal nature of human relations nor the imperatives of the human condition. The area of
experience of the play is small, narrow and limited to particular people.
This dissatisfaction has been echoed by many serious readers. N. Jain found the Prologue irritating
and meaningless, unrelated to the characterization. Many devices in the play are too obvious and jaded -
like Ashok’s constant use of scissors, Mahendranath dusting the files, Savitri seeing her husband’s face in
Ashok’s sketch of Singhania and Kinni closing the door in the end. According to Jain the characters are
flat and too much attention hasn’t been paid to fine details.
Natrang (Apr-Sep 1969) was devoted to Aadhe-Adhure. The editor acknowledges that the commo-
tion caused by the play is justification enough to devote an entire issue to it. Here is a glimpse of the
divergent opinions expressed in this collection, “The fundamental issues in life are bypassed and the
dramatist gets lost in the labyrinth of psychological aberrations. The play is in the danger of becoming the
picture of a mentally sick couple and the consequences of this on their children. The writer’s philosophy
is defeatist and his familiarity with middle-class values partial. The characters are unidimensional and
lack depth.” says Kunwarji Aggarwal. But surprisingly, in spite of such strong objections to the play this
critic agrees that Aadhe-Adhure advances realism in Hindi theater by many steps. Brijmohan Shah, in
the same issue says that the plot of the play is constricted and lacks tautness. Still it manages to grip the
audience’s attention. That is because of the language and dialogues. In the same vein Shobana Bhutani
alleges that “the characters are not individu- -alized and the situations are contrived and artificial.” Like
most other critics she doesn’t appreciate the need for a Prologue and feels that its language is its greatest
achievement.
All these opinions and critiques should be read with a detached mind as they sometimes border on
the extrefne. This may be due to the initial excitement the play generated. Gin’sh Rastogi makes a correct
analysis
Of all the plays thatRakesh wrote, Aadhe-adhure, perhaps, has received the most attention. Since it
was performed regularly and also because it was so different from the run of Hindi plays, reaction
was swift and abundant. Some critics praised it highly and put it in the same category as the plays of
Brecht, Ibsen, Strindberg, O’Neill and Arthur Miller. On the other hand, however, the play was seen
as being sentimental and commercial, superficial and hollow. These extreme reactions.il ighly
laudatory on the one hand and severely hostile on the other, were not only hasty and prejudiced but
to some extent such reactions did not allow the play to be evaluated properly and fostered instead a
stereotyped critical approach,
What the directors have to say :
After Mohan Rakesh’s death many journals brought out tributes. Of special interest to us is Natrang
(Oct.-Dec.’1972) in which some well known directors have expressed their views. Om Shivpuri, its first
director, called Aadhe-Adhure “the first successful play of contemporary life. Its most significant
contribu-’ tion is its use of language-common, everyday language which succeeds in capturing the
tensions of modern life.” He found its depiction of the attraction and repulsion between opposite sexes
was meaningful. Sushil Chaudhry translated and presented the play in Bangla. He chose to stage this play
because it deals with ordinary, middle class people and the treatment is a refreshing change.
Famous drama director Ebrahim Alkazi has included the play in a collection of plays representing
the modern Hindi stage, which he has edited. He admires the play for its ruthless depiction of the aridity,
depravity, self-destructiveness and double-faced morality of the middle-class. The play exposes the
lurking demons of fear and insecurity behind its self-respect and propriety. The language of the play, he
feels, is simple, straightforward and uniformly tense. It captures the minutae of human experience.
The first complete book on Mohan Rakesh was published in 1974 -(Natak-kar Mohan Rakesh by
Sunderlal Kathuria.) There has never been a shortage of articles in literary journals and books on his
ouevre. Enact, the journal of drama criticism has some valuable essays in its back numbers. Most of the
criticism subsequent to the initial responses has focussed on the issues raised by Mohan Rakesh’s early
critics and commentators. Prominent among them is his exploration of man-woman relations, his use of
colloquial Hindi and depiction of middle-class decay. More of this in the next section.
 3. ISSUES IN CRITICISM
Aadhe-Adhure as the tragedy of a middle-class family
Mrs. Savitri
Mahendranath
Rakesh’s Dramatic Art
Aadhe-Adhure as the tragedy of a middle -class family.
At the time of writing the play Mohan Rakesh wrote :
In a few days I am going to complete a play whose name is Aadhe-Adhure. Adhure means
incomplete and Aadhe means half. It is related to today’s ordinary class which is half and
incomplete. It is the story of a middle-class family in this city which is being pushed towards lower-
middle class existence by circumstances. Their desires, aspirations and struggle, and along with that
the situation getting out of control -1 have attempted to show all this in the play.
As the author explained, the family in the play has fallen from middle-class prosperity to a lower
status. There are many remnants of their former bourgeois acquisitions—a sofa-set, dining-table, writing-
table and refrigerator. There are references tcwnoney spent freely by both husband and wife in the past-
high rents paid for the house, traveling by taxis, the son and daughter educated in expensive convents and
liquor parties. For the last ten years the man has been unemployed and remains at home most of the time.
The wife is forced to be the breadwinner and this has made her a bitter person. The son is a college drop-
out with a cynical attitude. He doesn’t seem inclined to make any attempt to become financially
independent. Now this isn’t a typical middle-class situation. Women leaving their homes to work and
bringing an extra salary into the house in the quest for a comfortable lifestyle is common enough. But
women shouldering the financial responsibility of the house while the husband remains unoccupied is a
rare phenomenon. Though not disabled in any way Mahendranath has lost the win to work. In this respect
the family is not the average middle-class family and one can sympathize with reviewers who fee! that
Aadhe-Adhure presents an atypical situation and is the story of “a particular middle-class family’ Do
ponder ever, this point. Even. today how many middle-class households have matriarchal set-ups ?
The man in the black suit says in the Prologue.
A particular family and its particular circumstances …. If the woman of the family were replaced by
another she would put up with me in a different way., or, she would assume my role and I, assuming hers,
would remain equally undefined and it would be just as difficult to decide who or what has the
determining role... I, the woman, the circumstances that surround us or the questions that arise out of our
interaction with people. {p. 5-6}
It is almost as if the author had anticipated charges of presenting an unusual situation in the play.
The Prologue pre-empts the uniqueness of the circumstances. The focus of the play is not on Savitri’s
economic independence and her dissatisfaction with her domestrc set-up and her husband, but on the
disintegration of familial ties due to economic, psychological and sexual reasons. Rakesh wrote that the
play is “an abstraction of a theme which covers a large area of human experience. This ordinariness does
not qualify the play but the life depicted in it.” Another point in favor of the generality of experience
which the writer tries to convey is, that though the characters have names Savitri, Ashok, Juneja-in the list
of characters and the play they are called the First Man, Second Man, Woman and Boy. Mot
individuality, but commonality is being stressed. The biographical details in the play, and there are many
of them, reinforce the authenticity of a life of economic deprivation.
After the play’s first performance the drama critic of the Navbharat Times wrote that Aadhe-
Adhure showcases a middle-class family that is unduly influenced by Western culture and characterized
by an ugly sexual openness. No doubt many people in the audience were discomfited by the strong sexual
undercurrents on the stage. The main protagonist Savitri has not one but numerous men friends-
Singhania, Jagmohan, Manoj and Shivjeet. These liaisons are not clandestine-her family seems to be
aware of them and they all frequent her house. The situation rightly seems to be improbable. Another
critic alleges that the whole family seems to be steeped in sexual awareness. Kinny has a precocious
interest in sexual matters-she openly discusses them with her friends. Ashok spends his time cutting
pictures of scantily clad American actresses and pursuing his girlfriend. The eldest daughter elopes from
home with her mother’s boy friend. But is this behavior so unusual and aberrant ? It is quite normal for an
adolescent girl to be curious about sex and a boy of twenty one to find sexual gratification through
pornographic literature like “ Memoirs of Casanova.”
It is Savitri’s character that has caused maximum discomfiture to readers. They feel that Savitri’s
abnormal sensuality propels her towards one man after another to satisfy her urges. No relationship seems
to hold her. Her husband Mahendranath, according to Juneja, loves her deeply in spite of the torment of
knowing about his wife’s liaisons. Savitri doesn’t seem concerned about the effect of her openness.
Whenever a friend comes to visit her at home, Mahenderanath escapes. But what is most sacrilegous is
Juneja’s revelation in the end that Sfvitri has enjoyed a level of intimacy with her son-in-law Manoj in the
past. This would have been most unpalatable to average audiences-the spectacle of a middle-class
housewife who has desired her daughter’s husband.
Middle-class values, though on the decline, have a certain hold on the unhappy couple. Savitri has
never been able to accept Mahendranath as he is. Within a couple of years of her marriage she started
feeling alienated from her husband. But why doesn’t she opt for legal separation ? She is not financially
dependent on her husband. Even if Jagmohan ditches her in her moment of crisis she can simply walk-
out. A warped sense of committment seems to be at work here. Mahendranath too wants to break free but
is forced to continue with the marriage as he is dependent on Savitri. Aadhe-Adhure is in, this respect,
the tragedy of a middle class marriage gone sour. What are the reasons for its failure ? Savitri projects
herself as a martyr, constantly reminding her husband and children about her efforts to improve their
condition. There is constant bickering between husband and wife. Mahendranath’s helplessness is
understandable -he is unemployed an’icaunot stay over at Juneja’s indefinitely.
Of his own unhappy marriage to his first wife, Rakesh wrote “since the beginning we were
strangers. Being a Hindu woman she considered marriage” an unchallengeable reality. In his own life Rak
sh broke away from a loveless alliance not once, but twice. In a middle-class family it was unforgivable.
After he divorced his first wife even his colleagues and friends in Jallandhar were unsympathetic, “In that
small city people were quite conservative. I found the pupils and my Principal still liked me for my work
but there was hostility in the minds of the people as well as among the staff.” Unable to take such a step
Savitri and Mahendranath continue with their marriage, suffering and imposing suffering on each other.
As Ebrahim Alkazi wrote, the play is about the aridity and lovelessness in middle-class families.
It is not only the relations between husband and wife that have broken down. The entire family is
affected. The children don’t respect their parents, the youngest daughter is rude and outspoken. The son
insinuates about his mother’s alliances. The weak father is taken for granted. The son bullies his younger
sister and the elder daughter cannot communicate her problems to her mother. The mother’s sacrifices are
scoffed at by the son. There is no mutual compassion or understanding. Communication is nearly non-
existent. As the elder daughter tells Juneja, the house is like a zoo.
Rakesh subverts and undercuts the notion of a ‘home’ and a ‘family’. Values traditionally associated
with the middle classes are shown to be hollow and meaningless. When the play begins the house is
empty and in a state of disarray. Us occupants do not treat it like the retreat that it should be. As Kinni
rightly complains “no one is ever home when you want them to be”. With an ominous sense of
foreboding Manoj points out this abnormality and blames it for the self destructive trait in his wife, Binni.
The Woman : What does he say ?
The Older Girl : That... it’s from this house I have taken something with me which prevents
 me from being natural. (p-18)
The son Ashok picks up his younger sister’s trinkets to gift to his girl friend and when his mother
accuses him of stealing things from his own home he taunts her: “Do you call this a home?” (p.30) The
younger daughter is barely out of her childhood. Instead of looking after her material and emotional needs
with affection, every member of the family is preoccupied with his/her own problems. Kinny is rude to
everyone all the time. It is her way of rebelling against those adults who deprive her of affection. Though
at home her father doesn’t bother to give her a glass of milk when the girl returns from school. She has to
swallow her humiliation and wear torn socks to school. Her teachers constantly scold her for not bringing
necessary items like embroidery threads. More than anything else, in Audhe-Adhure Kinny’s character
draws our attention to the pathetic financial situation the family has reached and the parents’
unsympathetic attitude to the girl’s needs,
Savitri is not the typical sacrificing mother, suppressing her desires for the sake of keeping the
family together. The articulates her turmoil and frustration :
The Woman : The burden of this house is so great that I need someone to share it with me. 1 can’t
manage it alone! Your father lost all our money and has been idle ever since. You,
far from doing something on your own even consider my efforts to help you an
insult! If no one else is bothered why should I alone go on? Why should’nt I enjoy
life? (p. 41)
Savitri’s refusal to quietly submit to her circumstances and her quest for happiness is what makes
the play so fundamentally different from contemporary Indian middle class values. Mohan Rakesh
succeeds in capturing the claustrophobia of failed relationships; not only that of husband and wife but
other members as well. On this account at least, critical opinion is unanimous; that the play succeeds in
generating the tension of interfamilial discord, and the resultant emotions of boredom, anger. revolt and
stubbornness.
Mrs. Savitri’s tragedy
“The ending suggests that an over-ambitious and misguided woman has destroyed a family” -Girish
Rastogi.
“The play probes the blinding ambitions of a middle-class housewife, utterly mindless of what her
ambitions and the means she adopts to fulfi11 them would do to her conjugal bliss or their shattering
effect on her growing children.” Frank Thakurdas.
These are a couple of instances which echo the tenor of a majority of view-points about Savitri in
Aadhe-Adhure. The onus of the tragedy has been placed on Savitri’s shoulders. Opinions have been
skewed f against her. and discontent projected as the driving force behind her actions. Such an assessment
does not take her physical hardships into account. Her husband, instead of trying to ameliorate their
circumstances has resigned himself to a life of inaction. Ashok is irreverent and unco-operative. Under
such conditions it is not unnatural for her to be irritable and throw insults at Mahendranath, who remains
at home but doesn’t make a good househusband. He is lazy and unconcerned, not even bothering to tidy
up the house while his wife is away or feed his schoolgoing daughter. Savirti’s anger could hardly be
evaluated as resulting from ‘blinding ambitions.’ It is more a struggle to survive. She says.
Year in and year out... do this for him, do that for her ! Earn the money, run the home ! (p. 23)
Her situation is stressful and seems to wear her out at times. She feels upset when Ashok refuses to
follow her advice. Savitri’s anxiety for her children has to be accepted as real and not driven by ulterior
motives as Ashok alleges. Her attempts to settle Ashok in a decent job or her anxiety about Binny’s
marital problems hardly fall within the purview of individual aspirations.
The Boy .....Whenever you’ve invited anyone, it hasn’t been for the person himself but because of
his name, his salary, his position. (p. 40)
 She complains, grudgingly does her domestic chores and yet retains the desire for happiness. If her
home and her husband don’t give her emotional fulfillment, she reaches out for it elsewhere. Instead of
compromising and accepting her destiny silently, she articulates her agony. With pain she asks Binni,
The Woman : What do you think I am ? A machine ? (p.30)
Savitri has been accused of developing a bloated ego because of her financial independence. But it is a
very tenuous kind of independence, she is not free to spend money on herself. Her income barely brings
in enough to run the household. The flip-side of her working woman status is sexual exploitation at her
workplace. When Singhania visits her house his behaviour is odd. He is preoccupied and constantly draws
attention to Savitri’s visits to his house, while she is eager that he do something for her son.
The Second Man : But you’ll be coming anyway. 1 Ml let you know. The Woman : So you will
keep it in mind ?
The Second Man : What ?
The Woman: About Ashok.
The Second Man:Yes, yes. You’ll come to the house. There’s some business to be discussed.
The problem with the Union.(p. 36)
There are unsavoury references to various ‘aunties’ visiting his house and competing to win the
boss’ favour among them. Savitri tolerates his behavior because she hopes that something might come of
it. But her efforts go in vain. She feels that her life is running out and she screams, “If no one else is
bothered, why should 1 alone go on ? Why shouldn’t 1 enjoy life ?” (p.43).
Right from the beginning a lot of questions are raised about her intentions. Savitri’s projection of
herself as a long-suffering martyr are undercut by Ashok. (p.42). She bullies her husband, and slaps her
daughter in a state of frustration. All these incidents contribute to a gradual build up of opinion against
her. Sympathy for Savitri which has gradually built up gets a rude jolt when Juneja reveals what he feels
are her true motives. She is placed in the dock and judgement passed on her; Juneja says,
The Fourth Man: The point is that if any of these men had been a part of your life instead of
Mahendra, you would still have felt you married the wrong man...Because the meaning of life to you is
how many different things you can have and enjoy at the same time. (p. 14)
Both in reading and performance the play encourages a misogynist interpretation. Readers and
critics have termed the play anti-woman. An early draft of the play was read out to Rakesh’s friends. It dit
not have Savitri’s long speeches in the end. It was on his friend Dina Pathak’s insistence that Rakesh
added the long speech of Savitri to “redress the balance.” But the imbalance is there and different
directors have tried to correct it. In Rajender Nath’s production Om Pun” was asked to stress Juneja as a
sympathetic friend rather than a prosecution counsel.
What the reader needs is to tread a careful path between outright sympathy evoked by Savitri’s
projection of herself as a martyr and condemnation of the kind fostered by Juneja’s revelations in the end.
Savitri’s tragedy is her failure to recognize this fundamental existential truth - that there is no escape from
the disappointment, boredom and frustration that most human relationships eventual ly entail. This leads
her into repeated and doomed quests for the complete “man” in her life. Her perception of married life is
rather unrealistic :
The Woman : why does one get married? In order to fulfill a need.... an inner.... void, if
you like; to be self-sufficient....complete.(p. 69)
Savitri wants fulfillment through marriage, not realizing that it requires acceptance, compromise,
and mutual adjustment. She complains to Juneja about Mahendranath’s fiendish behaviour. Perhaps, i:
was provoked by hersubbern refusal to “conform” (p. 71) to his wishes. Ironically she expects
Mahendranath to conform to her desire to be at home when her boss Stnghania comes calling (p. 10).
 Juneja’s revelations about Savitri’s past liaisons with various men, Shivjeet, Manoj, jamohan and
himself, are significant not because they brand her as being a woman without ‘character’. His
observations are central to an understanding of Savitri. She spends her life chasing an impossible illusion,
an ephemeral notion of love. It is Juneja who performs the task of deconstructing tins fallacy of hers, the
quest for the complete man and the “complete relationship”. This is the core of her tragk situation.
The Woman : Have’nt I said that’s enough .’ All of you.... even, one of you..... all alike ! Exactly
the same. Different masks, but the face.....? The same wretched face.... every single oneofvou!
The Fourth Man : And yet you felt you had a choice.....? Was there really any choice? Tell me,
was there? (p. 76)
Therein also lies the significance of the title - Aadhe-Adhure: half-incomplete, which is essentially
what all men, and even women are. Completeness, through relationships, is a myth, an unattainable
fantasy.
Mahendranath
Readers and critics have found Mahendranath to be something of a puzzle. They have not been able
to reconcile the defeated, and demoralized Mahendranath on stage with the Mahendranath talked about by
Binni, Juneja and Savitri in the end of the second Act.
The Woman : The same Mahendra who smiles meekly among his friends, becomes a fiend when he
comes home. One never knows when he may scratch one’s eyes out or drink one’s
life blood. (p. 71)
Binni recalls ocassions when he would beat up his wife and children in a moment of rage. Though,
there is a great disparity in these two aspects of Mahendranath it is not improbable. He has been
unemployed for a long time and incurred huge financial losses. Being dependent on a wife who constantly
reminds him of his dependence has apparently destroyed his self-esteem. He calls himself a “parasite” (p.
27). Another reason for the change could be ascribed to Savitri’s constant bickering.
The Fourth Man : Today, Mahendra is bad-tempered. But there was a time when he really did
laugh. From within. That was when no one made him feel small. When there was no one to tell him what
he was not, what he should actually be, and what he.......(p. 74)
Apart from this lack of consonance between two sides of Mahendranath’s personality his character
is not sufficiently foregrounded. From Savitri’s long speeches in the end the reader can, at the most,
conclude that he is a man without a personality of his own, a puppet whom Savitri begins to hate. Even
this is repudiated by Juneja.
The Fourth Man : He’s not a puppet nor anything else you may call him. He has only one defect.....
he is the same as every man (p. 71)
It is true that the characterization of Mahendranath lacks profundity and complexity. Reasons for his
bitterness towards Savitri can only be gauged through Juneja’s revelations.
Rakesh’s Dramatic Art
Realizing the significance of realism on stage, Mohan Rakesh moved away from the choice of
historical subjects in his two earlier plays, Aashadh Ka Ek Din and Lehron Ke Rajhans to a
presentation of contemporary reality in Aadhe-Adhure. To show the tragic situation of a middle class
family he has chosen a room in the house. The whole play is set within this room -all the characters come
into this room, fight with each other, break down and want to escape from this place. The disarray in the
room, the broken down furniture and especially the broken tea-set on which the stage lights fall in the
beginning-have their own significance. They symbolize the lives of the occupants of this house. When the
play begins the lights first focus on the broken tea-set.
 Keeping the limitations of realistic drama in mind Rakesh has observed the unities of time, place
and action. All the action of the play takes place in that one room, there is no change of scene. The play is
divided into two acts and both happen in the same place. The dramatic events occur over a time period of
not more than thirty-hours. The play begins about half an hour before Mahendranath leaves his house,
after quarelling with his wife, and ends late into the night on his return home the next day.
The development of the plot has been dictated by the imperatives of unity of time and place. A lot of
important incidents in the play are reported instead of being presented-Savitri’s relations with Manoj,
Shivjeet and Juneja; Mahendranath’s friendship with Juneja, the discord between Binni and Manoj and
Savitri’s discussions with Jagmohan. This is not the best way to develop character in drama.
The main point on which the reported situation detracts from the play is the references to Savitri and
Mahendranath’s earlier relations. Binni tells Juneja about her father’s demonic temper when she was a
child and his wife-beating. Savitri too elaborates upon Mahendranath’s irrational violence towards her.
But this aspect of her husband is not convincing. The main objective of the author was to present a picture
of a disintegrating middle-class family; a family where communication has broken down. By not
changing the scene the claustrophobia and loveless existence of the members is successfully conveyed.
In the Prologue the man in the black suit says, “Once again the same thing all over again. “When the
man walks out of the house after fighting with Savitri, she tells her daughter not to worry as these scenes
happen every alternate day. As anticipated Mahendranath returns to his house the next day. When
Jagmohan comes to visit Savitri in response to her desperate plea she insists that she has finally taken a
decision to leave her husband and house.
The Woman: You must have heard me say this before, but this time I really have taken the decision,
(p.56) When Savitri returns from her meeting with Jagmohan Juneja confronts her with an uncanny
suggestion.
The Fourth Man : I can guess what Jagmohan said to you because in his place I would have said
exactly the same. (p. 76)
Discussing Mahendranath. Juneja tells Binni how her father returns home after even, fight with his
wife in spite of being dissuaded. There is a circularity in the events. The husband and wife have reached a
breaking point and there is emotional crisis in the play At the same time there is eyen suggestion that
what is happening has happened before and with the same conclusion es en, time. Sayitri has tried to run
away from home but her attempts are fruitless. Mahendranath too cannot stay on at his friend Juneja’s
indefinitely and staggers back. The emotional tension is not built up to a climax and then resolved.
Aadhe-Adhure is a play where there is no linear movement, it is lateral It is a play of exploration, without
nemesis. The action returns to the point from where it started. The dramatist’s interest is not in plot but
psychological states of mind.
4. Follow-up
Here is a suggested reading list for Aadhe-Adtmre.
Jain, N.C. “Rakesh, The Playwright.” Enact 73-74. (Jan.-Feb., 1973 ; Mohan Rakesh Memorial
Number)
Paul, Rajinder. “An Interview with Mohan Rakesh. “ Enact. Mav 1972.
Sethi, J.D. “Rakesh’s Aadhe-Adhure : A Breakthrough” : Enact 27. (March 1969)
In Hindi
Natrang (Mohan Rakesh Memorial Number), no. 21, 1973.
Taneja , Jaidev. Mohan Rakesh : rang-shilpa aur pradarshan. New Delhi : Radha Krishan Prakashan,
1996.

PART -II
CRITISIM ON “AADHE-ADHURE
TOWARDS A NEW HINDI DRAMA : THE PLAYS OF MOHAN RAKESH
by
Veena Noble Dass
Mohan Rakesh was one of those rare literary personalities who never accept the traditional set up
but always aspire to find and project something which is challenging and new. Rakesh was a pioneer in
more than one field of creative writing. In the field of the short story he initiated the “new story
movement” in Hindi. In his novels and travelogues he explored the vast expanse of man’s inner and outer
world. And in the field of drama, he opened up new vistas by his untiring efforts. In fact no genre of
creative writing was left untouched by Rakesh and he brought a whiff of fresh air into each one of them.
Rakesh wanted to start his literary.career by writing for films. In the 1940’s when he was still a
young man, he realized that Hindi cinema required a creative touch. This conviction impelled him to go to
Lahore. He was determined to become a script writer. He did write a script for the late D.M. Panchole, but
unfortunately other considerations prevailed and he could not write the screenplay. The world of Hindi
cinema, as it was then, probably lacked the mettle to digest the literary genius who sought to bring about a
revolutionary change. But this disappointment did not deter Rakesh from doing what he wanted to do. It
spurred him on to do still bigger things, to seek wider horizons. In retrospect Rakesh’s whole life appears
to be a long and unending struggle to achieve his cherished goals. To earn a living he had to take up
various jobs ranging from teaching to journalism but never for a moment did he lose sight of the ends
which he had marked for himself.
In the 1950’s the Hindi stage was in a sorry state. Even after independence it could not boast of any
serious plays. There were mythological, historical and pseudo socials but none of these made
contemporary life their chief concern. Rakesh’s was the pioneering spirit which pondered over this sad
state of affairs. He came up with a brilliant set of plays which reflected the contemporary mind. To do so
he used historical characters. For example, in One day in Ashadha he portrayed the dilemma of the
present day writer, a writer lured by temptation being offered by the state as well as other agencies and his
commitment to himself.
The other play The Great Swans of the Waves also deals with a similar dilemma. Nand finds
himself drawn towards all that is pleasure and equally drawn towards something that cannot be reduced to
a set of concrete symbols. Each one of us has got that desire for this quest within us. This is the
contemporary situation that Rakesh projects in his plays.
The appearance of Mohan Rakesh with his first play Ashadh Ka Ek Din (One Day in Ashadha) on
the Hindi dramatic scene in 1958, apart from indicating the emergence of a talented play-wright added a
new dimension to an important process already at work in the field of Hindi drama, with the staging of the
plays of Upendernath Ashk and Jagadish Chandra Mathur.
In Rakesh’s plays the unity between the natural, theatrical realism and poetic sensibility acquired an
altogether new level. Rakesh has gone far beyond the superficial psychosocial problems, or one-
dimensional, stiffly-jointed dramatic structures that were found in the work of his predecessors. Instead,
he has tried to explore a more relevant area of the intense contemporary experience in essentially
theatrical images through period character and situations woven together in a more or less well made
realistic frame.
In a sense, Rakesh began his dramatic career with the treatment of apparently historical themes in
his plays. For both One day in Ashadha and The Great Swans of the Waves he chose historical
personages and situations. But in neither play is history a very important matter. It is certainly not the
essence of the thing. To quote Rakesh, to a great extent, “I conceived the play as a writer’s predicament
with the forces around him leading him towards such compromises as could kill his very personality as a
writer. This was both the crisis of the age as well as my own crisis.”
 Rakesh’s personal explanation endows a clear dimension to the play. It is not so much a historical
reality as the reality of our own lives that has been caught in the play.
The historical reality that pervades the whole play is concerned with the growing frustrations of the
intellectuals of the period, a period rightly called the dangerous decades. This was a period characterized
by frustration arising from a feeling that the high expectations of free India were being increasingly belied
though paradoxically, the rising expectations still persisted. The failure to meet adequately the challenges
developing as a result of the departure of the British was giving rise to widespread uncertainties and
perplexities. The gradual unfolding of the implications of the Indian welfare state and the experience of
parliamentary democracy, which promises everything to everybody but only in the long run, in a tradition
bound society in which no one was willing to wait, produced obstinate tensions and irreconcilable
conflicts. It is obvious that a human and social situation like this would be pregnant with poignant themes
and an artist or a writer is likely to find it creatively disturbing. Yet Rakesh turned to the remote past for
the themes of his plays. But even if he turned to the past he was not turning away from the present. From
the total experience of his time what has attracted his aesthetic dramatic response is just that which should
be of the greatest danger to an artist. The great danger to higher life and higher values in a situation like
India’s under its own welfare state arises from its artists and intellectuals, avidly or reluctantly becoming
a part of the establishment and identifying themselves with it. That is the his quest for the lost hair (in the
Hindi version) or for more words (in the English version) in the footprints of his creator’s search for a
further and superior artistic creation. As in Sundari’s words. “You are free to go and search for as many
points as you like. Don’t shut those points out with words, or if you must, go and search for more words.
See where the points go and where the words end. Why do you stay where you are ? Why, Why ?” (p.
116)
Thus with his desire for more words and new situations Rakesh embarked on his third play Aadhe-
Adhure (Half-way house) To those who are never tired of crying hoax about the absence of modern
Indian plays, despite some notable examples to the contrary, came a powerful answer from Mohan
Rakesh with his play Half-way house.
In this play, Rakesh has brought to light the v. ay of living of a middle-class all but on its way out,
with their personal and social problems. It is a family torn between middle class morals and respectability
on one hand and the hindrances that stop them from achieving them. Al! the five members of this family
are linked together through unresolved conflicts and tensions.
Rakesh has chosen the theme of the middle class family, because the crisis of the Indian society of
today is in a large measure a crisis of the dead illusions of many years of the rising middle class. This he
expressed in an interview,
Many of the writers today not only come from the middle class, but more specifically from the
urban middle class; those from the rural middle class have also been urbanized for the most part.
The country today, at all levels—lower, middle and upper classes, urban and rural is becoming
middle class. The play-wright identifies the consciousness or mentality of the middle class as that
uppishness, that status hunting, that struggle for attainment of material possessions, the going to any
lengths to attain all of this. This is the morality of the average man, almost anywhere, belonging to
any class.
The play begins with a prologue in a disorderly living room of a once well to do middle class
family. A man in a black suit is sitting on the sofa smoking a cigar. The man introduces himself as one
who cannot be identified with any name or character. He has no role in the play and the play is
as.undefined as he is.
A prologue as a brief introductory note is conventionally accepted in the drama of both the East and
West. In ancient Sanskrit drama and the Restoration plays it appeared as a regular feature. According to
Frank Thakurdas “a prologue which seeks to serve more than as a prefatory note, to establish a highly
dubious theory of dramatic literature, is something questionable.” In the prologue to this play, Rakesh
declares a thesis— a statement of the situation of which the play is a demonstration, that is the hero
Mahendranath and his friends, or more precisely his wife’s casual acquaintances, could be any one in the
audience. Therefore, what matters is not the individual and all the subtle attributes that define his
personality which make him and nobody else, but the situation that is sovereign, compelling him to a
particular mode of behavior and none other. Stated in such bold terms it appears to be the most tyrannous
type of determinism in which human volition is reduced to nullity and all the psychological factors
motivating conduct are declared irrelevant to the understanding of a human being in a particular human
situation.
Frank Thakurdas’ contention relates to the thesis of the ‘prologue’. Far from demonstrating it, the
play actually repudiates it, and therefore in a sense the prologue is a trifle redundant. However, he feels
that it does not interfere with the enjoyment of this beautifully structured play; a triumph of craftsmanship
in which the balance is so evenly held as to be deceptive. According to the prologue, Rakesh would have
us believe that Mahendranath —a feckless individual is either a hero with a thousand faces or a faceless
self, in whose shoes any one of the equally faceless persons can step in and behave identically; or in the
shoes of his three alter egos, or as his wife imagined him, and find ourselves comfortable, behaving in an
identical manner as the situation commands. We know that functional characters are analogous to some
basic types. It is she and not her weak husband who has generated the morally suffocating atmosphere at
home. She is the cause of the malaise in the domestic scene, driving her sensitive children, each in his or
her own way, to a rebellious mood and conduct.
There is a subtly drawn parallel between the disillusionment of the eldest daughter who married in
haste to escape the clogging atmosphere at home, and her mother’s disillusionment which is the constant
refrain of the play. Here is a sharply drawn character of a woman, wishing to live a class above her own, a
domineering type who never really loved her husband, who thrived on his weak moral nature, tortured
and deserted him and who, in desperation, beat and bullied to win her love which he realized he never
had. Her highly intelligent and sensitive children see through her deceptions, and prevention’s, the
unsuccessful camouflage with which she wishes to cover the moral defiance. In the final idiosyncrasies of
her restless self is a scene which is a brilliant ‘tour de force’ of economy in dialogue. She accuses Juneja
for her husband’s failure and very nearly convinces the audience till he turns the search light on her grand
illusion and her fruitless attempt to realize them.
This exposure has a shattering effect on her, as he holds up the mirror to her and ruthlessly tears the
veil of self-deception and holds her responsible for the painful domestic scene:
Fourth Man-You’ve made him believe that despite the circumstances, he has no other
way of life open to him, no other solution except to remain with you and haven’t you
done everything to ensure that if nothing else, you should at least be able to hold this
wretched pawn in your hand? (p. 17)
Savitri’s desperate attitude when she is exposed is seen in what she says:
There is no need for him to come and live in this house. And I too. I’ve absolutely no need for this
pawn as you say, this man who neither moves ahead himself nor permits anyone else to do so. (p. 17)
But this attack can be repudiated in the sense that the searchlight falls on the wife and the story is wound
round her and becomes important, only because Mahendranath is in the background throughout. Savitri’s
role in the play would not have been so important had she not reacted in different ways to everything
Mahendranath was upholding. Thus one need not agree with Thakurdas that the thesis of the prologue is
repudiated in the play.
The woman’s seaiyh for a complete man while trying to keep her family from disintegrating, forms
the theme of the play. For Rakesh, the central character is incidental, ‘situations’ converging round any
character are bound to place that person in the limelight. The play is the story of how much of a lost soul
a woman could come to be, who while having a passion for possessing any soul that crosses her way, has
also the knack of either scaring it away or of suffocating it to a state of coma in her effort to possess it.
Developed thus, the play turns out to be a pointed impeachment of a rare human type than a rounded
indictment of a universal social phenomenon. That a play such as this has a right to social attention cannot
be denied, but that it also possesses a social purpose is open to question. Portraying a woman as a curse
rather than as a problem to herself and to all around her, the play, one is inclined to feel could be more
appropriately called ‘A Doomed woman i n search of He 11’.
The play portrays a woman who is the sole economic source of the family. For twenty years she has
been trying to hold on to any man, who she thought had masculine perfections. But it resulted only in
torture and humiliation and dehumanized her self and her small domestic set up, driving them to mental
and moral decomposition. Her unsuccessful husband Mahendranath has been turned into a writhing worm
and her son Ashok into a hissing reptile. The elder daughter elopes with Manoj, who was one of Savitri’s
ex-boyfriends, and the younger daughter Kinny exhibits signs of promiscuous precocity.
Savitri, however chooses to go ahead with her exploration of the possibilities of masculine
perfection, which brings on the scene, her boss Singhania and her old friend Jagmohan, both of whom
indicate their readiness to reciprocate her advances and to accept her favors if, the cost of what they get is
well within reason.
The device of five divergent roles for one single person seemed evidently to have been meant by
Rakesh, as both a philosophical symbolism and a theatrical novelty designed to bring added depth and
distinc-tiveness to the play. But the flimsy theory advanced frivolously by Savitri of their being split
personalities in masculine form around her is exploited in no uncertain terms by Juneja, who having been
given the last say in this matter by the writer, Fittingly retorted that all those who had happened to come
into her life were full-fledged persons having their own diverse peculiarities and what made her see them
as fractioned entities was but a figment of her own diseased imagination. The philosophical symbolism
having thus been smashed by the author himself, what remained of it was more or less a gimmick.
Whether five divergent persons in these five roles would not inject greater vitality into the play, is a
matter that only an actual experiment can decide.
According to Verma, this play is capable of providing immense sadistic thrill to those who crave for
it. Savitri stripped of all her matriarchal sentiments and thrown to universal contempt, reminds one of the
disgraced criminal whose naked public execution to vast jeering used to be sportive occasions.
The play thus portrays the family of Savitri - Mahendranath as one in which the importance of individuals
has not been considered at all. Savitri is considered important as long as she provides the means for the
family to survive. All her other relationships were not accepted in an Indian society and so like Nora in A
Doll’s House, who is in search of some sanctuary, in Half-way House whether it is Mahendranath
turning to Juneja or it is Savitri to one of her admired ones, it is the self-same phenomena-the soul’s
search for a sanctuary. These sources, whoever or whatever they may be, are bound to be dearer to the
individual concerned than anything or anybody in the family. The situation can only add to the existing
tensions which will make the need for a sanctuary all the more imperious. The vicious circle runs on. At
certain levels, the level particularly to which this play belongs, the situation of crisis originates from and
is made more vicious by the break-down of marriage. This is explicable not only in case of Savitri-
Mahendranath but even in the marriage of Binni and Manoj, which is almost on the verge of breakdown
as Binni says:
Older girl : That the longer two people live together the more estranged they become from one
another.
Woman : Is that how you both feel.
Old Girl : Well at least’l do.
Woman : Then there must be a reason.
Older girl : What reason.... a cup of tea split from his hand or a short delay when he returns from
work?
 These little things are not really reasons, they become reasons. A strong sort of feeling mounts, up
within me and spreads little poison through my whole being.... Everything 1 touch or see or hear becomes
distorted and 1 stand helpless and fearful under the spell of a destructive fate. But Mama. I don’t know
why...... I just r-n’t see why? It happens unasked, unforeseen, it tortures me till I think I’m going mad.
(pp.3-4)
This breakdown is significantly related to the emancipation of woman. In this play Savitri is the
principal figure in the breakdown in a way. She appears to be’ the principal accused. The point, the
dramatist is trying to make is that it is not the individual who is responsible for the situation, for the
individual would have made the same choice, no matter what, regardless of the situation. Any choice
anyone makes has a certain irony in it, for things turn out the same regardless of the choice and this is
how Savitri gets herself entangled in this kind of a situation.
What makes for the tragedy in the play is that it is always the innocents that suffer the most Like
Binni who is frustrated, the other children also suffer in different ways. The boy for whom the mother is
trying to fix him in a job is frustrated at her actions. When the mother invites her boss Singhania home, he
says,
Boy : Why do you have to call people who make us feel even smaller than we actually are.
Woman : What do you mean?
Boy : For the glamour of it all an intellectual, a man with a salary of five thousand a chief
Commissioner, whenever you’ve invited anyone, it hasn’t been for the person him
self but....because of his name, his salary, his position, (p.9)
It is the outrageous burst of an adolescent who is not able to reconcile to the fact that a woman
belonging to a middle class family with the sole responsibility of her family on her shoulders tries to keep
contacts with men in higher positions, so that one day they would be of some use to her. She tells him the
reason as to why she does so :
Woman : If I try and keep up contacts with certain people, it’s not for my sake, but for all of
you. The burden of the house is so great that I need someone to share it with me, I
can’t manage it alone. Your father lost all the money and has been idle ever since.
You, far from doing something on your own, even consider my efforts to help you, an
insult. If no one else is bothered, why should I alone go on ? Why should not I enjoy
life ? If I did that you wouldn’t feel small would you ? (P. 9)
The younger girl suffers in a very different way. In this strange household she feels very insecure,
i>e one to care for her, to stand by her in times of need. Her disgust about this house can be summed in
these I ines when she says.
Young girl : Lumps of clay ! All of you are lumps of clay ! (p.14).
That Savitri represents the predicament of the new woman becomes clear in her encounter with
Juneja towards the end of the play where the character of Savitri, her relationships, her problems, her
attitude, her frustration in the half-way house are unveiled. A halfway in which she tries to find
wholeness, a completeness in an incomplete thing. Juneja begins by saying that Mahendranath is not a
free man. He is in a trap.
Fourth Man : And I say, that you have him in a trap...he’s become incapable of doing anything for
himself.
Woman : When was he ever capable of doing nanything? (p. 14)
The character of Mahendranath is revealed through a discussion about him between Savitri and
Juneja. She feels that Mahendranath is devoid of any strength of character and she does not like the idea
of her husband being a parasite on Juneja. Her attempt to change him and make him a man was always
bullied by his friend. She accuses Juneja of making him a puppet. Juneja retorts.
 He’s not a puppet nor anything else you might call him. He has only one defect..... he is the same as
every man. (p. 15)
Juneja feels that Savitri would not have been happy if she had married any other man, because the
meaning of life to her is how many different things she can have and enjoy at the same time, because one
man could not have given her complete satisfaction, whether it was Mahendra, Shivjeet, Jagmohan,
Juneja or even Manoj who married Binni. Savitri, in a frustrated tone, screams:
Haven’t I said that’s enough ! All of you, every one of you.... all alike, exactly the same. Different
masks, but the face ? The same wretched face .....every single one of you. (p.15)
The play ends with Mahendranath coming back home and the problem of the family remains un-
solved. Savitri and Mahendranath living in the same hell again reveals a great truth of contemporary life.
The experience of contemporary life within the universe, of the present discourse is the experience of
finding oneself caught in a cleft anchor, which is an experience of agony and helplessness. Some like
Mahendranath are so much in love with the idea of the anchor that they would rather suffer the eternal
agony than let the cleft anchor split all along the length and be free. Others like Savitri only seek to shift
from one cleft to another cleft anchor though they may not realize the significance of their moves till the
operation is complete. The tragedy all the time is not that the anchor is cleft, but that somewhere at some
point it is still joined, that is the tragedy in Half-way House.
The playwright has seized from life a general and larger truth which is expressed in the play. Cer-
tainly the concern of the playwright as an artist is not with propagation of truths, sociological or moral.
His concern is with the form which he has, which he must give to the truth he has seized from life. He
tries to transform the experience of truth into an experience of beauty which is a joy in itself both to the
one who creates and the one who contemplates. But the experience of beauty is, in the last analysis, the
experience of the contemplation of form. Hence the supreme concern of the artist with form. Rakesh too
has been concerned with the form in no small way. His idea of a single person appearing in four different
roles, the use of prologue, and certain other features are significant to the total form which he gave to the
experience that is expressed through the play.
The structure of the play can be experienced in parts only. It has all the basic ingredients of modern
drama. It is part existentialist, in the sense that there is no exit as all the claustrophobic conflicts remain
unresolved. It is also Brechtian, in the sense that people, though apolitical, prey upon each others
problems and inadequacies precisely to highlight their own—an inevitable link in the process of
alienation. According toJ.D. Sethi, the play,
is doubly Ibsenian in that people cannot survive without illusions and that the apparently insane
babbling of perfectly sane persons is the human condition of hidden fears and fantasies. A lone
shadow of O ‘MeilPs despair falls on the whole setting—the room walls, furniture, the books etc. all
suffocatingly distanced from their masters. There is also an all pervading Miller’s sense of decay
without disillusion and revolt. Of course all these aspects are found only in parts and patches, linked
through the Indian family’s age old conflicts between bondage and freedom, between small hopes
and gigantic - pretensions, between self-doing and the masquerade of sacrifice.
The language of the play can be viewed from different aspects. First, it is simple and yet so telling
that it could come only from a master craftsman. The play is an uninhibited expression of fierce realism
and, again, unlike the plays that are built on powerful dialogue, it suffers from no riot of words or colours.
There are no faded cliche’s, no determinism, no ugly introspection through an interior monologue, no
psychic oddities and fallacies etc. which have crowded out drama from modern plays. The argumentative
ratiocination, the exposure technique, which were present in One Day in Ashadha and The Great Swans
of the Waves are also present here but reduced admittedly to work -a-day language. The admired
“stripping” of Savitri by Juneja is a speech which speaks too much. Rakesh the sincere artist that he was,
admitted that the denouement should have been felt in the body of the play. The play through its language
can be seen as a protest against anonymity imposed on human beings after the Industrial Revolution. An
incident can be quoted from Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Prince Andre-tells Pierre in War and Peace Pierre
you must be something. “Yes 1 know but that ?” which shows that there is depreciation and irony about
the value of being something,, itself.
Such depreciation and irony are impossible for Savitri and millions like her who are being dumped
in astronomical numbers on the historical scene. They all want to be “something”. To use a hoary vein
from sociology they have become outer directed from being “inner directed”. Traditional and parent
inspired controls are gone. All of them hunt for paradigm recognition and approval by the “models”
which is the chief source of direction.
It is merely money or security that Savitri desires. It is a certain style of life, a certain ineffable
distinction which will lift her above the grey mass. She hopes to attain this by merging the world of
culture (Manoj) and of style (Jagmohan). It is Rakesh’s insistence on this craving, this distinctive anxiety
as a psychological lever, that lifts this play from the ordinary and makes it stand up as a “modern drama”.
Savitri is not searching for a complete man. Her search is for a touchstone which will confer identity on
her.
The play is a hunt for a paradigm in another sense. It marks a stage in Rakesh’s frantic search for a
language of ‘being’ rather than “knowing”— a language which will create “is-ness” rather than a
language which will rationally describe or justify. His dramatic idiom in this play has shed off a lot more
of its earlier ornamental quality and literary artificiality, and has become more direct, incisive and
economical.
The other aspect of language that we find in this play is that of incomplete utterances in the
dialogues between the woman and the four male characters. The incomplete utterances and the ways in
which they are uttered throw light on the interaction process, reject and reinforce the nature of social
relationships among the male and female characters and function as a means of expressing subtle nuances
of meaning, attitudes and feelings. Rakesh has exploited the potentiality of the process of incomplete
utterance to great advantage in literary communication and depiction of character.
Rakesh, by a dramatic exploitation of this technique and also by giving one person four roles has
been able to handle the major counterparts of the theme. True to life, the characters are seldom all of a
piece, they are the broken images of a decomposing society.
Thus Half-Way House will be cited for years to come as the play which not only marked a dramatic
breach with the past, but also ushered in a neo-classical phase in Indian drama if one agrees with Edmund
Wilson’s definition of classicism:
In the domain of politics and morals a preoccupation with society as a whole and in art an ideal of
objectivity.
 AADHE-ADHURE: A COMMENT
by
R.L. Nigam
Mohan Rakesh’sAadhe-adhwe is a highly significant play, sociologically. Apparently it is the story
of a particular family and turns on a limited experience of that family. But Rakesh has been able to merge
it into a larger experience.
In its particularity, Adhe-adhure is the story of a particular family set on a downward path, currently
facing a threat of total disintegration. The family has been held together for so long by the unaided
labours of the lady of the house. Savitri, wedded to a husband who is apparently a stupendous
nincompoop. She has been the sole breadwinner for this family of five. At the beginning of the play so
nearly full is our sympathy for her that even if she should, at times, appear a little too important and
peevish, one is willing to understand her impatience and irritations as a natural consequence of the
stresses and strains accumulated over the years. She manages to convey the impression that her life is a
curse, and that her husband, Mahendranath is the curse of her life, though others of the family had played
their own contributory roles. There are, indeed, men—husbands in particular—who are callous, lethargic,
spineless, parasites rather than independent organisms. Yet, the) do have their human moments and some
little human qualities for which they are still recognised as human beings. Mahendranath, as Savitri
regards him, is not even a human being. At the best he is a stinking lump of flesh. One also gathers the
impression that this stinking lump of flesh would turn out to be a quite respectable creature if he had a
name, a status and a comparable bank-balance. But being what he is and more particularly what he is not.
he is seen to spell the hell that is Savitri’s life. At long last, she decides to get out of this hell, leaving
others to stew in their own juice. She happens to bean old flame of Jagmohan who, almost providentially,
arrives on the scene at the appropriate moment. To him she turns for shelter and relief. But the wary
gallant unceremoniously puts out the flame, and Savitri is back in her hell. Mahendranath who too had
left, this time apparently not to return, also stumbles in, unable to keep himself away from her whom he
loves, perhaps, in spite of himself. The hell stands eternal, inviolate. All must burn in it, eternally, the
innocents and the not -so-innocent alike.
This in very broad features is the story of the Savitri-Mahendranath family. At the story of a particu-
lar, isolated family it would seem to be so much fuss about nothing in particular. For at the end of the play
we are where we were at the beginning, though things may well have been different. Savitri could have
any moment stepped out, with or without the children, and started her own life anew. Alternatively,
Mahendranath could have been prevailed upon by his friend Juneja to stay away from the ‘hell’. Taking it
as a usual naturalistic play we can certainly have interminable discussion as to who is responsible for the
‘hell’, Savitri or Mahendranath. Either can be shown to be ‘more sinned against than sinning’. All this
would be interesting, but not significant enough to justify the pains that the author has taken or the
material or devices he has used. Some of these latter have been denounced by some commentators as
mere ‘theatrical gimmickry’. Yet, gimmickry they are not, though 1 have my own objections to some of
them. At the movement 1 only wish to add that precisely through these the particular has been merged
into the general, the larger truth.
The Savitri-Mahendranath family has existed all these twenty years and more primarily as an “eco-
nomic unit’, created in its earlier phase by the inexorable biological urge which too seems to have dried
up since. It has not existed even as a ‘social unit’, though it wouldn’t have made much difference even if
it had. The common and significant point in all the three cases—whether it is a biological, social or
economic unit— is that the individual member is subordinated to a supposedly higher purpose, or is
regarded merely as a means to an end. What could, and would, make a difference is the existence of the
family, as a ‘psychological unit’—a unit which rests on a psychic rapport. In such a unit one person
would be required-would rather like—to understand the feelings, attitudes and needs of the other person.
The path, like that of true love, may still not run smooth. But they will find it possible to be on good terms
with each other for all that. Only in such a pattern of relationships can individual persons be regarded as
ends rather than means. The Savitri-Mahendranath family has been one in which the importance of
individuals has been simply as means or not at all. Naturally, the one who is most regarded as means.
Savitri, feels the relationship to be the most oppressive. The solutions through which she could have,
conceivably, extricated herself from these constrictive relationships, would have meant, in the given
social circumstances, not her salvation but a re-enacting of the hell all over again elsewhere. The one
solution which could have led to joy and personal fulfillment, and was available to her all the time, would
need for its success a regenerated society in whose value system personal fulfillment and interpersonal
responsibilities have been harmonised. In the present social environment that solution would not work.
Savitri’s instinct must have been sound, therefore, which held her back from the course which was all the
time open to her and which she does notcontemplate even at the last most excruciating moment. Here, the
fortunes of the Savitri -Mahendranath family pass from the purely domestic to the social dimensions.
In this larger aspect, the play represents the crisis of the family system consequent upon, among
other things, the virtual breakdown of marriage as an institution. In our fast changing society and in the
face of belated individualion of its members, the values and regards on which family and marriage have
so far rested are fast losing their meaning and significance. Assertion of personal rights and freedoms
within a group-unit (family) which necessarily involves inter-persona! adjustment produces a situation of
crisis because there are no principles to guide these adjustments which, in the present context, cannot be
thought of in terms of surrender of one or the other party. The older lights, whatever they were,’have gone
out, newer ones have not yet appeared. However, the old family—which would certainly not do for
modern man-had something of value which even modern man cannot be without. This ‘something’ was
symbolized in the home which had come to have psychological connotations. The ‘home’ food for a
source of solace and moral stay to the individual in moments of crisis, a sanctuary for the sound against
the slings and arrows whether of fortune or external foes. All that is gone. The family, in the emerging
society, increasingly tends to be a house divided rather than a “home’. The sanctuary now must be sought
out of the family. Whether it is Mahendranath turning to Juneja, or it is Savitri turning to one or other of
her admired ones, it is the self-same phenomenon— the soul “s search for a sanctuary. These sources,
whoever or whatever they may be, are bound to be dearer to the individual concerned than anything or
anybody in the family. The situation can only add to the existing tensions which will make the need for a
sanctuary all the more imperious. The vicious circle runs on. At certain levels, the level particularly to
which Aadhe-adhure belongs, the situation of crisis originates from and is made more vicious by the
breakdown of marriage.
Satyr To Hyperion
Now, this breakdown is significantly related to the emancipation of women. She is the principal
figure in the breakdown, in a way. Significantly, Savitri appears to be the principal accused towards the
end of the play in Aadhe-adhure. The point, however, is not that the woman is more cussed than the man.
The woman is what she is in these situations not by nature but by historical necessity, almost a creature of
the historical situation. The institution of marriage has worked, so far, almost entirely to the advantage of
man. it was, after all. something created by and in a Man’s world. Man has had, if not in principle,
certainly in practice all the freedoms that woman (wife) is claiming today. She has become conscious of
her own individuality, of her own right to freedom and to joys of life. As she is also a career-woman, she
is economically independent and, therefore, more in a position to assert and obtain her rights. She is no
longer confined to the four walls of the house. She moves in the same large world as man moves in, and
meets other men as freely, And there are all sorts to be encountered, the better sorts too. There are men
eminently successful, eminently prosperous, healthier and handsomer, more cultured, more talented, more
magnetic than the man to whom she happens to be tied merely by custom and ceremony, or by signatures
affixed to a piece of paper in a fit of romantic idealism. Soon, too soon, the realities of (married) life
dawn, and the romantic idealism and mystic trance fade into the light of common day. She begins to rate
her man not by what he is, but by what he is not, and by what others are. In this rating he is bound to go
down, ‘a satyr to Hyperion’! The situation would have been happier if she could leave the ‘satyr’ for her
‘Hyperion”. She could have, then, either lived happily ever after—which is most doubtful—or would
have discovered before long that familiarity soon turns even ‘Hyperion into a ‘satyr’. This latter
realisation would help to break the ever recurring illusion and put life on a more even keel. But the social
environment makes that honest course impossible. The woman must, therefore, retain her “satyr” as long
as possible, to keep her social face, turning elsewhere for peace of mind and inmost joys. If this should
involve also an assertion of a right to promiscuity within \vedlock,’she is not to feel any more embar-
rassed than man has felt or does. In the environment so created ‘each for himself or herself will be the
ruling ethic. In the recurring crises resulting from this situation man can be the greater sufferer even as
woman has been the exclusive sufferer in the past, exceptions notwithstanding. It is the sins of his
forbears being visited on him. and as surely the sins of the present ones will be visited on their children.
We can see this already happening in the case of the three children of the Savilri-Mahendranath family in
Aadhe-adhure. What makes for the tragedy is that it is always the innocents. that suffer the most.
22-year Long Hell
That Savitri represents the predicament of this rising new woman becomes clear in her encounter
with Juneja towards the end of the play. The twenty-two year long hell she paints her life with
Mahendranath to have been turns outdo be a very different story. Within less than two years of her
marriage, Savitri has seen the gilt wear off the gingerbread. Mahendranath had appeared to her already
then the despicable creature that he is to her today. The remaining twenty years were spent not in trying
any interpersonal adjustments as she would have us believe, but in search of escape routes and a
sanctuary. She took it all as a particular failure, the failure of Mahendranath, which could be explained
away by his ugly traits. A man free from those blemishes would have made the marriage a success. The
fact, however, is that Savitri had aspirations towards a life which Mahendranath could not give her. but
which no man could possibly have given her—a point which Juneja tries to drive home to her so
forcefully. For, any man who had his lot cast with her would have suffered the same denigration and
humiliation as Mahendranath had suffered. Name, fame, status, wealth, luxury and all that which
Mahendranath could not command, might, perhaps, have been realised for her by anyone on whom Savitri
was willing to rely. But she would not have remained satisfied for long. A sense of loneliness and
hankering would have invaded her sooner rather than later. What thus appears to be the failure of a
particular man or woman is in fact a disguise for the inevitable failure of most modern marriages.
Marriage in the present milieu is bound to stale, if not tomorrow, the day after. The indifference, if not
contempt, bred by familiarity is accentuated by opportunity. It is conceivable that Savitri and
Mahendranath might have tried to understand each other and to re-establish the psychic rapport sundered
by familiarity, had the opportunities not been there at hand for Savitri, beginning with Juneja and ending
with her unhappy experience with Jagmohan. A situation which needs to be faced jointly by both is
regarded from the very beginning in terms of man vs woman, husband vs. wife. The consequence is that
neither learns anything from experience and, therefore, can only repeat the unhappy experience.
Cleft Stick
In exceptional cases, however, a particular and personal solution may be found. But that would take us
nowhere. The problem is generic and not specific. With unerring instinct Rakesh has disallowed that
personal, particular solution to Savitri because that would have only meant her repeating the experience.
This point is made obvious, again, in Savitri’s encounter with Juneja. She admits to the discovery that all
these men are. after all, not very different from each other. They are as stunted in mind and spirit as the
dwarfish Mahendranath. Savitri’s going back to her ‘hell’ is not materially different from what life would
have meant to her in course of time had Juneja twenty years ago or Jagmohan at this late moment played
the game. Therein lies a great truth of contemporary life. The experience of contemporary life within the
universe of the present discourse is the experience of finding oneself caught in a cleft stick, which is an
experience of agony and helplessness. Some, like Mahendranath, are so much in love with the stick or
with the idea of the stick that they would rather suffer the eternal agony than let the stick split all along
the length and be free. Others, like Savitri, only seek to shift from one cleft stick to another cleft stick
though they may not realise the significance of their moves till the operation is complete. The tragedy all
the time is not that the stick is cleft, but that somewhere, at some point it is still joined. That is the tragedy
in Aadhe-adhure.
Laboured Prologue
It has already been pointed out that the play in its intense particularity, as the dream of a particular
family, does not amount to much. It appears to be, then, an individual failure and individual tragedy. But
such an estimate would be a misreading of the play. The evident pains that the playwright has taken
would go against any attempt to so circumscribe the play. The playwright seems to have seized from life a
more general and larger truth which he has embodied in the play. Certainly, the concern of the playwright
as an artist is not with the propagation of truth, sociological or moral. His concern is with the form which
he must give to the truth he has seized from life. He tries to transform the experience of truth into an
experience of beauty which is a joy in itself both to the one who creates and to the one who contemplates.
But the experience of beauty is, in the last analysis, the experience of the contemplation of form. Hence
the supreme concern of the artist with the form. Rakesh too has been concerned with the form in no small
way. His idea of a single person appearing in four different roles, the use of a Prologue and certain other
features are significant to the total form which he gives to the experience that is expressed through the
play. This is not to say that his method is ideal or that his execution of these has been perfect.
Theprologue is rather laboured or apologetic. It is diffuse in character where the play is built on the
principle of concentration. Perhaps, a Shavian type of preface may have been more useful and more to the
point than a few enigmatic remarks in the Prologue. The use of a single person for four different roles is
also open to objection if the words of the Prologue are taken too literally. The statement in the Prologue
that nothing in the play, including the play itself, is definite, and that anyone from the play could change
places with anyone in the audience or society at large is not strictly true. For, evidently, not to speak of
the audience or society at large, the places cannot be changed among the limited set of the play itself. The
point, however, as it occurs to me, is that the experience from which the play arises and which it
embodies could be anyone’s whatever his character and disposition. In other words, the emphasis is on
the human situation which has been projected through a set of human beings and not so much on those
human agents themselves, however interesting individually each one of them might be. It is a mark of the
greatness of the playwright that he allows his own notions about the individual characters and some of his
statements in the Prologue to be forgotten almost as soon as they are made. Once the prologue merges in
the play, nothing but the logic of the play’s own development is allowed to rule. The play as an individual
piece of work does not suffer thereby, as is sometimes supposed, but gains in depth and dimension.
Further, the play acquires poignancy through certain other formal aspects in which I should include
some of the feature of style. The directness of dialogue has been generally appreciated. The feature I wish
to emphasise, is the use of a subtle irony. The irony is so much more effective because it is unobtrusive.
The most infamous thing about Mahendranath has been his utter spinelessness, his total dependence on
others. Savitri detests him the most for this. She, on the other hand, has stood all on her own. The end of
the play shows the positions reversed. The end of the play shows both of them back in their ‘hell’.
Whatever the interpretation of the ending of the play, the fact stands out that at this crucial moment
Mahendranath has acted on his own, against the advice and insistence of Juneja whose marionette he is
supposed to have been all these years. At the other end the situation is brought about by Savitri’s failure
to act on her own. She cannot carry out her decision because Jagmohan fails her, so completely has she
been depending on him, on external aid. The unspoken conclusion is that nothing avails against the cleft
stick !
A Lot In A Name
 Not the least significant in this respect is the name Savitri given to the heroine. There was a Savitri,
the Savitri of tradition, who had fought the Lord of Death to have the life of her husband restored. Here is
a Savitri, our contemporary, who can desire nothing better than the removal of her husband from, at least,
the scene of her life. The irony is not against Savitri, the contemporary woman, for the play is not a study
of character but of situation. The Savitri of yore found her life meaningless without her husband ; our
Savitri finds her life meaningless (to say the least) with her husband. That suggests how tradition has
become effete and exhausted. The tragic consequences of living with an exhausted tradition in an age
which calls for other ways and values—that is the meaning of the play. Aadhe-Adhure.
Now, a word about the pessimism supposedly underlying the play. The play is not entirely
pessimistic in spite of its very depressing atmosphere. It is doubtful if Rakesh had intended the play to
communicate pessimism unmitigated, eternal. To announce to men that they are living in a hell which is
absolute and eternal may be great news, but it is not great drama. Even if he had so intended, the truth of
life has got the better of him once again. If the tragic experience embodied in the play arises from the
persistence with an exhausted tradition, the implication is not, then, on the inevitability of’ hell’ but on a
challenge to the moral and intellectual resources of men involved in the contemporary human situation.
That the challenge is very great is not the same thing as to say that man has come to the end of his
intellectual and moral resources. Another bit of evidence is the title of the play itself. What is the
significance of’Half-incomplete’ as the title of the play ? The only reference to the fragmented
personalities occurs in highly exasperated utterances of Savitri. To begin with she finds that
Mahendranath is an incomplete being while others have their complete personalities. Later she discovers
that all are alike. To leave the matter there would be for the author to identify himself with Savitri in her
less sober moments. This is not warranted. Another, perhaps the more reasonable, way of looking at the
matter is to take the title as the playwright’s criticism of life in a capsule. This criticism amounts to pin-
pointing the fact that the tragedy of contemporary life results from the failure of men (including women)
to measure up to the challenge of contemporary life. This failure is due precisely to the inadequacies of
fragmented personalities with which they face the problems calling for the resources of integrated
personalities. But those living with the exhausted traditions of the contemporary world cannot have
integrated personalities. The positive insinuation is, again, that the tradition must be reexamined, renewed
if possible, given up for a new one if necessary. This is not pessimism.
 NOTE

B.A. (Hons) English I Year Paper II

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ACADEMIC SESSION 2012-13

1. Explain with reference to the context and give critical comments.

(a) Very well, then, From now on I’ll only bother about myself.... You look after your own lives,
(silence) I don’t have many years to live now. But however few they be, I’ll no longer spend
them like this, I have done my utmost. It’s the end now as far as I’m concerned.... it really is
the end.
(b) Haven’t I said that’s enough! All of you..... every one of you ..... all alike! Exactly the same.
Different masks, but the face.....? The same wretched face..... every single one of you!
(c) Lump of clay ! All of you..... lumps of clay !
2. Halfway - House is the tragedy of a middle class family : Discuss the play in the light of this
statement.
3. “The play probes the blinding ambitions of a middle class housewife, utterly mindless of what her
ambitions and the means she adopts to fulfill them would do to her conjugal bliss or their shattering
effect on her growing children”. Do you think that Savitri is responsible for the tragic situation in
the play? Give reasons for your answer.
4. Comment on the significance of the play’s title : Halfway House?