Seven Steps Around The Fire Analysis

Authority, Subversion and the Telling voices of the Subalterns in Mahesh Dattani’s Seven Steps around the Fire
ABSTRACT: Transgendered occupy a chunk of Indian population. Not only in India but in most of the countries they live like social outcasts. Mahesh Dattani is a playwright who takes up his pen for these wretched of the earth. Seven Steps around the Fire dramatizes the brutal murder of a hijra for her secret marriage with a son of a minister. Dattani delves deep into the problem and snobbish hypocritical face of those in the upper echelon of society is exposed. The first part of this paper highlights on the authority , their politics of hegemony and how the same authority is dismantled and social institution has been subverted. The second …show more content…
He has a penchant for the mean, the ugly, and the unhappy things of life that are too embarrassing to be accepted as facts of life. For instance, ‘On a Muggy Night in Mumbai’ and ‘Do the Needful ‘deal with the life and problems of homosexuality. Tara upholds poignantly the male female ascendancy or gender discriminations. ‘Bravely Fought the Queen’ deals with the stunted lives and troubled relationship bred by dishonesty. ‘Final Solutions’ deal with partitions and suspicions on a generation. In ‘Seven Steps around the Fire,’ Dattani breaks away from these themes and focuses a revealing searchlight on the transgendered hitherto expressed by any …show more content…
They also bless a new married couple with their singing and dancing. It is axiomatic that society which accepts these entertainers, the age-old preserver of a tradition of a social convention, does not allow a hijra marriage. Kamala was burnt to death as she defied the social norms by marrying Subbu, the son of a minister who occupies a higher social hierarchy. The transgendered or the hijras in our society, stand for a life of deprivation, mockery and derision. They lead the life of social outcasts, deprived of the happiness of marriage by society which practices discrimination against them. Dattani subverts the concept of marriage as a social institution. The title of the play is reminiscent of the sacred image of ‘seven circles’ before the sacred fire that makes a marriage complete. The secret marriage between Subbu and Kamla in a temple also involved seven circles around the fire for its fruition. But such marriage between Subbu and a transgendered is sanctioned neither by Subbu’s father nor by society. The playwright seems to question the relevance and validity of this convention in contemporary India. Possibly, he suggests that a marriage is a spiritual union of two true minds beyond the barriers of the body or impediments of physical limitation. In an intense tensed moment, the authority is exposed and dismantled. The dramatist’s investigative emphasis, his introduction of a new woman in