Self- resistance in Dina Mehta’s Getting Away with Murder

Abstract

Dina Mehta is an Indian writer belonging to the Parsi community. Among the Indian writers belonging to the community of Parsi's, Dina Mehta is prominent. Generally, the Parsi novelists who write in English are differentiated into two categories; expatriate writers and stay-at-home writers and Dina Mehta falls into the category of stay-at-home writers. Other Parsi novelists like Firdaus Kanga, Rohinton Mistry, Farrukh Dhondy and Bapsi Sidhwa are included in the list of expatriate novelists. The work of these novelists reflects the life of their community and the history of India. Their works also portray their ethnic identity and relationships like motherhood, intricate baffling relationship of men and women, incest and adultery. Dina Mehta'sGetting Away With Murderdeals with various issues like child abuses, rape, female feticide, and blind superstitious belief that are the hindrance in the development of human development, but this play voices against foeticide, infanticide, rape, inequality, and gender discrimination. This play portrays the independent thinking modern women who work to rise up herself and world around with her conscience thoughts, and harmony. Getting away with murder is one of the three plays in the collection entitled “Body blows- women violence and survival” published by Seagull books, Calcutta in 2000. The play was first performed by Indus International, a socio-cultural group for women at British Council Theatre in Mumbai in 1990. The play seeks to portray the lives of three friends Mallika, Sonali and Raziya who are connected perhaps by the strain of suffering that they undergo in the hands of male hypocritic and dominating human. The private world outside so corrupted that women have to face childhood sexual abuse, differential treatment on the male and the female child, infidelity partners with whom they have an utterly insecure relationship, sexual harassment at workplace and elsewhere, and a disheveled life despite having been educated.