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Vijay Tendulkar. Kanyadaan. Gowri Ramnarayan, tr. New Delhi. Oxford University Press. 1996. iv + 70 pages. Rsl45/$8.95. ISBN 0-19-563864-6.
Vijay Tendulkar, a Marathi author of some twentyeight plays written over a period of about forty years, has been known as a social critic of traditional India and has been both admired and denigrated. "Sometimes my plays," he once said, "jolted society out of its stupor and I was punished." The present play, Kanyadaan (literally, "(Jiving Away the Bride"), does not exactly make for exciting reading. The action of this two-act drama, containing five scenes in all, each placed in the same locale in Pune (or Poona), revolves around four main characters: an inept but idealist father, an independent-minded but realist wife, an educated and skeptical son, and a naive but would-be-willing-to-suffer daughter, all belonging to a Brahmin family but all votaries of socialism dedicated...