• Sona Chouhan

This paper looks at how Mahesh Dattani’s play On Muggy Night in Mumbai focuses upon the plight of gays and lesbians. It highlights the contrast of social and personal entities and the mounting pressure on individual’s choice. Craving for social acceptance the group of gays confronts psychological trauma and humiliation. This contradiction between the self and the society leads to the identity crisis which has been beautifully dramatized in this play. It highlights the contrast between social behaviour and personal identity. Even some of them consult psychiatrists for curing themselves and even one of these characters goes to the extreme of committing suicide due to societal pressure. Some of the characters later develop escapist tendencies while some of them take refuge in heterosexuality in order to join the main stream of society. Dattani considers that the biased attitude of the society tends to regard its individuals as `things' and not as human beings with hostility towards them. He believes that for every individual, personality is an inseparable part of his self and the loss of this self means distortion of personality and alienation from one's own self that results abnormal. Any society that does not accept human nature is alien to him, and, in a way, distorts and deforms his real nature and converts his self into non-self which may in certain individuals result in abnormal psyche.

Key words: Homosexuals, Heterosexuals, Dilemma, Abnormal Psyche, Humanistic Concern.

" From the Closet to the Open: Mahesh Dattani’s Play On a Muggy Night in Mumbai as a Study of the Plight of the Homosexuals", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.6, Issue 5, page no.362-365, May-2019, Available :http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR1905J55.pdf

" From the Closet to the Open: Mahesh Dattani’s Play On a Muggy Night in Mumbai as a Study of the Plight of the Homosexuals", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org | UGC and issn Approved), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.6, Issue 5, page no. pp362-365, May-2019, Available at : http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR1905J55.pdf