SURVIVING THE SHADOWS: HUMANITY IN CRISIS IN MANJULA PADMANABHAN’S LIGHTS OUT

Abstract

Lights Out is a haunting one-act play by Manjula Padmanabhan which in a dramatic way shows how common men react to uncommon violence that is taking place in immediate surroundings. The play has concentrated on a group of upper-middle-class Indians who prefer to stay silent instead of rebelling, showing how survival may turn into a moral sacrifice. This essay is going to examine how the play does not only criticize metropolitan indifference and misogyny, but also the psychological processes and feminist politics of such passivity. Based on the text and the major critical theories supporting this line of thought, this paper suggests that the characters created by Padmanabhan unravel the existence of a severe crisis of human beings in a society where the obsession with fear, denial and privilege take the forefront to act out the instinct of intervention.