Drama and the story of Chandalika

Drama tells a story through dialogue meant to be acted. It asks us to accept a 'make-believe', such as a room on stage with one wall 'missing' so that we can see in. It takes many forms, from tragedy and comedy to the modern soap opera.

Rabindranath Tagore, who won the Nobel Prize in 1913, wrote plays with music, in which character and inner awakening matter most.

'Chandalika' is based on an old Buddhist legend. Ananda, a disciple of the Buddha, asks a chandalika girl (a girl of the 'untouchable' chandal caste) for water. She falls in love with him, and her mother's magic draws him to her, but the Buddha breaks the spell.

Tagore turns this into a drama of a sensitive girl, Prakriti, awakened by Ananda's humanity to her own full worth. Then, hurt by his indifference, she forces the spell on him.

When she sees him degraded by it, she repents. Her mother revokes the spell, and dies. It is a tragedy of awakened self-consciousness that goes too far.