When the image says- “Her illness was unfortunate. But because of it, she got the best of everything.”

(i) What is the nature of Manjula’s reply?

(ii) How can it be related to what follows in the play?

(i) Manjula was highly defensive on her part after hearing “Her illness was unfortunate. But because of it, she got the best of everything.” She retaliated back by saying that Malini never demanded for anything. However, we can trace a stench of insecurity in Manjula as she fumbles for words and ends up defining her sister as “the apple of their eye”. She understood that her sister needed to be the priority to her parents but somehow couldn’t accept it fully. She even saw how she was “hungry for life” despite her limited resources and wondered whether she would have prospered had she received all that love and attention. Somewhere, Manjula is caught up in a comparative analysis between Malini and herself.

(ii) While answering to the questions posed at Manjula, she constantly reveals the noble personality of her sister while trying to collate herself with her and an attempt to conceal her diffidence simultaneously. When Manjula realized her inferiority to her sister, she evoked a defensive tone and said, “I did write a bestseller”. She understood her sister’s constraints and the attention meted out to her. But she had to convince herself that she actually understood the situation. The voice of the image, if taken as the author’s spokesperson, made a comment which made the author blurt out the question that had left her perturbed, “Are you implying that I ‘used’ her?” However, she quickly dissembled her subconscious confessions and narrated how she too had been a sufferer. She counterfeited the negative portrayal of her character as the need for a villain counterpart. Manjula feels that it was because of her illness that made her gain people’s attention, sympathy and even from her husband, Pramod Murty, to whom she was very close.