Theme of Destitute in Shahid Nadeem’s Plays: Kala Meda Bhais (Black is My Robe) and Dukhini (Woman of Sorrow)

For centuries women have been humiliated being considered as entities instead of human beings. They have been employed as gifts to gratify the personal pursuits and were bartered to quench the lusts under the patriarchy. They are reckoned as a tool to mollify sensual exigencies of the gentry. Asking for their wish or consensus is considered of no use. From childhood to youth they are brain washed that parent’s home is not their home. They are being trained in such a way that they should not consider their parent’s home as their permanent shelter. The same idea is inoculated into their minds when they are married. They are treated as a commodity which can easily be replaced with a more useful commodity when they become useless. Consequently, they are escorted from both sides and become the victim of destitute. As long as they are expedient, they are being oppressed in the name of society and religion. They are maltreated but are not allowed to complain just for the sake of family prestige and respect. A woman’s survival is probable, only when, she is fecund. If she is futile, she is not worth of any sympathy. Shahid Nadeem in his plays Kala Meda Bhais (Black is my Robe) and Dukhini (Woman of Sorrow) has exquisitely rendered the same notion. He, through his characters, has tinted this idea of exploitation of women in a way that it mites the heart and mind of every equitable individual.