ABSTRACT

Both the radio plays –Seven Steps Around the Fire and Doing the Needful-are concerned with homosexuality and the usual theme of family relationships. First broadcast as Seven Circles Around the Fire by BBC, Radio 4 on January 9, 1999, the play was first performed on stage at the India Habitat Center, New Delhi on July 10, 2004. The play is partly detective in which the wife of a Police Officer solves the mystery of a Hijra who is secretly married to the son of a Minister. The play offers many insights into the lives of Hijras, and their beliefs and customs. In Do the Needful, aired on BBC 4 and staged in Bangalore- Patel, a Gujarati businessman, wants a bride for his son, Alpesh, who is thirty and divorced, while Gowda, a wealthy Mysorean is in search of a husband for his daughter Lata, twenty four and notorious for everyone knows about her foolish passion for a Muslim and a terrorist as well. The two families meet, with much mutual one-upmanship, and many frantic efforts to see that the skeleton in the family cupboards do not pop out. Finally, Alpesh confesses that he is a homosexual, and Lata runs away to join her lover.

Key words: radio plays, homosexuality, family, hijras, terrorist.