This is a ppt on lights out play by Manjula Padmanabhan

1. Social Significance
and Relevance of
“Lights Out”
Presented By :
Suresh.D

2. Theme of the story:
The Theme of the story is based on a real
life incident that took place in 1982 at
Santa Cruz Bombay where a women was
“gang raped” Infront of a group of
neighborhood and people did nothing
but watch the crime
The play was first published in 1986
based on the above incident where the
POV of the people watching the act was
portrayed

3. Key points
Feminism
Middle Class Psychology
Religious Beliefs
Exploitation upon the Poor
Role of Media
Slacktivism

4. FEMINISM
Women were always looked inferior to men
and treated as a subordinate to men
• Leela’s request of calling the police was
ignored directly or indirectly throughout
the story
• Surinder raising his voice while speaking
to Naina to suppress her views and
showing his dominance

5. Middle class Psychology
• A very common phrase we have been hearing
throughout the story “WHY SHOULD WE”, people
often refuses to get involved where they might
encounter trouble
• They always wanna be audience, in fact the very
reason Mohan came to Bhaskar’s house was to
watch what's going on and for not taking any
action .
• Also, Being judgmental and always reaching to
conclusion without any proof or evidence, Bhaskar
and Mohan were talking about the rape scene to be
a religious ceremony and later, the victim being a
whore without any knowledge of the victim

6. Religious
Beliefs
• Everything is fair in the name of
Religion
• Religious Ceremony were pretty common a few-10
decades ago, There were many kinds of religious and
everyone had their own god and own way of
worshiping
• In Act 2 Mohan and Bhaskar assumes the crime to
be some sort of religious ritual, henceforth Mohan
did not call her a victim anymore he termed her as
some kind of offering/initiate And started calling the
rapist as priests and they are performing some kind
of exorcism
• This shows that people we so immersed into
Religious that they could not even differentiate a

7. Exploitation upon the
poor
From Bhaskar’s description of the victim, the
victim must be a poor women and in Act2 Mohan
says,
With , this line its clear that Rich and Poor People
lived in 2 different worlds, if you have money you
have, respect fame, etc., and if you are poor you
don’t even have the most basic right of freedom

8. Role of Media
There was a brief mention about the Media
at the end of ACT 3 where Mohan suggest
that we should film the crime and give it to
the media and we will hence make a lot of
money
This point again criticizes media that it is
just interested in some crazy headlines that
will make their ratings go high and not
playing their role properly by showing

9. Slacktivism
It means “Being present online and no practical
action”
In a way it is playing the role of Pretends,
When Leela reached her maximum point and
shouted out loud to call the police , Bhaskar
was again pretending to call the police, he had
Nil intention of calling the police
Even in the Final phase of Act 3 Everyone
where just pretending to go and help , they
were bringing knifes, petrol, Acid, steal rods
and stuff if they really wanted to help they
would have done it way sooner

10. CONCLUSION
The whole point of this drama/play is to let people
know that they should not be an audience to the crime,
the crime should not be as big as rape or murder all
the time it can be as small as a bunch of neighborhood
kids throwing rocks at a stray dog/cat or a child age
11-12 working at a restaurant(child labor) we should
not turn a blind eye on the incident as a human we
should be capable of knowing what is right and wrong
and taking the right decision at the right time