ABSTRACT
The current chapter attempts to read the city space by referring to the impact of urban materiality and the subsequent social metamorphosis on it with reference to the dramatic works of Manjula Padmanabhan. Her plays Lights Out (1986) and Harvest (1997) present a realistic vision of the city by highlighting the city as a social force, an organic identity which remains ambivalent towards human relationships. The storylines of both plays dramatising the true events of a gang rape along with the people’s apathy towards it and the trafficking of human body parts followed by the mechanised living as well as the suffering of bio/medical hazard in two Indian metropolises Bombay and Madras respectively not only depict the harsh reality of city lives, but also chart the civic response towards such incidents. Both plays leave the reader/audience not with a sense of character or plot, but rather with the brief and often contradictory impression which shape the urban experience. The process of urbanisation here denotes the way of dehumanisation that unfolds the façade of metropolis.
