মনোজ মিত্রের ‘পাখি’ : মধ্যবিত্ত দাম্পত্যের স্বপন উড়ান / Manoj Mitra’s ‘Pakhi’ : The Dreamlike Flight of Middle-Class Conjugal Life

Abstract

Manoj Mitra’s one-act play Pakhi offers a subtle yet profound exploration of middle-class conjugal life shaped by economic deprivation, emotional restraint, and fragile aspirations. Avoiding overt didacticism, Mitra employs humour, symbolic imagery, and everyday dialogue to reveal the silent negotiations that define a childless, financially strained marriage. This article analyses Pakhi as a dramatic text where comedy functions as a mask for unspoken suffering and deferred desires.

Structured around a single day—the wedding anniversary of Nitish and Shyama—the play juxtaposes Nitish’s impulsive, bohemian idealism with Shyama’s quiet endurance and pragmatic realism. While Nitish openly expresses his dreams and frustrations, Shyama’s longings—particularly her unfulfilled desire for motherhood—remain largely suppressed, emerging only through symbolic gestures and lyrical silences. Central to the play’s imagery is the motif of the ‘two birds on one branch’, an embroidered emblem of conjugal unity that gradually deteriorates, mirroring the erosion of Shyama’s emotional self under the pressures of poverty and social marginalisation.

Yet Pakhi resists a narrative of marital collapse. In reclaiming their anniversary from social expectations and elite indifference, the couple affirms intimacy, dignity, and emotional solidarity. The play ultimately suggests that within the constraints of middle-class hardship, love and mutual recognition can momentarily transcend material insufficiency, enabling a dreamlike flight rooted not in affluence, but in shared human resilience.