— Eunice Ojedele
I found this text very interesting because of the turn it took. When I started reading the text, I tried to predict the way it will end in my head, thinking that maybe due to the quarrels that both wives constantly had, that they will end up killing themselves or something of that sort, but that wasn’t the case. This for me is why the text really interested me, because due to the shift it took, as Dukhiram ends up being the one that killed his wife, the real character of everyone in the household was exposed, especially that of Chidam which added more substance to the text. It gave it a different rhythm. Although I feel like this is what makes this work great, I feel this play is a great work of art for various other reasons too.
Another reason is how it tells a story of what we see going on in the society, and it tells it in a very clear to understand way. Reading the text honestly made me feel bad, because even if I understand that he Chidam was trying to save his brother, probably with the mindset that “Blood is thicker than water”, he shouldn’t have done it at the expense of somebody else’s life which in this text was actually his wife. This text just goes to show me that we should not fully trust anybody at all, because anyone can betray you, and if I had something to say back to the text, it will be that Chandara should have stood up for herself and shouldn’t have taken the blame for something she didn’t do. Now I understand that her silence was still a response, and was probably a way for her to make Chidam feel bad about what he did, I still feel that it made her look weak because everyone that didn’t know the situation looked at her bad. Reading this text just made me think of people in the real world, who have been accused and actually paid the consequences of crimes that they did not commit simply because they were trying to cover up for someone, or they were being set up like Chandara was. This text really just taught me not to trust people and put myself first sometimes.
