{"id":201485,"date":"2021-12-20T12:00:02","date_gmt":"2021-12-20T12:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=201485"},"modified":"2021-12-15T06:24:38","modified_gmt":"2021-12-15T06:24:38","slug":"slanted-truths-women-characters-in-vijay-tendulkars-plays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/12\/slanted-truths-women-characters-in-vijay-tendulkars-plays\/","title":{"rendered":"Slanted Truths: Women Characters in Vijay Tendulkar\u2019s Plays"},"content":{"rendered":"

12 Dec 2021 – <\/em>Vijay Tendulkar (1928-2008), India\u2019s prolific playwright, wrote over seventy works which include 32 full-length plays, seven one-act and six children plays.(1) Nobel Laureate V.S. Naipaul described him as India\u2019s best playwright. Tendulkar\u2019s plays, though originally written in the author\u2019s native Marathi, have been translated and performed in English. <\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>The philosophy behind Tendulkar\u2019s writing is based upon his perception of society and its values \u2014 his life experiences, and observing what he had seen in others around him: \u201cI did not attempt to simplify matters and issues for the audience, though it would have been easier to do so through such a medium. Sometimes my plays jolted the society and I was punished\u2026I was adamant as it is an old habit with me to do what I am asked not to.\u201d (2)<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>On characterization in his plays, in his Sri Ram Memorial Lecture, The Play is the Thing, he states, \u201cMy characters are not card-board characters; they do not speak my language; rather I do not speak my language through them; they are not my mouth-pieces; but each of them has his or her own separate existence and expression. This is felt more in the original versions of my plays because of the nuances and variations in speech I attribute to my characters.\u201d (3) <\/em><\/p>\n

I had the opportunity to collaborate with Mr. Tendulkar, first as the translator of his play Safar, re-titled The Cyclist, then adapting it for BBC World Service in 1998, and further working towards its publication to which Tendulkar at last minute added another play, his first play in English \u2013His Fifth Woman. \u00a0He wrote that piece in a short period of six weeks while staging his classic, Sakharam Binder in New York.\u00a0 The two plays were published by the Oxford University Press (India) with a new title, \u201cThe Cyclist and His Fifth Woman\u201d in 2006. (4) During this period, trying to understand Tendulkar\u2019s enigmatic oeuvre, I met with him many times while visiting Mumbai.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Vijay Tendulkar (06 January 1928-19 May 2008)<\/p><\/div><\/blockquote>\n

Essentially, Vijay Tendulkar\u2019s multi-faceted work deals with social and moral questions in a male-dominated Indian society. The basic urge to write for him has been to express his concerns vis. a vis<\/em>. the social reality surrounding him. Silence! The court is in Session<\/em> (1968), Sakharam Binder<\/em> (1972), Ghasiram Kotwal<\/em> (1972), Baby<\/em> (1975), Kamala<\/em>(1982) , Kanyadaan<\/em> (1983), Safar\/ The Cyclist <\/em>(1999), and His Fifth Woman (2005)<\/em> are some of his significant plays. (5)<\/p>\n

Women characters have a central role in these writings, the lives of the characters determined by their location in a particular social space, mainly the lower strata of society and urban middle class. You see these characters as a housewife, a teacher, a mistress, a daughter, a film extra, a bonded slave, a kept woman, a servant etc. It is not just their social place but the broad spectrum of emotions which they bring to these characters \u2013 \u201cfrom the unbelievably gullible to the clever, from the malleable to the stubborn, from the conservative to the rebellious, from the self-sacrificing to the grasping\u201d. (6)<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>Violence and Self- Esteem <\/strong><\/p>\n

Psychological assault on self-esteem is a theme that underscores female protagonists in his work. Women characters are generally isolated and emotionally detached \u2014 insecure, solitary, and often deprived of their family connections or parental guidance.<\/p>\n

In Silence! the Court is in Session,<\/em> the lively school teacher Leela Benare who loves to recite fanciful poetry and participate in community theatre, realises that staging of the play-rehearsal as a mock-trial is in fact aimed at humiliating her. The trial accuses Benare of an illicit relationship she has had with a colleague Professor Damle and the illegitimate child she is carrying. \u00a0Benare\u2019s reaction is immediate. She recoils into herself wanting to shelter her privacy (and right as an individual). Responding to the court\u2019s charade, there is a stern silence on her part. In one crucial scene towards the end, Benare is unable to restrain herself from expressing her innermost thoughts.<\/p>\n

Tendulkar for this scene has the rest of the cast \u2018freeze\u2019 in their positions and lets Benare speak her private thoughts. It\u2019s not clear whether she is addressing the court in actuality, or because of having been silenced by the court, the long soliloquy is an imagined conversation with her own self \u2013 her only way to defend. Benare has been informed by the court that because of her \u2018immoral\u2019 behaviour, she is being dismissed from her teaching position. Her lone response:<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026Milord, life is a very dreadful thing. Life must be hanged. Na Jeevan jeevanamarhati . \u2018Life is not worthy of life\u2019. Hold an inquiry against life. Sack it from its job! But why? Why? Was I slack in my work? O\u2019 I just put my whole life into working with the children. I loved it! I taught them well! I knew that life is no straightforward thing. People can be cruel. <\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>Even your flesh and blood don\u2019t want to understand you. Only one thing in life is important \u2013the body! You may deny it, but it is true. Emotion is something people talk about with sentiment. It was obvious to me. I was living through it. It was burning through me. But \u2013do you know? \u2014 I didn\u2019t teach any of this to those young tender, young souls. I swallowed that poison, but didn\u2019t even let a drop of it touch them! I taught them beauty. I taught them purity. I cried inside, and I made them, and I made them laugh. I was cracking up with despair, and I taught them hope. For what sin are they robbing me of my job, my only comfort? My private life is my own business. I\u2019ll decide what to do with myself; everyone should be able to! I\u2019ll decide what to do with myself; everyone should be able to! That can\u2019t be anyone else\u2019s business; understand? Everyone has a bent, a manner, an aim in life. What\u2019s anyone else to do with these? \u2026Again, the body! (screaming) This body is a traitor. This body is a traitor. (she is writhing with pain). I despise this body \u2013and I love it! I hate it \u2013 but \u2013 it\u2019s all you have in the end, is n\u2019t it? It will be there. It will be yours. Where will it go without you? \u00a0And where will you go if you reject it? \u2026\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Tendulkar does not take the easy way out. Even though there is no recourse for Benare to present her side of the story or to expose the duplicity of others playing the judge, lawyer, and court officials, he does not let Benare make a speech of remonstration. Instead he uses this opportunity for her to reveal her emotional trauma and pain.<\/p>\n

I<\/strong>n Kamala,<\/em> Sarita\u2019s self- esteem is threatened when the illiterate bonded-girl that her journalist husband has bought in an auction asks Sarita if she too is a slave in the household, and how much did her owner pay for her? This innocent query triggers in Sarita\u2019s mind a series of questions requiring her to look at her marriage in a new light. The way her husband Jaisingh takes her for granted is not much different from the bonded slave Kamala.<\/p>\n

In conversation with her liberal uncle Kakasaheb, Sarita questions the wisdom of such convention:<\/p>\n

SARITA: \u2026If a man becomes great, why doesn\u2019t he stay a great man? Why does he become a master?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>KAKASAHEB: \u00a0Sarita, the questions you are asking have only one answer. \u00a0Because he\u2019s like that. That\u2019s why he\u2019s man. And that\u2019s why there\u2019s manhood in the world. I too was just like this\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>SARITA: So Sarita, go behind your master like that. It\u2019s your duty to do this \u2013 is that what you\u2019re saying?<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>What is significant about Tendulkar\u2019s two middle class female protagonists, Sarita in Kamala<\/em> and Leela Benare in Silence! the Court is in Session<\/em> is their desire to be recognized as individuals in their own right. Empowerment of Tendulkar\u2019s characters comes from an awareness of the contradictions within, arising from nonfulfilment of their emotional needs and an unyielding social setting which stops them from outright revolt.<\/p>\n

In Silence! the Court is in Session<\/em>, despite the inquisitorial nature of the trial, the play\u2019s resolution remains understated. All who conducted the mock-trial, withdraw quietly into the next room leaving Benare alone. While leaving they console her superficially that the whole thing was just a game, she should not take it to heart. It\u2019s not clear that on their departure if Benare will take the poison from TIK 20 bottle lying on the table or not?<\/p>\n

While this anguish for self-esteem in Tendulkar\u2019s plays set in the middle class is restrained and muted; in his two other works that take place in Mumbai slums (Sakharam Binder <\/em>and Baby<\/em>), the playwright has \u2018no holds barred\u2019 for his physically and emotionally beaten-up female protagonists. Despite their limited range of choices which are deplorable, unlike his middle class protagonists, his lower strata women become master of their thoughts, emotions, and find a will to act outside the box. The results are mixed, sometime the mountain wins, sometime the mountain looses.<\/p>\n

In Sakharam Binder<\/em>, the play about a coarse Brahmin who instead of marriage prefers to pick desperate women deserted by their husbands as his co-habitants. Laxmi and Champa are two such characters with opposite personalities who consentingly opt to live as Sakharam\u2019s comfort women. Laxmi the quiet one worships her new master as a God-fearing dutiful wife, whereas the rebellious Champa despite Sakharam\u2019s strict code does not hesitate to have an affair behind his back.<\/p>\n

I<\/strong>n conditions of great poverty with social divisions and gender prejudices, opportunities for manipulation and exploitation are legion. Tendulkar\u2019s male characters have a field day in exploiting their female subjects. \u00a0Sakharam and Shivappa are two domineering male antagonists in these slum dramas. In Sakharam Binder<\/em>, the play about a coarse Brahmin who instead of marriage prefers to pick desperate women deserted by their husbands as his co-habitants. There is general acceptance by his women that it was their choice and must adjust to the male violence imposed. They are acutely aware of consequences of any wrong doing on their part to hurt Sakharam on whom they rely for their sustenance. Champa while stopping Sakharam from beating Laxmi scolds him, telling him the reason for her interference:<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause you will be hanged for murder, and to fill this belly of mine, I\u2019ll have to start hunting around everyday for a new customer. Instead of having ten beasts tearing at me everyday, I\u2019d rather do what one says to me. You get me?\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I<\/strong>nterestingly it\u2019s not men but the women in this play who are quick to point out flaws of the other. The criticism of Champa and Laxmi is mutual, the former chides the later as a \u201cpious simpleton\u201d, while Laxmi sneers at Champa calling her a sly \u201csinful\u201d woman. \u00a0Both however are cognizant of one another\u2019s strengths and willing to accommodate other until their own survival is at stake.<\/p>\n

Mrs. Kashikar in the Silence! the Court is in Session<\/em> is another such critic. Her indictment of her teacher colleague Leela Benare is scathing:<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what happens these days when you get everything without marrying. They just want comfort. They couldn\u2019t care less about responsibility! Let me tell you \u2014 in my time, even if a girl was snub nosed, sallow, hunchbacked, or anything whatever, she\u2013could\u2013still \u2013get married. It\u2019s the sly new fashion of women earning that makes everything goes wrong. That\u2019s how the promiscuity has spread throughout our society.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A<\/strong>buse of power, both overt and latent, has been a dominant theme in Tendulkar plays \u2014 \u201cfrom humiliation, to revenge in assertion, to eventual victimization; played out against a background of political and moral decadence and degeneracy, with sexuality impinging on strategies of power.\u201d (7) The power base eventually gets dissipated through interplay of actions, it\u2019s not forced but evolves from the character\u2019s motivation. Like in chess, the game goes on from act one to the next involving confrontation, challenge, accommodation, and resolution. Ultimately the character being challenged, is decimated, left with a sense of utter helplessness. (Silence! The court is in session, Kamala, Sakharam Binder, Kanyadan). <\/em><\/p>\n

Detachment and Objectification<\/strong><\/p>\n

O<\/strong>n the surface, some of these characters may appear ordinary, the playwright wanting to show these women in distress as victims; such an assertion will be flippant. The emotional content of Tendulkar\u2019s plays is so finely tuned that it gets objectified by the characters carefully structured behaviour and societal predicament that leaves them little choice but to helplessly enact the inevitable role they must play. In this, a logical construction of opposites is developed as their future gets unravelled shaping the arc of their journeys.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s look at Sakharam Binder again. We see him in the beginning of the play as a man in control of his world. By the end that power has been neutered by the actions of his two comfort women: one challenging him spiritually, the other sexually, both causing confusion and inner chaos in him. Eventually, Sakharam baited by Laxmi that Champa is having an affair with his friend Dawood, in a rage kills Champa. Sakharam is numb, \u00a0\u00a0speechlessly staring at the dead body of Champa.<\/p>\n

Tendulkar\u2019s Baby<\/em> has a similar intricate male-female interplay. The hot headed slum landlord Shivappa\u2019s in lieu of the rent from his hovel tenant Baby has total control over her. Not only she must share with this godfather authority-figure her earnings from film work, serve him liquor, offer her body for sex and be subject to his whimsical beatings; but to please her master she has to crawl submissively on her four and whine and lick him like a dog.<\/p>\n

To be consistent with the character, Tendulkar doesn\u2019t make Baby hit back Shivappa. Instead after being kicked in the stomach, she takes full blame for her misfortune.\u00a0 It is she who broke the trust by not fulfilling the conditions of the unwritten \u00a0contract with Shivappa, and for that she must vacate the hovel and leave the shanty before dawn.<\/p>\n

T<\/strong>endulkar doesn\u2019t judge his characters, making pronouncements on their virtues or weakness. In Baby<\/em>, though the viewer wants her to rebel, Tendulkar leaves Baby in a quandary. The fate of Baby is not to be decided by the playwright or the audience, but by the choices available to the character.<\/p>\n

Women in these plays come across as cold, insecure, doubtful, and distrustful \u2013 as if in a sort of abandonment of their self. Their isolation destroys the sense of being someone in other\u2019s eyes, and their complete submission to others in fact destroys a sense of being a human in their own eyes. \u00a0You see once in a while a glimmer of desire for an idealized life, an attempt to hold on to the self but the balance sought is so fragile that ultimately the cracks appear, and they remain broken for ever.<\/p>\n

T<\/strong>he actions and thought processes of Tendulkar\u2019s male characters on the other hand show a consistent tendency to dominate the other sex. Their behaviour, despite their lofty pronouncements, remains paternalistic and violent. Only exception to this is the male protagonist in Kanyadaan\u2013<\/em>Jyoti\u2019s father Nath Devalikar who remains vulnerable and torn throughout the narrative.<\/p>\n

Kanyadaan<\/em> is about Jyoti, a young educated woman brought up in a liberal higher-caste family who with her father\u2019 s approval marries a lower-caste Dalit. It explores the facile texture of Indian modernity which such a marriage unleashes. Tendulkar was awarded the prestigious Saraswati Samman prize for Kanyadaan<\/em> which literally translates from Marathi into English as \u2018donating the daughter\u2019, the Indian equivalent of \u2018giving away of the bride\u2019. \u00a0Accepting the prize, Tendulkar noted that this play about domestic violence was not a story of a victory, it was an admission of a defeat and intellectual confusion. (8) \u00a0It gave expression to a deep rooted malaise of the society and its pain.<\/p>\n

Nath is conflicted between his high-minded liberal ideals and discovery of his latent despise for the socially under-privileged lower-caste Dalits. That has arisen from seeing his daughter subjected to beating by her Dalit poet husband Arun in an inter-caste marriage which Nath had himself encouraged. He cannot understand Jyoti\u2019s acceptance of the rough treatment meted out to her by Arun. Nath\u2019s fate at the end of the play is not that different from Tendulkar\u2019s other male protagonists. Nath is bewildered, losing the upper hand he had been playing as the broad minded liberal father. In the last act, the father-daughter confrontation shows that it is now up to Jyoti alone to face up to her new situation:\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cJYOTI: It will not happen, Bhai (father), because you yourself have taught us that one must turn one\u2019s back upon the battlefield. It was you who always taught us that it is cowardly to bow down to circumstances. It was you who constantly intoned those phrases which never failed to get the audience cheering. And we also clapped and said, \u2018Our father is a great man.\u2019 You taught us those poems which said: \u2018I march with utter faith in the goal; \u2018I grow with rising hopes\u2019, and \u2018Cowards stay ashore, every wave opens a path for me.\u2019 .we shall continue to recite \u2018March on, Oh Soldier!\u2019 and continue to lose our lives as guinea pigs in the experiment, and you, Bhai, you will go on safely rousing the god sleeping in man.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>NATH: (In pain) Jyoti, don\u2019t say that. Wait, Jyoti. Please don\u2019t go away like this. Let\u2019s give some more thought to it.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>JYOTI: You think about it, I have to stop thinking and learn to live. I think a lot. Suffer a lot. Not from the blows, but from my thoughts, I can\u2019t bear them much longer. forgive me, Bhai. I said things I shouldn\u2019t have. But I couldn\u2019t help it. I was deeply offended by your hypocrisy. I thought: why did this man have to inject and drug us every day with truth and goodness? And if he can get away from it at will, what right had he to close all our options?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>(With certitude) Hereafter I have to live in that world, which is mine.(pausing) and die there. Say sorry to Ma. Tell her none of you should come to my house, this is my order.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

T<\/strong>he emancipation of Tendulkar\u2019s female characters is subtle; personalities involved must work out their emotion and intellect; espoused values and conflicting actions; seeking independence yet compromising, struggling between physical desires and conscience. Tendulkar\u2019s oft statement that his characters define the play in itself is confirmation of a vantage point \u2013 in which he is watching the whole process of character development from the outside. This capacity for detachment vis a vis<\/em> himself and life in general,\u00a0 provided Tendulkar an ability to hold back his emotions, retiring into himself like his Nath character in Kanyadaan<\/em>, and viewing the world as it unfolded. Those who have followed Tendulkar\u2019s life as a social activist would see in this one play his struggle to\u00a0 distance himself as the social reformer father from the Nath character.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>I<\/strong>n His Fifth Woman<\/em>, despite the play\u2019s solicitous title, the viewer never gets to meet its female protagonist. \u00a0In fact, the Woman character spoken about is already dead. \u00a0Sakharam is waiting in the hospital yard to claim the dead body of the woman after its post-mortem, pondering whether he has any responsibility to make such a claim. The play is not about Sakharam\u2019s love or atonement of his wrongs but about broader existential questions of life, death and afterlife. It is rather a continuation of the play Safar<\/em>\/The Cyclist where instead of a strong woman protagonist, in this allegorical drama, he introduces a Mermaid (woman in a fish\u2019s torso) who swallows the cyclist\u2019s clothes, leaving him bare to the bone. The Mermaid\u2019s seduction of the traveller is that of Oedipus, a composite of mother, girl friend, and enchantress. The cyclist\u2019s journey is a carefully structured voyage into \u2018the dark night of the soul\u2019 unravelling man\u2019s dehumanization in the face of society.<\/p>\n

In August 2005, in an email I asked Mr. Tendulkar, \u201cHow and why is this focus on women central to your work?\u201d His reply was that of a psychologist: \u201cThere is always a woman in most men\u2019s psyche. And man in most women. The balance is never perfect. One may have the woman factor dominant in him by which he has an instinctive understanding of women. Or the man factor in him which generates a natural interest in women. The two are different and the difference shall be felt by the reader. In the first instance the woman in his writing will be more a-physical and more of a woman in the core. In the second instance the woman in his writing will be essentially a sensuous, physical creature with other aspects like emotions etc. But the stress in both will be different; and also the women they create in their writing. I say this when asked but also caution that it may be only a theory.\u201d (9)<\/p>\n

U<\/strong>ltimately, the inner core of Tendulkar\u2019s plays came from his deep compassion and respect for human life \u2013 for life in general. Seeing its exploitation and waste, his response came through his unrelenting literary output and non-stop social activism. His plays seeking to comprehend the changing Indian reality showed balance, equilibrium, reconciliation and synthesis. Tendulkar\u2019s personal views and thinking in this regard leaned towards championing the rights and individuality of female protagonists.<\/p>\n

References:\r\n<\/strong>\r\n1.For a comprehensive listing of Vijay Tendulkar's works, see Vijay Tendulkar<\/em>,(2001), New-Delhi: Katha, pp. 149-150\r\n2. Ibid., p.37\r\n3. Sri Ram Memorial Lecture, The Play is the Thing, New Delhi: Sri Ram Centre for Performing Arts, p.5\r\n4. Vijay Tendulkar and Balwant Bhaneja, (2006), Two Plays by Vijay Tendulkar: The Cyclist and His Fifth Woman<\/em>, New Delhi: Oxford University Press , 2006, pp.79\r\n5. The English texts of the plays in this article have been used from the following sources: Vijay Tendulkar: Five Plays, (1992),<\/em> Bombay: Oxford University Press, pp. 357. The five\u00a0 translations are: Kamala<\/em>, Silence! The Court is in Session, Sakharam Binder, The Vultures, and Encounter in Umbugland<\/em>. Translations are by Priya Adarkar, Kumud Mehta and Shanta Gokhale. Vijay Tendulkar, Kanyadaan,<\/em> (English translation by Gowri Ramnarayan) , (1996), Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 71 . Vijay Tendulkar, Baby<\/em> ( Hindi translation by Vasant Deo) (1987), New-Delhi: Vidya Prakashan, pp. 71\r\n6. Shanta Gokhle, \"Tendulkar on his own terms\" in Vijay Tendulkar<\/em>, (2001), New-Delhi: Katha, p.81\r\n7. Vijay Tendulkar: Ghasiram Kotwal<\/em>, (English Translation by Jayant Karve and Eleanor Zelliot) (1986), Calcutta: Seagull Books, Introduction by Samik Bandyopadhay p.v\r\n8. Tendulkar's Saraswati Samman award-accepting speech quoted in Vijay Tendulkar<\/em>, (2001) op. cit., p.35\r\n9.email from Vijay Tedulkar , 4 January 2005\r\n__________________________________________<\/em><\/pre>\n
\"\"<\/a>Dr. Bill (Balwant) Bhaneja is a former Canadian science diplomat, a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/a>, and author of six books and scholarly papers on politics and science. He holds a PhD in science policy from UK\u2019s Victoria University of Manchester, currently serves as Senior Advisor to the Center for Global Nonkilling<\/a> in Honolulu-Hawai\u2019i of which he is a founding member, and produces the Nonkilling Arts Research Committee (NKARC)\u00a0 Newsletter. A peace activist, his recent books include:\u00a0<\/em> Troubled\u00a0 Pilgrimage: Passage to Pakistan (TSAR\/Mawenzi,\u00a0 Toronto, 2013);\u00a0<\/em> Quest for Gandhi: A Nonkilling Journey (Center for Global Nonkilling, Hawaii, 2009); and in collaboration with Vijay Tendulkar,<\/em> Two Plays: The Cyclist and<\/em> His Fifth Woman (Oxford University Press (India), New-Delhi, 2006). He lives in Ottawa, Canada. Email: billbhaneja@rogers.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n
Go to Original – thebeacon.in<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0The philosophy behind Tendulkar\u2019s writing is based upon his perception of society and its values \u2014 his life experiences, and observing what he had seen in others around him: \u201cI did not attempt to simplify matters and issues for the audience, though it would have been easier to do so through such a medium. Sometimes my plays jolted the society and I was punished\u2026I was adamant as it is an old habit with me to do what I am asked not to.\u201d (2)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":106201,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[870],"class_list":["post-201485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members","tag-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201485\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}