“A woman's garment covers me from head to toe. Inside, made of stone, a hardened heart alone Can stone ever be melted by the ebb and flow of tears? » - Binodini Dasi.Violence against women is a global phenomenon that affects all social classes and age groups. Violence, whether subtle or blatant, is so deeply ingrained in cultures around the world that it is almost rendered invisible. To quote Charlotte Bunch: “Opening the door to the subject of violence against women around the world is like standing at the threshold of a huge dark room vibrating with collective anguish, but whose sounds of protest are reduced to a whisper. Where there should be outrage aimed at an intolerable status quo, there is instead denial and largely passive acceptance of the way things are.” (Bunch) In this spotlight, this study intends to focus on the consumption of violence and the fear associated with it, deliberately and subtly illustrated by the elements of silence and darkness in the play Lights Out by Manjula Padmanabhan. Violence in India has many facets: not just physical, it is most often mental and emotional, subtle and indirect, most often insidious and difficult to recognize. Lights Out is based on a real incident, an eyewitness account. The incident took place in Santa Cruz, Bombay, in 1982, where, just like the play, a group of urban middle-class people chose to stand and watch...... middle of paper .. ....core of contemporary masculinity that allows such violence, because good behavior is certainly not something we can legislate, or even be instigated or propelled based on the needs of the moment, it comes purely from human feeling essential. Works Cited Abraham, Taisha. Feminist theory and modern drama. New Delhi: Pencraft International, 1998. Print. Bunch, Charlotte. The intolerable status quo: violence against women and girls. www.unicef.org/pon97/women1.htm. Kudchedkar, Shirin and Sahiba-Al-Issa. Eds, Violence against women: Women against violence. Delhi: Pencraft International, 1998. Print. Manjula Padmanabhan, Dina Mehta, Poile Sengupta. Body shots. Calcutta: Seagull Books, 2000. Print.Subramanyam Lakshmi. Stifled Voices: Women in Modern Indian Theatre. New Delhi: ShaktiBooks, 2002. Print.