‘Tara’ tells the story of Chandan and Tara, who are conjoined twins. Following a surgery intended to separate the two, Chandan ends up ridden with guilt over the fact that he benefitted from this surgery while his sister Tara suffered and eventually died as a result of it.

In the words of Asif Ali Beg “While rehearsing for ‘Tara’ I was supposed to be embarrassed and well up with tears because my advances had just been snubbed by the girl next door. I was struggling to understand what I was supposed to do when suddenly Alyque walked up to me and slapped me hard in the face. I was stunned and highly embarrassed because that was also the day some press had been invited to the rehearsal, and my eyes welled up with tears. ‘Now do you understand what you need to do?’ is what Alyque then triumphantly said to me. I never forgot how I felt at that moment and needless to say, I always got it right on stage.”

Playwright Mahesh Dattani made his career debut as a scriptwriter with Alyque’s direction of what is considered one of Mahesh’s finest scripts.

This play touched a very responsive nerve in the Bombay audience. Such kind of a response for an Indian English play wasn’t seen since ‘Tughlaq’, though it was nothing like ‘Tughlaq’. There were no grand sets or elaborate costumes, although Alyque had a real set built up on the stage for this production. Tara is about the girl next door who happens to be crippled. As the play unfolds, you find out why she is crippled. Wonderful characters and a great story. The audience simply adored the play.

This was the first play that Raell produced for Alyque, which was written by Mahesh Dattani.

Freaky Facts : During rehearsals, Alyque took a fall off the stage and broke his arm and had to be rushed to Breach Candy Hospital and Asif broke his leg and Tarini and Aadya went down with measles during the performance and actually performed with high temperature and spots on their faces and a few days later Raell fractured her foot, too.