Contemporary Fiction: an Anthology of Female Writers

CONTEMPORARY FICTION: An Anthology of Female Writers

Edited by Vandana Pathak Urmi la Dabir Shubha Mishra

Sarup & Sons

Contemporary Fiction: An anthology of female Writers

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contemporary fiction: An Anthology of female writers

Edited by Vandana Pathak Urmila Dabir Shubha Mishra

Sarup╇ &╇ Sons New╇ Delhi - 110002

Published by Sarup & Sons 4740/23, Ansari Road Darya Ganj, New Delhi-110002 Tel. : 23281029, 23244664, 41010989 Fax : 011-23277098 E-mail : [email protected].

Contemporary Fiction: An Anthology of Female Writers

© Editors 1st Edition - 2008 ISBN 978-81-7625-835-7

Views and opinions expressed in the articles are those of the contributors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editors. Printed╇in╇ India Published by Prabhat Kumar Sharma for Sarup & Sons, Laser Typesetting at Chitra Computers and Printed at Mehra Offset Printers, Delhi.

To All Our Family Members with Love and Gratitude… …Don’t write in English, they said, English is not your mother tongue. Why not leave Me alone, critics, friends, visiting cousins, Everyone of you? Why not let me speak in Any language I like? The language I speak Becomes mine, its distortions, its queernesses All mine, mine alone. It is half English, half Indian, funny perhaps but it is honest, It is as human as I am human, don’t you see ? It voices my joys, my longings, my Hopes, and it is useful to me as cawing Is to crows or roaring to the lions...(Kamla Das)

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Preface

“Literature can not be the business of a woman’s life and it ought not to be”, declared Robert Southey in a letter written to Charlotte Bronte. Yet Women’s literary voices successfully marginalized and trivialized by the dominant male establishment, nevertheless survived. Indian writing in English brings out the veracity of this statement. Last few decades have been catalytic for the growth of Indian writing in English. A new galaxy of writers has been witnessed. That Women are no longer ‘others ‘in the Indian English literary scenario and that Indian English female fiction writers have created a space for themselves is crystal clear from the distinguished awards they have bagged in the recent times and by the way in which their names figure in any anthology on fiction. In India, many female fiction writers like Kamala Das, Kamala Markandaya, Nayantara Sahgal, Rama Mehta, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Shobha De, Shashi Deshpande, Manju Kapur, Neelum Saran Gaur, Bharati Mukherjee, Indira Goswami, Arundhati Roy, Jai Nimkar, Gouri Deshpande, and Susan Viswanathan, Arundhati Roy, Eunice De Souza, Jaishree Misra, Anita Nair, Suniti Namjoshi, Mrunal Pande, Namita Gokhale, Githa Hariharan, Arundhati Roy, Manjula Padmanabhan, Jhumpa Lahiri, Anjali Banerjee, Sonia Singh, K avita Daswani, Sabrina Saleem, Santha Rama Rau, Basanti Karmarkar, etc. have contributed to this genre immensely. Female writers of the Indian Diaspora too have carved a niche for themselves. They include writers like Anita Desai, Kiran Desai, Gita Mehta Anjana Appachana, Abha Dawesar, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Bharati Mukherjee, Shauna Singh Baldwin,

viii Ann Bhalla, Kaavya Vishwanathan, Bapsi Sidhwa, Bharti Kirchner, Sujata Massey, Indira Ganesan, Shani Muthoo, Marina Budhos, Anuradha Mar wah-Roy, R ani Dharker, Meera Syal, Anita Rau Badami, Uma Parameswaran, and Ameena Meer, etc. Female fiction writers from other Asian countries like Pakistan and Bangla Desh too have expressed themselves in English. Some such well known writers are Bapsi Sidhwa, Uzma Aslam Khan and K amila Shamsie, Rukshana Ahmad, Taslima Nasreen, Monica Ali, etc. All women novelists are the unacknowledged sociologists of the world. The famous historian Gerda Lerner is quite sure of the “evil conspiracies of men” and feels that women have been left out of history. She stresses the need to “rectify this” by conducting a “women centered inquiry” to see “what would history be like if it were seen though the eye of the women and ordered by the values they define.” L i t e r a t u r e b y w o m e n p r e s e n t s a n “i m a g i n a t i v e continuum”. In women novelists, a commonality of motifs is observed. They deal with gender issues and roles, female subjectivity, exploitation and oppression, the concept of being ‘other’ in a patriarchal society, the theme of growing up from childhood to womanhood, that is, the Bildungsroman, self liberation via self quest, sexual deviance and sexual autonomy, human relationships, realism, magic realism, fantasy and surrealism, the image of the New Woman, traditional I ndian culture, image of ‘exotic I ndia’, globalization, migration, expatriation, diasporic consciousness, East-West confrontation, the clash between tradition and modernity, socio-psychological aspect, Independence struggle, and partition, etc. The articles in the present anthology highlight some of these significant themes. Narrative Strategies and the Invisible in Neelum Saran Gour’s Sikandar Chowk Park: Re-Constructing Identities and (Inter-) Religious Confrontation by Ludmila Volna analyses the so called ‘backstage’ of a militant’s explosion in Allahabad Park where 57 people died. The paper analyzes what is behind the explosion and is interested in the author’s questioning to each individual’s part in a religion-related confrontation

ix displayed on the ‘scene’. Ana Garcia-Arroyo in her piece of writing From The Sandal Trees to Facing the Mirror: A Herstorical Overview of Same-Sex Love in India discusses very less anthologized and in the typical Indian aspect considered a taboo subject of lesbian relationships. It voices a silence and depicts the invisibility of such relationhips as an urge to create space for themselves in their quest for identity. Prem Srivastava in her brilliant exposition Literature Still Matters! The Namesake: Woman Reads Woman studies the dynamics of Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake and Mira Nair’s depiction of the same on the celluloid. The aspect of how one woman reads the other woman constitutes another touchstone of this enquiry. Leela Kanals’ in The Celebration of Acculturation in Monica Ali’s Brick Lane celebrates acculturation leading away from stereotyped self pity at the loss of identity exposing problems of exiles in England. It applauds the ability of human kind to be transplanted from one environ to another and turn it into an adopted home. Vaishali Naik explores various metaphors and aspects of space related to discourse of protest, hegemony, and hierarchies in her intellectual scrutiny A Socio-Cultural Feminist Critique of Inside the Haveli within the Frame of the Marginal. Supriya Sahasrabuddhe’s scholarly article on Reason and Rebellion in Feminism: Shashi Deshpande and Bharati Mukherjee is a comparative study focusing on the women centered approach. Her analysis of women as beings, not as gender specific beings is applaudable dealing with quest for identity. P.D. Nimsarkar in his in depth analysis of History and Politics, in Bapsi Sidhwa’s Ice Candy Man sheds light on history especially the aftermath of partition caused in the lives of people in Pakistan. It describes an amalgamation of the Parsi community and the deep undertones of racial politics have been perceptively dealt with.

x Shashi Deshpande’s The Binding Vine: an Ecocritical Perspective by Amol Padwad highlights the importance of ecocritical viewpoint as a parallel to other moral, social, economic and cultural undertones. Malti Panga’s paper on Mistress of Her Choice-Conflict and Resolution in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s Arranged Marriage reflects various shades and nuances of expatriation along with an insight into diasporic consciousness and the conflict between the native cultural values and those of the dominant culture. Nutan Chotai’s Changing Faces of Women in Manju Kapur’s Home reflects upon the socio-cultural changes taking place in women belonging to three different generations and describes how they come out as strong , transitional characters in the third generation fulfilling both domestic and professional obligations. “One is not born a woman, one becomes one”, says Simone de Beauvois . How a woman is always treated as the ‘other’ has been brought out effectively by Madhavi Moharil in Writing on the Wall: A Critique of Namita Gokhale’s Shakuntala written in an experimental ‘first person singular’ style highlighting the uniformity in the exploitation of all women from mythical Shkuntala, to modern, educated Shakuntala, to the fallen woman Yaduri. Enigma of Cultural Inter face is an insightful paper by Jyoti Patil, evaluating Lahiri’s diasporic sensibilities as reflected through the characters of The Namesake. The cultural alienation of the second generation expatriates and its implications are thoughtfully analyzed. Githa Hariharan’s The Thousand Faces of Night: A Silent Quest for Identity by Shirish More addresses the issue of self realization of three different women spanning three generations within the boundaries of time, space, and region in a simple, lucid style. Marriage as Misalliance: A Reading of Anita Nair ’s Mistress by Sujata Chakravorty deals with the common mismatch observed in the Indian scenario and highlights various nuances of a husband-wife relationship.

xi The tremendous impact of globalization on literature in terms of outsourcing, immigration, multiculturalism or cultural encounters, racism and alienation has been traced in a candid, critical manner in Reclamation of Inheritance: Biju’s Homecoming in Kiran Desai’s Inheritance of Loss by Narendra Khandait against the background of Biju’s ‘American Dream’. Such a Long Journey: The Quest for Identity in Gita Mehta’s Raj by Renu Dalela and Alka Zade tries to perceive the East-West encounter from a feminine point of view. It reminds of those who suffered and paid a price for the Raj, whether a royalty or a commoner. Priya Wanjari in her ar ticle De -Analysis of Marital Relationships surveys the wife-husband relationship in urban setting. She depicts vividly Shobha De’s delineation of the naked reality that exists in Indian family system through psycho-analysis. Varsha Karmarkar ’s paper on Resolution of Akhila’s Dilemma in Ladies Coupe deals with the problem of an unmarried, earning, independent woman trapped in her family and her search for identity against the background of stories narrated by five women in a ladies coupe. Vandana Bhagdikar’s Evolution of ‘New’ Female Identity in Namita Gokhale portrays the female protagonist of Namita Gokhale as ‘New Woman’ and substantiates the same with a textual analysis. Usha Kurjekar in Mother Daughter Relationship in Fasting, Feasting and Difficult Daughters analyzes the most primal bond of mother-daughter relationship from a psychosocial perspective to reveal how mothers wish to perpetuate their own image in their daughter by way of imposition and refusal to accept them as individual entities. Vandana Pathak and Urmila Dabir concentrate on the motif of human relationships in their article On Structures of Dyadic Mother-Daughter Relationships (An Analysis of Kamila Shamsie’s Broken Verses) and depict nuances

xii of mother-daughter relationship in terms of its psychosociological impact on an adolescent. Shubha Mishra’s paper on Echoes of Realism in Manju Kapur’s Difficult Daughters reveals Manju Kapur’s critique of social, national, cultural, and gender issues in her oeuvre spanning relationships of four generations and how she employs all these motifs to depict realism. We would like to put on record our sincere gratitude to Manju Kapur for our lively interface with her and her wholehearted co-operation. We are indebted to all our contributors for their contributions. We are also grateful to Prof. Prabhatkumar Sharma of Sarup and Sons and his team, New Delhi, for all his active help and support.

Contributors 1.

Dr. Ludmila Vol¿a, affiliated to Charles University Prague, Czech Republic and IMAGER Université Paris XII, France.

2.

Dr. Ana Garcia-Arroyo, Associate Professor, University Autonoma Barcelona (Spain).

3.

Dr. Prem K Sr ivastava, R eader, D ept. of English, Maharaja Agrasen College, University of Delhi, Delhi. Dr. Leela Kanal, Reader and Head, Dept. of English, Bundelkhand P.G. College, Jhansi (U.P.).

4. 5.

Vaishali Naik, Senior Lecturer, BR Gholap College, Sangvi, Pune.

6.

Dr. Supriya Sahasrabuddhe, Head, Dept. of English, Modern College, Pune.

7.

D r. P. D. N i m s a r k a r, R e a d e r a n d H e a d , D e p t . o f Linguistics, Indian and Foreign Languages, R.T.M. Nagpur University, Nagpur.

8. Amol Padwad, Head, Dept. of English, J.M. Patel College, Bhandara (Maharashtra). 9. Malti Panga, Lecturer, Dept. of English, Hislop College, Nagpur. 10. Nutan Chotai, Senior Lecturer, Dept. of English, L.A.D. & Smt. R.P. College for Women, Nagpur. 11. Madhavi Moharil, Lecturer, Dept. of English, Rajkumar Kevalramani Kanya Mahavidyalya, Nagpur. 12. Jyoti Patil, Head, Dept. of English, Dayananda Arya Kanya Mahavidyalaya, Nagpur. 13. Shirish More, Lecturer, Dept. of English, Dhote Bandhu

xiv Science College, Gondiya, (Maharashtra). 14. Sujata Chakravorty, Dept. of English, Dayananda Arya Kanya Mahavidyalaya, Nagpur. 15. Dr. Narendra Khandait, Head, Dept. of English, G.S. College of Commerce and Economics, Nagpur. 16. Renu Dalela, Head, Dept. of English, Principal Arunrao Kalode Mahavidyalaya, Nagpur. 17. Alka Zade, Head, Dept. of English, Sant Gadgebaba College, Nagpur. 18. Dr. Priya Wanjari, Santaji Mahavidyalaya, Nagpur. 19. Varsha K armark ar, Head, Dept. of English, Shree Samartha Atrs and Commerce College, Ashti, (Dist. Wardha). 20. Vandana Bhagdikar, Senior Lecturer, Dept. of English, Mahila Mahavidyalaya, Nagpur. 21. U s h a K u r j e k a r, H e a d , D e p t . o f E n g l i s h , Mahavidyalaya, Nagpur.

M.K.

22. Vandana Pathak, Head, Dept. of English, L.A.D. & Smt. R. P. College for Women, Nagpur. 23. Dr. Ur mila Dabir, Pr incipal and R eader, D ept. of English, Rajkumar Kevalramani Kanya Mahavidyalya, Nagpur. 24. S h u b h a M i s h r a , S e n i o r Le c t u re r, P. W. S . Co l l e g e, Nagpur.

Contents Preface

vii



xiii

Contributors

1. Narrative Strategies and the Invisible in Neelum Saran Gour’s Sikandar Chowk Park: Reconstructing Identities and (Inter-) Religious Confrontation — Ludmila Vol¿a 2. From The Sandal Trees to Facing the Mirror: A Herstorical Over-view of Same-Sex Love in India — Ana García-Arroyo 3. Literature Still Matters! The Namesake: Woman Reads Woman — Prem Srivastava 4. The Celebration of Acculturation in Monica Ali’s Brick Lane — Leela Kanal 5. A Socio-Cultural Feminist Critique of Inside the Haveli within the Frame of the Marginal — Vaishali Naik

1

15 28

48

58

6. Reason and Rebellion in Feminism: Shashi Deshpande and Bharati Mukherjee — Supriya Sahsrabuddhe

69

7. Dimensionality of History and Politics in Bapsi Sidhwa’s Ice Candy Man — P.D. Nimsarkar

78

xvi 8. Shashi Deshpande’s The Binding Vine: An Ecocritical Perspective — Amol Padwad 9. Mistress of Her Choice-Conflict and Resolution in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s Arranged Marriage — Malti Panga

91

103

10. Rendenzvous with Manju Kapur

111

11. Changing Faces of Women in Manju Kapur’s Home — Nutan Chotai

127

12. Writing on the Wall: A Critique of Namita Gokhale’s Shakuntala — Madhavi Moharil

135

13. Enigma of Cultural Interface: A Study of Diasporic Experiences in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake — Jyoti Patil

143

14. Githa Hariharan’s The Thousand Faces of Night: A Silent Quest for Identity — Shirish More

156

15. Marriage as Misalliance: A Reading of Anita Nair’s Mistress — Sujata Chakravorty

164

16. Reclamation of Inheritance: Biju’s Homecoming in Kiran Desai’s The Inheritence of Loss — Narendra Khandait

172

17. Such a Long Journey: The Quest for Identity in Gita Mehta’s Raj — Renu Dalela and Alka Zade

181

18. De-Analysis of Marital Relationships — Priya Wanjari

191

19. Resolution of Akhila’s Dilemma in Ladies Coupe — Varsha Karmarkar

205

xvii 20. Evolution of ‘New’ Female Identity in Namita Gokhale — Vandana Bhagdikar

215

21. Mother-Daughter Relationships in Fasting, Feasting and Difficult Daughters — Usha Kurjekar

225

22. On Structures of Dyadic Mother-Daughter Relationships (An Analysis of Kamila Shamsie’s Broken Verses) — Vandana Pathak and Urmila Dabir

237

23. Echoes of Realism in Manju Kapur’s Difficult Daughters — Shubha Mishra

250

Index

264

Vandana Pathak, Head, Dept. of English, L.A.D. & Smt. R. P. College for Women, Nagpur-10 (NAAC Accred. A Grade). Areas of Interest- Dalit Literature, Indian Writing in English, Transla-tion Studies, and Compara-tive Literature Translated a book on Dalit Criticism from M arathi into English (already published), A translation of a Marathi Dalit autobiography into English is in the pipeline. Published and presented many papers in International/National Journals and Conferences Dr. Urmila Dabir, Principal and Head, Dept. of English, Rajkumar Kevalramani Kanya Mahavidyalaya, Nagpur. Areas of Interest: Indian Writing in English and Indian Literature. Published and presented many papers in International/National Journals and Conferences. Shubha€ Mishra is a Senior Lecturer in English, P.W.S College, RTM, Nagpur University, Nagpur. She is presently engaged in research in areas focused on Indian Writings. She has published/ presen-ted several€ research papers in national journals/conferences.

ISBN-81-7625 2008, Size-Demy, Pp. 263+18+Index

Contemporary Fiction: An Anthology of Female Writers focuses only on one particular genre of literature-fiction. It is a multi-disciplinary critique of novels written by South Asian female novelists like Neelum Saran Gour, Kamla Das, Jhumpa Lahiri, Monica Ali, Rama M e ht a , S h a s h i D e s h p a n d e, B h a rat i Mukherjee, Bapsi Sidhwa, Chitra Banerjee Divak aruni, M anju K apur, Namita Gokhale, Githa Hariharan, Anita Nair, Kiran Desai, Gita Mehta, Shobha De, Anita Desai, and Kamila Shamsie. It analyzes various issues related with socio-cultural dimensions of patriarchy, religious confrontation and identity, s e x u a l d i v e r s i t y, t r a n s c u l t u r a l i s m , immigrant and diasporic sensibilities, socio-psycho-political-historical representations, economic ramifications and globalization, eco-critical p e r s p e c t i ve, a n d fe m a l e q u e s t fo r identity. The highlight of the anthology is Manju K apur ’s long and exhaustive inter view. I t would provide a new sense of direction to research scholars and would be of great interest to all literature lovers, students and teachers alike. The papers in the anthology can serve as reference points to all those who are interested in an indepth study of contemporary female fiction writers underlining the space they have created fo r t h e m s e l ve s a n d re ve a l va r i o u s aspects, nuances, and shades of women writing’s in English.

1 Narrative Strategies and the Invisible in Neelum Saran Gour’s Sikandar Chowk Park: Reconstructing Identities and (Inter-) Religious Confrontation

Neelum Saran Gour was born in 1955 to a Bengali mother and a Hindiphone father and lives now in Allahabad. She has been praised for her remarkable talent to depict the aspects of a small Indian town and at the same time to see these in a broader, national, and even international context, which resembles R. K. Narayan’s vision of Malgudi. Her usage of the English language, which bears strong imprints of bhasha languages as to rhythm, narrative patterns, and style, chimes with works of other Indian writers in English, such as Raja Rao and Salman Rushdie. She published two collections of short stories, Grey Pigeon and Other Stories (1993) and Winter Companions and Other Stories (1997), as well as three novels, Speaking of “62 (1995), Virtual Realities (2002), and Sikandar Chowk Park (2005). “Gour records,” in G. J. V. Prasad’s words, “the residual spark of human feeling that survives even the ravages of wars and riots.”1 ‘The residual spark of human feeling’ and ‘the ravages of wars and riots’ are alluded at in the very first sentence of Sikandar Chowk Park: “This is the story of eleven people and

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a bomb blast...,” 2 which can be already, in the perspective of what follows, analysed as falling apart into ‘just eleven people and a bomb blast’ on one hand and ‘the story of these’ on the other. Because ‘eleven people and a bomb blast’ are a part of a tableau Gour carefully drafts of what is put on the screen, literally and metaphorically, whereas ‘the story,’ the narrative associated with these ‘objects’, because when just on the screen they are in fact reduced to objects and deprived from what makes them human including their feelings, is, for the time being, not immediately accessible, it is hidden. The ‘screen’ fac tor is inex tricably linked to both time and space setting. Associating the 9/11 events, most destructive, deadly, and demolishing and at the same time the most spectacular blasts put on the T V screen, with the 2000 New Year fireworks as they appear on the same TV screen Gour shifts her perspective towards a temporal milestone of contemporary history as she makes an opening towards the beginning of a New Millennium. By mentioning the celebrations in places so different and far away from each other as New York, Tokyo, Sydney, and Hong Kong she not only emphasizes the time factor but makes the whole planet her space setting. It is then no lesser issue that the future of humankind that the author questions and Neelum Saran Gour’s vision as she draws its contours is not very encouraging. At one hour to midnight on 31 December 1999 a certain Vakil Sahib sees what for his wife and himself looks exactly like his own dead body carried in a funeral procession. By employing what is in fact a joke of Vakil’s servant the author makes the issue of humankind suddenly a reference to each individual, to you, to a member of my family, even to myself. Everybody is concerned and nobody can feel out of danger. The concept of a ‘millennium baby ’ as a reference to the creative and re-creating capacity of humankind is displaced from its front stage position and pushed behind the scene by the ‘millennium corpse,’ as it is called in the novel, which points rather to the threatening dangers of destructive forces. Another pair of opposites, or counterparts,

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is represented by a TV report of the Indian Airlines plane hijack completed by a newspaper column reporting on a militant’s father’s condemnation of the act, the same militant who the kidnappers demand to be released in exchange for the hostage. Besides Vakil Sahib and his wife, the first characters put on the scene are Professor Mathur, a Hindu, and his landlady Sakina Bibi, who is a Muslim. It is through their encounter on 31 December 1999 that the above mentioned newspaper column is evoked and put into relation with Thomas Hardy’s poem “The Darkling Thrush” as Professor Mathur recalls it, which was written exactly one hundred years before, on the last day of 1899, and in which darkness and desolation of a winter tableau is designed. ‘Death’ of the century is paralleled with the state of death of earth in winter. And still an aged thrush sings a song of hope. The militant’s father’s proclamation appears a sign of such a hope to the two. The author’s vision of the future of the humankind takes then a bomb explosion which happens on 22 March 2000 at 4.25 p.m. in the Sikandar Chowk Park in Allahabad, in which 57 people die and 115 are seriously injured, as a starting point. Gour makes the notion of ’history’ the axis around which her front scene and its green room oscillate. Where does this history happen? For those granted merciful, if temporary, exemption from its sting, it happens in the headlines of newspapers, in the T V screen, in internet outcries, on bookshelves, in magazines, classrooms and conference rooms. Or in the reverberation of human voices recalling. (Italics added.)3

TV and newspaper reportage vocabulary becomes easily identified by a characteristic “now-clichéd vocabulary ” 4 which is said to have developed consequently to the frequency of bomb attacks or other militants’ actions. The clichés, because easily and widely available, are seemingly putting the events in the centre of attention, but at the same time exactly this cliché identity does not allow any deeper investigation and disguises so the true character of what is happening. Presentations through clichés become a kind of

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ritual; and it is in the nature of ritual, as Sigmund Freud explains, ‘not to inquire into its significance,’ 5 not to leave any space for more profound questioning. The histories of the victims have to be retrieved and they can only be retrieved on the ground of the personal, that is what Siddhanta, the journalist who takes on this task for the Sikandar Park explosion, feels: That’s again how history goes on happening all around you and sometimes within you ... It’s like a drop of rain here, another there, then a shock of unexpected spray under a gust of wind and you might say to yourself: Soon I’ll need my umbrella. Then suddenly there’s the spouting downpour, the thrashing drenchbroil and the uproar and urgency of clamouring for shelter... Then in a second it’s detonating all around you, its high decibel booms imploding in your nerves. It has you capsized, fleeing, blinded. I frequently get the sinking feeling that I’m one of the passengers on that hijacked plane that smashed into the WTC, my illusory identity on a disintegration countdown. Do you hear that sick buzz, behind all the other noises? That’s history, its engines never switched off.6

This is an important revelation with respect to the front stage/behind-the-scene axis. The difference between the history which appears in the newspapers and on TV on the one hand and that which actually happens on the spot on other hand echoes one between object and subject, Other and Self in a way, and certainly reflects also the difference between the centre and margin, metropolis and colony. Because in the post-colonial space, there also ‘the received history must be rewritten, realigned from the point of view of the victims...’ 7 This is actually what is done by Professor Mathur and his pupil Munna, the latter stubbornly refusing to adapt his English to the acknowledged standard of the language. His perseverance inspires Professor Mathur to offer Munna a narrative which traces the colonizer ’s perspective of the British Empire’s ‘glory and honour’ at the time of Sepoy Mutiny. This narrative which includes a poem by Francis Hastings Doyle’s (in standard English) ce l e b rat i n g t h e h e ro i s m o f a yo u n g a n d a p p a re nt l y insignificant British private when facing ‘Indian enemies’

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becomes a palimpsest for the postcolonial English text: to the astonishment of Professor Mathur Munna brings the act of appropriation to the utmost by creating a self-referential poem in his own ‘english’ in honour of the language which has become an Indian acquisition and a compensation for all the things lost, indeed Munna’s own. The colonizer’s narrative and Doyle’s poems are rewritten from the point of view of the colonized. If the hope expressed by Professor Mathur and Sakina Bibi (as mentioned above) is to find any solid ground, take root and bring fruits, to get to the front of the scene indeed, and if this power-based relationship is to be re-structured, it is necessary, as Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin rephrase Michel Foucault’s argument, to “create a history of the different modes by which, in our culture, human beings are made subjects.” 8 “This is a book about eleven people and a country. Eleven human characters and a twelfth parahuman one, you might say.” 9 Who are these eleven when it is fifty seven the number of victims? The answer is that the eleven people who interest most the author are those who are the least visible, those whose bodies could not have been identified but for the DNA fingerprint method. The reconstruction of their lives which the author undertakes through Siddhanta’s work is thus bringing to light ‘the invisible.’ Siddhanta’s motivation is to find out the circumstances of the ‘invisible’/now no more ‘visible’ lives which make the characters find themselves ‘there’ at ‘the time.’ The purpose of the research is to trace the ways of coincidence and it makes one only too acutely aware again that everybody is concerned. The history is then informed by the stories of the eleven people in the sense that what is brought to light does not make claim to be “their undeniable history,” but an “essential story,” “not factually accurate, ... but existentially probable.” 10 Their stories are re-assembled not only from the ‘real’ facts found out by Siddhanta, but also with the help of “inferences, implications, through the pursuit of strong chances and frequently through pure hunches.” 11 The

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author’s task carried out through Siddhanta’s investigation and re -assembling of personal histor ies when using newspaper articles and other sources resembles Shashi Tharoor’s attempt to reconstruct the circumstances of a young American woman’s death in his Riot: A Novel.12 The reconstruction of the eleven people’s identities through the DNA fingerprint method from the remnants of their bodies is a metaphorical representation of the reconstruction work as done by Siddhanta. The latter can in fact be considered the extension of the former as it is not enough to know that there was someone named Vak il, Professor Mathur, Pandit Raghopal Misra, Swati Maurya, and others. What do these names betray when just mentioned? Not much, and in each case a life, a story of one’s own and many others related to it, is only to be revealed. The fact that through the search for coincidences which led the characters all to find themselves at the time and place of the explosion their life stories are revealed, and that what comes to light is in reality, as indicated above, a story of ‘one country,’ clearly relates to what Homi Bhabha defines as ‘unhomeliness.’ Because through an ‘unhomely’ moment we perceive “the estranging sense of the relocation of the home and the world”13 in the sense of the relocation of the private and public. What has been considered public (i.e. as rendered by the media) can be treated with due attention only when the private is drawn to light. The private then becomes public. What is reconstructed and thus brought to light are the characters and relationships of the eleven people and of those with whom they have been in contact. Revelations are made not only to the reader but to the individuals-characters in question themselves and it is done progressively, step by step. As if, Gour was carefully lifting the veil enveloping the characters, their lives, and identities. The characters themselves experience a kind of revelation, or a disclosure. For some it means a better understanding of Self, or of human condition, for others their encounter with the Other

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is brought to the utmost, in one way or other. Religious, ethnic, social, gender, and other ‘particularities’ of one ‘entity’ are presented as related to those of another. Thus, for example, Suruchi Chauhan, an attractive woman and a high administrative officer, finds herself, in the end, deeply in love with Vikram Aditya, a highly intelligent and sensitive man, who is, never theless, as Suruchi at first perceives him, “a physically challenged person.” 14 There is Swati Maurya and Neelush Trivedi who practically live together and the abysmal distance between them. The distance, immediately indicated to those, who know that ‘Maurya’ is a Dalit name and ‘Trivedi’ a Brahmin, is made even more important by the fact that Swati is still considered as being married to a Dalit man who she has left. In spite of Swati and Neelush’s discordances Neelush exerts himself to the utmost to save not only Swati’s life but also her physical appearance when her husband throws acid into her face. Clearly, never theless, the most acute attention is consecrated to the (inter-)religious encounter, and first of all to that between Hindus and Muslims. Starting with the New Year’s Eve conversation of Professor Mathur, a Hindu, and Sakina Bibi, his Muslim landlady, the two are in a perfect agreement as concerns the hijack. Apart from showing a profound sympathy for the victims Sakina Bibi rejects the interpretation of the act as one in accordance with the name of Islam. She is also reluctant in her affection for her other lodger, Suleman Jamel, who becomes in the end the Sikandar Chowk Park bomb assailant, for his lack of social behaviour towards other people. Sakina Bibi’s character and attitude show perhaps the best during her encounter with a group of Hindu boys who play cricket just in front of her house, which annoys her. As she is scolding them and they respond, religious differences between them come out. Sakina does not understand the boys’ evident easy relationship with Hindu gods when

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they attribute a few of the gods each a role in the game of cricket, a role the character of which is based on their knowledge and understanding of the Hindu mythology. This is so very different from Sakina’s perception of Allah as the only god, who should be revered with the utmost respect. Nevertheless, Sakina condemns the horrors done to people both by Hindu extremists and by Pakistani army on the one hand and she evokes her donation for the Indian Kargil war martyrs on the other. 15 In the end, after the explosion, Sakina Bibi is endowed herself a part in the history’s play when becoming a victim of a Hindu mob’s assault on her house and witnessing to her niece’s being raped, the mob being composed of the same people who, a couple of days ago, invited Sakina Bibi for a festivity. As Sudhir Kakar explains, suddenly not only “the deep sense of community” have come to light in the riot, but the hitherto hidden “complex emotions, such as both disgust and overwhelming sexual attraction for a member of the enemy community” are revealed.16 Another example of a profound and all-embracing humanity is projected in the Hindu-Muslim relationship of Vakil Sahib and Osman Bhai. Not only they both try to escape from, in terms of religion, the rigid atmosphere of their homes, especially Vakil, but they go on errands where they, with the utmost pleasure, eat together, which, of course, is unthinkable for both an orthodox Hindu and a Muslim believer, 17 and they even do it at the time of fast (for both of them). Though there is nothing orthodox about either of them each can be rightly considered as adhering to his respective ‘religious camp,’ and not just in social terms. That shows through their respective reflections concerning their ‘sin’ (committed by eating at a fast period): each recalls and tells the other legends related to his religion the interpretation of which is supposed to justify what they have done. Their friendship goes back to the time of Partition when Vakil Sahib’s father saved the life of Osman Bhai’s father disguising him as his Hindu cook, a secret which is revealed at a crucial moment on the occasion

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of Osman Bhai’s Pak istani relatives’ visit. There is an agreeable atmosphere of a mutual understanding at the dinner given by Vakil Sahib’s family when suddenly Pathans (Pakistanis) in the Indian jail are evoked, ‘the shame’ of disrobing Draupadi in the Mahabharata mentioned, and “... The pressure of unspoken things weighed heavy in the air and the strain was felt by everyone.” 18 It has, however, no damaging effect on the two men’s friendship. The varied shades of the Hindu-Christian encounter a re re ve a l e d t h ro u g h t h e re co n s t r u c t i o n o f Ly n e t te Shepherd’s personality, who is an ardent Christian. Lynette has difficulties to accord forgiveness to her deceased husband, Brian, because of his relationship with another woman, an Indian. Through Lynette’s recollections Brian’s disrespect towards Hinduism and Indian life in general is re-constructed, while Lynette herself, though reproaching herself not being able to come to terms with her own religion, that is not being able to forgive Brian, Marcia, and even herself for the lack of forgiveness, shows a sincere and profound interest in Indian culture. She finally manages to cope with her problem by putting fire to Brian’s letters and seeing the act in terms of the Hindu perception of fire, “... A fire sacrifice, a relinquishing of claim in the brief drama of igniting and extinguishing.”19 That the victims’ and their interlocutors’ relationships, encounters, motivations, and feelings, in shor t, their stories, are brought to the scene in such a detailed and vivid manner and made so the centre of the narrative subverts in fact another kind of narrative which might be expected here as appropriate and that is the detective story. Victim and murderer are present in both and people are most interested in the revelation of the identity of the murderer and bringing of his/her story to light. The detective story fulfils these expectations, but not so that of Neelum Saran Gour. Besides concentrating, in her investigation, as mentioned above, entirely on the ‘victims,’ not only she communicates the ‘murderer’s’ identity in a matter-of-fact manner already at the very beginning of the novel as that

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of Suleman Jamel, but as to his character or personality as if no story was given; no representation of his thoughts, feelings, or whatever other revelation of his inner self is offered. He is entirely externalized and portrayed just as awkward with respect to human exchange, he shows no effort to communicate and pushes off every such attempt from other people. On the other hand, it is he himself who is writing a story: it is a novel. Apparently this is a love story of a young Mughal and a Rajput princess in the times of Akbar when the two families are overcome by enmity towards each other. The story when decoded manifests itself in a most terrific and totally reversed and perverse appearance - the explosion, through which its author’s unsociable character shows itself in its most intense. While the militant draws, as Mohammed M. Hafez explains, ‘on shared meanings to reproduce and to embellish them, and generates new ones’20 the love between individuals as a counterpart to the communal enmity in his novel, points, however, to what Neelum Saran Gour and some of her most enlightened characters value most: individual contact, encounter, and interaction regardless the religious appurtenance. The question of religious identity is evoked through a young woman’s story, whose parents, a Hindu and a Muslim, had to do without the blessing of their respective families when getting married out of love, which also echoes the love relationship in Suleman’s novel. “But what are you now? What do you mean? Hindu or Muslim? - I’m Vani Shahnaz Kabir. That’s who I am.”21 Thus also Professor M athur, before dying in the explosion, makes, for some, an astonishing statement: “I converted long back. I converted to every religion in the world. - Silence. - You’re not a Hindu any more? - That could only be described as a stage silence. - Of course I’m a Hindu. Half of me is Hindu. The other half’s open.” 22 Another remarkable example of a ‘convert to every religion’ and the simple, straightforward, and all-embracing humanity is Master Hargopal Misra who lets a homeless person sleep in his modest dwelling, adopts an abandoned female dog and

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her family, always carries biscuits for other animals in need and even refuses to travel because of them. On his priceless Stradivarius violin he only plays ‘hymns to Jesus’ until the eve of the explosion (in which he dies) to keep his promise to the Christian from whom he got the instrument. Now something extraordinary happens: at a party where he plays for free while he has believed it had been organized in his honour the humiliation is surmounted by his encounter with Karen Schumacher, an American Ph.D student of ‘Western Musicology.’ After refusing to recognize a financial benefit as his reward Masterji’s play and Karen’s singing become unified in one melody. A Christian hymn which had been once imposed as a duty has become a song of a profound human interchange in spite of approaching death. “Still all my song shall be Nearer my God to Thee,” 23 the Titanic leading tune, and K aren’s resemblance to Madonna (in Hargopal Misra’s perception), all these become an expression of ‘human feelings which survive ravages of wars and riots’ (as mentioned above) and even death, no matter what the creed, race, nationality, or colour is. This is, however, only made possible after a voluntary and loving human exchange between Self and Other, expressed here by Karen playing Hargopal’s violin. This must still, nevertheless, be preceded by the recognition of one’s Self as demonstrated by Hargopal’s forgetfulness, for the first time, of his promise when playing Indian ragas ‘instead’ of Christian hymns. It is not a mere coincidence that the author decides to end her novel with Siddhanta’s contemplation after he finds his newspaper office burnt down due to his having reported on Sakina Bibi and Rubina’s assault, which makes also an appropriate conclusion to the present paper: It goes on, you see. I was fond of saying that history has taught us how to make the old mistakes in new ways. Now I’d like to add to that and say history is one hell of a flexiholograph in which some rules get recast, some rhythms recur or reverse but the obdurate old truths reincarnate in new forms and all the old human stories get rewritten in new ways.24

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Neelum Saran Gour has attempted to re -write the human story in a new way, in a way that goes far beyond what appears on the sur face, in a way that takes into account individuals rather than falsely uniting rigid dogmas, faiths, and propagandas. Works Cited Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-colonial Literatures. 1989. London and New York: Routledge, 2001. Bhabha, Homi. The Location of Culture. 1994. London and New York: Routledge, 2002. Chandra, Bipan, Mridula Mukherjee, and Aditya Mukherjee. India After Independence: 1947-2000. 1999. New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2000. Doniger, Wendy. The Laws of Manu. London: Penguin Books, 1991. Foucault, Michel. “Afterword: the Subject and Power.” Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow. Michel Foucault: Beyond Struc turalism and Her meneutics. Br ighton: Har vester, 1982. Freud, Sigmund. “Compulsive Actions and Religious Exercises.” 1907 (“Zwangshandlungen und Religionsuebungen”). Mass Psychology and Other Writings. London: Penguin Books, 2004. Gour, Neelum Saran. Sikandar Chowk Park. New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2005. Hafez, Muhammad M. Why Muslims Rebel: Repression and Resistance in the Islamic World. New Delhi: Viva Books Private Limited, 2005. Kakar, Sudhir. The Colours of Violence. 1995. New Delhi: Penguin Books India, 1996. Kropáèek, Luboš. Duchovní cesty islámu. (Spiritual Routes of Islam.) Praha: Vyšehrad, 1993. Prasad, G. J. V. “Neelum Saran Gour.” The Cambridge Guide to Women’s Writing in English. Ed. Lorna Sage. Cambridge: Cambridge U Press, 1999. Tharoor, Shashi. Riot: A Novel. 2001. New Delhi: Penguin Books

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India, 2003.

References 1.

G.J.V. Prasad, “Neelum Saran Gour.”

2.

Neelum Saran Gour, Sikandar Chowk Park, 1.

3.

Neelum Saran Gour, Sikandar Chowk Park, 23.

4.

Neelum Saran Gour, Sikandar Chowk Park, 24.

5.

Sigmund Freud, “Compulsive Actions and Religious Exercises,” 8.

6.

Neelum Saran Gour, Sikandar Chowk Park, 27.



7.

Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-colonial Literatures, 34.

8.

Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-colonial Literatures, 170. Michel Foucault, “Afterword: the Subject and Power.”

9.

Neelum Saran Gour, Sikandar Chowk Park, 29.

10.

Neelum Saran Gour, Sikandar Chowk Park, 36.

11.

Neelum Saran Gour, Sikandar Chowk Park, 36.

12.

Shashi Tharoor, Riot: A Novel.

13.

Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 9.

14.

Neelum Saran Gour, Sikandar Chowk Park, 39.

15.

During the Kargil crisis when the Pakistani armed forces managed to infiltrate into Indian territory a large number of Indian soldier’s and officers’ lives were lost in the Indian counter-offensive. For more details see Bipan Chandra, M ridula Muk herjee, and Aditya Muk herjee, India After Independence: 1947-2000, 297, 298.

16.

Sudhir Kakar, The Colours of Violence, 44, 45.

17.

See, for example, Wendy Doniger, The Laws of Manu, and Luboš Kropáek, Duchovní cesty islámu, 107-110, 135, 136.

18.

Neelum Saran Gour, Sikandar Chowk Park, 175.

19.

Neelum Saran Gour, Sikandar Chowk Park, 236.

20.

Muhammad M. Hafez, Why Muslims Rebel: Repression and Resistance in the Islamic World, 156.





Narrative Strategies and the Invisible… 21.

Neelum Saran Gour, Sikandar Chowk Park, 106, 107.

22.

Neelum Saran Gour, Sikandar Chowk Park, 238.

23.

Neelum Saran Gour, Sikandar Chowk Park, 263.

24.

Neelum Saran Gour, Sikandar Chowk Park, 286.



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2 Arroyo in Her Piece of Writing from The Sandal Trees to Facing the Mirror: A Herstorical Overview of Same-Sex Love in India —Ana García-Arroyo

When I first came across The Sandal Trees, a collection of short stories by Kamala Das, I remember stopping for some minutes to contemplate the beautiful and suggestive illustration that makes the front cover of the book. Here, the depiction of an Indian woman with long black hair and a yearning look in her eyes, a kind of nostalgia for the past, or for the unfulfilled expectations of the future, occupies, outstandingly, the centre of all its space. What is relevant to mention is that the woman is in the house, beside a window, with her gaze fixed in the infinite wonders of the world outside. Exuberant vegetation can be perceived vaguely, probably the sandal trees which the title evokes and the writer uses as a kind of metaphor. “The Sandal Trees” is the first short story of a compilation of twenty-four, which gives the title to the book, published in Malayalam in 1988 and then translated into English in 1995. In “The Sandal Trees” Kamala Das examines same-sex love between women which occurs within the heterosexual mainstream. She narrates the story of two women, Sheela, from a prosperous family, and

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Kalyanikkutty, from a poor family, who have been in love with each other all their lives. The second text that I propose to study, Facing the Mirror, is the first anthology of lesbian writing from India edited by Ashwini Sukthankar and published in 1999. The title itself is very significant as it speaks for the fact that now women are courageous enough to ‘face the mirror’, to question themselves and challenge the hypocrisies of life around. The year of publication, 1999, must be noteworthy for it is essentially at the end of the 90s that the work carried out by activist movements in previous decades to politicise and make visible a lesbian space starts to give its fruits and has its reflection in literature. In this article I would like to analyse some of the major changes and landmarks that have taken place in the 80s and 90s within the Indian political movements struggling against lesbian invisibility in a heteropatriarchal society. At the same time I will aim at establishing a correspondence between these achievements and their reflection in the two texts that I propose, “The Sandal Trees” and Facing the Mirror. Kamala Das tackles the theme of same-sex love between women in “The Sandal Trees”, although it is not the first occasion that it appears in her narrative or poetry. Despite the fact that Das is counted as a major 20th-century Indian poet and is introduced as a “unique literary phenomenon in India” in critical works and anthologies (Mittapalli & Piciucco, 2001:v), not many critics have wanted to analyse her exploration of sexuality and her attitude to love owing to her controversial and bold literary style. Das has no qualms about depicting same-sex desire in works such as My Story (1977), an autobiographical narration for which her defence of free love earned her the reputation of ‘promiscuous’; nor does she fear to deal with male homoeroticism, which appears in “Iqbal” (1992), a four-page short story that narrates the love relationship between a wife, her husband and her husband’s lover. In “The Sandal Trees” Das wants to highlight that two women

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who fall in love are always subjected to the rigid cultural conventions that contemplate heterosexuality as the only expression of sexuality. Sheela and Kalyanikkutty fall in love when they are teenagers. The writer describes the authenticity of their desire and love bonding in the following lines: Why weren’t you born a boy? We were bathing in the swimming-pond. In front of her gaze I suddenly felt shy. I felt my buttocks and my bosom trembling under her steady gaze (3). The moistness and taste of her mouth became mine. The roughnesses and tendernesses of her body became all mine (4).

From the perspective of the patriarchal mainstream this kind of relationship between women has been explained and justified as a phase in female adolescence that expires as soon as the individual gets married. Notwithstanding, in the story, when their families discover their strong attachment and affection, they are immediately married off. Sheela is married to a man twenty-one years older than her and Kalyanikkutty marries a young man who loves her. On the day of Sheela’s wedding, Kalyanikkutty suggests running away together to live a life of their own, but Sheela, who adopts a more rational behaviour and does not have the spirit of a daring, passionate and courageous woman like Kalyanikkutty, answers that their education is not finished, an argument which eventually leads us to deduce that they would not be able to survive in the dominant masculinist jungle. They finish their education and both women become doctors. As time goes by Kalyanikkutty gets a divorce but Sheela remains trapped within cultural conventions that impede her from abandoning her husband. Disappointed, Kalyanikkutty leaves for Australia where she will spend twenty-six years. When she returns both women are in their fifties and they continue being in love with each other. Kalyanikkutty realizes that Sheela is still not prepared to leave her husband. “I’ve never loved anyone else like this” Kalyanikkutty confesses to Sheela, but the latter, instead, does not dare to admit that she also loves her

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beloved, and that during all those years with her husband she has missed the sweet scent of her skin, the touch of her limbs and her kisses. Thick distance and silence have interposed between Sheela and her husband, but it is this unspeakable silence which gives her happiness as it evokes the real presence of her true love. At a particular moment of the narration Sheela’s thoughts roam freely like this: “I cultivated silence. It grew and stood between me and my husband like a sandal tree, giving me much happiness” (13). The writer associates the image of the sandal trees with Sheela’s beloved. Much earlier, almost at the beginning of the story, Kalyanikkutty is also compared with sandalwood: “She was a rustic girl then. A girl whose skin had the colour of sandalwood” (2). After the beautiful literary descriptions of female sexual pleasure with which Kamala Das delights, or perhaps surprises the reader, the question that rises now is why it is not possible for the two women to go away, maybe to Australia as Kalyanikkutty suggests, and enjoy a life in peace together. I have mentioned above that Das examines queer relations that occur within the heterosexual mainstream, among ordinary people in everyday situations. On one hand, what Das seems to convey is that within the heteropatriarchal system these lesbian relationships are invisible and unacknowledged. Das subverts the domination of constructed attitudes and sexual taboos by naturally telling a same-sex love story and placing queerness within the hegemonic straight culture in India. On the other hand, despite the recognition and internalisation of the lover’s love towards the beloved, Sheela, the one who is trapped within the marriage, does not express her feelings overtly, nor is she brave enough to liberate herself from the clutches of social convention. If we pay attention to the context and the time of the story we realize that the writer does not situate the narration at any particular moment. However, the story was first published in 1988, which in a way functions as a signal indicating that it is very unlikely to find same-sex love stories with happy endings or fulfilling

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relationships if writers want to be faithful to real life. It is still too early. The convergence and combination of the necessary factors and circumstances that produce political awareness, unleashes restraints and inhibitions and brings about change in this particular field of alternative sexualities starts to occur in the 80s, and mainly develops in the 90s with the arrival of globalization, the acceleration of capitalism and the rise of the middle class. In the 80s there were reports in the Indian press about lesbian suicides, which were characterized by their sensationalist tone (Giti Thadani, 1996; Bina Fernandez 2002). This inauspicious news was also complemented by reports on Indian lesbian marriages towards the late 80s (Anu & Giti, 1993). In many of these cases the lovers followed ancestral traditions like the gandharva marriage, a non-contractual union as Thadani puts it, or the Maitri Karar, a friendship pact practised in the state of Gujarat through which the two women become sahiyas or lifelong companions. Such news in the late 80s takes the subject of sexuality out of the closet. Sexual myths and taboos are challenged and Indian society is reminded of its own heritage and its well-rooted homoerotic traditions, which scholars such as Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai have depicted so well in works like, Same-Sex Love in India: Readings from Literature and History (2000)1. 1990 is the year of the first Asian Lesbian Conference which takes place in Bangkok. It is attended by seven lesbians from Delhi and Mumbai who meet other Asians with the purpose of discussing issues related to politics, relationships, family, networking, arranged marriages, lesbian invisibility and the absence of artistic lesbian manifestations. A fruitful result of this conference is the formation of “Sakhi Collective”, a Lesbian Resource Centre and Research and Networking Institute in Delhi. Giti Thadani is the founder of Sakhi Collective, and also a researcher who establishes connections between ancient mythologies, cosmogonies, temples and sculptures of the erotic and sexual bonding between women in the past.

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Despite the situation of invisibility of Indian lesbians, groups such as Sakhi in Delhi, and many others that have been appearing afterwards, like Stree Sangam in Bombay, have emerged in urban areas to fight for legitimisation. The first major step has been to break the silence and deconstruct sexual discourses. The relationship between lesbian organizations and feminists has been tense, especially at the beginning, because the latter did not want to include lesbian issues in their agendas. They did not realize at the time that the socio-economic realities that affect women in India have to do with the heteropatriarchal system that lesbians so much challenge and criticize. The National Federation of Indian Women has boycotted some lesbian workshops and conferences. For them discussing lesbianism in India is immoral and vulgar as it threatens women’s dignity and welfare. They consider that Indian women must be preserved from external influences that come through discourses and images. This attitude should not surprise us if we bear in mind that postcolonial nationalism, as Shakuntala Rao informs us, has used women and their bodies to represent identity. Women become passive symbols within the discourse of tradition and religion, they are deified as Sita or Draupadi; “they embodied subordination through deeply essentialized and mythologized feminine qualities” (Rao, 1999: 322). The term ‘lesbian’ itself has caused great trouble to the women who opt to identify like this, as it conveys negative meanings associated with the West. In “Silence and Invisibility”, Giti Thadani comments: “the self-identified Indian lesbian is viewed as inherently Western, and is subject to frequent criticism on this account” (1999: 150). Thus, lesbianism is seen as a Western importation that refers to abnormal sexuality or sexuality against the order of nature. Likewise, the Indian lesbian defies ‘correct’ gender roles, claims feminist independence and contests the moral codes and traditions of the country. From the Indian perspective the construction of the West holds layers of materialism, sexual vices, moral corruption, capitalism, pornography, violence

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and scandalous sexual affairs. To make matters worse, those homoerotic Sanskrit terms such as sakhi or jami, which did suit the purpose of naming and defining, have been purged of their sexual reference and original eroticism. They are now interpreted as ‘sister’, ‘woman’ or ‘friend’. To debunk lesbian invisibility and misrepresentation, the lesbian movements of the 80s and 90s have resurrected homoerotic expressions of the rich Indian legacy and they have brought them to the popular memory. The reappropriation of the terminology of desire has been crucial. If the term ‘lesbian’ seems controversial for some women in India for its political load, the task has consisted in recuperating some terms in Sanskrit such as saheli or sakhi, and imbuing them with their original meaning, which alludes to the female lover and to love between women. During the 1980s and very especially in the 90s the vindication of an identity and the legitimacy of a “room of one’s one” has constituted the major political act against silence and invisibility. This great barrier of Silence and Invisibility, which paradoxically seems to be pleasant for the protagonist of Das’s story because it evokes the image of her beloved, has been challenged thanks to the work done by both activist movements and artistic works. The formation of lesbian networks, the construction of a lesbian identity, the recovering of a sakhi or saheli space eventually does away with the conspiracy of muteness and silence, and allows the female lovers to cultivate their own meritorious possibility of existing together. In 1988 when “The Sandal Trees” is published for the first time the cultural context and situation for lesbians or sahelis is still very undefined as I have just exposed. There had been some artistic antecedents such as “The Quilt”, a short story written originally in Urdu (Lihaaf) and published in 1942 by Ismat Chughtai. Also Suniti Namjoshi’s poetry and fables deal with the theme of feminism and lesbianism. However, many of Namjoshi’s works are first published abroad and reach India much

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later. Let me point out that one of the reasons for Namjoshi to leave the country is the discovery of her lesbianism and, as a result, the impossibility of living her life together with her lover in India. When Ashwini Sukthankar’s edition of lesbian writing from India appears in 1999, it constitutes a great achievement; a landmark that represents a plural, visible and lesbian space in contemporary Indian writing in English, where the lesbian becomes a literary character and a writer. Facing the Mirror: Lesbian Writing From India is a remarkable collection whose best characteristic is diversity. Literary diversity is reflected in the various genres that compose the text: essays, poetry, short stories and memoirs. Diversity is also present in the plurality of the thematic areas: some writers interrogate identity, others the space between two worlds, between the mask and the face, as the contributor “V. S.” asserts, that is to say, the reality of being trapped in a conventional marriage and the desire of loving another woman. There are others who prefer to personify the sour feeling of silence and the tangible invisibility, which causes pain to the body and the soul. Some others write about the spirit of community, group and family; the lesbian/queer family which contrasts with their biological family. The great majority write about love, which is the theme par excellence and appears in all the works, adopting different forms: romantic, erotic, sexual. Sukthankar introduces this anthology pointing at the meaning of the different words that compose the title. The term ‘lesbian’ is used in the broadest sense to show the great variety and complexity of human relations. ‘Lesbian’, ‘writing’ and ‘Indian’, Sukthankar states, taken together, mean: “to write with a knowledge of this country, and to relate to its particular freedoms and restrictions and proprieties from that perspective” (1999: xix). Consequently “Indian” implies the recognition of a homoerotic past, of an Indian identity that is in constant flux and expresses the different manifestations of loving women. These expressions and ways of loving women have continuously been shifting and

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linguistically evolving. Despite the Western pejorative connotations, “lesbian” refers to a diverse group of women, who differ in terms of class, caste, region, age and social status but are bound by their common love towards women. Likewise, “writing” is a political act, “the process through which our lives, put into the tangibility of words, could be made public” (xxi). What might strike the reader about this edited anthology of lesbian writing in India is that of a total number of almost a hundred pieces of writing, in only a few do the contributors use their own real names. Most of the writers adopt a pseudonym. This is indeed a relevant indicator of ubiquitous homophobia, as it seems that by using a pseudonym the writer can defend herself for it works as “a shield to defect the light” and also as a “kind of ironic freedom” (xxvi). The US writer Bell Hooks embodies this idea of opting for a pseudonym, a shelter, which for her, and also for the writers in Facing the Mirror, is a rebellious gesture, an act of empowerment to recreate and invent an identity, which affirms the right to speak and express one’s alternative sexuality. I would now like to illustrate with some examples from Facing the Mirror the richness of lesbian existence in contemporary India. “Passages” corresponds to the first section of the book and focuses on change and transition in their lives. In “Learning and Waking” Rajkumari writes: At the age of forty, to awaken is painful because the eyes have become accustomed to darkness, and sudden light hurts. The pain is like glass smashing inside the skull (26).

She uses the recurrent metaphor of light and darkness to allude to the obscure world she has been living in, the one that submits and enslaves her will and consciousness; her awakening and rebirth in a new world of love brings her a promising future and also pain. In “Words, Yours and Mine” Mani and Palash write: Our memories, that are still unexpressed, waiting to be clothed in words and scattered upon the page […] On the one hand an unknown future but lifelong togetherness, and on the other

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hand, the memories of days spent with our families. The speeding train was carrying us to an absolutely alien city. We had left everything behind, our homes, our people, and a life led according to the wishes of others (52 & 56).

The writings in the section entitled “Home” reflect the ongoing tension and pressure of a traditional family, marriage and the desire to be liberated from these clutches. Among all these ones “The Letter” by Kanchana Natarajan is a fully-fledged short story which beautifully describes the process through which lesbian women in India have gone in the last two decades. It recalls the past and also what being ‘lesbian’ and ‘woman’ means in the context of a lower middle-class Brahmin family. It also foretells a hard but flourishing future for two women who love each other. There are striking words of the lover towards the female beloved which stir up great excitement: Listening to her was as exciting as biting into a green chilli, sliced and seasoned, in curd rice … with the thrill that comes from letting hot saliva flow freely into the mouth. Afflicted by the sting, swearing never to bite into a chilli again… but after a while craving it once more (96).

“The Letter” is a good example that confirms the important shift that has occurred in India between the late 1980s and the present time. However, we have to place the text within the complete anthology of lesbian writing to be able to perceive the evolution. The section “Worlds” of Sukthankar’s anthology deals with lesbian existence, its origins, stereotypes and continuous struggle to create space. The contributor V. S. poetically alludes to the phenomenon of lesbian invisibility in “How Does It Feel to Be a ‘Problem’?”: How does it feel to be a secret? How does it feel to be invisible? How does it feel to be unutterable? How does it feel to be forbidden to be? […] How does it feel to have your credibility, validity and legitimacy constantly interrogated? (147)

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And she continues with this daring, challenging interrogation, the voice of a subject already positioned by the status quo, interpreted, judged and mutilated by the mainstream, overridden, overruled and constructed as silent and mute by heteropatriarchy. In a more optimistic and gracious mood, Ruth Vanita contributes a small but very lyrical piece, “On Non-Resident Angels”: To entertain an angel is harder Than it sounds, is indeed a dangerous Enterprise. Think twice when your stranger glows. Angels have a disconcerting way Of stealing hearts, and flying away (173).

In the other sections of the anthology, “Differences”, “Connections” and “Love”, the contributors discuss the diversity within the community of lesbians, the incapacity of restrictive terms such as ‘man’, ‘woman’, ‘lesbian’, ‘gay’, ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ to define human beings. They also focus on the necessity to form groups, networks and coalitions to fight invisibility and heterosexism. The last part celebrates the representation of love in different ways. No doubt, Facing the Mirror constitutes a process of artistic creation and communion, “a tribute to writing as a record of our lives” (xxxix). Sukthankar adds that there are some silences so immense that they cannot be bridged with words. For this reason it is important not to forget the story of these women’s individual lives. In general, the writings in Facing the Mirror surprise us with ingenious phrases, beautiful metaphors and subtle, ironic comments. They have to be studied and evaluated with alternative literary devices that include and do not exclude. Facing the Mirror represents a panoramic view of contemporary lesbian herstory in India. Despite the fact of undeniable homophobia women and women writers can live together and write their own stories. No matter what name they choose to define themselves (lesbians, sahelis, bisexuals) their mutual struggle towards acknowledgement

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of their rights and appropriation of a common and visible space marks a step towards the complete realization of a utopia. To conclude, I would like to go back to the beginning of this article, to the image of the Indian woman on the front cover of The Sandal Trees and what it really represents. As I expressed above, the woman is in the house looking through the window, longing for her female lover. Deeply accepted social barriers and cultural constrictions of a compulsory marriage impede her from making a decision and taking action. Instead, she prefers to remain passively secluded in an unhappy marriage, while silently evoking the nostalgic happiness of the beloved. In Facing the Mirror, the female protagonists and women writers have come out of their house to face reality; to politicise their name and legitimise their rights; to artistically claim a space of their own, which does away with invisibility and obscurity and establishes a continuum with the Indian homoerotic past. This is the tremendous change that can be perceived from the stage of silence to the era of facing reality. WORKS

CITED

Anu & Giti. “Inverting Tradition: The Marriage of Lila and Urmila”. A Lotus of Another Color. An Unfolding of the South Asian Gay and Lesbian Experience. (Ed). Rakesh Ratti. Boston: Alyson Publications, 1993. Chughtai, Ismat (1942). The Quilt and Other Stories. Trad. Tahira Naqvi & Syeda. New Delhi & London: The Women’s Press, 1991. Das, Kamala. My Story. New Delhi: Sterling Publishers, 1977. — (1974). “Iqbal”. Padmavati The Harlot and Other Stories. New Delhi: Sterling Paperbacks, 1992. — (1988). “The Sandal Trees”. The Sandal Trees and Other Stories. Trans. V.C. Harris & C. K. Mohamed Ummer. Hyderabad: Navya Printers, 1995.

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Fernandez, Bina (ed.). Humjinsi. A Resource Book on Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Rights in India. Mumbai: Combat Law Publications Ltd., 2002. García-Arroyo, Ana. The Construction of Queer Culture in India: Pioneers & Landmarks. Barcelona: Ellas Editorial, 2006. Hooks, Bell. Talking Back. Boston: South End Press, 1989. Mittapalli, Rajeshwar & P.P. Piciucco (eds.). Kamala Das. A Critical Spectrum. New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers, 2001. Namjoshi, Suniti. Feminist Fables. London, 1981. —. The Authentic Lie. Fredericton, New Brunswick (Canada): Goose Lane Editions, 1982. —. Because of India. London: Onlywomen Press, 1989. Rao, Shakuntala. “Woman-As-Symbol: The Intersections of Identity Politics, Gender, and Indian Nationalism”. Women’s Studies International Forum. Vol. 22, nº. 3 (1999): 317-328. Sukthankar, Ashwini (ed). Facing the Mirror. Lesbian Writing from India. New Delhi: Penguin, 1999. Thadani, Giti. “Visibility & Silence”. Bombay Dost. Jan-June, 1992. —. Sakhiyani: Lesbian Desire in Ancient & Modern India. London: Cassell, 1996. —. “Silence and Invisibility”. Facing the Mirror. Ed. Ashwini Sukthankar. New Delhi: Penguin, 1999. Vanita, Ruth & Saleem Kidwai. Same-Sex Love in India: Readings from Literature and History. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000.

NOTES 1.

See also: The Construction of Queer Culture in India: Pioneers and Landmarks by Ana García-Arroyo.

3 Literature Still Matters! The Namesake: Woman Reads Woman —Prem Srivastava

Two Worlds, One Journey 1 Jhumpa Lahiri’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Namesake (2003), has been both loved and ignored for its por trayal of the trauma of the culturally displaced. Responses to the novel have veered between an unqualified appreciation 2 and a lukewarm rejection, resultant from the view that she has not been able to surprise the readers anymore beyond Interpreter of Maladies, her debut collection of stories.3 In the year 2007, Mira Nair, the academy awardnominated filmmaker explores this theme of ‘immigrant experience and the clash of cultures in the U.S’4 on celluloid. Both Lahiri and Nair share a plethora of common experiences. Being ‘an Indian by ancestry, British by birth, and American by immigration’5 and having the experience of ‘the perplexing bicultural universe’ of Calcutta in India and the United States, ‘Lahiri mines the immigrant experience’ 6 through print in a manner not variant from the filmmaker’s subsequently; born in India but negotiating Canada, Africa and the US, and a husband from Kampala, Uganda-hybridity, dislocations, disjunctioned psyches, displaced and confused personas, adoption, assimilation, annihilation, resurrection, clash of cultures and mediums - all suddenly appear so relevant and logically positioned and located in these two narratives of

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human drama of love, loss and longing, forging an ancientmodern tapestry that beautifully cradled the span of thirty years in the Ganguli family. It will, therefore, be interesting to look at literature, essentially the novel and narratives on celluloid and posit, then negotiate, certain theoretical strategies regarding literary adaptations for a smoother entry into the dynamics of the novel and film. I would like to go by Corrigan’s (1998) suggestion that even though the present postmodern sensibility has toppled hierarchies; rewritten the notion of value, taste and aesthetics; and brought communication, market and the mediascape, centerstage – literature still matters. Another interesting area of enquiry would be to see how the one reads the other or how one woman reads the other/another woman. Fur ther, another discursive configuration would be to appropriate the views of Geoffrey Wagner and Andrew Dudley 7 wherein the film becomes ‘another work of art’ (Wagner 1975: 227) and ‘uniqueness of the original text is illuminated by the cinematic refraction of the original’ (Pellow 2000: 30). Literature Still Matters One estimate claims that 30 percent of the movies today derive from novels and that 80 percent of the books classified as best sellers have been adapted to the cinema. If the connection between the two practices has persisted so adamantly through the years, it seems especially pressing now, at the end of the twentieth century, as an index of why the movies are important, why literature still matters, and what both have to offer a cultural period in which boundaries are continually being redrawn (Corrigan 1999: 2).

The above remark astutely sums up major issues c o n c e r n i n g f i l m a d a p t a t i o n s 8 o f l i t e r a r y wo r k s. T h e continuous interaction between literature and film, although it is usually film that initiates the interaction, has generated substantial amount of debate and received legitimate attention. Many English and/or media studies departments in universities offer courses on film adaptations and the Academy confers a separate award for adapted screenplays, distinguishing them from original ones. Such phenomena

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tend to be read as encroachment of visual culture upon the traditional culture of literacy. Nonetheless, one finds the aim of an adaptation in that: The adaptation trades upon the memory of the novel, a memory that can derive from actual reading, or … consumes this memory, aiming to efface it with the presence of its own images. (Ellis 1982: 3).

This also raises debates concerning the relation of film and literature and the established hierarchy between the two, often privileging literature, 9 but sometimes, seeking to dismantle the hierarchy and look for a way to embrace the two in a culturally productive manner. However, in the majority of cases, studies on adaptation appear to dwell on the question ‘why literature still matters’, in other words, the question of the ‘fidelity’ of a film adaptation to its source literature. The answers and explanations to the question are generally of two kinds: one is that literature should not matter and the other is that there are reasons that literature still matters. The former tends to end up discarding literature as the inspirational source of a film, thus actually making meaningless the act of adaptation itself and the latter tends to subordinate film to literature, thus essentialising the meaning of adaptation as the visualization of a novel. The limits of both approaches reside in the assumption of the ontological value of literature. Given such parameters, one tries to answer the question ‘why literature still matters’ by revealing the ways in which the meaning of literature is constructed in discourses on adaptations. M e a n i n g i s a l ways a re s u l t o f ( re ) co nte x t u a l i z a t i o n . Examining different ways in which literature and film are (re)contextualized will shed light on a new aspect of the question. Looking at Mira Nair’s rewriting of Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake on celluloid is one such sure step in this direction. Literary Adaptation Studies The first book-length study on film adaptation of literature is based on the assumption that literature and film are intrinsically incompatible. Bluestone defines the

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two media as ‘two ways of seeing’ (Bluestone 1957: 1): one as physical sight through the eyes and the other as constructed sight through the mind, hence imagination. (p. 2) and also that the filmmaker is not a translator but a new author. This will be debated and problematised in the following pages when we discuss Lahiri’s text and Nair’s film in detail. On the other hand, several seminal studies, 10 including C. Kenneth Pellow ’s, interpret film adaptation as a critical commentary upon its original literary text. However, his study is based on the overtly asserted notion of hierarchy privileging literature over film. He claims ‘the film is almost invariably a shrunken version of the novel, a précis of sorts’ (Pellow 1994: 2). Most studies that compare literature and film in terms of medium specificity fail to move away from the fidelity issue. They bear the fear deriving from the concept that the film is a ‘picture-book’ (Orr 1992) that ‘there is…a risk that in the adaptation of novels into novel images some of the issues and arguments contained in the original may be … sacrificed to the demands of the new medium’ (Reynolds 1993: 10).The most important and significant critical statement comes from one of the pioneers in the study of film adaptation, Geoffrey Wagner who suggests that the methods of dramatization should be categorized into three types: transposition, commentary and analogy. Transposition is identified as the most dominant method ‘in which a novel is directly given on the screen, with the minimum of apparent interference’ (Wagner 1975: 222). He points out that this method is also least satisfactory as the film production is merely a reduced ‘book illustration’ (p. 223), a position shared by Orr too. Films ‘where an original is taken and either purposely or inadvertently altered in some respect’ is categorized as commentary. Such films are regarded as ‘creative restoration’ (p. 223) The final mode is an analogy where the film becomes ‘another work of art’ (p. 227). The creativity of the director is privileged over the author and ‘an analogy cannot be indicated a violation of a literary original since the director has not attempted to reproduce the original’ (p. 227). It is this suggestion to which

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I owe strict allegiance in my analysis of Mira Nair’s The Namesake. Relatedly, the debate on film adaptation is placed in a wider cultural practice. The adapted work holds ‘the status of myth’ as evidenced in works like A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the success of adaptation lies in ‘the issue of their fertility, not their fidelity’ (Pellow 2000: 30). The idea is that does the film enable further dialogues on the subject? True, for Mira Nair’s The Namesake actually is a landmark cinema in the vast ensemble of stories of cultural encounters and will be further qualified in the ensuing discussions of the same. The seminal critical framework to study the practice of adaptation is the one that raises the question of traditional cultural hierarchies. Corrigan claims, the usual cultural hierarchy that places serious literature above supposedly less serious film’ has been put in question in recent decades and ‘cinema now demands equal time and attention when we argue the relative value and meaning of movies and literature’ (p. 2-3) and advocates interdisciplinarity as an important factor to be considered in the study of adaptation. 11 He points out that both film and literature can be regarded as businesses and industries that participate in technological constraints and advantages. (p.3) Mira Nair’s The Namesake, can easily claim this understanding of adaptation which fosters individual creation. What is privileged, literature or film discourse - is the eternal debate. This is revealed in a most interesting manner in a case where a film is seen as more complex, nuanced and worthy of sustained ‘literary’ critique than the novel to which it is attached. Contrarily, in a 1996 adaptation of Henry James’s novel The Portrait of a Lady (1881), quite the opposite would seem to be true: that such a great novel would inevitably remain more complex and nuanced than the film.12 Can a similar case in point be made of The Namesake, is a worthy point for ponderance. The writer uses words; the film maker uses pictures. So begins all traditional arguments in adaptation studies.

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To borrow the terminology of the semiologists, words are arbitrary signs or symbols which are meaningless in themselves, signifying only by conventional agreement; and pictures, in contrast are generally thought of as natural signs or ‘icons’ which represent things on the basis of some sort of inherent resemblance to them and which in the case of photographic image, give the illusion of being almost identical to what they signify. It follows, according to this reasoning, that to the extent literature is dependent on the one and film is rooted in the other, each communicates through a different ‘language’. I n the nascent days of the motion pic tures, the introduction of the literary classics to the masses was seen as its mission. On the more practical level, can Lahiri’s novel be called a classic? Award winning, yes, classic – maybe, later! True that the work in question happens to be a significant intervention in the contemporary cultural diasporic discourses straddling two cultures on the threshold of forging the third; it, thus, also is a valuable screen asset - the proverbial ‘proven property’. There’s another factor at work also: such classic sources give movies their own touch of class. For, to adapt a prestigious work is to do more than merely borrow its plot, its characters, it’s themes: in the eyes of the movie industry it is to borrow a bit of that work’s quality and stature, too. Mira Nair further enhanced the text by her unwavering loyalty to her medium. In discussing the aesthetics of film adaptation, the basic question pertains to what the literary text gains or loses in the process of celluloid transposition. Thus far, I have attempted to spell out my initial propositions that furrows through various positions on literary adaptations. In the best cases, adaptation extends, enhances and elaborates the source. The Namesake

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Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake (2003) 13 is a narrative that ricochets the cultural dilemmas and dislocations experienced by an Indian Bengali family from Calcutta and their America-born children in different ways: spatial, cultural and emotional, to create ‘home’ in the new land. In The Namesake, the immigrant is Ashoke Ganguli, a young electrical engineering student who narrowly survives death in a horrific train accident in West Bengal, and follows the advice given to him by a fellow passenger just hours earlier: ‘Pack a pillow and a blanket and see as much of the world as you can’ (Lahiri 2003: 16). With a place in a doctoral program at MIT, Ashoke leaves family and culture in Calcutta, ‘in the waves of the early ’60s .…as part of the brain drain’ 14, to research in the field of ‘fibre optics’ with a prospect of settling down ‘with security and respect’ in America. (p. 105). Two years passed and he comes back to India, marries a nineteen year old Bengali girl from Calcutta named Ashima, who has no idea or dream of going to a place called Boston, but agrees because ‘he (Ashoke) would be there’. The most terrifying experience for her is ‘motherhood in a foreign land…so far from home, unmonitored and unobserved by those she loved…without a single grandparent or parent or uncle or aunt at her side’ and further ‘to raise a child in a country where she is related to no one, where she knows so little, where life seems so tentative and spare’ (p. 6). After the birth of son Gogol, she wants to go back to Calcutta and raise her child there in the company of the caring and loving relatives but decides to stay back for Ashoke’s sake and brings up the baby in the Bengali way. ‘To put him to sleep, she sings him the Bengali songs her mother had sung to her’ (p. 35). But greater displacement is felt more by her, after their migration from the University apartments to a University town outside Boston when Ashoke is ‘hired as an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University’ (p. 48). Feeling lonely and displaced in a foreign land, Ashima, though not pregnant now, begins to realize that being a foreigner ... is a sort of life-long pregnancy - a perpetual wait,

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a constant burden, a continuous feeling out of sorts. It is an ongoing responsibility, a parenthesis in what had once been ordinary life, only to discover that previous life has vanished, replaced by something more complicated and demanding. Like pregnancy, being a foreigner, Ashima believes, elicits the same curiosity from strangers, the same combination of pity and respect’ (p. 49-50). Their ultimate settlement, after two years, in their own home at ‘67 Pemberton Road’ which they buy in the locality where, ‘all the houses belong to Americans, shoes are worn inside, trays of cat litter are placed in the kitchen’, (p. 50) is initially disgusting to the Bengal born and bred – Ashima, but it is this house which becomes for her, her ‘home’ in America, negotiating the memories of her past, parents and Calcutta. This grand sweep of 30 years is the plot of the novel; punctuated by pungent realism - often stymied by lowlevel bureaucrats, like hospital staff and k indergar ten teachers. 15At the time of the birth of their son Gogol, they find it difficult to make the hospital authorities and the school authorities understand their cultural practice of having two names – a pet-name to be used at home and an official name (bhalo name) for formal purposes, which will be decided on the receipt of a letter from Ashima’s grandmother. Hence on their daughter’s birth they decide not to give her two names. From his earliest consciousness, Gogol almost hates his name, an accident caused by a collision between ancient Bengali custom and the American rush into informality, the constant perplexed looks it elicits, the unappreciated tie it represents to his parents’ native customs, the reference to this weird Russian writer that no one reads. In one of the interesting vignettes in the book, poor Gogol squirms through an English class when the saturnine teacher narrates the events of his namesake’s brief life. ‘Not your ordinary guy, Nikolai Gogol’, the teacher says. The identity crisis, the feeling of ‘in-betweenness’ 16 and belonging ‘nowhere’ is experienced by Gogol more intensely during his school trip to the cemetery where finding no grave of his ancestors he felt that being a Hindu/Bengali ‘he

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himself will be burned not buried, that his body will occupy no plot of earth, that no stone in this country will bear his name beyond life’ (p. 69). A series of his broken relations with Ruth, Maxine (with whom he was seriously involved) and his ‘wrecked marriage’ with the second generation Bengali girl, Moushumi, and the conflict between the unconscious Bengali cultural way and the conscious adaptation to the ‘American way’ make him ‘a boy sandwich’, broken and fragmented.17 Resistance and rejection, as imminent signifiers of diaspora and migrant narratives, is evidenced from several situations in the novel, primarily when some miscreants in the American neighbourhood remove the letters ‘uli’ from the name Ganguli on the mail box leaving it ‘shortened to GANG, with the word Green scrolled in pencil following it…Gogol’s ears burn at the sight, and he runs back into the house, sickened, certain of the insult his father will feel’ (p. 67) ‘Migrants’ 18 , according to Rushdie, ‘straddle two cultures.... fall between two stools’ and they suffer ‘a triple disruption’, comprising the loss of roots, and both the linguistic and the social dislocation. 19 Being migrants, Gogol and his parents suffer all these in different ways. But all the second-generation immigrants do not react the same way. Moushumi, who earlier had relations with men in Paris and America, breaks her marital ties with Gogol, goes to live with Dimitri, a German and has plans to leave for Paris ‘immersing herself in a third language, a third culture’. She, in fact, does not want to remain bound with any cultural roots, thereby refashioning and mobilizing received ideas from their ‘home’ culture and ‘host’ culture and through this act of ‘per formance…negotiated’ new ‘hybrid identities’. Ashima’s decision to draw and paint on ‘this year’s Christmas cards an elephant decked with red and green jewels, glued on to silver paper, the replica of a drawing her father had done for Gogol over twenty seven years ago, in the margins of an aerogramme’, instead of choosing the ‘Merry Christmas’ cards with ‘angels or nativity scenes’ (p. 160) reveals a new ‘hybrid’ identity, which is in the process of formation and ‘transformation’ 20. Thus, fresh

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interventions in the dominant culture and new subjectivities are born; fixed borders are ‘crossed’ imaginatively; from the ‘in-between’ marginal status, the migrants go ‘beyond’ the binary fixities of natives/migrants and carve new ‘routes’ 21. Gogol, though having passed through many emotional setbacks because of his ‘bicultural identity’, is shown to be feeling dejected, distressed, displaced, and lonely in the end not knowing what to do after the thwarting of his dreams, his father’s death, his wife’s desertion and his mother’s impending departure to India. But his desire to settle in a ‘home’, have a family and a son and rise professionally in other countries hints at his quest for the new ‘route’ which will dawn on him after his reflections in the company of the stories by his namesake, Nikolai Gogol - gifted to him by his father. Dostoyevsky is credited with saying, ‘We all came out of Gogol’s overcoat’, referring to a seminal short story by Nikolai Gogol, and suggesting how this tale, ‘The Overcoat’ was the cornerstone of Russia’s realistic school of fiction. While portraying the theme of cultural dilemmas and dislocations of the migrants, Lahiri does not remain confined to the dislocations of migrants in foreign lands alone. Rather, she projects dislocation as a permanent human condition and comments on Ashoke’s death in America ‘who had forsaken everything to come in this country, to make a better life, only to die here?’ (p. 180). The element of realism has been very strong in all of Nair’s films. ‘ The Namesake’, too, is very realistic and credible, not just in its look but also in the way the story has been treated and presented by Mira Nair. Not once are the emotions overblown. Rather you sense a slight awkwardness in the film’s characters when they have to bare their hearts open. Tales of identity crises of the young generation Indian diaspora may have become a bit clichéd of late, but Mira Nair tackles the theme of The Namesake with great sensibility and sensitivity. It is a subject with which she obviously can relate to. She brilliantly captures little moments in the lives of the characters when the conflict between western lifestyle and eastern sensibility comes out

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in the open. The element of realism has been very strong in all of Nair’s films. ‘The Namesake’, too, is very realistic and credible, not just in its look but also in the way the story has been treated and presented by Mira Nair. Not once are the emotions overblown. Rather you sense a slight awkwardness in the film’s characters when they have to bare their hearts open. Tales of identity crises of the young generation Indian diaspora may have become a bit clichéd of late, but Mira Nair tackles the theme of The Namesake with great sensibility and sensitivity. It is a subject with which she obviously can relate to. She brilliantly captures little moments in the lives of the characters when the conflict between western lifestyle and eastern sensibility comes out in the open. The element of realism has been very strong in all of Nair’s films. ‘The Namesake’, too, is very realistic and credible, not just in its look but also in the way the story has been treated and presented by Mira Nair. Not once are the emotions overblown. Rather you sense a slight awkwardness in the film’s characters when they have to bare their hearts open. Tales of identity crises of the young generation Indian diaspora may have become a bit clichéd of late, but Mira Nair tackles the theme of The Namesake with great sensibility and sensitivity. It is a subject with which she obviously can relate to. She brilliantly captures little moments in the lives of the characters when the conflict between western lifestyle and eastern sensibility comes out in the open. Bottom of Form Lahiri tells the story from a great narrative distance, and in a present tense that flattens the temporal context of events. Already slightly removed from the reader, the real messy things - arguments, rebellions, despairs, and dissolution of affairs, deaths and funerals - all occur offstage, mentioned in asides. For example, in a book that focuses so acutely on family, we never actually experience an extended conversation between father and son, mother and child, brother and sister. This is partly thematic: the Gangulis - even, perhaps especially, Gogol - are not emoters and talkers. As a result, the real experience of this family

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situation remains a little out of reach. I n i t s c i n e m at i c re p re s e nt at i o n , t h i s d i s t a n ce i s bridged. The Ganguli family is indeed quite ordinar y, as ordinary as all people, you and me. In the end, these two quiet narratives make a very large statement about courage, determination, and above all, the majestic ability of the human animal to endure. Nair, in the film, ‘brings alive the multiple selves constructed so painstakingly to make sense of the unknown world that is as much a land of opportunities as it is of conflict and confusion’. 22 Nair makes her Gogol a cross-cultural hybrid, a would-be ‘hip’ Indian-American with western clothes and a sullen pout, who is impatient with the languorous rituals of his parents and their community resonant of Lilia’s dilemma in a story by Lahiri ‘When Mr. Pirzada came to Dinner’. 23 But Ashima has a disguised subversive vein (she married American resident Ashoke partly to get away from her culture and because she liked his shoes), and Ashoke has a core of sweet self-sacrifice. Both become increasingly lovable as the story unfolds. Gogol’s rebellion is, in good measure, spurred on by his name: the (to him) idiotic cross between ‘Pogo’ and ‘Goo-Goo’, fostering lifelong resentment until his father finally explains the complex inspiration behind the name. The callowness of youth is captured by the way Gogol sulks and misbehaves, until finally, he sees who his parents are, who he is. Film aficionados love the Indian (Bengali) films of Satyajit Ray because of Ray’s ability to reveal layers of feeling and sensibility; that’s what Nair does here. Like the Gangulis, Nair empathically stands alongside those cultures, feeling them the way they feel through her ability to bathe everyone on screen in a glow of understanding. With near sculptural skill, she expresses that spirit — her arrangement, for instance, of people in a suburban kitchen, so that their intimacy is offset by the way they stare into their cereal bowls, or how a father ’s love for his son is conveyed powerfully by his devout refusal to say it.24 It’s one of those adaptations that are sprawling and episodic and crammed with incidents. The film opens in

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India in 1974 with a fateful train crash, then leaps ahead three years, when the studious and quizzical Ashoke marries the young Ashima, arranged for him to wed. A tale of assimilation and annihilation ensues, but the film then leaps ahead to their son, Gogol, whose love-hate, push-pull relationship with his heritage forms the spiritual core of the story. It is not ver y fashionable in literar y and scholarly studies to look to a creator’s life for comprehensive answers to the mysteries embedded in their work. Yet, it is imperative for us to be vigilant, for we may find ourselves in danger of falling into the convenient trap of finding parallels which convince us that we have understood the work even better than perhaps the creator/artist/writer did. Interestingly, Virginia Woolf comes to my mind. It is true that for a correct understanding of her fiction it was important to go through her myriad letters, diary entries, numerous essays and autobiographical sketches of her life. 25 So, an obvious area, apropos ideas about the novel and film is the emergence of alternate histories, in the form of interviews, comments, blog entries, etc. related to the filmmaker and film on the internet. I am suggesting a framework of continuities that will enable greater understanding of the texts under scrutiny. Thus, it is hard to put aside Nair’s several interviews, reviews and comments on/of the film. One way out of this dilemma may be to read them alongside the central concern of the filmmaker and thus construct and at the same time de-construct the text. In her most personal film till date, Nair brings to the screen, exploration of the ties that can both tangle and bind global families as they brave the modern vicissitudes of change, conflict and disaster. Spanning two generations, two clashing cultures and two very different ways of life that crash into each other only to become lovingly intertwined, the film, The Namesake, is ultimately about the imminently relevant question: What does it means to be a family? Family, as a unit had dominated the director’s imagination

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for quite some time before the making of this film. In one of her interviews on the film, Nair says that the family is the greatest refuge we have, how part of growing up is forgetting that and then remembering it. Also the film was made out of the need to make a really good family film. 26 The film mirrors the primal question: In a country where one can invent oneself anew all the time, how does family define us? As one reviewer puts it, The Namesake will ‘make you want to book a holiday to India and call your mother’. The study of this novel and film requires both a subjective appreciation of the story’s emotional message and an objective refinement of this message through the examination of other expressions of the culture’s sensibility. It is the expression of cultural values that makes this film so valuable for learning about another culture. With the right amount of curiosity and attention to detail, the viewer can explore the film, its images and symbolism and discover another culture through the eyes of the director, who has honestly adhered to the essence of her medium of expression. In Nair’s presentation of the text, she has almost achieved the impossible – a mating of fidelity discourse and preservation of the medium of expression! (Stam 2000: 58) It is true that even the most sincere, near perfect cinematic representation has its limitations. It may be, thus, useful to enter certain caveats regarding the inadvertent errors and anachronisms that affect this film, listed by vigilant observers and faithful viewers.27 Having dwelled on the issue of how well or otherwise has this woman read the other, I would respond, quite well. Lahiri’s The Namesake is Gogol’s story, some would say, and Lahiri herself clarifies her aim in creating such a character in The Namesake, ‘I just wanted to wr ite something focussing on the experiences of a Bengali-American kid’ and Nair gently transposes this in her medium. 28 But, Nair somewhere identifies more with the writer, Jhumpa Lahiri and protagonist Ashima to deliver such a heady schizophrenia of immigrants torn between two homes, unwittingly. Statements that establish a direct link with the

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protagonist spill out innocently in interviews. ‘Christmas still alienates me…Christmas lights may be the loneliest thing for me, especially if you mix them up with reindeers and sleighs. I feel alone. I feel isolated. I feel I do not belong’. One wonders, who said it? Ashima, Jhumpa Lahiri, or Mira Nair, or all the three? The success of the powerful film lies precisely in the analogical identification that the director develops with the writer and the protagonist. In one of her interviews, Nair ruminates, ‘ Then there is this image of Ashima in her sari, hauling her laundry cart in the snow. It reminds me of when I came to the U.S. It took me three years to learn to dress in the American way, especially in winter. That was just like me’. 29 With a myriad of conflicts roiling around, The Namesake’s cross-cultural identity crises will speak to anyone who has ever felt pulled in different directions. The element of realism is heightened when one shares the slight awkwardness in the film’s characters as they bare their hearts open. Tales of identity crises of the young generation Indian diaspora may have become a bit clichéd of late, but Nair tackles the theme of The Namesake with great sensibility and sensitivity. For the purposes of the present enquiry, it would be interesting to conclude with a brief excursus on the various positions adopted by some of the scholars, right at the outset of this discussion. Due to its resonant base, Nair ’s The Namesake is indeed ‘another work of art’ (Wagner), but does not intend to efface the cultural memory of the novel (Ellis) evident from our discussions above. In fact, the uniqueness of the original text (Lahiri’s) is fur ther illuminated by the cinematic refraction of the original (Pellow). Not just a ‘picture book’ (Orr) or a ‘shrunken version of the novel, a précis’ of sor ts, Nair ’s film is a superlative ‘critical commentary’ (Pellow). To go back to Bluestones’ argument that a literary text and its filmic adaptation are different things and the filmmaker is not a translator but a new author. So much for the obvious difference! I would rather like to state that Nair is both. She has magnificently captured the ethos of the text and translated it to another

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level. The stillness of that generation has been conveyed succinctly through her empathetic portrayal of Ashoke and Ashima. Rather than viewing the film by Nair as a cultural replacement for a story or the novel by Lahiri, each work should be reviewed as a variation of the theme of cultural displacement and replacement. The eternal debate around adaptation of literature into cinema can go on endlessly. The fact is that in assessing an adaptation, we are never really comparing a book with a film, but an interpretation with an interpretation – the novel that we ourselves created in our imaginations, out of which we have constructed our own individualized ‘movie’, and the novel on which the filmmaker has worked a parallel transformation. For just as we are readers, so implicitly is the filmmaker, offering us, through her work, her perceptions, her visions, her particular insight into her source. An adaptation is always, whatever else and more it may be an interpretation (Boyum 1989:33). In essence, literature will perennially remain that archeological mythic site where filmmakers would dig in again and again for excavating heirlooms and treasures. So, a mild hegemon, literature matters! Notes 1.

Tagline of the film by Mira Nair, The Namesake. (2007).

2.

A news report by S. Rajagopalan from Washington published under the heading Jhumpa’s debut novel gets rave reviews in the US. In: The Hindustan Times. September 17, 2003.

3.

Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake (2003) ‘an enlarged variation of the same existential trauma of the culturally displaced that animates her debut. Interpreter of Maladies’. In many respects, the novel represents an expansion of her story called ‘The Third and Final Continent’, in which a Bengali immigrant looks back on his first years in America. S. Prasannarajan. 2003. What ’s in a name? In: India Today, September 8, 2003.

4.

Refer note 2.

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5.

Rhagabat Nayak. 2002. Multicultural commitment: A study of Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies. In: Indian English L i t e r a t u re. E d. B a s av a r a j N a i k a r. N e w D e l h i : At l a n t i c Publishers and Distributors, p. 206.

6.

Review of The Namesake by Aditva Sinha. The Malady of Naming. In: Sunday Hindustan Times, September 28, 2003.

7.

Wagner, G. (1975). The Novel and the Cinema. Cranbury, New Jersey: Associated University Presses, Inc.

8.

Literary Adaptation to film is a long established tradition starting, for example, with early cinema adaptations of the Bible. By the 1910’s, adaptations of the established literary canon gave cinema the respectable cachet of entertainmentas-art.

9.

In the 1980’s and early 90’s, the adaptation of classic novels became a virtual industry in itself. At the forefront of this wave, were the adaptations of Jane Austen’s works.

10.

Michael Klein and Gillian Parker (1981) also identify three approaches to the study of adaptation.

11.

Another study in this area is Timothy Corrigan’s Film and Literature: An Introduction and Reader (1999). He suggests four critical frameworks to study the practice of adaptation.

12.

Bordwell, D., Staiger, J., & Thompson, K. (1985). The Classical Hollywood Cinema: style and mode of production to 1960. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

13.

Jhumpa Lahiri. 2003. The Namesake. Flamingo. The analysis that follows stems from a discussion by Tejinder K aur in,”Cultural Dilemmas and Displacement of immigrants in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake.” In Creative Forum, vol. 16 no. 34, July-Dec 2003, New Delhi, Bahri Publications

14.

Refer note 16. The following reference was made by T Kaur about Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s observations on the Indian Community in the United Slates.

15.

‘Am e r i c a n I n d i a n - Th e N a m e s a k e by J h u m p a L a h i r i ’. Reviewed by Christopher Tilghman. Sunday, September 14, 2003; Page BW10.

16.

Homi K. Bhabha. 1994. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. p. 1. Quoted by Barbara Kantrowitz. in her review of 77/c Namesake, Coming of age. In: The Week. September 7, 2003.

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17.

Quoted by Barbara Kantrowitz in her review of The Namesake, Coming of Age. In: The week. September 7, 2003

18.

Salman Rushdie. 1991. Imaginar y Homelands. London: Granta Books, p. 5.

19.

Ibid. p. 279.

20.

Stuart Hall. 1994. Cultural identity and Diaspora. In: Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader. Ed, Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman. New York: Harvester Wheat sheaf. Pp. 392-403.

21.

See note 19.

22.

Nayar Aruti. 2003. A story told with sensitivity and subtlety. Reviewed in: The Sunday Tribune. October 5, 2003.

23.

Review by, Michael Wilmington, Tribune movie critic. Accessed @ http://chicago.metromix.com/webtools/print/movies/review/ movie-review-the-namesake

24.

Arun Kumar in The Namesake: a flag of desi creative power. Indo-Asian News Service Washington, February 22, 2007.

25.

B o s e , B r i n d a ( 2 0 0 1 ) M r s D a l l o w a y D e l h i , Wo r l d v i e w Publications

26.

Q. Why did you make ‘The Namesake’ at this stage in your career? Nair: .....last few films have been so strongly about family, because that is my complete immersion- as a wife, as a mother, but also as a daughter-in-law and as a daughter. When asked a question about capturing the essence (story of a family) of the novel, Nair has this to say: Nair: I think the story is about the fact that every Saturday I take my 84-year-old father-in-law and 15-year-old son to an outing—usually a movie. And it is really difficult to find a movie that doesn’t insult one or the other. And so this was consciously made for people of all ages and for each one to get something out of it. I was attracted to the love story in the book-the connection between Ashoke and Ashima. I wanted to capture the stillness of our parents’ generation. If you have a cup of tea…. You do not talk to each other. You do not multitask. That kind of stillness is a very rare quality. Our parents’ generation had everything we have, but it is just a different language, and it is deeper than any language we know. I was interested in people who are strangers and who fall in love

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Contemporary Fiction: An Anthology of Female Writers versus today’s lack of courtship. Interview by Aseem Chhabra URL: http://www.beliefnet.com/ story/214/story_21485_2.html

27.

Some of the factual errors, anachronisms and not so engaging aspects of the film can be accessed on URL www.imdb.com/ title/tt0433416/

28.

Q.You have made some subtle changes to the novel… Nair: Yes, we looked at the balancing act between the parents and their children, not just Gogol’s coming of age which is what the book is more about…. But I know what it is like to be Gogol because I am the mother of a 15-year-old. Interview by Rob Carnevale at URL: http://www.indielondon. co.uk/Film-Review/the-namesake-review

29.

Nair: Even though I have lived here for many, many years, Christmas still alienates me. … When I was framing the scene in which Ashima learns the news about her husband, and she comes running out of her house into her garden and it is night time and cold—I wanted the Christmas lights…. We are used to so many kinds of celebrations, but Christmas was something I did not have any association with. So for me that is a lonely moment, and I used that to heighten Ashima’s isolation. Interview by Aseem Chhabra URL: http://www.beliefnet.com/ story/214/story_21485_2.html

REFERENCES Adorno, T. W. (1991). The Schema of Mass Culture. In J. M. Bernstein (Ed.), The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture (pp. 53-84). London: Routledge. Bluestone, G. (1957). Novel into Film: The Metamorphosis of Fiction into Cinema. Los Angeles: University of California Press. Wagner, G. (1975). The Novel and the Cinema. Cranbury, New Jersey: Associated University Presses, Inc. 94 Boyum, Joy Gould. (1989). Double Exposure: Fiction into Film. Calcutta: Seagull.

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Lahir i, Jhumpa. The Namesake. New D elhi: Har per Collins, 2003. Stam, Robert. (2005). Introduction. Literature and Film: A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Film Adaptation. Eds. Robert Stam and Alessandra Raengo. London: Blackwell. Orr, J. (1992). Introduction: Proust, the movie. In J. Orr & C. Nicholson (Eds.)Cinema and Fiction: New Modes of Adapting, 1950-1990 (pp. 1-12) Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. P e l l o w, C . K . ( 1 9 9 4 , 2 0 0 0 ) . Fi l m a s C r i t i q u e s o f N o v e l s : Transformational Criticism. Lewiston; Queenston; Lampeter: The Edwin Mellen Press. Lapsley, R., & Westlake, M. (1988). Film Theory: An Introduction. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Ellis, J. (1982). The Literary Adaptation: An Introduction. Screen, 23 (1), pp. 3-5. Bordwell, D., Staiger, J., & Thompson, K. (1985). The Classical Hollywood Cinema: style and mode of production to 1960. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Gelder, K. (1999). Jane Campion and the Limits of Literary Cinema. In D.Cartmell & I. Whelehan (Eds.), Adaptation: from Text to Screen, Screen to Text (pp.157-171). London; New York: Routledge. Stuart Hall. 1994. Cultural identity and diaspora. In: Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader. Ed, Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman. New York: Harvester Wheat sheaf.

4 The Celebration of Acculturation in Monica Ali’s Brick Lane — Leela Kanal

Acculturation is the psychological and social counterpart of cultural diffusion. Although acculturation is often defined as a two – way process of change, research and theory have continued with a focus on the adjustments and changes experienced by aboriginal people, immigrants and other minorities in response to their contact with the dominant majority. If enculturation is first – culture learning, then acculturation is second – culture learning, which is a unidimensional cultural conflict in which the minorities culture is displaced by the dominant groups culture in a process of assimilation.1 The concept of acculturation can be defined as acquiring the capability to function within the dominant culture while retaining one’s own culture. Although this concept is relatively recent, it can be traced back to as far as Plato. He argued that humans have a tendency to imitate strangers and a tendency to like to travel, both of which introduce new cultural practices. Plato argued that this should be minimized to the degree possible but not to the extent of cultural isolation. The intercourse of cities with one another is apt to create a confusion of manners; strangers are always suggesting novelties to strangers.2

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This probably forms another metaphor cross fertilization of cultures, which was set to be the cause of progress and human development and which still reigns in the domain of progress and prosperity in terms of success. The first known use of the word ‘acculturation’ is in J.W. Powell’s 1880 report by the U.S Bureau of American Ethnography on changes in Native American languages. Powell explained that ‘acculturation’ refers to the psychological changes induced by cross – cultural imitation. The impact of these cultural changes forms the core of the novel Brick Lane by Monica Ali.3 Booker-nominated Monica Ali is the recent literary sensation and brand name for modern European multiculturalism. She has contributed, in a whole new way, to the history of Asian input to Britain’s life of the imagination. Monica Ali, with her debut novel ‘Brick Lane’, and other writers of her ilk, constitute the phenomenon of the Empire writing back, but instead of vengeful bitterness, her novel is a new, passionate, love song to England. Most of the writers of the Diaspora have been marooned in history, reflecting the sentiments of the first generation immigrants who were saddled with the baggage of the stifling cultural traditions of the countries they came from. But, there are some writers like Monica Ali who have succeeded in shedding this burden and coming out of the time warp by very emphatically declaring themselves to be deeply embedded in the country of their choice, embedded in very specific places, port areas, provinces, very rooted in class and absolutely marinated in this country. Instead of ‘ingratitude’ there should be ‘immgratitude’ by getting rid of the feelings of displacement and exile into a positive acceptance of and relocation to their new home. It is in this context that the present paper attempts to explore and highlight the celebration of acculturation and assimilation by persons displaced from their native countries, in place of the clichés of self–pity for the loss of identity in the writings of the Diaspora.

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Place and displacement, whether viewed in a comic, tragic or sardonic way, is almost a stereotype among other themes in most cross-cultural works of fiction. The relationship between the ‘self’ of the characters and the place they are transported into, would obviously lead to a crisis of identity. Some amount of cultural denigration is expected, varying in degrees perhaps, but comprising a very important thematic element, in most commonwealth literatures. The take-off point is the ubiquitous theme of exile, which results in a cultural encounter. Like Bharati Mukherjee, Monica Ali too has suffered a literal geographical displacement, albeit very early in life. The London based author was born in Dhaka, but brought up in the northern English town of Bolton from the age of three. She has a Bangladeshi father and an English mother and an English husband. Although she herself leads a comfortable English existence, she shows a rich observation of, and a genuine concern for, the sub-continental immigrant population residing in the ethnically stratified society of England. It is also worth noting that unlike the marginalisation of the Diaspora writers of Asian origin in Canada and elsewhere, Ali has received wide acclaim in Britain, apart from being nominated for both Granta’s ‘Best writers under 40’ list as well as for the ‘Booker Prize’. ‘Brick Lane’ has become an eye-opener for the British exposing them to the hidden world of British-Bengali culture. As Ian Jack noted when he explained why the Granta panel had included Ali in their list of the twenty most promising young British novelists that ‘her prose brings us ‘news’ about contemporary Britain in a way that only fiction can. I certainly feel more informed about the people who are my next-door neighbours than I did before I read this book’4 . The novel is about Brick Lane, the Bangladeshi version of London’s Southall. It is a real place in Bangla Town in East London. Geographically it is in England, but culturally it is far away in distant Bangladesh. The novel describes the life of a young Bangladeshi girl Nazneen, who is transplanted from sterile, rural Bangladesh to London and

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her journey through seventeen years of a heavy, meaningless, loveless, arranged marriage to a middle-aged, pompous and self-deluded, educated husband. The story depicts Nazneen’s journey from a dominated, subdued teenager to a gradual metamorphosis into a hesitant, independent mother with a poetic sensitivity beyond her stifling, bleak and cluttered flat on Brick Lane. It culminates in a quasi-English tolerance of her daughters’ Brit-Bangla attitude and leads her to reject her husband’s proposal to return ‘home’ to Bangladesh. The novel has an unusual pattern in its story line. The main theme of Nazneen’s life in England is related in a relatively simple, non-fussy narrative which fluctuates from the comic to the grim and sardonic. The Bangladesh part of the story is introduced either through flashbacks of Nazneen’s memory of her childhood in Gouripur or through letters written by Hasina, her sister, who remained in Bangladesh: beautiful Hasina with the heart-shaped face, pomegranate-pink lips and liquid eyes: ‘such beauty could have no earthly purpose but trouble’ (50). The letters are interestingly interspersed in the narrative and Ali uses this method to cover about twelve years of Nazneen’s life (as well as Hasina’s) from May 1988 to January 2001. Nazneen’s nostalgic memories of Gouripur are straightforward and uncomplicated. The chronological and geographical distance helps her to comprehend minute details of her relationship with her Amma and Abba and the differences that existed between her parents: ‘And she drifted off to where she wanted to be, in Gouripur tracing letters in the dirt with a stick while Hasina danced around her on six-year-old feet. In Gouripur, in her dreams, she was always a girl and Hasina was always six. Amma scolded and cuddled, and smelled as sweet as the skin on the milk when it had been boiled all day with sugar. Abba sat on the choki, sang and clapped… when she woke she thought I know what I would wish but by now she knew that where she wanted to go was not a different place but a different time. She was free to wish it but it would never be’ (45)

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Nazneen is portrayed as a very submissive person deep-dyed in the concept of fatality. The quotation, from Ivan Turgenev and Heraclitus at the start of the novel are self-explanatory and set the tone of the narrative: ‘Sternly, remorselessly, fate guides each of us: only at the beginning, when we’re absorbed in details, in all sorts of nonsense, in ourselves, are we unaware of its harsh hand’( Ivan Turgenev) ‘A man’s character is his fate’ (Heraclitus)

The very fact that she survived her birth is a story in itself and this is emphasized repeatedly to Nazneen during her growing-up years: “As Nazneen grew she heard many times, this story of How You Were Left to Your Fate.” (15) Her mother’s quiet courage and tearful stoicism is drummed into her existence, instilling in her a passive acceptance of everything that life brings. What could not be changed must be borne. And since nothing could be changed, everything had to be borne. This principle ruled her life. It was mantra, fettle and challenge. So that when, at the age of thirty-four after she had been given three children and had one taken away, when she had a futile husband and had been fated a young and demanding lover, when for the first time she could not wait for the future to be revealed but had to make it for herself, she was as startled by her own agency as an infant who waves a clenched fist and strikes itself upon the eye. (16)

Of course there are times when she rebels silently, quiet little gestures of opposition which go unnoticed by her husband, specially when he circumvents the request to find Hasina who has disappeared in Dhaka by tactfully saying ‘Sometimes we just have to wait and see. Sometimes that’s all we can do’. (63). At this Nazneen shows her resentment the only way she can , by rebelling in her house-work: ‘The next day she chopped two fiery red chillies and placed them like hand-grenades, in Chanu’s sandwich. Unwashed socks were paired and put back in his drawer. The razor slipped when she cut his corns. His files got mixed up when she tidied. All her chores, peasants in his princely kingdom, rebelled in turn. Small insurrections, designed to destroy the state from within.(63)’

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Her first foray alone into the London streets is also a kind of small insurrection, when she gets lost and is cold without a coat, is caught in the rain and is desperate to visit a toilet. She needs to experience what Hasina is experiencing: ‘They were both lost in cities that would not pause even to shrug.’(59). Nazneen realizes her own stupidity, fully aware that this impulsive behavior might be a symbolic rebellion against her husband, but can in no way, help locate her sister Hasina lost in Dhaka. Through the minute, well-described details of Nazneen’s life in East End, vividly bringing to life the poverty and grimness, apart from the humor of the BritishBengali culture, Ali has counterpointed, with the help of Hasina’s letters from Bangladesh, to etch the cultural gulf between the two countries. Ali traces, through Nazneen’s husband Chanu, the archetype of the Bengali displaced man, who should be even though, living in England cannot rid himself of the consciousness of his native culture and traditions. Chanu loves declaiming about Bengal’s history and is proud of it being called ‘The Paradise of Nations’. His two wide-eyed daughters Shahana and Bibi, are the chief beneficiaries of his lectures on Bengal. He is portrayed as a thorough chauvinist, but at the same time as someone who is proficient in cooking up entire meals when necessary. His pride and prejudice, arrogance and array of certificates are unable to secure a suitable job for him. This in turn results in further lectures on Bengali culture and enhances his domineering attitude towards his daughters. But Chanu’s continuing interest in English Literature and his frequent quotes from Shakespeare adds to the double standards implied in the narrative. This is heightened by the irony of Chanu’s desire to return to Bangladesh where he intends to teach English Literature! He keeps talking of the ‘immigrant’s tragedy’. When visiting Dr. Azad, he comments in a general manner: ‘This is the tragedy of our lives. To be an immigrant is to live out a tragedy.’ According to him, it is ‘The clash of cultures … And of generations’ (112). A little later he adds:

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‘I’m talking about the clash between Western values and our own. I’m talking about the struggle to assimilate and the need to preserve one’s identity and heritage. I’m talking about children who don’t know what their identity is. I’m talking about the feelings of alienation engendered by a society where racism is prevalent. I’m talking about the terrific struggle to preserve one’s sanity while striving to achieve the best for one’s family’(112).

Mrs. Azad rubbishes this generalization and her response is very enlightening: ‘Crap! … Why do you make it so complicated ?’ says she.’(113) ‘Assimilation this, alienation that! Let me tell you a few simple facts. Fact: We live in a Western society. Fact: Our children will act more and more like westerners. Fact: That’s no bad thing. My daughter is free to come and go. Do I wish I had enjoyed myself when I was young? Yes!’ (113)

The conflict inherent in this cultural clash is very succinctly described by Mrs. Azad, the doctor’s wife: ‘Listen, when I am in Bangladesh, I put on a Saree and cover my head and all that. But here I go out to work. I work with white girls and I’m just one of them. If I want to come home and eat curry, that’s my business. Some women spend ten, twenty years here and they sit in the kitchen grinding spices all day and learn only two words of English…They go around covered from head to toe, in their little walking prisons, and when someone calls to them in the street, they are upset. The society is racist. The society is all wrong. Everything should change for them. They don’t have to change one thing. That is the tragedy.’ (114)

What Monica Ali tries to probe and highlight is the concept that although displacement leads to alienation and self-searching, it is important to reconcile oneself with the concept of acculturation. She moves away from nostalgia to focus on changing identities and establishing new relationships, by exhibiting a deep awareness of the social reality surrounding the immigrants. The multi-cultural scenario leads to confrontation and the struggle for a new life, but, nevertheless, a complete break with the past is improbable. Ali stresses the need to assimilate and adapt oneself rather than wallowing in the self-pity of denigration.

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She vividly delineates the tremendous disparity between the two countries and their individual cultures. She does not moralize or lecture overtly, and neither does she demonstrate her preferences or prejudices. Through the letters of Hasina which are written in ungrammatical pidgin English, she describes in a matter of fact way, the traumatic experiences that a young pretty girl faces, when she decides to run away from home and marry the boy of her choice. One after the other, the irregularly spaced letters, unfold the sad and stirring events that dog Hasina at every step of her young life: Her desertion by the boy she elopes with, her sojourn in Dhaka where she is helped by the father-figure Mr.Choudhury, who, she boasts, has a Toyota Land Cruiser (who, ultimately claims his pound of flesh by sexually exploiting her), her working in a garment factory which turns her into a ‘machinist real woman’. Vignettes of Narayangunj, Dhaka, the living conditions, the general corruption rampant in the country, the frequent hartals in the country and the taboos and restrictions on the movement of women are very touchingly presented with a wry sense of humour. Hasina’s social decline is well chronicled leading to her ultimate debasement as a ‘loose woman’. She finally finds solace in the company of Ahmed, an albino, and who marries her. This marriage lasts a few months and then, when Ahmed abandons her, she is back on the streets. A few years later, she gets the position of a house-maid ‘in good house’. She ultimately runs away with the cook. When Chanu gives this bit of shocking news to Nazneen from Bangladesh he asks, ‘Why did she do it? Why does she do these things?’ to which Nazneen replies cryptically, ‘Because she isn’t going to give up.’ (490) This answer could also symbolize Nazneen’s own determination of not giving up in her own quest for ‘self’ by acquiring some meaning in her life. Thus we see that the acculturation process has resulted in Nazneen acquiring a changed identity that is governed by her own individual logic and homespun wisdom. Her relationship with Karim, her young lover,

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coincides with her induction into partial economic independence as well as an introduction to the political activities of the local Bangla youths. Thinking about this relationship she feels a change in herself : “since the first time with Karim, since her life had become bloated with meaning and each small movement electrified”. (299) She persuades herself that the attraction she feels for Karim is beyond her control, a part of fate as everything else is in her life: “How could such a weak woman unleash a force so strong? She gave in to fate and not to herself.” (300). It is ironic that what Nazneen has been seeking inside herself, consciously or unconsciously she finds in Karim, which forms that basis of her relationship with him: “She thought about his certainty, how he walked a straight line, while others turned and stumbled. And most of all she thought of what he had that she and Haseena and Chanu sought but could not find. The thing that he had and inhabited so easily. A place in the world.” (264). Then there is her secret desire to indulge in ice-skating, wearing a sequined dress achieves fulfillment at the end of the novel, when she is led, blindfolded to an ice-skating rink by her children and her friend Razia. The last sentence of the novel, symbolically cuts short the immigrant doubt of skating in a sari when Razia reassures her ‘This is England. You can do whatever you like. ‘(492) The sandwiches that the four of them eat while en route to the skating rink are also symbolic of this cultural crossover: They are filled with cream cheese spread with mango pickle. Instead of ‘telling’ us, Ali ‘shows’ us these little details in her versatile and lyrical manner through which she succeeds in treating with wit and gentle irony the problems of exiles. Notions of nationality, of patriotism, and of fixed ethnic differences, get blurred and what emerges is Nazneen’s struggle to find her identity through her growing confidence and self-determination. The wisdom underlying this need for assimilation and accommodation of a new vision of life, so essential within the larger paradigm of immigrant experience, is conveyed to us, in a very incidental manner. Perhaps there is irony,

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in the turn of events: The educated, already-residing-inEngland Chanu is obsessed by the myth of the homeland and a desire for return, which he finally fulfills; whereas the simple village girl Nazneen finds it easier to adapt and change in her adopted home in England leading to her reluctance to return to Bangladesh and the subsequent rejection to do so. Thus we see that Nazneen’s metamorphosis is a triumph of the cross cultural intersection reflecting the melting-pot of modern British society. Monica Ali’s Brick Lane represents as Rashmi Z. Ahmed puts it: “The mixed race, fusion-curry-out-of-a-can brand that has the confidence to call itself a main course meal. And sell itself as a la carte.”5 NOTES AND REFERENCES 1.

Histories of acculturation theory have been written (in chronological order) by Sarah Simons (1901), Isaac Berkson (1920), W.D Borrie (1959), Guido Baglioni (1964), Harold Abramson (1980), and Floyd Rudmin (2003a; b; 2006).

2.

Plato, Laws (4th Century B.C).

3.

Monica Ali, Brick Lane (Great Britain: Doubleday a division of Transworld, 2003).

4.

Ian Jack, Acclaim for Brick Lane. Brick Lane by Monica Ali, (Great Britain: Doubleday a division of Transworld, 2003).

5.

Rashmi Z. Ahmed, “Booked for Booker”, The Times of India ‘Men & Women’ 12 Oct. 2003.

5 A Socio-Cultural Feminist Critique of Inside the Haveli — Vaishali Naik

Inside the Haveli can be seen broadly through various approaches. It is a fine portrayal of the lives in havelis of Rajasthan, and of the way of lives of men and women within them. The writer Rama Mehta, apart from being a writer, was also a top sociologist, lecturer and had a promising career as a diplomat in Foreign Services, but it was cut short as she was forced to resign her position after marriage. Her other non-fiction writings include The Western Educated Hindu Woman, The Hindu Divorced Woman, and From Purdah to Modernity. These titles reflect her major concerns. Women, Religion, Marriage and Modernity, these concerns are taken up in this novel. This novel echoes the voices of protest at various levels, especially through the women characters. The three major approaches which could be used effectively in a critique of Inside the Haveli are: i]

Feminist Approach focussing on conflict, patriarchy and other feminist concerns.

ii]

Sociological approach focussing on social customs and society located in particular time, space and community.

iii]

Tradition versus Modernity Approach.

In this paper, I will try to attempt a critique of this novel. I will not deal with individual approaches as such but I will try to locate and study the voices of protest in the

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narrative. I will focus on the following aspects. 1.

A study of voices of protest which would include voices within voices, interaction of dominant voice and voice of protest and the resultant changes.

2.

A study of hierarchies within hierarchies, suggesting that it is almost impossible for one to occupy a space of either of complete authority or that of complete subservience.

3.

To trace certain important constituents of the discourse of protest namely, internalisation, coercion, cooption, hegemony, sensitisation, subversion and victimhood-agency-in this novel.

4.

Touching on other supplementar y issues like power politics of haveli and the concept of private space and public domain.

5.

Fi n a l l y, I w i l l t r y to p u t fo r t h a fe w o f my observations based on the above critique. This would also form the conclusion of my paper.

The Novel:╇ Inside the Haveli is a realistic novel of the upper class aristocractic families of Udaipur, Rajasthan. This novel portrays the educated Geeta’s journey backwardsfrom modernity to tradition. Geeta is the protagonist of Inside the Haveli. Geeta lives through a shift which is geosocial, hegemonic and is from modernity to tradition. She is an educated, vivacious Bombay girl who marries into a conservative family of Udaipur and abruptly finds herself living in purdah in her husband’s ancestral haveli. The fast paced life of Bombay which is full of forward movement is suddenly changed into a static life of haveli for Geeta, this life is almost in a time-warp, the progress of time is on a slower scale, the close and clustered life of haveli doesn’t allow changes easily. Faced with regressive traditions, those threaten to snuff out her independence and progressive views, Geeta fights to maintain the modern values that she has always lived by. So her voice is the main voice of protest. Critique : A quick look at the social customs prevalent in the life

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1. Purdah : The life of haveli makes it mandator y for all women to observe purdah symbolising not only purity and coyness (as it would if it is observed in front of other men), but also meekness and subservience as the daughter-in-law observes purdah in front of her motherin-law. Purdah also works on various levels—there is a total seclusion of men’s and women’s quarters in the haveli and only close male relatives enter women’s apartments and that too only after being properly announced. Purdah works on various metaphoric levels in the narrative, as the marker of differentiation and seclusion. The haveli is not accessible to the outsiders, as if it is in a purdah. Here it epitomises the image of the respectable woman maintaining purdah as opposed to the common woman without purdah; here symbolized by the other common houses which are accessible to the outsiders. Similarly the Old city of Udaipur is enclosed within a wall, is mysterious, inaccessible, with ‘gullys leading from nowhere to nowhere’. In contrast the new city is open, without a wall, open to the scrutiny of the strangers. In the new city, there are no mysteries, the houses are identical. Thus the old city could be seen as maintaining purdah through the city wall. The wall provides a mystique and also a traditional decorum as opposed to the stark, naked modernity of the new city. On a more generalized level, Ajay’s decision not to shift to Delhi also conveys the impression that he is putting a veil in his own professional life, he prefers to stay on in Udaipur which is a limited world in comparison to Delhi. Thus the narrative can be interpreted as woven on various metaphoric levels of purdah. Geeta, of course has to observe purdah but she looks at the veil as an empowering device — she subverts the very purpose of purdah; “She came to love the veil that hid her face, this allowed her to think while the others talked. To her delight she had discovered that through her thin muslin sari, she could see everyone and yet not be seen by them” {page

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23}. There is an entire paradigm shift here, the victimised and the subverted finds various ways, even perspectives due to which the space occupied by her is viewed as empowering with respect to the dominant ‘Other’. II. The issue of dowry comes up when the younger generation, Sita and Vijay reach the age of puberty and marriages are being discussed. But there is no voice of protest; it is an accepted fact of their lives. Even Geeta never questions it. This is due to assimilation and internalisation. Internalization and assimilation perpetuate the victimhood and hence sensitization is recognised as the first step in empowerment in feminist as well as other marginal discourses. The novel also shows that the issue of dowry is very much grounded in material reality and is woven tightly into the economic structure of the community. This is all the more true in the traditional rajasthani community where the major occupations lie in the realm of finance. III. Issue of Girl Child. Two girls are born in the haveli at the same time. Sita is born in the servant quarters, she is the daughter of Lakshmi and Gangaram. Vijay is born as the first grandchild of the haveli — daughter of Ajay and Geeta. The birth of Sita is met with indifference and disappointment as she’s a girl child. Vijay’s birth is met with celebrations for three days on a large scale inspite of her being a girl child as she is the granddaughter of the haveli. This is a classic example of how class hierarchies are higher than those of gender. IV. Motherhood is not dealt with as a separate issue but the blessings given by the elder women to the younger ones continuously point to the importance of fertility and that too, that of begetting of male offsprings. The blessings are, “May you have many many sons, my child, and may you always wear red”. {page 33} V. Childhood marriage is another other major area while the dominant discourse quietens the voice of protest. Almost all the women of the haveli (except Geeta) have gone in for child marriages and they find nothing wrong in it. It’s

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only at the end of the novel when Geeta’s daughter — Vijay receives marriage proposal at the age of thirteen that Geeta protests vehemently at the cost of hurting everybody, even her father-in-law, and the patriarch of the family. VI. Widowhood is innately undesirable, but all the more in such a strong patriarchal framework. The widows are considered to be sinners to be punished by God with widowhood, but there is no protest, in fact a passive acceptance. In fact, some of them do defend the system instead of questioning and protesting, the instance of Manji, Geeta’s sister-in-law says, “Binniji I do not need to be pitied. A widow has her place too in our society; do not forget. These women, our relatives you see here, feel responsible for me”. (Page 117)

VII. Through this novel, we also become aware of a custom of feudal Rajasthan where villagers in desperate circumstances gave their sons and daughters to the care of aristocratic families. Pari, Lakshmi and many others have come to haveli in their childhood in this manner. This can be understood as a concept similar to that of “Aashrit”. This can be seen as one of the means used by the stronger ones to co-opt the weaker ones with them. Internalization takes on various forms in this novel — Pari, a servant says, “In those days even the havelis had more glitter. Now it is all so different, everyone thinks he is equal; how is it possible?” (Page 25).

Here we can argue that Par i ’s views are due to lack of sensitisation. Hence we acknowledge and accept sensitisation as an important precedent to protest. But Internalisation is most visible and bit tragic in case of Geeta. After spending many years in the haveli she thinks “I don’t want to leave Udaipur now. The Haveli has made me a willing prisoner within it’s walls. How stupid I was not to see all that is holds. Where else in the world, would I get this kind of love and concern?” (Page 170). Later on the narrator tells us:

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“But Geeta no longer felt trapped in the Haveli, she found that she too has changed” (page 178)

Stereotypical imaging The haveli’s life adheres to a very stereotypical image of a woman as well as a man- Purdah, seclusion. Fertility, childbirths, purity-chastity, household responsibilities and obligations of kith and kin, form the limited sphere of the women of the haveli. The areas of authority are more or less demarcated. The public space, the baithak where visitors come; this outer world is the domain of the men while the private space i.e. the inner courtyard, cooking, children, relatives constitute the women’s world. The Geographical division is complete, men of the house as well as male guests enter from the front door i.e. the main door of the haveli while the women of the haveli and female guests enter through the side door or back door opening inconspicuously into a side alley and also entertained in the back courtyard, not in the ‘baithak’ of the haveli. Women stereotypes are stressed time and again. To take an instance, when Vijay tells her Grandma, that she has come first in her class, the grandma retorts, “Coming first is all right, Vijay, but you must also learn to cook. Don’t become like your mother, “Bhagwat Singhji’s wife teased “(page 153).

The identity of women is diffused, neglected even ignored. Most of the women characters are referred not by their names but ‘wife of so and so’. (As in the above extract). All women do not grudge or protest against authority. As discussed earlier, the obvious reasons are coercion, internalisation, co-option etc. One more point needs to be made in this connection. The private space accorded to the women has its own power structure, hierarchies and power politics. The various hierarchies of age, seniority, proximity to the patriarch or a male relative, class etc. create these power struc tures. And these struc tures are dynamic, changing over time, giving authority to women who were earlier victims or exploited. Thus the victim-hood is given,

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the authority of “agency”, over the years, paving the path for further suppressions and oppressions. The cultural space occupied by the haveli is not totally immune to changes and modernity. But the changes come very gradually (to use a Keatsian term, it is the offspring of “silence and slow time”). One of the major channels through which the changes seep in is that of education. It is seen in many ways, at least in three major instances. The episode of Sita’s schooling, the education of Geeta’s children and the school started by Geeta in the haveli for the maid servants and their children. I would now like to present some observations based on the above critique of the novel. 1. 3 Models of Victim-hood: The victims trapped in the exploitation react in 3 ways. i]

Here the victim, trapped in a subservient role by the victimiser, accepts it as her fate, gives in and surrenders. She even regales in her sympathetic, pitiable condition. She portrays herself as martyr within a ‘sati-savitri’ image, one who looks after the family first, caters to their needs.

ii]

In other cases, the victim breaks free by being a rebel. She breaks the stifling shackles around her even becoming an outsider or an outcast in the bargain for gaining personal freedom.

iii] There are cases where the victim protests, reacts but from within the system. This might appear to be less dynamic than that of breaking the system but this requires more tenacity, patience, endurance, strength of will — ‘to be within’ and ‘yet not to yield’. Examples of first type could be seen in plenty in the novel. Almost all the women of the haveli fall into this sacrificial image. The character of Lakshmi fits in the second category. Lakshmi is a married maid of the haveli whose husband is almost ugly. The driver of the haveli makes advances towards Lakshmi. She neither encourages nor

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discourages him but her husband suspects her of infidelity. Lakshmi is hurt at this lack of faith and leaves the haveli. She breaks the framework and becomes a free woman, without purdah and earns her livelihood. She is rumoured to have liasions with various men. In this process, she becomes an outcast for the haveli and has to leave her child behind. She is branded as an ‘outsider’. Geeta, the protagonist is an example of the third model. She stays within the haveli and tries to change it but she remains on the fringes in the bargain. She never becomes a true insider in the real sense. The 3 models of victim-hood represent one of the key problems raised by the feminists. There are only 2 spaces available to women—the subservient sacrificial image of ‘sati-savitri’ or Kulin, or the bold but bad woman — the Kulta. The third space, i.e., of a thinking, modern and “good” woman is neither easily available nor given. It comes at the end of a long struggle as in the case of Geeta. 2. This observation is regarding the problem of ‘absolute good’ or ‘beneficial for all’. In other words, what is good for one, is it always beneficial or good for other in a different context or situation? These questions arise in the context of a major incident in the novel. Geeta thinks of sending Sita (servant’s daughter) to school. Sending a servant’s girl to school is unthinkable in the ‘rule’ of the haveli and obviously Geeta’s proposal is met with disapproval. But Geeta succeeds in getting consent from her father-in-law through the mediation of her maid. Throughout this Geeta faces the dilemma of whether she is doing the right thing for Sita. “Pari was right, thought Geeta as she stared out of the window. Going to school may give Sita wrong ideas. Going to school would change her, and the maids would resent that.” (page 106) Here Geeta is full of apprehension as educating Sita would mean a displacement from her earlier space and Geeta is not so sure if she would be able to give Sita another secure space. Later on when Sita is engaged and her in-laws

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want her to stop going to School, Geeta actually defends this to her husband and daughter. “We must not interfere. This (Sita giving up school and getting married) means a life of happiness for Sita. But Sita cannot continue with School,” (page 209) The point being raised here is that there is no “absolute good”, the ideas of goodness and badness have to be evaluated after contextualizing them. 3) I would like to comment on the changing status of Geeta, the main protagonist. She stands for modernity, western education and progressive views. When she enters the haveli as a ‘daughter-in-law’ she is definitely an outsider, vulnerable to the scrutinising and criticising gaze of the insider. She feels isolated as an outsider. Over the years she carves a place for herself but through a long and painful process as she wants it on her own terms. During this she also imbibes some traditions of the haveli and she also changes. So in the process of protesting and subverting she undergoes coercion and internalisation to some extent. Haveli stands for tradition and Gita stands for modernity. Thus the writer Rama Mehta is tr ying to suggest that tradition and modernity are not always binaries. They could have a symbiotic, give-n-take relation as it happens in case of Geeta. At the end of the novel we see her becoming the mistress of the haveli as her mother in law is widowed. This completes the struggle and the protest on a broader level. She becomes an insider but only when she has learnt and acknowledged and accepted the “rules of the game’ of the life of the haveli to some extent. When she cries on her father in law’s death, her sister-in-law cautions her”. Don’t cry, Binnij, you are now the mistress of this haveli. You can’t forget it’s traditions in your sorrow. “(page 264). (These are also the concluding lines of the novel. 4) The dynamics of space is fascinating throughout the novel. Spaces inside and outside the haveli, the inside spaces in relation to each other, the space of haveli as juxtaposed with that of other havelis,

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The spaces occupied in marital relations, master- servant position and so on and so forth. In this novel, the Space is geographical, cultural, gendered, hierarchial, as a marker and also as a mode of demarcation. This point cannot be discussed here due to “space’’ constraint but I would like to make a single observation in this context. The ‘Womenonly–spaces ‘in the haveli could be more liberating. In other words, here seclusion could also mean more freedom. For example, on geographical level, the inner courtyards, the women quarters are the exclusive domain of women where they enjoy more mobility and less inhibitions. On the whole, one feels that the social critique of the novel is bound to be diffused, it lacks sharper focus. This is because there are too many social issues crammed in the narrative. This also slackens the plot at certain points. On the other hand, the cultural critique of this novel turns out to be stereotypical. This is due to the fact that the issues are presented on an overt and obvious level. This is particularly seen in the case of modernity and tradition. One is left with a diffused and confused feeling. This is similar to the diffused and ambivalent tone at the end of the novel. The space that Geeta occupies is intersecting modernity and tradition, inner and outer. She appears to be desperate to belong to both and in the bargain belongs to none, as if falling in no man’s land, occupying the in-between. She also appears to be continuously in a process of being a perpetuator of change, although at the end her fighting spirit appears to be tamed, toned down, internalized and more attuned to negotiating rather than rebelling. As one tries to probe into the reasons for this diffusion at the end, it could be argued that the end is in keeping with the realistic touch. This is the way the battles of life turn out to be in reality, not glorious in victory or pathetic in defeat but diffusing in inconsequence, even turning trivial. As T.S. Eliot puts succinctly it ends ‘not with a bang, but with a whimper’ in “Hollow Men”. Another, more plausible argument could be Geeta’s stance is non-committal, sitting on the fence attitude. This is escapism because one has to take position and be loyal to one’s position. Thus this

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can be viewed as resistance from within, which has remained Geeta’s strategy throughout the novel. Thus in this novel we obser ve the entire journey of “protest”, the transformations and finally the end of the journey in partial subversion and partial hegemonic existence in case of Geeta. If we recall that the writer, Rama Mehta had to give up her promising career of a diplomat in foreign services after her marriage, we can say that some of the protest has an auto-biographical touch; it carries echoes from the writer’s own life. works cited Barry, Peter, Beginning Theory: An introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory (Manchester, 1995). Caplan, Patricia (1985), Class and Gender in India (London: Tavistock Publications). Grace, Daphne, Women’s Space “Inside the Haveli”: Incarceration or Insurrection? Journal of International Women’s Studies Vol 4 # 2 April 2003. Jenks, Chris (ed.) (1993) Cultural Reproduction (London and Routledge) Leslie, Julia (1991), Roles and Rituals for Hindu Women (Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press). Mehta, Rama, Inside the Haveli, (Penguin, 1977). Mehta Rama (1970), The Western Educated Hindu Woman (New York: Asia Publishing House). Paranjpe, Jayant, Critical Discourse (ASC - Nagpur, 2001).

6 Reason and Rebellion in Feminism: Shashi Deshpande and Bharati Mukherjee —╇ Supriya Sahsrabuddhe

Shashi Deshpande has drawn attention of the western as well as eastern readers with her genuinely Indian novels such as That Long Silence, Roots and Shadows and so on. That Long Silence won Sahitya Academy Award. It is translated in Dutch and French languages. Tirumati Rangamalay Award was given to Roots and Shadows [1983]. The Dark Holds No Terrors [1980] is translated in German and Russian languages. Detective fiction such as If I Die Today [1982] and Come Up and Be Dead [1983], The Binding Vine [1993], A Matter of Time [1996] and Small Remedies [2000] are her recent novels. Bharati Mukherjee has established herself as a power ful member of the American literar y scene with her novels like The Tiger ’s Daughter [1972], Jasmine, [1989] Wife [1975] and anthologies of short stories such as Middleman and Other Stories [1988] and Darkness [1985]. The Holder of the World [1993] and Leave It to Me [1997] are two other novels by Bharati Mukherji. She received the National Book Critics Circle Award – for Middleman and Other Stories and some other awards, too. It is extremely interesting to study and compare the nature of the portrayal of women of these two writers.

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The study of women in their novels will show different aspects of feminism although the writers are not avowed feminists. We cannot say that they are not aware of or are not influenced by feminism. Saru in The Dark Holds No Terrors mentions the writing of Virginia Woolf and Betty Friedan. In her inter views also Shashi Deshpande has accepted the influence of the western feminist writers in her novels. Both the writers do not discuss feminism as such in their writing. And yet woman is the centre of all their writing and both of them have created compelling portraits of women as the principal figures in their narratives. They are bold and subtle in their delineation of characters. While depicting the modern woman, aspects of feminism are bound to appear in the writing of women writers. Awareness in woman of her independent identity is a major feature of feminism. Betty Friedan says in Feminine Mystique, “ The feminine mystique permits, even encourages, women to ignore the question of their identity. The mystique says they can answer the question “Who am I?” by saying “Tom’s wife…Mar y ’s mother.” 1 So a woman should possess her independent identity. Woman’s confidence to assert her independent identity without referring to husband or other persons and her efforts to live according to her own ideas and ideals is a goal of feminism. The women of these writers are seen struggling to achieve this goal. One more chief concern of modern woman is her relationships. Sexual relationship is prominent among them and here the novels of these writers spell a break from the mythological image of Indian woman in the earlier fiction. They show a kind of amoral attitude towards relationships. The old world of taboos and restrictions, confinements and superstitions where women are marginalized has not died yet. The imperative significance of marriage in the Indian tradition is shown by both these writers. For instance, Indu in Roots and Shadows says, “To her I was just a childless woman. To get married, to bear children, to have sons and grandchildren, they were for them the only success a woman could have.” 2 Jasmine in the novel Jasmine has to be married off and a widower with

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three children might do as a bride groom. Her mother had tried to kill Jasmine immediately after her birth because she was the fifth girl child in the house. Dr. Kulkarni in If I Die Today, with all his medical knowledge, hates his daughter Mriga and her mother because he had wanted a son to be born. Th e s e t wo w r i te r s s h ow t h at m o d e r n wo m a n i s struggling to fight this injustice. Jasmine refuses to stay with her mother and spend the rest of her life in the village as a widow, sets out for America and survives there against all odds. Indu does not bow in the face of the hegemonies of the family and Akka. These women possess inner strength of character. These women do not impress the readers with beauty but with this strength of character. In spite of such similarities, it is felt that the portrayal of women in Shashi Deshpande is chiefly governed by reason while that in Bharati Mukherjee has more rebellion than reason. I mean by reason a kind of intellectuality and tendency of analyzing situations. Rebellion is seen in bold, ambitious and adventurous actions on the part of the women. This rebellion gives rise to the element of violence in Bharati Mukherjee’s writing. The comparison of some texts of these writers shows this difference between the aspects of feminism of these two writers. Shashi Deshpande’s por trayal of women is based in traditional Indian families settled in the south. The background is usually urban life of Maharashtra and North Karnataka. The educated women belonging to the modern generation in these families try to break away from the shackles of family tradition and justify their action by convincing arguments and reasoning. They do not indulge in super ficial modernism but make a case for modern or modernistic way of life to prove themselves and their abilities in such a set up. Modern Indian woman is generally liberated from the traditional restrictions and some family constraints. Still she has to play certain roles in the frame of the family and society. She is trying to explore and seek the

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meaning of her life and personality. When this perspective is taken into account Shashi Deshpande’s characters do not remain just Indian but they get a universal dimension. Her deep interest is woman and her typical experiences but it is not limited to the relationship of two persons of different genders. She says in an interview given to Vanamala Vishwanath for ‘Literature Alive’, “I want to reach a stage where I can write about human beings and not about women or men.”3 Betty Friedan has expressed the same view in the above-mentioned book. “..a turning point from an immaturity that has been called femininity to full human identity. I think women had to suffer this crisis of identity, which began a hundred years ago, and have to suffer it still today, simply to become fully human.” 4 This is the quality of reason. With this maturity of understanding she explores the meaning of living in the modern Indian society as a woman through out her novels. She never provides simplification or readymade solutions to women’s problems. Her women are always deeply aware that the final answers or final truth is not easily available or available even. They are ever seeking their identity and their fulfillment. They do not resort to violence or melodrama for their purpose. Indu in Roots and Shadows sees that the women in the family have no identity of their own. Perhaps they do not remember their own names because they are recognized just as mami, kaku, mavshi, vahini and so on. Here we remember Betty Friedan’s remark about woman’s identity. Indu has boldly given up that world and has created her own independent identity in her career. Almost all women of Shashi Deshpande have the ability to think and so do not succumb to customs. Indu also assesses her relation with her husband without going away from him because she tries to understand him at the end. This understanding is far different from the stories that end with ‘..they lived happily ever after’. Indu assesses her sexual experience, too, which is never a feature of Bharati Mukherjee’s women characters. Shashi Deshpande’s women are never smugly happy and they go on thinking about life with sincerity. She avoids utopian or romanticizing view.

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Because of intellectuality, they have devastating honesty and insatiable desire to know. They hate complacency. This gives a distinction to Shashi Deshpande as a novelist. She presents subtle analysis of feelings, emotions, misunderstandings and expectations in marital relationship. Saru in The Dark Holds No Terrors and Jaya in That Long Silence have romantic ideas of love like school girls at the time of marriage. But soon they become aware that they have to support their husbands in their dealings in this callous world. Jaya understands that she has to share Mohan’s difficulties because she was a party to the plans of getting more money. She had thought of him just as a ‘sheltering tree’ but now she cannot remain just Mohan’s wife. She decides to ‘erase the silence between them’. She also understands that only the traditions and society were not responsible in creating the silence between them; she was equally responsible for it. In Small Remedies Madhu’s son is killed in the riots in Mumbai that followed the demolition of the Babri Mosque. She is trying to get over the grief. At the same time she becomes aware of her own sense of possession over her son. She goes to a small town and tries to write a biography of a singer called Savitribai. These are some of the prominent traits of Shashi Deshpande’s women characters. The women of Bharati Mukherjee are not only from India but also from the cosmopolitan world of America. Her work shows her celebration of embracing America and her women struggle to settle there successfully. She is mainly concerned with different aspects of the condition and plight of the immigrants in America. The women in her fiction are bold, ambitious and adventurous. Many of them are impulsive and tend to be sensational. They are more prepared for action than thinking. Through her characters, she brings out the feminist sensibility in all its different colours. The women’s world is wonderfully depicted by her. Women all over the world suffer similar neurotic and psychic disturbances, because they live in a male - dominated world.

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This aspect elevates her women above local atmosphere and characters. They try to do away with the past and emerge successful in the new world. Violence is yet another feature that finds its way in Mukherjee’s fiction. ‘Psychic violence’ according to her is necessary for the transportation of character. This is often accompanied by physical conflict. Bharati Mukherjee’s portrayal of women has a loud assertion of the injustice imposed upon them and their retaliation has violence in it. It has more bravado than sober tone. The depiction many times turns melodramatic. In Jasmine, Jyoti’s husband, Prakash, is killed by Sikh terrorists. She refuses to live with her mother and spend the rest of her life in the village as a widow. He had cherished a dream of going to America, so she decides to pay a novel homage to his memory in America by burning his clothes at the same place where he had wanted to study. She enters the country by illegal means, without job, husband or papers, becomes Jasmine, faces rape by Half Face, takes revenge by murdering and then makes some marriages. So Jasmine goes through various traumas before she settles in America. This is the sensational theme of the novel. In fact she possesses strength of character that makes her an object of adoration of Taylor, Duff, Bud, Mrs. Ripplemeyor and even Karin, the divorced wife of Bud whom Jasmine marries. She says, “I am potent like a goddess.” This may be an exaggerated version of herself but her charm over the boys like Du and Darrel cannot be denied. For all her intelligence, Jasmine does not possess intellectuality like Shashi’s women to probe into her emotions as she is too engrossed with her struggle to survive because of her expatriate’s rootlessness. We may say that she does not bother or finds no time for such an analysis. Dimple in Wife lives in a fanciful world, in a society away from reality—a world created by the threads of her own imagination. She lends air y dimensions to a ver y realistic thing like mar r iage. She begins creating an imaginary husband by the power of her own imagination. “She borrowed a forehead from an aspirin ad, the lips, eyes

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and chin from a body builder and shoulders ad, the stomach and legs from a trousers ad and put the ideal man.” This was the husband she wanted to spend her entire life with. In marriage, she looks forward to a magical change of life, she expected a fairy to appear with a magic wand and put her into the fanciful world that she always dreamt of. But when she actually confronts the man in Amit, all her fantasies are brought down to the earth, with a thud. Dimple again expects marriage to lead her to a new dimension of self-expression. Marriage, Dimple felt would definitely help her speak out, all that was hidden and unsaid so far. “That was supposed to be the best part of getting married-being free and expressing yourself.” Thus, she has laid down too many expec tations from marriage; and when all those expectations do not materialize, she is shattered-shattered into a million pieces. Marriage, instead of liberating her, imprisons and stifles her. The bondage that she has to bear becomes more complex and intricate. The daily domestic and marital hardships that she confronts, disillusions her. The post marital demands, bad moods and tantrums from her husband and his family, cause great anxiety within her. Her life was reduced to that of a puppet or a toy. Mukherjee aptly writes - “How hard it was for her to keep quiet and smile though she was falling apart like a very old toy that had been played with, sometimes quite roughly, by children who claimed to love her”. Slowly but surely, she begins to rebel and resent wifedom in various possible ways. A spark of violence is being born in her. She thinks that it is not only the question of his inability but the fact that the two cultures will never meet. They stand apart and will remain so. Intellectuality is beyond the dreams of Dimple of ‘Wife’. Her sexual experience or encounter with Mill Glasser leaves her numb and all she wants to know about him is his real job. She is the example of the result of the obsession of marriage in the society. Marry she must and she and

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her parents are preparing her to be fittest for marriage. Obsession of marriage has made her sick and almost morbid. She does not seem capable of enjoying anything in her life in America. Her life story ends up with shocked condition and dreams of violence. Bharati Mukherjee also studies the modern women’s developing sensibility like Shashi Deshpande but she is too engrossed with the expatriate’s psyche and struggle for survival to penetrate deeply into it. This is reflected in what she says, “I am an American writer, in the American mainstream, trying to extend it. This is a vitally important statement from me—I am not an Indian writer, not an exile, not an expatriate. I am an immigrant; my investment is in the American reality, not the Indian.”5 Dimple is a negative model in this respect and also of the modern woman with her morbidity and intellectual d e b i l i t y. B h a r a t i M u k h e r j e e’s s t o r y “ M a n a g e m e n t o f Grief ” has a character Mrs. Bhave who shows faint signs of intellectuality. Mrs. Bhave stands at the center of the narration, trying to cope with life and the pain given to her. She has lost her husband and sons in the plane crash. The isolation, loneliness, withdrawal that many others like Mrs. Bhave experienced, touch us to the core. She tries to overcome her tremendous grief of the death of her whole family in a plane crash by intellectualizing and with stoicism but in the end she loses it. After the tragedy, she goes to her parents in India and her mother out of concern forces her to stay back. She has a vision of her dead husband, with whom she enquires if she could stay back. She follows supernatural shadows and we cannot call this victory over the grief. Because of the element of reason and thinking Shashi Deshpande’s novels acquire a quiet depth and profoundness. Bharati Mukherjee loses lasting appeal because of the violence and sensational or melodramatic element in narration. The core of feminism is the human desire to be treated fairly and judged equally. The goal of writing for human beings and not merely for men and women can be achieved at this stage through reason more than through melodrama.

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References 1.

Friedan Betty, Feminine Mystique, New York : Dell Publishing, 1984. p. 71. Henceforth referred as Friedan.

2.

Shashi Deshpande, Roots and Shadows, New Delhi : Disha Books, 1983. p. 128.

3.

Vanamala Vishwanath, “Interview with Shashi Deshpande,” ‘Literature Alive’ [British Council, Madras], Vol. I, No. 3 (December 1987), p. 8-14.

4.

Friedan, p. 79.

5.

M. K. Naik and Shyamala Narayan, Indian English Literature : 1980-2000 : A Critical Survey, Pencraft International, Delhi, 2001. p. 108.

7 Dimensionality of History and Politics in Bapsi Sidhwa’s Ice Candy Man — P.D. Nimsarkar

‘Crack ing India’ alias ‘Ice Candy Man’, when appeared in different names, foregrounded multiplicity of meaning and dimensional gravitation the novel offers through the treatment of various themes, different characters, voices, cultural varieties, communal conflicts and quest for burdened identity intertextualised beautifully in the canonical form purposefully, representing writing in the post-colonial era. The events, incidents, issues, characters and the language have become instruments in the conscious hands of the narrator shaping the discourse on history and politics and their relevance in delineation of tendencies that have tremendous impact on individual, human beings, and the cultural segments of the society fermenting communal forces. The title ‘Cracking India’ straightway relates the history of Partition and politics whereas ‘Ice Candy Man’ tells about an individual person heading combination of communal strands. The novel is a powerful discourse on the multiple histories, of nations, of communities and of individuals. By way of literary history the novelist envisages deliberate discussion of nation and nationalism on one hand and individual’s experience which in turn consists of ‘the experience of the collectivity itself ’ keeping communal politics for nation building at the centre.1

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The political upheavals in the Indian subcontinent during the British reign developed into regional identities to be achieved through border marking. The novelist has used the first person narrative as a device to rewrite history narrating the story of her family and of her country, and in turn rewrites the “history of the subcontinent, thereby undercutting the British views of history imposed on the subcontinent.” 2 The historic dimension of the novel lies in the depiction of the disintegration of the communities after the Partition which destroyed harmony among the communities and individual life of men and women. Ayah is a representative of the victimization sprung from the Partition. The communal collision and place of woman in the patriarchal society, the historic trap has been revisited by using Ayah, caught in a flirting whirl with men. During the Partition, on both the sides, both Muslims and the Hindus mercilessly killed people and raped innocent women disregarding their religion. It seems that the novelist, being Pakistani, has taken Pak istan’s favour while rewriting the past of the new born country after colonial debacle. Mahatma Gandhi, B. Jinah, Pt. Nehru and so many strived to push further the struggle for freedom of the subcontinent but as the dawn of the independence approached, the rift between ideological stances taken by Gandhi and Jinnah developed into a great chasm resulting in the division of the land. The longing for separate land was not in the Muslim consciousness before the freedom movement against the British imperialism. This longing was seeded by the colonial power, in Jinnah, through political game-plan subverting Gandhi-Nehru’s ideological pursuit. Jinnah was held primarily responsible for the partition of the country, for his fundamental optimism and assertion of his deflated ego. The British and Indian historians have placed guilt-responsibility on Jinnah and his stand and presented Gandhi in dignified manner in the motion films based on these historical accounts. The novelist, in a discussion, opines,

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Contemporary Fiction: An Anthology of Female Writers The main motivation grew out of my reading of a good deal of literature on the partition of India and Pakistan…what has been written by the British and Indians. Naturally they reflect their bias. And they have, I felt after I’d researched the book been unfair to the Pakistanis. As a writer. As a human being, one just does not tolerate injustice, I felt whatever little I could do to correct an injustice I would like to do. I have just let facts speak for themselves, and through my research I found out what the facts were.3

The politics of communal division gathered strength due to dissention among the leaders representing two communities, the Hindu and the Muslim. Being a citizen of the countries, Pakistan, where she was brought up, Sidhwa has kept up the ethics of the nationality by re-examining the reasons and background responsible for the Partition. As an artist, the novelist has admired Gandhi, the politician, thinker and humanist, but severely castigated him also; Jenny, the nar rator, comment on G andhi ’s personality, He is knitting, sitting cross-legged on the marble floor of a political varanda, he is surrounded by women. He is small, dark, shrilled, old. He looks just like Hari, our gardener, except he has a disgruntled, disgusted and irritable look, and one I dare pull off his dhoti! He wears only the loin-dhoti and his black and thin torso is naked (85-86).4

The narrator’s remarks are witty and humorous, and are ironic in implicature, also: “Gandhi certainly is ahead of his times. He already knows the advantages of dieting. He has starved his way into the news and made headlines all over the world” (86). Here the narrator presents him as a strategic planner who gets things fabricated, as he desires for. His special intention towards women has been pointed out without fear for, in reality also, Gandhi always preferred flanked by beautiful young girls. He had developed special respect for the sweepers and untouchables when Dr. Ambedkar took up the cause of the downtrodden in India. “He is a man to love women and love children. And the untouchable sweepers contributed girl-child best…”(87). His advise to women

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“Flush your system with an enema” (87) seems to be pressed intentionally to cut his figure short which was not possible for any writer or critics. Moreover Gandhi’s image as a politician of a low rank emerges from the discussion between the ordinary people. For instance, ‘That non-violent violence-monger-your precious Gandhijee- first declares the Sikhs fanatics! Now. suddenly he says, “oh dear, the poor Sikhs cannot live with the Muslims if there is a Pakisthan!” What does he think we are some kinds of beast? Aren’t they living with us now?’ He is a politician, yaar’, says Hassen smoothly. ‘It’s his business to suit his tongue to the moment’ (91).

These views of the common people, the butcher and Masseur have no political soiling but comments are derogatory in effect and minimize the stature of the Mahatma, who continuously agitated against imperial dominance to attain freedom. The narrator has presented Nehru in the similar vein as if he is a cunning politician working against Jinnah: “Jinnah or no Jinnah! Sikh or no Sikh! Right law, wrong law, Nehru will walk off with the lions share….”(131). He is the person who entered Mountbatten family life also: “But that Nehru, he’s a sly one…He’s the one to watch.” (131). Here Nehru’s honesty has been questioned and carnality exposed in a slippery way: “He bandies words with lady Mountbatten and is presumed to be her lover” (159). While belittling the stature and position of Gandhi and Nehru, the narrator resurrec ts and elevates the ignored hero, Jinnah. An ordinary sepoy argues ‘ Don’t underestimate Jinnah’,… he will stick with him his rights, no matter whom Nehru feeds! He is first –rate lawyer and he knows to attack the British with their own laws! (131), “Jinnah was brilliant, elegantly handsome….”(160). Jinnah’s intellectual achievements and his resoluteness have been defined by a common man let politician like Nehru do anything for that matter. The British officials were partial towards Jinnah in all respect!: ... the Hindus are being favoured over the Muslims by the remnants of the Raj. Now that its objective to divide India

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Contemporary Fiction: An Anthology of Female Writers is achieved, the British favour Nehru over Jinnah.Nehru is Kashmiri; they grant him Kashmir. Spurning logic, defying rationale, ignoring the consequences of bequeathing a Muslim state to the Hindus: while Jinnah futiley protests: ‘Statesmen can not eat their words!’ Statesmen do. They grant Nehru Gurudaspur and Pathankot, without which Muslim Kashmir cannot be secured.(159)

Jinnah’s personality as a great human being and intelligent politician has been raised and resuscitated by explaining the excellent features of his character. He lost his beautiful wife who died of heart-break but he maintain cool in his grief: But didn’t Jinnah too die of a broken heart? And today fortyfive years later, in the films of Gandhi’s and Mountbatten’s lives, in books by British and Indian scholors, Jinnah who for a decade was known as ‘Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity,’ is characterized, as portrayed as a monster. (160)

In the larger interest of the nation, he disregarded his personal grief and loss of the loved one. The villainous image of Jinnah presented during freedom struggle and after independence has been rejected by the novelist, displaying “anguish at the biased work of the British and Indian scholors.” 5 Her assessment of Jinnah’s personality is bestrewed with impartiality as well as personal proclivity for the man who wrought out Pakistan with foresight and dedication. In order to shun away the hostile reviews she has quoted Sarojini Naidu, the poetess, who was infatuated with his personality: ….The calm hauteur of his accustomed reserve masks, for those who know him, a naïve and eager humanity, an intuition quick and leader as a woman’s a human gay and winning as a child’s pre-eminently ration and practical, discreet and dispassionate in his estimate and accepted life, the obvious sanity and serenity of his worldly wisdom effectually disguise a shy and splendid idealism which is of the very essence of the man (101).

Such acclamation so profusely expressed recreates a grand image of the man who was condemned by the Gandhian polity for the sake of political appropriation.

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Through the literary history, Sidhwa has resurrected the image and standing of Jinnah but dusted the glorified Gandhi for the division of the country. The father of Pakistan won the battle and land for Muslims going against Gandhi’s ideology usurping the British Government’s political moves. He deserves right evaluation in the light of the Socio-political situation that prevailed in those days which seems to be the basic argument the novelist has developed in the novel. The novelist has endeavoured to rewrite the history of the new nation, Pakistan which is “a purely post colonial nation with no colonial past, uniquely its own.” 6 After partition India was also a new country, new Indian, devoid of its extreme north- west region. Before Partition, cultural integration between Muslim and Hindu and Sikh in the subcontinent was harmonious and mellifluous but turned into enmity after Partition. After the division of the land, the socio-cultural issues of the countries became alien, and their ethos were expressed in different voices sprouted from the bordered region. India had pre- and colonial background to look back into while reorganizing their glorious past whereas Pakistan looks at her connection with Indian past with malice and reservations. The novelist here takes stock of the ethos of the two countries deliberately but indirectly. There are widely read novels on the background and horror of partition such Manohar Malgaokar ’s Distance Drum, Khushvant Singh’s Train To Pakistan’ and Chaman Nahal’s ‘A zadi ’ written from an I ndian point of view. Pakistan, born of India by means of par tition, and its literary history is “as much a part of Pakistani history as it is a part of India History.” 7 providing a Pakistani version of the Partition. The birth and origin of Pakistan and allocation of land to Pakistan has taken up for rational interpretation. The trifurcation of land was executed according to the plan keeping beautiful region with India. For instance, possession of Kashmir accorded to India has ulterior design. The novelist lashes at the British Government strategy saying “For now the tide is turned and the Hindus are

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being favoured over the Muslims by the remnants of the Raj was that its objective to divide India is achieved. The British favour Nehru over Jinnah: ‘Nehru is Kashmiri; they grant him Kashmir.’ Pakistan’s efforts, using all kinds of means even today to dislocated Indian occupied Kashmir, subsequent terrorist attacks and massacre are aftermaths of the burning hatred lashing in the disgrumbled minds. Sashi Tharoor has opined that Sidhawa lacks proper knowledge of history of India and partition and account given in the novel is ‘wrong’. 8 The attacks and confrontation between the Muslims on one hand and Hindu and Sikh on other has been objectively discussed in the narrative. Sidhwa claims, “the Sikhs perpetrated the much greater brutality, they wanted Punjab to be divided. A peasant is rooted in his soil. The only way to approve his was to kill him or scare him out of his wit”.9 T h e r e a c t i o n o f t h e Pa r s i C o m m u n i t y a n d i t s members during the crisis of partition unfold their psychic bewilderment in the novel. Here the Parsi writer has to speak on behalf of the community as well as the nation she belongs to. The veering mentality of the community people in the matter whether to patronize Pakistan or Indian side is further swayed by the inherent fear undercurrent in their cultural identity. They assimilated in the cultural m a i n s t re a m o f t h e I n d i a n t ra d i t i o n w h e n t h e y we re absorbed into the life of the country. During the awesome struggle for freedom the Parsi community suffered clutching embarrassment, for as Madhu Jain comments, “the Parsi dilemma is whom do they cast their lot with?” 10 By going back into the past history of the migration of the Parsi community, Sidhwa has not only rewritten the history of the marginalized community but expressed the dilemma and predicament of the people and society who have settled down in the country, adopted the socio-cultural practices but still are uncertain in their attitude and commitment. The Parsi community, the followers of the Zoroastianism, left their homeland about 1,300 years ago to protect their life and religion. In their last efforts they arrived at the

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port of Sanjan in Gujarat around 785 A. D. The Monarch King Madhav Rana gave them conditional shelter. While rewriting the history of the Parsi community with agony in voice but affirmation in deeds, the novelist says “When we were kicked out of Parsia by the Arabs thirteen hundred years ago, what did we do? Did we shout and argue?” (37). These words express the frustration of the community, restlessness of its members and uncertainty looming large always in their minds. T h e Pa r s i c o m m u n i t y a n d p e o p l e a d o p t e d t h e Zoroastrian philosophy as a social code of their religion and supported the ruler by bestowing their loyalty on the state agency: “The basic attitude of the followers of Zarathustra towards a ruler was that of loyalty akin to Iranic, pre Islamic Sassanian traditions”. 11 When they came to India they accepted the rule and the faith in order to survive and were compelled by the circumstances to accept the forced hybridity. They remained ‘chance seeker’, shifting allegiance and faith towards the dominant ruler utilizing them forever to consolidate their business strategies and social conformity so that they could bank upon the status and favoured place in the eyes of the dominated. “All the Parsis wanted from the ruling British authorities was religious autonomy and protection”. 12 During the British rule, they remained close to the British authorities, accepted their language and maintained autonomy, a willing hybridity, but lost the faith and support of the native nationalists and social activists. At the time of the division of the country, their indifference became a reason for apprehension and insecurity which resulted from “alienation brought about by the rejection of the colonizer and distrust of the nationalists”. 13 In a way, the novelist has evaluated the attitude of the Parsi community towards their place and role in the country they adopted willingly. The promise they had made with the King still echoes in the collective consciousness of the community transferred from one generation to another. This lacerated consciousness trends expression in the novel through Colonel Bharucha, the spokesman of the Zoroastrian Community

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in Lahore: “‘I hope on Lahore Parsi will be stupid enough to court trouble’…. ‘I strongly advise all of you to stay at home —and out of trouble’” (36-37 ). The Parsis, settled in Lahore, were migrated from Gujarat and Bombay and were conscious of their dislocation, further not sure of the effect of Partition. Keeping in mind the aftereffects of the communal outrage he warns the community people, “‘Hindus, Muslims and even the Sikhs are going to jockey for power: and if you jokers jump into the middle you’ll be mingled into chutney!’”(36). The ideal indifference proposed through this expression surfaces in “There may not be one but two – or even three- new nations. And Parsis might find themselves championing the wrong side if they don’t look before they leap” (37). With pragmatic consideration expressing some resurrection. Dr. Moody’s agrues “Our neighbours will think that we are betraying them and siding with the English” (37). Another Parsi member’s opinion, though nervous in tone, reflects “Which of your neighbours are you not going to betray?... Hindi? Muslim? Sikh? (37). The Parsi community have remained isolated in terms of their community and religion from rest of the people with their faith lost in their superiority complex, cultural hegemony, blood purity, religious practices and so on. Colonel Bharuch, regardless of the effects, says “‘Let whoever wishes to rule! Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian. We will abide by the ruler of the land’” (39). This view confirms the community’s stand which made them opportunist and so isolated. The novelist drives ironic perspective through these words on the community’s indifference and hesitation to mingle in the mainstream and adopt the values of the location/country, they have lived for such a long time constantly struck by the apprehension of being minority marginalized. The discussion between the members of the community display their ambivalent attitude towards Partition and their participation in the social life. The attitudinal indifference, though characteristically dominant in their sensibility, the compassion and concept of universal brotherhood oozes from the treatment given by them to the victims of violence. The novelist has used

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subtle narrative mode to display another face of the Parsi community. Secretly and with great resoluteness, the Parsi men and women took initiative to help both the communal enemies, the Hindu and the Muslim. The elderly Parsis’ involvements in the Partition have been revealed through the narrator’s mother when the latter whispered the truth: “…I wish I’d told you….We were only smuggling the rationed petrol to help our Hindu and Sikh friends to run away…. And also for the convoys to send kidnapped women, like your ayah, to their families across the border” (242). Here the purpose of the help thus extended is backhanded as well as is equivocal in that whether their desire was to extend help in reality or they just wanted to exhibit so that is the later stage they could be easily understood and assimilated. The narrative voice in “How could she have? How can anyone trust a truth-infected tongue?” (243) rewrites the historic intentionality of the community. The opportunistic mental design of the Parsi community people has been taken for discussion by using comic mode of narration to mitigate the punching sharpness of the comments on their polity. After uprooted from the homeland the Parsi community flew with the wind till they could find safer location. Having mixed in the Hindu community like sugar into milk they adopted the language of the ruler, Gujrati, religious rites and rituals, customs and ways of life and lived with communal synchronization before arrival of the British in India. 14 This hybridity was maintained with ingenuity for several years. When the British took over the state power of the country in their hands the Parsis shifted their loyalty to the ruler, this attitude stemmed from the Zoroastrian religious belief of loyalty to a ruler and a close relationship between state and power. The other cause for loyalty to the British was purely economic.” 15 The history of the development of the community’s policy did not end here. Sliding towards the rulers they adopted the latter’s language, English to exhibit homogeneity with the British. The historicity of their move brought double harvest they reaped easily, one by going close to the speakers of that

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language, the imperial power and another by using English they started dominating the natives who are poor at this language use. This masterstroke gave them upper hand, they exploited the context and accentuated their superiority in the country they adopted, a reality which is inscribed by the history. Even after Partition and independence, they have not abandoned that means which gave the community power to dominate with which they are quite familiar. The Parsi is a homeless community always in search of an opportunity and site to settle and assert their own identity like the Muslim, the Christian, the Hindu and the Buddhist in the different parts of the world have done with their nations and land. They are a capitalist community, financially strong but have always forged their allegiance with the country and the people with whom they stay. It is a tragedy of the community which has sickened their mind and consciousness which has been lucidly expressed through the girl narrator, Lenny. The post colonial era provided new inspiration to the writers like Sidhwa to have graphic record of the past of the nation, of the community and individuals in ‘Ice Candy Man’, all grim effects of the politics and partition. She has captured the reality in her literar y histor y written with cer tain ambition by rejecting earlier version of the historiography inked by the Indian and the British historians and stirred conscientiously the conventional mind set of the people. REFERENCES & NOTES 1.

Ania Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism, Routhledge, London and New York, reprinted 2001, p. 204. She has summarized the view of Jameson expressed in ‘Third World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism’ Social Text 15 1986.

2.

Rahul Sapra, A Post-colonial Appraisal of Sidhwa’s Fiction in Rashmi Gaur (Ed) Bapsi Sidhwa’s Ice-Candy-Man, Reader’s Comparison, Asia Book Club, New Delhi, 2004, p. 197.

3.

David Montinegio, points of Departure : International writers

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are writing and politics,1989, P. 36, quotes in Rashmi Gaur (ed) p. 200. 4.

Bapsi Sidhwa, Ice-Candy-Man, Penguin Books, 1989. All the quotations incorporated in this paper are taken from this edition.

5.

V. L. V. N. Narendra Kumar, The Ice-Candy- Man : Partition Revisited by a Parsi Woman Writer in Rashmi Gaur (Ed), Bapsi Sidhwa’s Ice-Candy-Man, Reader’s Comparison, Asia Book Club, New Delhi, 2004, p. 164.

6.

Rober L Ross, The search for Community in Bapsi Sidhwa’s Novel, in R.K.Dhawan and Navy Kapadia(ed), Novels of Bapsi Sidhwa, Reader’s Comparison, New Delhi Prestige Books, 1996, p. 71.

7.

Ralf J. Crane, A Passion for History and Truth Telling: The Early Novels of Bapsi Sidhwa, in R.K. Dhawan and Novey Kapadia(ed), Novels of Bapsi Sidhwa Reader’s Comparison, New Delhi, Prestige Books, 1996, p. 60.

8.

Tharoor’s review of the novel, “Life with Electric-Aunt and Slavesister”, New York Timess Book Review, Oct., 6 1991, p. 11. What she[Bapsi Sidhwa] doesn’t handle history as well as politics: when her characters discuss the issue of the day, Ms. Sidhwa’s deftness collapses in clichés. Don’t look for historical accuracy in this seemingly realistc tale: Mahatma Gandhi’s march to the sea protesting the jritish tax on salt is displaced by a decade an a half, and when Ms. Sidhwa uses her authorial authority to inform the reader that “the British favour Nehru over Jinnah. Nehru is Kashmir, they grant him Kashmir,” it is not simply wrong(the Maharajah of Kashmir acceded to India a Year after Partition), it undermines her narrator.

9.

David Montenegro, Points of Departure, International Writers on Writing and Politics, 1989, pp. 50-51.

10.

Madhu Jain, sensitive servings: Deshpande and Sidhwa Fetch Notice”, India Today, September 15, 1989 p. 47.

11.

Novy Kapadia, The Parsi Paradox in The Crow Eater in R.K. Dhawan and Novy Kapadia(ed), Novels of Bapsi Sidhwa, Reader ’s Comparison, New Delhi, Prestige Books, 1996, 130.

12.

Novy Kapadia, The Parsi Paradox in The Crow Eaters in R.K.

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Contemporary Fiction: An Anthology of Female Writers Dhawan and Novy Kapadia (ed) Novels of Bapsi Sidhwa, New Delhi, Prestige Books, 1996, p. 130.

13.

V. L. V. N. Narendra Kumar, The Ice-Candy Man: Partition Revisited by a Parsi Woman Writer in Rashmi Gaur (ed.) Bapsi Sidhwa’s Ice-Candy-Man, A Reader’s Compania,. Asia Book Club, Newe Delhi, 2004, p. 161.

14.

Feroja Jussawalla, Navjote Ceremonies, the Location of Bapsi Sidhwa’s Culture in R.K .Dhawan and Novy K apadia(ed) Novels of Bapsi Sidhwa , New Delhi, Prestige Books, 1996, p. 82.

15.

Nov y K apadia, Communal Frenz y and Par tition, Bapsi Sidhawa, Attia Hussain and Amitav Ghosh, R.K.Dhawan and Novy Kapadia(ed) Novels of Bapsi Sidhwa, New Delhi, Prestige Books, 1996, p. 36.

8 Shashi Deshpande’s The Binding Vine: An Ecocritical Perspective — Amol Padwad

Indian writing in English has now grown into a considerably rich tradition and now claims its own place in the world literatures in English. Among the more recent generations of Indian writers in English Shashi Deshpande has become a name to reckon with, not just because of her bold presentations of life experiences from a peculiar feminine perspective and her experimentation with themes and characters, but also because the stances she has taken, implicitly in her creative works and explicitly in her critical writings, about feminism, literature, writing in English and women’s role in the society. A lot of work has been done and is underway in exploring her writings from a variety of perspectives. The present article is one such attempt to explore her novel The Binding Vine from an ecocritical perspective. The first part shall briefly delve into the new critical idiom of ‘Ecocriticism’ and then, in the second, look at The Binding Vine from an ecocritical perspective. The present paper does not propose to undertake an exhaustive ecocritical analysis of the novel, but attempts to put forth a sample analysis of a few select passages in the novel. Ecocriticism Ecology has come to penetrate the human psyche and human thinking in a significant way only recently. The issues

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in ecology began to become prominent in world consciousness roughly since the Second World War. Roughly in early 1970s environmental concerns took a firm step towards becoming global. The initially politico-economic concerns gradually took on other forms of moral, aesthetic, socio-cultural and philosophical concerns. The debates over development versus conservation expanded into questions about the legitimacy of mankind’s appropriation of nature, about the role of religions in supporting or degrading nature, about the role of languages, cultures and thought paradigms in the way environment and nature entered human cognition, and many others. The result was the emergence of many ‘-isms’ with the prefix ‘eco-’, (such as ecofeminism, ecoMarxism, ecophilosophpy, etc) indicating various attitudinal and perspectival positions on environment mediated by different schools of thought and fields of study. Attempts in the fields of art and culture began to consider issues such as the representation of nature in various forms of art and culture, human relationship with nature as reflected in art and culture, the impact of artistic and cultural practices on conser vation or degradation of environment and so on. Ecocriticism is one of the interdisciplinary branches of critical theory that studies language and culture from the viewpoint of ecology and environment. In the words of Glotfelty (1996: xix): Simply put, ecocriticism is the study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment. Just as feminist criticism examines language and literature from a genderconscious perspective, and Marxist criticism brings an awareness of modes of production and economic class to its reading of texts, ecocriticism takes an earth-centered approach to literary studies.1

As t h e co m p a r i s o n w i t h fe m i n i s m a n d M a r x i s m suggests, ecocriticism has its own political position and a ‘green’ agenda. Ecocritics are interested in how culture and literature construc t environment and how these constructions impact the human response to environmental concerns. According to Richard Kerridge (1998: 5), The ecocritic wants to track environmental ides and

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representations wherever they appear, to see more clearly a debate which seems to be taking place, often part concealed, in a great many cultural spaces. Most of all, ecocriticism seeks to evaluate texts and ideas in terms of their coherence and usefulness as responses to environmental crisis.2

Ecocriticism is assumed to have emerged on the literary-critical scene with the publication of the novel Silent Spring by Rachel Carson in 1962, which revolves around the catastrophic destruction of an ‘idyllic’ American town by the introduction of pesticides like DDT, aldrin and dieldrin. 3 Later on ecocritics have undertaken studies of a vast range of texts from classical Greek literature to English Romantic poetry, and have often unearthed quite interesting facts and attitudes about the environmental issues in them. These studies have included media other than literature too, such as films, TV documentaries and painting.4 Among the contemporary theories of literature and culture, ecocriticism stands out as a truly interdisciplinary study, because it has to be continually informed by at least one science – ecology. While ecocritics examine how their ‘subject’ is represented in literary texts and cultural artifacts, our knowledge of the subject too is constantly evolving. That is why Garrard (2007: 10) warns that “the challenge for ecocritics is to keep one eye on the ways in which nature is always in some ways constructed, and the other on the fact that nature really exists, both as the object and, albeit distantly, the origin of our discourse.”5 Ecocriticism is informed by the developments in ecology as well as in world politics and economics. It is concerned with how literature constructs and reflects the man-nature relationship, the impact of human enterprise and intelligence on nature, the status of human species in the overall schema of this planet and the universe, and the human understanding of and approaches to the issues related to all these. At the same time it is also concerned with how notions/perceptions of ‘nature’, ‘environment’, ‘wilderness’ and so on are constructed in literature and in the individual psyche.

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Ecocriticism is more of an umbrella term, rather than a monolithic body of thought, that encompasses a range of diverse views. It includes a whole spectrum at one end of which there are the groups which believe that nature, environmental problems and the apocalypse are all parts of an objective reality, while at the other end there are groups which believe that notions and perceptions of nature and the environmental crisis are strongly conditioned by the sociocultural contexts. There is even a postmodern rejection of the ecocritical stance on the basis of this, as will be apparent from the words of Peter Coates, the eminent historian (1998: 185-6): … the belief in the existence of a global environmental crisis is just another grand narrative, for cultural theor y insists that environmental threats (like everything else) are socially construc ted and culturally defined: there are no shared, universal threats – different groups privilege those confronting their own particular interests.6

Neither the motley range of ‘schools’ within ecocriticism nor the severe postmodern opposition to it should take away the importance of this discipline. The ecocritical approach is justified on the proposition that environmental problems require analysis in cultural as well as scientific terms, because they are the outcome of an interaction between ecological k nowledge of nature and its cultural inflection. … [Ecocriticism] supplies us a model of cultural reading practice tied to moral and political concerns, and one which is alert to both the real or literal and the figural or constructed interpretations of ‘nature’ and ‘the environment’. (Garrard, 2007: 14).

In rather simplified words, ecocriticism attempts, on the one hand, to look at how literary-cultural representations affect the way human world responds to its surrounding and contributes to its sustenance or deterioration, while on the other hand ecocriticism considers how the changes (and crises) in the environment and nature are impacting the literary-cultural practices of the human society. On a less global and more local note, ecocriticism

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affords us a view of how individual authors or literary works relate to and represent nature. The ecocritical analysis also allows us to understand how various elements and aspects of nature are perceived, what images and notions they are afflicted with and where all this stands on the overall canvas of environmentalism. The present paper is one such attempt at gaining a ‘micro-view’ of a novel by an author from the ecological and ecocritical perspective. The Binding Vine The Binding Vine is Shashi Deshpande’s sixth novel, first published in 1993. The novel is a narrative of an intelligent, independent and outspoken middle-aged woman Urmi, who is suffering the pangs of the death of her baby daughter. The suffering takes on new and quite different dimensions as Urmi discovers two more suffering female souls, one old and dead, the other young and alive. She discovers a collection of the poems written by her longdead mother-in-law, which open up to her an unknown and unimagined world of suffering. The mother-in-law Mira, a sensitive, intelligent and creative mind, was subjected to rape in her marriage, but suffered everything (apparently) patiently through the entire course of her life, opening her wounds symbolically in the privacy of her diary of poems. The other sufferer is a young girl Kalpana from a very poor family of a housemaid, who has been a victim of rape, and is now lying in a hospital ward, hanging between life and death. As Urmi engages with the symbolic manifestation of acute grief in Mira’s poems and an actual observation of slow death by suffering in Kalpana’s case, further complicated by her own grief, she discovers the ‘binding vine’ of love, in all its varied avatars, that keeps hope and optimism alive. Since the purpose here is to attempt an ecocritical analysis of the novel, the literary-artistic-aesthetic issues will not be considered. The focus will be on implicit and explicit representations of nature and environmental concerns, the implications of these in terms of the author’s approach to ecological matters and the light these may

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throw on the role/ impact of literary works in perpetuating or amending ecological perceptions of a society. The first thing that strikes one about the novel is that it is intensely focused on the human, largely urban elite, world. The novel speaks almost exclusively of the manmade world. There are roughly six or seven occasions when we find some reference to or discussion of nature as such. There are several possible interpretations of such a tiny place nature comes to occupy in the novel. It may be justified on the ground that the novel revolves basically around the psychological world of an individual, who may not have strong associations with nature. But Urmi’s charac ter seems to have a special love for nature, which is obvious from her nostalgic longings for the natural surroundings of the Ranidurg House, her childhood abode. There are many indirect references to her attraction towards nature. Perhaps the insignificant presence of nature in the novel may be explained by claiming that the acuteness of the personal suffering of Urmi, coupled with similarly acute grief of Mira and Kalpana, may not provide scope for bringing in nature in a significant way. The issue here is not whether the author was right or wrong in giving the space to nature she has given; the issue is what giving this small space may imply. One possible implication is that Urmi and her urban world is so incredibly preoccupied with the man-made surrounding that it is cut off from nature, not just physically but emotionally and mentally too. This way of drawing the implication seems to suggest a dichotomy between man-made world and the world of nature, and that these are mutually exclusive. While reality may not support this view, and human world and nature may coexist in all sorts of troubled, strained, symbiotic, cooperative or supportive relations, it also seems equally likely that nature may exist in the minds of human beings just as an extension of their (human) world and not as an independent entity. This perception is corroborated by the way those few references to nature in the novel come about. There are some

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bits of description of the Ranidurg House, which include the lovely garden around the big old house with its neem, mango and tamarind trees, the thick hedge separating neighboring houses, the soft green grass and so on. Although the view seems to suggest a glimpse of the lovely ‘rural’ nature, it is a landscape dominated by a limited utilitarian perspective of children searching for instrumental values in the surrounding. There is no mention of butter flies, wild flowers, carefree birds, or any such thing that exists in nature and does not have any use or value for human beings. We are told, on the contrary, about the delicacies the tamarind trees provide in form of “the tender green leaves, the crisp and white yellow flowers, the tiny curving fruits, … and then the larger, raw tamarinds that even when seasoned with salt and chilli powder, set our teeth on edge with their sourness”.7 Then there is the mention of monsoon rains in Bombay that “announces itself with a melodramatic thunder”. The conversation that unfolds between Urmi and Inniauntie about rains is quite revealing. Urmi hates Bombay rains and contrasts them with the lovely rains in Ranidurg with their “grey skies, soft clouds and a soothing drip drip”. Inniauntie counters her by calling it a “maddeining drip drip” and prefers Bombay rains as everything is “damp and squelchy all the time” in Ranidurg during rains. The image that Innieauntie paints of Ranidurg is full of negative terms: “the slush … that terrible red mud … the stains [on] my petticoat hems … those crawly things …” followed by a theriophobic description of the millipedes caught in a box that “sort of oozed out some slimy stuff…”.8 The issue here is not which rains are better – Bombay or R anidurg, or whose approach/ logic bet ween the women is more compelling. The issue is how two human beings perceive a phenomenon of nature from a typically anthro po ce nt r i c vi ew. B oth I n n i aunti e a n d U r m i a re judging the worth of rains from their respective sentimental considerations and presenting them in a highly personalized and instrumental perspective. Rains are appreciated (or not)

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depending on whether and how far they suit the individual preferences of these persons. One may argue that literary representations are nothing but personal responses to the world of experience; an individual’s description or judgment of rains cannot but be very personal. But that is precisely the point. An individual’s judgment and perceptions are situated in cultural and social contexts. It is the socio-cultural ramifications that affect how we view a routine phenomenon like rains. Our being situated in these ramifications decides whether we hate or like ‘slush … that terrible red mud … those crawly things’. By extension, our hatred or liking then conditions how we respond to that phenomenon. In our dislike we shudder away from the millipedes, trample them under foot, kick them away, shut them up in boxes or just refuse to take a curious and serious look at them. When such attitudes are generalized, it becomes easier to understand why the first instinctive reaction on seeing a live snake is panic and the desire to kill it. Such reaction also betrays a deep-seated assumption that the world is made for the humans, who have the right to alter it to suit their convenience. Much of the environmental crisis plaguing the world today can be traced to such assumptions. There are quite different and mostly symbolic references to nature and non-human world in some of Mira’s poems that intersperse the later half of the novel. The poems were originally written in Kannada by a young poet Pratibha Nandkumar, whom Shashi Deshpande commissioned to do the job. 9 The poems were then translated by the author in collaboration with the poet. In the strict sense they are the ‘borrowings’ into the novel, but since they are made to order as the author instructed, they too can be included in our discussion here as representing the author’s view. In one of the poems referring to the emotive state of her mind Mira metaphorically reflects on the question facing her: Huddled in my cocoon, a somnolent silkworm will I emerge a beauteous being?

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Or will I, suffocating, cease to exist?10

On another occasion, Mira describes the agony of indecision and the frustration of helplessness in these words: Shall I surrender to this Maya-world dancing peacock, displaying its feathers? Or shall I, defying the market world retreat into my shell tortoise-like?11

And then in another poem M ira reflec ts on her pregnancy, and tells how it is to ‘feel the child grow within her’: Tiny fish swimming in the ocean of my womb my body thrills to you; churning the ocean, shaking distant shores you will emerge one day.12

Symbolic use of nature and its elements to represent human experience and perceptions is nothing new. Poetry in par ticular abounds in such use in the centuries-old histor y of world literatures. What is new, perhaps, is a growing realization, in ecocritical terms, of this use as either ascribing human values, qualities and features to natural beings (anthropomorphism) or the other way round (theriomorphism). In the quotes from Mira’s poems above, she takes an anthropomorphic stance by representing herself as a silkworm, a peacock, a tortoise, etc, or her yet-to-be-born child as fish. There are t wo basic problems with this k ind of representation. Firstly, many human attributes are being ascribed to non-human nature. The cocoon as a site of imprisonment and suffocation, the peacock as a display of the lure of beauty or the tortoise shell as a safe haven for retreat are all primarily human images, which may not hold good in the world of nature. As Garrard points out, some critics like Leahy “have criticized anthropomorphism, arguing that we mistakenly ascribe human attributes, such as our own desire for freedom, to the animals involved”. 13

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Such a humanized representation may actually lead to serious misinterpretations at times. Secondly, such representations seem to create and confirm many stereotypes that are basically cultural. Cocoon as a prison cell, peacock display as an awesome aesthetic per formance or retreat into a tor toise shell as either an ultimate defense strategy or an ultimate surrender/ reconciliation/ frustration are examples of such stereotypes. Proverbs and idioms of a language reveal how the culture it belongs to has stereotyped various members of the natural world: the lion as a brave animal, the fox as a sly one, the donkey as a stupid one, snakes as a traitors, rats as cowards or ants as industrious workers are common stereotypes. The worse part is that many of these are often used for racial or national stereotyping. From an ecocritical perspec tive such stereotypes condition our understanding of and responses to the nonhuman world around us. It colours our vision in particular ways and often hampers our understanding of nature as a world in its own right, which neither can nor need be explained in human terms. The fragments from Mira’s poems quoted above use images from nature in such a way as if the animals are leading a human life. Consequently, on a subconscious level, one continues to apply the logic and norms of human life to these animals, and thus may not see that they exist independently of human cognition. Conclusion The foregoing brief discussion of some sample extracts from the novel lead us to conclude that representations of nature in literature seem to be culturally and socially defined. There are numerous assumptions, biases and values working behind how literature reflects and reflects upon nature. The analysis of some passages from The Binding Vine suggest that nature is represented as an extension of human world, steeped in its attributes and its forms. Such kind of representation not only paints an

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inaccurate picture of nature, but also creates and confirms many cultural stereot ypes, besides leaving scope for misinterpretations, about it. From an ecocritical perspective, literary representations like the one discussed above have an impact on our understanding of and approach towards ecological issues and concerns. NOTES 1.

Glotfelty, C. (1996) ‘Introduction’, in C. Glotfelty and H. Fromm (eds), The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology, London: University of Georgia Press.

2.

K e r r i d g e, R . ( 1 9 9 8 ) ‘ S m a l l ro o m s a n d t h e e co s ys te m : environmentalism and DeLillo’s White Noise’ in Kerridge, R. and Sammels, N, (eds) Writing the Environment, London: Zed Books.

3.

Carson, Rachel (1999) Silent Spring, London: Penguin.

4.

See, for example, Bate, J. (1991) Romantic Ecology: Wordsworth and the Environmental Tradition, London: Routledge; Buell, L. (1995) The Environmental Imagination: How Literar y Naturalists from Henr y Thoreau to Rachel Carson Have Shaped America, San Francisco: Sierra Club Books; Glotfelty, C. and H. Fromm (eds) (1996) The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology, London: University of Georgia Press; Hochman, J. (1998) Green Cultural Studies: Nature in Film, Novel and Theory, Moscow: University of Idaho Press; Ingram, D. (2000) Green Screen: Environmentalism and Hollywood Cinema, Exeter: University of Exeter Press; Kroeber, K. (1994) Ecological Literary Criticism: Romantic Imagining and the Biology of Mind, New York: Columbia University Press.

5.

Garrard, Greg (2007) Ecocriticism, London and New York: Routledge.

6.

Caotes, Peter (1998) Nature: Western Attitudes since Ancient Times, London: Polity.

7.

Deshpande, Shashi (1993) The Binding Vine, New Delhi: Penguin Books, p. 12.

8.

Ibid, p. 28.

9.

Deshpande, Shashi (2003) Writing from the Margin and Other

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10.

The Binding Vine, p. 65.

11.

Ibid, p. 98.

12.

Ibid, p. 136.

13.

Garrard, Greg, op. cit. p. 137.

9 Mistress of Her Choice- Conflict and Resolution in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s Arranged Marriage — Malti Panga

As a multicultural, diasporic, postcolonial Indian living in US, Chitra Banerjee Divakarunis’s works portray only what constitutes her experience - the expatriate dilemma. The various shades and nuances of expatriation are projected and insights given into the female diasporic consciousness. The paper proposes to focus on the conflict and the resolution that takes place in the arranged marriage of the protagonists of Divakarunis debut collection of short stories, Arranged Marriage. I n four of the six stories dealt with in the paper – “Clothes”, “Meeting Mrinal”, “Affair”, “Disappearance” – we see a conflict and resolution of bicultural pulls. The female protagonists are shown straddling two diverse cultures - an inherited collectivist Indian culture with its emphasis on close family ties with its attendant responsibilities and obligations and the other adopted individualistic American culture driven by liberty, self-reliance and the pursuit of goals and personal desires. One common thread that runs through these stories is the dissonance that the female protagonists face - the conflict between the cultural values they are conditioned in and the ones they encounter in the dominant culture. What follows is a synergetic articulation - in this case a migrant

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“hybridity” as valorized by Homi Bhabha. Here the conflict is resolved by consciously or unconsciously integrating the sensibilities of both cultures. They use their multicultural experience to define themselves anew outside their roles of a wife or daughter-in-law. As a complete foil to the protagonists of these stories are the ones of the remaining two stories - “Bats” and “Silver Pavements Golden Roofs”. Here the women are guided purely by the traditional concept of feminine behaviour. The cultural devaluation of women as inferior is reflected in the psychology of these women characters. They choose to negotiate the conflict in their abusive marriages by setting boundaries for themselves and taking a compromised stand. In “Clothes” Mita’s evolution from a naive, star-struck bride to an independent, determined widow is traced using the metaphor of clothes - her bride viewing sari, her travel saris, her hidden American clothes and the widow’s white sari. As she boards the plane to join her new husband in U.S., she realises that the store that her husband owns in U.S. seems more real to her than her husband. “Perhaps I know more about it” (20). But despite her apprehensions, she looks forward to a complete integration and assimilation in the American life. She dreams of helping her husband at the store and kissing him “in front of everyone, not caring, like Americans (23). But before long, it dawns on her that despite being in U.S., her life is “no different from Deepalis’ or Radhas.” (26) She is required to play the role of dutiful daughter-in-law, a nurturer and a provider. Her personal aspirations and dreams are hemmed in the patriarchal folds of the family. “I stand inside this glass world, watching helplessly as America rushes by, wanting to scream” (26). Her first initiation into the American life comes in the form of her clandestine posing to her husband in the American clothes he brings for her. Her Indian clothes which hide her body symbolise the Indian values of subservience and self-effacement hiding her potential while the American clothes, waiting in the closet, symbolise her dreams and her husband’s aspirations for her (of her becoming a teacher)

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waiting to come out in the open. After her husband is shot, the image of her dressed in white “widow’s colour, colour of ending” (29) is contrasted with the image of herself as a teacher wearing “a blouse and skirt the colour of almonds” (33) that she sees in the mirror. She takes the decision not to go back to India with her in-laws. She chooses to step out of her role of a widow (“Doves with cut off wings” (33)) and step into the role of a teacher in America that her husband had dreamt for her. Thus she makes a choice to construct an identity that appropriates the western custom of autonomy and independence but at the same time remains loyal to her husband’s dream for her. “Meeting Marinal” begins in the situation where “Clothes” ends - a married woman negotiating the role of a single woman imposed upon her by circumstances. But unlike Mita who assertively steps out of her traditional role after being widowed in “Clothes”, Asha goes through a lot of psychological despair when she is stripped off her role of a wife. Her self-image, which has always been framed in the context of her role as a wife and mother is shattered when her husband leaves her for a red-haired American. She tries to find an explanation in her own behaviour and actions and does everything to save her own teetering marriage. True to Habermas’ definition of “Pygmalion Effect’”, she tries to “reshape her personality to conform to the wishes of her husband”. (Habermas, 887). “I’d fought the divorce every way I knew ... cooked Mahesh’s favourite meals. I’d even bought myself a gauzy black negligee from Victoria’s Secret. I’d taken a long time in the bathroom that night, brushing my hair till it shone down my back, rubbing lavender oil on my wrists and throats, trying different lipsticks (289)

Brought up in a country where the idea of pativrata is internalized by every girl through folklores, legend and epics, she has always tried to be “the per fect wife and mother, like the heroines I grew upon on - patient, faithful Sita, selfless Kunti”. (298) But the unexpected challenge that she is faced with equips her with a coping mechanism she

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never knew existed before and gives her a new perspective to her situation. She finally acknowledges the fact “that the perfect life is an illusion” (299). This makes her accept the imperfections in her life with a smile and move on. As Nevitt Stanford in his concept of challenge and response puts it, people learn by encountering new situations and they are forced to invent new methods of assessing and reacting to these situations in “order to reduce tension and free their attention for other things”. (Stanford, 44). “Affair mirrors the psychological development in Asha as she moves from ethnocentric thinking and behaviour to that of a bicultural one. (“It astonished me how little I’d known then, how shackled my thinking had been” (269)) The story introduces us to a perfectly ill-matched couple who have been ironically brought together in an arranged marriage by a per fectly matched horoscope. The stor y begins with Ashok breaking the news to his wife (Asha) about her best friend Meena’s extra-marital affair. Feeling betrayed that her best friend chose to share the news with him and not her, she plummets to great depths of self-doubt and insecurities. She compares herself unfavourably with her friend and wonders whether it is her husband (Ashok) Meena is having an affair with. She wakes up to the face that her “sexless, loveless” marriage is on shaky ground. The constant sparring, sarcasm and indifference in her marriage drains her of whatever little self-image that she has. It is her new job that gives her the much needed new lease of life. “I felt like perhaps I was about to start a revolution and perhaps I was”. (256) The realisation dawns on her that all these years she has kept her own personal happiness and fulfillment on hold, performing all the wifely duties to the hilt. As she begins to question the sanctity of her own marriage and the role definitions that are attached to it, she understands that “all the familiar rules were breaking around me.” (259) She asserts that “the old rules aren’t always right - not here, not even in India”. (270) By contrast, the protagonist of “Disappearance” does defy the confinements of her marriage, but in a covert

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manner. Divakaruni’s narrative strategy of presenting most of the story from the husband’s point of view makes us see how she systematically misleads her husband into believing how she was a “well bred Indian” wife, “not with too many western ideas”. (171) But we, as readers, do see the streak of rebellion in the “cool, considering look in her eyes” (171) and in her strategy to circumvent her husband’s customary demands of sex by starting on elaborate household chores when he wants to go to bed with her. Although he gloats over being a good husband, the readers get a peek into the wife’s suppressed self when her desire to get a job or go back to school or buy American clothes is quashed by him. (“What for, I’m here to take care of you”(172)) Almost till the end the readers and the husband are inclined to believe that her disappearance is a case of kidnapping. Finally, the discovery that her jewellery is missing too exposes her “sudden” disappearance to be anything but sudden it is a premeditated move to escape (or overstep, for the husband) the confinements of her marriage. Thus by using subservience as a strategy to disguise her subversion, the wife displays her resourcefulness (or treachery, in husband’s perspective) to forge her own way. In the aforementioned stories, the protagonists are shown defying the traditional concepts of women and womanhood. Indian tradition has long eulogized the values of self-effacement, self-denial, service, sacrifice and subjugation among women. These women protagonists question the values that they were brought up in, compare them with those of the society they live in and accordingly, make choices for themselves that take them in the direction of reform. But this does not come easily. The anxiety triggered by defiance of the behavioural code advocated by the mother culture is vividly delineated by Divakaruni. In almost all these stories, except “Disappearance” which is told from the husband’s perspective, the mother is shown to be an authoritative figure in the conscience of the protagonists. Faced with the bewildering prospect of

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an arranged marriage, girls in India have always turned to their mothers for advice and guidance. Thus Mita is “Clothes” embarks on her marital journey with her mother’s words ringing in her ears - “A married woman belongs to her husband, her in-laws” (19). Abha in “Affair” wonders how right her mother was when she had explained to her (Abha) that “a good wife’s duty was to allow her husband to satisfy himself no matter how unpleasant she found it” (244). Asha in “Meeting Mrinal” ponders over her childhood conditioning, being brought up by a mother who believed that “women should be happy with whatever their men decided they ought to have” (292) These women protagonists find themselves living on the margins of two cultures, with the values emanating from their upbringing clashing with their new aspirations as women. But they progress towards becoming, what Bennett calls “constructive marginals” when they “get beyond this confusing point through a recognition of the inevitability of ambiguity and of their own responsibility to think autonomous based on the assessment of the context” (Bennett, 115) A complete contrast to these women protagonists are Aunt Pratima of “Silver Pavements, Golden Roofs” and Mother of “Bats”. So rooted is their loyalty to their mother culture that they cannot bring themselves to walk out of their abusive relationships. They continue to maintain the status quo of man as superior and woman as inferior in their relationships. Divakaruni, who had established “Maitri”, a hotline for South Asian women who are victims of domestic abuse, has etched these characters with great authenticity. One of the fall outs of arranged marriage is that girls are married off to complete strangers with half-baked knowledge about their background and standing in society. This is more so in the case of men settled abroad. All this has seen women who, finding themselves in an alien land with no family support to fall back upon, giving in to their abusive relationships. One such couple is Pratima aunt and Balram uncle of “Silver Pavements, Golden Roofs”. When Jayanti comes

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to visit them in U.S., she finds out that her uncle is not the owner of an auto repair shop as people back home think but an embittered mechanic who believes that U.S. has not treated him kindly. Her aunt’s timid and reticent behaviour show that she has not moved beyond the confines of her home. This self-imposed isolation comes in the way of her assimilation in the American culture. On one rare occasion, at the behest of her niece, when aunt crosses the limits imposed by her husband and steps out of the house, an incident of racial abuse clouds her experience. After this, when she faces her husband again, she makes a small movement “something like an injured animal might make towards its keeper” (53). A victim of racial abuse himself as he was robbed off his shop in a case of arson, he gives vent to his pent up emotions by hitting his wife across the face. His wife responds to this with almost motherly affection. “She pulls his head down to her breast and lays her cheek on his hair. Her fingers caress the scar on his neck. Her face is calm, almost happy.” (54). Baffling though this response may seem, we find an explanation to it in the words of Dobash & Dobash - “This is not surprising in societies which allocate to wives the responsibilities for happy husbands and families; women are expected to ask how their behaviour ‘caused’ their husband’s violence” (Dobash & Dobash 225). “Bats” again depicts the plight of a physically battered wife through the perspective of her daughter. The little girl is bewildered by her mother’s constant crying at nights and the marks that keep appearing on her face. When mother finally leaves her home along with the child to stay with her uncle in a village, it is a welcome respite for the child from the “loud-voiced presence” of the father. The grandfather introduces the child to the idyllic world of the countryside. So naturally she kicks up a protest when the mother decides to return to the father again after a few days. This oft repeated process of staying, leaving and returning engaged in by the mother is as unfathomable to us as it is to the child. Her behaviour is akin to that of the bats who keep returning to the grandpa’s mango orchard even when they know that it is

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poisoned to kill them. As the child puts it, “They don’t realise that by flying somewhere else they’ll be safe. Or may be they do, but there’s something that keeps pulling them back here” (8) What is it that keeps pulling back mother to the abusive relationship? This is the only story in the collection that is set in India. So the reasons for her staying might be purely rational - economic (“she never had money” (3)) or social and cultural (“I couldn’t stand it, the stares and whispers of the women, down in the market place.” (12)) The answer could also be found in the words of Dobash & Dobash : Women leave for short periods in order to escape the violence and emphasize their disaffection in the hope that this will stop the violence. In the beginning, they are generally not attempting to end the relationship, but are negotiating to reestablish the relationship on a non-violent basis. (Dobash & Dobash, 22223).

Thus Divakuruni in her stories very subtly chronicles the dichotomy of response - women rooted in the mother culture seek accommodation even in an abusive marriage whereas those with migrant hybridity or ambivalence take emancipated decisions and action. Bibliography B ennett Janet M. “Cultural M arginalit y : Identit y Issues in I ntercultural Training” Education for the I ntercultural Experience Yarmouth, M.E. : Intercultural Press, Inc., 1993. Divakaruni, Chitra Banerjee. Arranged Marriage New York : Anchor Press, 1995. Harlambas Michael. “Women and Society” Sociology : Themes and Perspectives. Delhi : OUP, 1980. Stanford Nevitt. Self and Society : Social change and Individual Development. New York : Atherton Press, 1966.

10 Rendenzvous with Manju Kapur

A group of English enthusiasts met Manju Kapur at her Delhi residence on 4th September 2007 and spent an hour and half of fruitful interaction with her. A questionnaire was already sent to her and she answered all the questions in a lively manner. Manju K apur is an ar ticulate and loquacious person and listening to her was a pleasure. An attempt to retain that special ‘Kapur’ touch has been made in transcribing this interview. The group members were Shubha M ishra, Ur mila Dabir, Vandana Pathak , M alti Pa n g a , Pr i ya Wa n j a r i , Va r s h a K a r m a r k a r, a n d S u d e s h Bhowte. •

Madam, we would like to begin this interview with a very clichéd question. Why do you write?

I do not know whether there is a simple answer to such a question. It’s not as though I have always wanted to write, I haven’t. I have always been a great reader and in fact, because I was a great reader, I felt I couldn’t write, I couldn’t do the thing, I so admired. But I started writing in my forties after the birth of my last child, may be that had something to do with it, I don’t know. It was also this feeling is this all in my life – domesticity, teaching, children, preparing lectures? Writing was something I could do at home, so I started, very tentatively. Let’s see, if I can turn out a book – friends of mine were doing it, it couldn’t be that hard. But it took

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a long time for my first book to be written and published. It took – let me see, I started writing in 1991 and Difficult Daughters was eventually published in 1998. It took 8 years, 8 rejections, sending it here, sending it there. With every rejection I shortened, tightened, compressed, focused my writing. •

Does writing come to you naturally? Or does it require an effort? Your style of writing is unpretentious. You have that spontaneity, simplicity and lack of artifice, colloquial touch, which is very difficult to get into writing.

If you are rewriting the way I rewrite, you won’t talk about spontaneity! It has to seem spontaneous but it is not, because of the many revisions that go into it. Believe me, a lot of effort goes into that writing. I tend to repeat myself, I have to guard against that. •

What are your subjects? Most of your novels present this non existence of freedom of the spirit of educated woman.

I try and write in a way that enables readers to come to their own conclusions. I don’t want to tell the readers what to think but to do that I have to draw the reader into this world which she experiences for herself and she starts thinking. If that happens I have succeeded, there are no set conclusions she has to come to. I guess because I am a woman, I teach in a woman’s college, and I live in a joint family. I have an agenda about women’s issues, their freedom, their constraints, and how they are constricted by their personal problems, their spaces, their finding of themselves. I look at that in book after book. •

You also said that you started writing after forty and I think till forty you were tied up with other things.

Small children, husband, job. Women of ten star t writing late. Look at P.D. James. She is my favourite example. She had two sons, her husband was suffering from

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depression and she was a Police officer, working in the police department. She actually started writing after she retired. •

Per haps your mind was occupied with different things.

Mine was definitely. When you have small children, and a house and a job, there is often little space in which to get a sense of life that is not bound up with obligations. For a while I thought of doing a Ph.D. or some other research. But when I tried my hand at research I was oppressed by it. I had to record all my sources, take down the page numbers of every reference I thought I might use. I was also afraid of exposing my ignorance, of saying something that some other academic would immediately contradict. I think there is a certain freedom in creative writing which is not found in research. There is also a great deal more risk in creative writing because when you are writing creatively you do not know whether you are going to be successful or whether your work be published. The hunt for publishers is not so pressing, so market driven in research. Or so I like to imagine. •

Does A Married Woman depict the death of a family? Not at all. The fac t that Astha doesn’t leave her husband, that she has an affair with a woman is a way of keeping her marriage intact. What she is trying to do is to juggle her own needs and desires with those of her family. She does this by having an affair with a woman, and it only works temporarily. It is not as though she has a very happy relationship with her lover or that she uses this relationship in order to leave her family. Her children are her primary obligation. She is trying to get some personal happiness out of that space. In the end Pipee accuses her of being a coward and from a certain perspective this is true. This is where the artist figures. Astha expresses her emotions not through relationships [which are difficult] but through her art. But it is not entirely bleak picture. In the end her husband and children are there with her during the exhibition on the opening day. Pipee comes and

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goes. It is a kind of a metaphor of what stays and what does not, what you can hang on to and what you can’t. Passion does not lead to permanence and she needs permanence and security. Lot of women look for that, they need it for their children whom they love, and in order to function themselves. Women do have to compromise. •

Nisha’s compromise was jolting but it is accepted. I t happe ns i n a lo t o f f ami li es. Wo m e n h ave to compromise.

Home was thought to be tragic. But I don’t think so. I had a lot of trouble with this ending of the novel. My daughter said, “Don’t take away what she has won.” A friend of mine said the same, “You can not take away Nisha’s boutique, she worked too hard.” These are valid objections. I did try and rewrite the last two chapters with her retaining it. But to me, it seemed with that family set up and that type of mother- in- law, she had no choice but to give it up. The pressures on her when she was pregnant would have been too great. •

How and why did you select/think about the Babri Masjid demolition myth to depict the tensions in Astha’s married life?

The Babr i M asjid demolition is something I feel strongly about. My interest in it initially came from the research that I did for Difficult Daughters, Hindu- Muslim tension and the legacy of Partition. A Married Woman was very difficult to plot. The plot changed and changed and changed. One thing was sure, I wanted to write about the Babri Masjid, but when you use a historical incident you have to make it relevant, you can’t talk about it in a vacuum. I was also concerned about stereotypical notions. This is how women have to be, wives have to be, temples have to be, nations have to be, mosques have to be, Muslims have to be, Hindus have to be, and I wanted to expose the contradictions in such notions, the cruelty behind them.

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Do you believe in ‘Pygmalion Effect’? Nisha accepts motherhood and familial responsibilities and compromises with her family. Astha is shown to be in a dilemma. Ida too is in a dilemma. Do you justify such adjustments by educated women to preserve the traditional Indian family system?

Oh gosh! No, I am examining what happens. I am not saying that it should happen. What does a novel do? It reflects situations – political, domestic, social, which hopefully will cause readers to think. I write about what I see, in particular about the lives of women. I see the adjustments you talk about happen all around me, the class of the women doesn’t matter, how educated she is doesn’t matter. My first and second book has characters that come from the same milieu. In the third I write about a different class where education is not important. The women of all these books are constrained because of family considerations. These constrains are there whether the woman is working or not. I don’t think this situation is confined to Indian women. •

But such adjustments, by educated women to preserve traditional family worth the effort?

I have a quarrel with the word ‘traditional’. In itself it is not necessarily a value – after all at one time suttee was also traditional. Let me come back to the question of ‘education’ and the difference it makes. That was the point with which I started Difficult Daughters. You think that education should make a difference but it doesn’t make as much difference as you think it should. In fact, the starting point of Difficult Daughters was how educated women lead uneducated emotional lives. Education is compartmentalized and does not seem to contribute to happiness. One should have some kind of economic independence. It is not education that empowers as much as money. You have to stand on your

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feet. Rupa, the masi in Home is not educated but she is empowered. Nisha gets her boutique, she is also empowered. It is not education but economic empowerment that is more important. …Absolutely. •

Can we sum up Indian Womanhood in something concrete? What is Indian Womanhood?

Certainly Not! I can’t talk about Indian womanhood. It is vastly different. I am an Indian woman, my mother was an Indian woman and worlds lie between us. There is an idealized notion of Indian women, but I am against idealized notions. I think role models only exist in mythology, literature, cinema, not in real life. Even if such roles are enacted in a home, there are subtle ways in which power is gained or lost. For example when a woman sacrifices there is often an element of emotional blackmail through which she gets what she wants. I think rebellion is impor tant. These women don’t accept the status quo in many ways. They fight. What are the parameters within which the rebellion is taking place and how much can they – do they - change? There is a constant balancing of power. As for compromises – after all when do you compromise? When you get some thing in return. The price you pay and the value that you give that depends on many factors – and these are what I explore in my novels. •

Does education and financial autonomy make this kind of an adjustment difficult for women? For e.g. Virmati’s mother, Nisha’s mother, they see themselves in the role given to them. They don’t grumble, they accept it.

As far as Nisha’s mother is concerned, she has a love marriage. It makes her feel insecure, as the family hasn’t picked her. Women try so much to become a part of their in-laws’ family. That’s another way of compromising and adjusting, that you adapt more to the ways of the in-laws than sometimes the in-laws themselves. Because you come from outside and want to be accepted, you bend backwards

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to show what good a daughter – in –law you are. •

Even Ganga in Difficult Daughters accepts whatever is given to her.

Yes, Ganga does accept, as women do, but not without some struggle. But the emphasis in Difficult Daughters is not really on Ganga – we just get a glimpse of her – it is really on women who have more choices in their lives. •

Do you think Indian Womanhood is very saleable? Would you agree to it at this point of time when educated and empowered women are all around? But still womanhood sells….in advertisement.

As a woman, I write women-centric novels because that’s what I know. Not as a saleable thing. I am not going to repeat myself in my next book just because it has sold well. I think that is a trap one has to be careful not to fall into. If it sells, good. But if it doesn’t, that doesn’t matter. You cannot write a novel from any other place but one that lies quite deep within you. If you do, chances are that it won’t be very good. If you write something for reasons of saleability it will probably lack conviction. •

Do you feel that sexual autonomy should be given to females in the Indian context? Virmati goes against the wishes of her conservative family and searches her own partner. Nisha is not given that choice and has to marry a groom of her family’s choice and Hemant is happy with Astha’s association with Pipeelika. I do.

•

How did you think of the name Peepilika?

My daughter was studying Sanskrit. She asked me to go over the meanings of some words with her, and I came across the word Peeplika. I liked it and I said, I could use it in my novel for my character. She pointed out that Peeplika meant an ant and how could any person be named after an ant? That’s why I had a small dialogue about the meaning of the word in the book as well.

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The issue of sterility is multifaceted in your novel Home and yet it remains unresolved. Please comment.

I reflect a social issue in a fictional way. In many marriages sterility is an issue, and then having only girls is an issue. We just have to look at the statistics of female foeticide to confirm that. By writing about this I do hope to create awareness about this problem – but I am sure I don’t succeed. Some things seem very ingrained. •

Please shed some light on the process of your novel writing. Do you think of central metaphors and symbols before starting a novel (say after the selection of the plot) or do they spontaneously creep into the main plot? How much of the novel is pre-contemplated and how much of it is spontaneous?

Forget spontaneity. I don’t have central metaphors or symbols but I do have a theme. In my first book my theme was education, in the second I started out with the idea of friendship. It didn’t end up that way, because the plot wasn’t moving, when Astha and Pipee were just friends. I made the relationship into a sexual one and that gave the novel its shape. Usually I have a theme in mind and then I try and illustrate it. Although the stor y comes as I write, it is important for me to have a clear idea of the theme of the book. Even though in the end, as in A Married Woman, I didn’t write the book as I had set out to. In Home I wanted to write about how families both constrict and protect women. On the one had the family is a place where women are often limited, not allowed to do the things they want, on the other hand it is also a place that enables and helps them. As I said the story evolves as I write. If I get stuck writing, I change certain elements and try again. I spent about one year on the first chapter of Difficult Daughters. In the first draft it was about eighty pages. But as a starting point, it didn’t work. Then I did twenty-

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seven pages of diary entries. That didn’t work either, and eventually it came to be the four pages you see. •

What a painstaking effort! Yes it was.

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“No space for woman” in the patriarchal, andocentric society seems to be the message being conveyed. The creation of this space depends on the initiative, will and desire of the female concerned. Comment please.

Well, yes. I am looking at things through the eyes of women but I don’t want to make it a men vs. women kind of scenario. In Home there are a number of incidents that are seen through the eyes of men. •

So do your novels advocate what Boman Desai in Asylum USA calls ‘Disneyland Complex that is collapsing of the edifice of Indian values and relations, too many divorces, separations, even in India? Do you think it happens?

First of all, I don’t want to make a blanket statement that you should never get a divorce. There are some situations of violence and abuse or miserable incompatibility which call for this solution. Why should a woman go on feeling there is no way out? If there is a divorce now, it is not necessarily a bad thing. It does not mean being westernized. Now as regards of collapsing of values, I see joint families all around me really functioning. And in urban set ups too. Sometimes because of job and financial considerations there can be separation. But I don’t know, I won’t say it is on a large scale. One can’t generalize. Where does Boman Desai stay? Is he in the States? (Group: Yes.) (Continuing her comment on this aspect, she elaborates) I think people living abroad develop a different perspective on Indians. Diasporic writing tends to be different, even though the subject maybe India. There is

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a different feel, a different sensibility operating, which probably stems from the distance, I find this in writer after writer. •

Difficult Daughters and Home both deal with traditional, much anthologized and eulogized Indian v a l u e s. Th e l e s b i a n t o u c h i n A M a r r i e d Wo m a n works contrary to it. Why was it used or why was the relationship included in the novel? Did you have the western reader in mind?

No. Does lesbianism not exist in India? Sexuality is a global thing. It may be open, accepted or not. Sexuality is not confined to places. These are realities, human realities, not Eastern or Western. •

Why are your male characters so insipid as compared to your female protagonists? Are you trying to make some statement through them?

No, I am not making a statement. Actually my three books do centre to a considerable extent around the home – which is often the centre of women’s lives. I don’t mean to make my male characters insipid – but so far as internal life is concerned, I guess the emphasis in my books tends to be female. •

Two of your male characters are impressive, Nisha’s father and Virmati’s grandfather.

I also wanted to make the Professor in Difficult Daughters sympathetic. He didn’t come out as such, but I really did try. •

Virmati’s grandfather is an enlightened man.

Yes. He is an enlightened man, he stands for female education. •

The Dichotomy between tradition and modernity is at the center stage of all three novels. Why is it so close to your heart? Do your novels contain some element of popular soaps in them? A lot of people said Home was like a soap. It shares

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with them a similar theme – joint family, generations under one roof, tensions between mothers and daughters in-law. I think women’s lives are complex, they are often torn between conflicting demands, plus sometimes there is tension between the demands of the outside and the family self. •

In Difficult Daughters and Home, there is too much of code -mixing and borrowing. This aspect is less noticeable in A Married Woman. Here the shouts/ slogans raised in a procession or rallies too are in English. Is it because A Married Woman is meant more for the Western market?

No, I don’t write for Western readers. In fact I write for people like myself and I think a book written for a foreign audience, in fact, will not be a successful book. A Married Woman is different because it is urban and contemporary, upper-middle class, and educated – in fact Hemant is foreign educated. Since I write in English the slogans shouted at processions also have to be in English, though I grant you that that may strike a false note since we are all familiar with them in Hindi. But then that is the disadvantage of portraying Indian realities in English. Home is also urban but it centres around a ver y different class. •

Towards the end of A Married Woman, there is a sudden change in the narrative strategy. Use of first person narration and diary technique is made. What prompted this change?

That is where I was stuck and I was looking for ways to unstick myself. Astha in love sounded like a Mills and Boon heroine – when I switched to the diary entries she was more convincing. In Difficult Daughters also there is a chapter that has letters, for some of the same reasons. •

How far is the text of Difficult Daughters autobiographical? That’s my mother on the cover.

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That means you are Ida.

No, I am not Ida. Ida is somewhat a shadowy figure. Actually she became more shadowy with the re-writing. This novel is broadly based on my mother’s life. Very broadly. •

How much of partition had you actually seen?

I was born after Partition. My mother’s family was in Amritsar. •

How would you describe Difficult Daughters as colonial, post colonial or Neo colonial?

I don’t know it. I won’t describe it as any of these things. •

Did you formally research how the canal system and roads were built by the Britishers in Punjab mentioned in Difficult Daughters (p71) ?

I research everything, from roads, to politics to the Babri Masjid. I read what I can, I read contemporar y newspapers. I go to the place. For Difficult Daughters, I read ten years of Tribune, published from Lahore. This made a huge difference to the confidence with which I approached the period, even though there may not be much of the information I gleaned directly present in the novel. I am the kind of writer who is comfortable with a lot of facts. •

Do vernacular embedded Asian narratives have a distinctive future or do you foresee an end of them due to increased globalization?

Judging from the way people are writing I don’t think it is going to end. They have stories to tell. What is really good is that they have the assurance that their story is good and worth telling. And publishers feel that it is worth publishing ,so obviously there is a market. In fact, from what I can tell globalization has increased the demand. •

How far does your literature background and teaching help you in your writing work? Not really.

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I mean teaching of Shakespeare etc.

Teaching of Shakespeare certainly does not help. It only makes me wish I could write like that. Teaching novels and writing them are totally different activities. I do my best writing when I am on holidays. •

Your novels are often described as realistic. Would you agree that your writing belongs to a special category of writers, who promote realism as a literar y ism? How, according to you, are you different from other contemporary writers of realism?

I write in the realist tradition. When I started writing in 1991, I tried different styles in an effort to hit upon one that felt authentic. I experimented with magic realism, very popular at the time. And though I tried to write in that mode, it just seemed false to the way in which I wanted to tell my story, which was as unobtrusively as possible. At the same time I wish to have a distinctive voice – that certainly can’t come from copying anybody. •

This question is for Manju Kapur, the lecturer. Do you agree that the use of magic realism by many contemporary writers is used as a ploy to escape from everyday reality?

I don’t know. I don’t think so. Even Salman Rushdie is not using it to escape from everyday reality, certainly not in his best books. For example in Midnight’s Children, one of my favourite novels, he is not so much escaping form reality as presenting it in a different, more imaginative way. •

As a writer are you aware of ‘isms’ at the back of your mind? So do they hamper your writing?

I mean, I teach the stuff. So obviously I know it. It doesn’t hamper my writing, particularly now since I have been writing for sixteen years. I think every writer writes what seems most real, truthful to them. •

Nothing sells like sex. Some present writers use sex and sexual descriptions in a very prominent manner.

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As compared to them, your use of the same is on a very low key. But ‘Cleavage Culture’ hyped by the media and Bollywood has crept into it a certain extent. Do you believe in depicting things in a traditional manner? I write about sex when the story requires it. It is not the sexual act that I am as interested in as what leads up to it, and what flows from it. Sex is a very powerful thing and we are all sexual beings. And the way in which women’s sexuality is defined also becomes the way in which she experiences herself. That is the aspect I am interested in and that is what I write about. Sexuality is a very wide thing and you can’t reduce it. •

Do you think Home has been hampered by want of historical background to it as compared with Difficult Daughters? Does the use of history impart depth to the novel?

I did think that, and that is why I had intended to write in some historical background in Home. When I came to do this though, it didn’t ring true because the family in Home is only concerned with money. They certainly do not take part in hartals or things like that. It was hard to bring in a political aspect in this book. •

I n your novels are many incidents like marriage ceremonies and godhbharai’s, naming ceremonies, etc. that bring out your minute observation and insight. In one of your interviews, you mentioned that you socialize very little. Then how do you depict these details in your novels?

I have attended these ceremonies. Even though I don’t socialize much I do after all have a somewhat large family. •

A lot of observations must be going into all that. Even the construction of the haveli in Difficult Daughters is given with minute details.

I visit all the places I write about and I take extensive notes. I am indeed very detail oriented – that’s the way my imagination functions. I can’t write if I cannot visualise the setting and to do that I need to have some knowledge of the

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places I am writing about. •

You manage to create the picture and readers became a part of it.

When I am writing I ask questions. I do research. Now I go on net and for Difficult Daughters I interviewed a lot of people. In A Married Woman I wrote about a factory and I asked around for a factory owner from that period in that place. The person I found asked what type of factory do you want, and I replied what kind of factory do you have, I will put that same factory in the book. •

What did you read in your formative years? Please name some writers who influenced your style of writing or technique.

Nobody influenced my style. I admire many different w r i te r s, J a p a n e s e, C h i n e s e, [ i n t ra n s l at i o n ] S p a n i s h , Russian, French, British and American of course.. But your style has to come from within yourself. •

Your sentences and language in all the three novels is simple, short and easy to comprehend language and yet possesses rapier’s thrust. Is the use of this style spontaneous or intentional?

I am a writer and a writer is a crafts person. Like any crafts person I work at refining my product. My sentences are not all short. I alternate long and short sentences. Sound is important too, and finally I retain the version that sounds the best and is the most truthful. I don’t sacrifice sound to meaning. Meaning comes first. Many times, I have to abandon sentences that sound really good, but where the meaning is vague, inaccurate or insubstantial. •

Why haven’t you depicted even a single, empowered and egalitarian woman protagonist, say like yourself, in your novels? I don’t know. If a woman is egalitarian she pays a price. Women pay prices, may be men pay prices too. I am sure

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they do. But as for me, I am interested in the nature of the price that women pay. Whatever it is. Even if she is free, independent, she pays. •

Can we wait hopefully for the depiction of such a character? May be in next one.

•

Is the next one ready? Yes, it’s almost ready. It takes me a long time to be completely happy with what I write. •

How do you write? I work on multiple novels. I am a teacher and during the academic year, I can only do little. During holidays I do large scale editing. This means I usually work on more than one novel at a time, writing first or second drafts during term, and editing in the holidays, when you have to keep the whole work in your head. When I am teaching I cannot do that. It is easy to write the first draft. You have a target. Anything from 200 to a 1000 words. That’s easy. Thousand words in one evening might take a week to fix – to edit. One month sometimes. (During the inter view, we asked many impromptu questions and she, without any grimace, replied in a ver y buoyant manner. The entire inter face went on in an atmosphere of camaraderie in her sprawling, colonial HOME. With deep gratitude and pleasant, cherishable memories, we bade her good-bye.)

11 Changing Faces of Women in Manju Kapur’s Home — Nutan Chotai

Manju Kapur is a professor of English Literature at the prestigious Miranda House, a girl’s college in Delhi. Her first novel Difficult Daughters made waves a few years ago, winning the Commonwealth Award. Set against the historical background of India’s partition, the story deals with the relationship of a young girl with a married man.€ The second novel, A Married Woman, is the story of Astha, belonging to a middle class family living in Delhi, who submits to an arranged marriage. It is an outwardly happy marriage, with two children. But beneath the obvious bliss lies distress and sorrow.€ All her novels deal with different aspects of women’s lives, the different roles they play in this male dominated Indian society.€ Her third novel Home, like her previous novels, deals with strong female protagonists and reveals through the life in a joint family, the petty power struggles and the fickleness of human relationships. M a n j u K a p u r ’s H o m e e x p l o r e s t h r o u g h t h r e e generations, the life of her characters in a joint family system depicting realistically the petty power struggles found everywhere. Women in each generation are not the fragile creatures woven by myth but struggle for their family and share in the hardships, contributing to the wellbeing of the family. Women are depicted as an extremely versatile social unit, widely sought after to fulfill an endless range of

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social and professional functions. As mother, daughter, wife, grandmother, business partner or in any other position – she comes out as an astonishing human being, with multifaceted talents, weak and vulnerable in certain circumstances, and powerful, resilient and indefatigable in others. As the novel progresses readers realize that the basic characteristics of virtually all women are alike. All look out for higher elevations in life. Differences occur only through varying levels of education, upbringing, social influences, and introspective wisdom.€ The story centers around Sona, the elder daughter-in -law of the Banwarilal household and the other characters and events revolve around her.€ The first generation of women, as represented by ‘Maji’, the mother-in-law, is€ deeply rooted in the shackles of the male mind-set, economically dependent on the men, first her husband, then her sons, she is confirmed in her domesticity. The mother-in-law occupies the central position in the family and is viewed with awe and emulated by the next generation. Pregnant during partition, she faces hardships in bringing up a growing family. She manages her family finances, however meager, with caution and makes sure her sons and especially the daughters-in-law are constantly reminded of this. The arrival of the daughters-in- law, who gain the attention of the sons, makes her feel marginalized. Steeped in the cultural mores and traditions of the Indian social system, a male child is considered necessary to “carry the name of the father and grandfather forward” (p. 49). When the first male grandchild is born to Maji, the family rejoices that “the male line is augmented ….. A boy brought up within the nurturing ambit of the shop would in turn ensure its continuing prosperity when he grew up” (p. 15). A true matriarch, Maji ensures the well being of all in the family, indulging all the grand children Vicky, Nisha, and Raju. She holds the family together the brothers eat at the same table and meals are cooked in the same kitchen till the mother is alive. It has been ingrained in the family that

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the “most basic principle of a successful joint family is all for one and one for all” (p. 109). Controlling the reins of the household even when old, she cleverly sees to it that Vicky is looked after by the family. When Nisha sleeps with her, “her nights were tinged with care and wakefulness; feeling useful she clung to the sleeping child” (p. 64). The disintegration of the family after her death is quick with separate flats being constructed for the two sons. The constantly varying relationships, to fulfill one’s own selfish ends in the family, are depicted well in the novel. A change occurs in the relationships at home once Sona conceived. Always taunted by Maji for not bearing a child, the moment she does, the mother -in-law showers her with love and care. The sisters also share a love-hate relationship. “A storm rose in Rupa’s heart. This was the kind of woman her sister was: cry on her shoulder incessantly, and the minute things improved, she turned her back….if Sona wasn’t her only relative in the city, she would never bother with her again” (p. 33). The second generation women, have imbibed the cultural traits and complexes from the first generation. The pivot of their lives is marriage and children. The birth of a baby boy to Sona fills her with joy—“The mother of a son, she could join Sushila as a woman who had done her duty to the family, in the way the family understood it. Gone was the disgrace, the resentment, gone with the appearance of little Raju, as dark and plain-featured as his father, but a boy, a boy” (p. 49). Marriage as a means of upward social and economic mobility makes both Sushila and Sona hunt for daughtersin-law from rich families who not only bring fat dowries but also help their business to prosper through the contacts that are made through the new relatives. Sushila, the younger daughter-in-law, was selected as much for the dowry she brought as for the fact that her father was a whole sale cloth dealer and would benefit the business. Later her own daughter-in-law and even Sona’s

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daughter-in-law came from rich families and were selected not because of any other quality but the fat dowries they brought and the ensuing benefits of business contacts made through the alliance. Though Ajay’s wife was supposedly approved because she was “provincial, adaptable, shy, sweet, caring, homely, devoted, and trained to put the interest of the new family above everything” (p. 136). Having internalized the social norms and expectations which are seen to correspond with their sex, they are expected to be more passive and gentle than the men.€ A good-looking daughter will also help to increase the expanding circle of appropriate contacts in gaining more business opportunities. Though Sona and Rupa have had the same upbringing, the difference in their attitudes is by reason of the education they have received. Married at a young age into a conservative, uneducated and superstitious family, Sona’s own cultural heritage is reinforced by the tradition loving Banwarilal household. Not being able to conceive a child, she resorts to prayer and fasting instead of adopting the more modern ways of medicine. Rupa’s advice to her elder sister to consult a doctor is met with prevarication “if I wanted something as badly as you do, I would do everything, not just rely on puja and fasts” (p. 25), says Rupa.€ With the childless Sona constantly bewailing her condition it is Rupa, also childless, who consoles her sister.€ Not as good-looking as her sister, she finished her B.A. and was married to an “educated, badly paid government servant” (p. 2).€ The negligible income of the husband and the lack of a child does not bog her down but brings out her enterprising spirit and she starts her own business, with sufficient help from husband, father-in-law and brother-in-law. Longing for her own child, Rupa accepts stoically her barrenness and is happy with the help rendered by her husband to his sister’s children and later to her own niece. The business started by her fulfills her. “More than an elusive baby, Rupa focused her attention on financial success” (p. 33). Yet the cultural heritage surfaces time and again before being quashed in routine chores. “She sighed

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and gave her karma a gloomy thought before concentrating on the provisions that needed to be brought tomorrow” (p. 38). The third generation of women in the novel tries to break away from the shackles of bondage and prejudiced customs. The urge to move ahead and reach the heights of success is as deep as yearning for home and family. Nisha, is steeped in the culture and mores of her family, “pretty, precocious and petted, there was not a lap in the house Nisha was not familiar with. And in those laps, as she was fed, cuddled, and bounced, words flowed around her, and into her, informing her of the ways of her house before she could even think” (p. 57). Trained from childhood to be docile, submissive, polite and prepared for marriage, the opportunity to live with a more open-minded aunt, who encourages her to study and read helps her to grow into an independent person. She was trained into the ways of the family from a very young age-“from time to time Nisha’s mother insisted her daughter come home to be groomed in the tradition of the Banwarilal household” (p. 92). From a young age she reasons and questions, yet is still too young to get her own way. Her aunt wavers as to the rearing of a “traditional and a modern girl” (p. 97).€ The opportunity to go to college and taste freedom opens out a new world to her. The process of acculturation takes place with her interaction with the friend Pratibha, a girl from a poor family who is ambitious and wants a job with the police and other college students. She ventures into unknown territory, meeting a boy and going out with him. “She returned to college feeling adventurous, daring and modern. For the first time she had interacted socially with an unrelated male” (p. 145). She asserts her independence by chopping off her locks of hair, which were considered a “family treasure, oiled all her life by loving hands, first vigorously to establish growth, then lightly to keep it tidy”. (p. 148) When negotiations for the marriage of Vijay, begin Nisha thinks, “ There would

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be no need for her to be silent or demure, … hers would be a modern relationship. Gone were the days when women needed to be so silent. This she had gathered from her teachers, who had spent much time explaining Fanny Price and the voices in which silence spoke”. (p. 161) Love gives her courage to defy her own family to marry a person from the lower class, whom she loves, but is let down by the boy at the last minute. Armed with a college degree, she tests new avenues and ultimately finds her own niche – that of designing clothes. She does not want to be “only the daughter of a prosperous man but be responsible for wealth herself ” ( p. 2 8 7 ) . A f l o u r i s h i n g b u s i n e s s gi ve s h e r e co n o m i c independence. Her father soon apprehended her to be “more intelligent, methodical and independent than Raju” (p. 296).€ Later marriage happened as a part of social adjustment and it became the turning point of her life. She was in two minds then a mother-in-law to take care of, a husband who himself was struggling with his business and her own well established business. She opted out of a career for sometime and chose the mundane comforts of home instead; postponing her dreams for sometime. Asha, Vicky’s wife, is also a practical, sharp woman. Having realized early the marginal position that Vicky had in the household, she “laid the duty of a daughter-in-law at Sona’s feet” (p. 103) making a shrewd move to win over Sona, in the firm belief that it would secure her future. With humility, obedience and a helpful nature she tries to win over the family. This girl from a poor family is also wiser than the superstitious Sona, who did not even consult a doctor when she did not conceive for ten years. Asha, though she comes from the “gullies of Bareilly” is smart enough to consult a doctor once she decides not to have a second child. Pursuing her dream to have a house of her own, “an independent place, where her mother and sister could visit her, something inconceivable at her in-laws”, (p. 105) she baulks when her husband talks about leaving. “I am not leaving. Where will we go? What about Virat’s education”

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(p. 107)? With the single motive of securing a better future for her family she “pounded sense into his ( Vicky’s) head, advising him against leaving the house. Picking up ideas from all around her, she is ambitious for her son- “Ajay is almost finished college, Vijay is in first year, Raju will go, even Nisha I am sure they will send. If girls can go to college…” (p. 107). She refuses to leave the household knowing full well that “once out of sight, out of mind”, (p. 113) ultimately securing a good amount of money for her family before leaving the house. Change and continuity operate side by side in the novel. After the death of Maji, the family demolishes the old house and builds two spacious flats to accommodate the growing families. The kitchens are separate yet the business continues together with more additions as per the wishes of the grandsons who had wanted to expand the business in keeping with the changing times. The position of the men was somehow delinked from mundane acts as cuddling children or looking after household chores. They only deliver dictum and form policy guidelines for women. It is the women who bring in change and also are agents of cultural transmission. The newly married Sona has been “trained from an early age to love, serve, and obey her in-laws” (p. 10) yet each generation adds, subtracts or changes what it inherits.€ She wants her daughter to be educated while waiting for the right proposal for marriage. Slowly changes are accepted when Nisha insists on working, when Raju’s wife brings a servant with her in dowry to do all the household chores and also when Pooja tries to help Nisha with her work. The changing times have made the older generation accept that girls have to be educated, though they also expect them to be homely.€ By now the family has accepted the idea of women working. If a daughter can work, how can a daughter-in-law not be allowed to work? Though the men are supposed to be the masters and bread-winners, the women are able to manipulate and manage them. Changes in ideas lead to friction between members in

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each generation. Nisha who wants to marry Suresh, finds her family objecting because he was poor and of another caste. She thought, “if they didn’t approve, why couldn’t they just let her go, her life was her own. Suresh and she were educated, they could both work” (p. 206). Sona, who believed that respectability demanded that it be avoided as much as possible, impatiently tells her sister that “if something happens, God forbid, she (Nisha) has her family, her brothers, her aunt and uncle. What is the need to look for a job, as though you had no one to protect you? You might as well live in the streets” (p. 124).€ Rupa in exasperation wonders “God knows what use an education would be to a girl from a trader family, one who was only going to marry and produce children” (p. 125). Manju Kapur observes the role of the family in making important decisions to benefit the entire family. The career of an individual is planned and executed by the family; Matrimonial alliances are made through family connections; and family also provides continuity between generations through inheritance and succession. Fulfilling different needs of the family in the span of three generations, the women in the novel come out as strong characters. The transition of the women, in the first generation performing domestic duties to women in the third generation who fulfill more compelling professional ones, is complete. The story which started with the intertwined lives of two sisters ends with the birth of twins to Nisha. The birth of a daughter may be the birth of a new dawn and she may realize all the dreams of her mother. Reference 1.

K apur Manju Home. (Delhi: R andom House, 2006). All quotations in parenthesis are from this edition.

12 Writing on the Wall: A Critique of Namita Gokhale’s Shakuntala — Madhavi Moharil

The situation of woman is that she- a free and autonomous being like all creatures-never the less finds herself living in a world where men compel her to assume the status of the other. Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir

Namita Gok hale, the leading Indian novelist, is drunk with the sound of words and that itself makes her novels a hypnotic read. Shakuntala, the play of memory is the proof of the same. It is an intriguing interplay of history and myth, suffused with profound metaphysical queries about the self. I am Shakuntala, the prototype of all women, right from ancient times to the modern. my names have been changing. I may be called as the representation of the womanhood. I have the capacity to create the storm. I attract the attention in whichever age I live. I am always lovable, caring, beautiful but controversial. I am empathetic, generous and kind, always worthy of praise and appreciation. I have given the proof of my patience, tolerance and strength at every step. In every aspect of my life I have shone like gold. Do you know who am I? I am Shakuntala, the most beautiful creation of the versatile Kalidas.

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Since long, I have been seeing the life and condition of the woman. I know the different phases, through which she passes very successfully, sometimes she enjoys the sense of relief and freedom, at times experiences the emotion of anger and revenge. She has the potential to create and destroy things. She possesses the capacity to love from the lees of her heart simultaneously to keep herself aloof from the attractions of the world. In fact a woman is not only the symbol of zeal and beauty but also the symbol of great toughness. But still the fact remains that she has been treated as subsidiary. Therefore, she has been considered as the object of pity. In a nostalgic mood when I try to assess my own life, I realize that I have seen many ups and down in my life. In fact people used to discuss my beauty and virtues. I am the daughter of Menaka, the paragon of beauty. My mother stole the seed of the great sage Vishwamitra and as I was the shadow of my mother, I was bound to be beautiful. One day, when King Dushyanta came to hunt in the forest, he was spellbound to see my delicacy and charm. He fell in love with me and secretly married me. It was called as “Gandharv Vivah”. But after marrying me he returned to his palace, gifting me a ring as the evidence of his love. How wonderful those days were ! But after that the cruel fate played with me bitterly. The ring was lost which was the memento of my secret marriage and the misfortune started playing its role. I went to the palace along with my son. I knew it well that he was the royal blood of Dushyanta. But King Dushyanta disowned me. He had forgotten me completely. I was banished from his court. Along with my son, I was passing through a difficult phase of life. In such difficult conditions my mother, celestial Menaka, came to my help and the romance ended with sweet smiles. Those were the days when a woman had to depend on a man, may be in the form of her father, husband or son. She did not have an independent identity. Marriage and

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love needed social sanction. In mythology, every woman, though having great qualities and virtues, had to suffer a lot in the same way. It may be Kunti, Gandhari or Draupadi. Those women proved themselves great with the help of their tolerance. Everywhere we see them facing difficult situations and complications. Though they belonged to royalty, they failed to enjoy the luxuries of royal courts. Their fate and social structure did not allow them to enjoy the things. Along with Pandu, Kunti suffered a lot. But she proved a source of inspiration for her sons. Gandhari proved herself as an ideal wife and with her blind husband, Dhiritarashtra, she faced all calamities. She experienced the pains caused by the death of her sons. She might be the only woman who was a “Sati” who hold her living husband’s hand and walked to the pyre with great patience 1. Drauipadi was another great woman who bound her five husbands together. Everywhere she gave the proof of her maturity and dignity. In spite of the experience of the great humiliation in the Royal Court, she stood strong and saw the death of her sons in the last battle. Seeta also was the victim of social suspicion. She shared the lot of Ram in every difficulty. But at the moment of peace and happiness, the society suspected her character and Ram left her. Those were the great women, my successors, who had gone through the fire of life but still preserved the spark within their personalities. What did they gain from the society? What did they get from the male dominated society? In fact, the strong women lead to strong families and strong nations. Every age is the witness of the same. But “What does a woman get from the society?” is a question to be asked. Today I am going to tell you the story of modern “Shakuntala” who is just like me, caring, lovable, beautiful and dashing. The modern Shakuntala lives on the ghats of Kashi, the most ancient of cities. Death lives here, forever mocking life and its passage. She asks the questions to herself, “What do we live for? Why do we die?”

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The conditions of her life make her ask those questions to herself. She is paralyzed with an unaccountable weight of despair. In the days of her childhood her mother used to say, “You wicked, heartless girl, were you born only to trouble and torment me?”2 Her mother concentrated on her son because he was an important pillar of the house. She neglected Shakuntala. So Shakuntala hated everything about her mother and did not even want to be like her mother. Modern Shakuntala’s mother did not have a celestial spark. Her mother never fatigued of telling her not to fancy herself as a scholar as the scriptures were forbidden to women. So many times, I realize that she wanted to compare herself with me. She used to think that what would happen if she were to share my fate? Would her mother be kind to her as my mother was? I fell in love with the King Dushyanta. She was also eager to get married. It was not because she loved someone but saw it as an escape from the bondage of her situation. She too was ready for love, eager for the exquisite sting of Kamdeva’s arrows. She was married to Srijan, a rich man, the chief of fourteen villages. In fact, this Shakuntala is just like me. She was hungry for experience. There were things she wanted to see, to know, to do. Her ignorance irked her. She wanted to fly in the open air like a bird. She was thirsty for knowledge and travelling. But her mother used to tell her not go forget that the vessel of her virtue is like the urn of water she balances on her head and she must not spill even a drop as she carried it home. She was the third wife of Srijan, but everybody used to say that she was the most beloved. Srijan’s other wives were dead and had not given him any children. But he was ver y happy with Shakuntala. He wanted Shakuntala to be like the star of Arundhati, the emblem of fidelity. But Shakuntala knew that there was more inside her than the limits of her experience dictated. But she was following her duties as a wife neglecting her real desire of travelling and getting more and more experiences. One day Srijan brought a woman home from his

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travels to work as Shakuntala’s maid and to follow her command. But the woman looked down upon Shakuntala from a great height and viewed her with contempt. At that time Shakuntala loved Srijan more than anyone she had ever loved. But later on she came to know that the so called dasi was the wife of Srijan. She thought that their love had vanished. Once she expressed her desire and told the priest that she wanted to see the world and wanted to travel as menfolk do. But the priest answered her that men were the masters of women. The society believes that a father protects the daughter in childhood. The husband protects a woman in youth and sons protects her in old age. So the priest further told her that a woman was/is never fit for independence and that was/is the way of the world. But I ask the world, is it really so? Is it the way of the world to crush the desires and aspirations of a woman in all the possible ways? Modern Shakuntala also thinks in the same way. One day while wandering on the shore, she saw a man whose looks were utterly carefree, reckless and happy. Shakuntala knew instinctively that he has traveled for long and through many worlds to be there. He smiled at her and she was enchanted by his smile. She was highly attracted by him and she thought that her life had changed. She felt that she could not go back to where she had come from. His name was Nearchus. He was from the land of Yavanas. When he asked the name of Shakuntala, she replied that it was “Yaduri”. It was a turning point in the life of Shakuntala. Now her identity as Shakuntala was lost and she was Yaduri. She abandoned both Srijan and Shakuntala. She thought that her thirst for traveling would be satisfied by the Yavana. Thus, as she was hungry for experience, she deserted home and family for the company of a Greek horse merchant. From here the journey of her life was completely different than my life. Because now she had assumed another identity, that of being “Yaduri” and not “Shakuntala”.

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She started living with Yavana and she surrendered herself to this new life. In the company of Nearchus she realized that the world was a wild and wondrous place. She was glad to be free and alone and Yavana had seen and known so much and she traveled with him to so many places. She started enjoying life and flying like a free bird. Sometimes she used to feel home sick. On the banks of the Ganga, she felt an intense sense of home coming. But now the way to go back had ceased. Gradually she sensed that her presence was becoming a burden on the freedom of Yavana. But she was helpless. It was because she knew it well that now the society would not accept her once again in the same role as she was in the past. She had broken the so called limits of the society. The coyness of mine was no more in her now. Yavana was an independent kind of fellow. When he saw the classic play “Abhijnana Shakuntalam” acted on the stage, he said to Yaduri that it was easy for men to forget the women they met. I also think many times that it is really very easy for men to forget women. But is it so easy for a woman to forget the man whom she loves and in whom she involves herself so completely? It is surely not so. King Dushyanta also did the same thing. He also seduced me in the sacred grove and forgot me. Now this Yavana was also passing through the same phase. He confessed that it had happened to him as well, quite a few times in his life. The moder n Shak untala, now as Yadur i, used to speculate and compare herself with me. Even in the moments of my disgrace, I had the sanctity of a secrete marriage. But the condition of Yaduri was not like me. While keeping the relations with Yavana, she did not have the sanction of marriage. She thought that she had betrayed everything. She was of the opinion that she had renounced her name and was no longer Shakuntala, only Yaduri, the unmentionable one. She had abandoned her husband. It did not matter that he had other wives before Shakuntala. When I secretly got married to Dushyanta, he had wives a plenty. Yet there was no slur in his love making with

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me. I also accepted the situation. In those days a woman had to accept this. It was because it was accepted and sanctioned by the society. The apsara Menaka, my mother also seduced the great Sage Vishwamitra, but, then she was immortal and such deeds were permitted to nymphs and celestials. But what about a common woman? If she wants to live a free and desired life, she is always condemned. Here Srijan could also marry and remarry again and again. Society accepted it. But if Shakuntala wanted to live such a life, she had to become “Yaduri” a fallen woman. Therefore she asks a question “ What is a woman’s desire”? I t is like the waxing and waining of the moon, incapable of consistency. She is always expected to be like the star Arundhati, a symbol of fidelity. Here a woman like Narangi can be seen whose husband left her and had taken her child with him when he left. After the death of her husband, her brother-in-law satisfied his every need through Narangi. Soon married to other woman he killed Narangi suspecting her of being in love with their neighbour. Those are the tales of women’s lives and sorrows and infidelities and deaths in modern age also. Yaduri at last left Yavana and wanted to live with the daughter in her womb. But unfortunately the infant also died in the womb itself and Yaduri remained alone. When Yavana prepared to marry some other woman, Yaduri came to the conclusion that all of us in this world are afraid of love. It is not easy to trust and believe in others without reser vations. Now Yaduri was alone, no one’s wife or mistress nor sister. She wanted to abandon the world, as the world abandoned her. I, Shakuntala, am the creation of the genius of the great Kalidas. With the passing of time everything has changed. The life style of the society also has changed. This changed world is completely different than the age in which I lived. Now I am only an object of passion. But when today I see the condition of the woman in the changed world, I realize that the condition of the woman is one and the same. The plight of woman has not changed with the passing of the time. Still

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she is a victim of the social customs and traditions. Still she has to follow social norms. Today also ‘Dushyanta’ is given the social sanction to keep relations with so many women at a time, but Shakuntala……………? She is abandoned if she follows the way of ‘Dushyanta’. Today she is well-educated, more capable than male but still she has to tolerate and suffer. No doubt that every generation should preserve culture and try to shape future and coming generations. But it does not mean that while preserving the same, the dreams and desires of women should be crushed under the heels of male dominance. No doubt Shakuntala is beautiful, but this beauty should be honoured and revered. Then only real peace will be established in the society in the real sense. I will be happy to see my counterparts as equals in the near future. References 1.

Simonede Beauvoir, Second Sex, (London: Vintage Clasics, 1997).

2.

“Yugant” by Iravati Karve.

3.

“Shakuntala” by Namita Gokhale, p. 6.

13 Enigma of Cultural Interface: A Study of Diasporic Experiences in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake — Jyoti Patil

Indian writers, particularly women, who stay abroad and write about Indian culture and ethos, have carved a niche in Indian English Literature. They are like fresh, soft-soothing wind providing a new lease of life to modern literature. Our women writers seem to have lent a new dimension of sensitivity and perception to the fiction writing in English. Feminist writing is also one of the most interesting developments in fiction writing, but one important twist is also noticed in the writings of migrant women writers like Geeta Mehta, Bharati Mukherjee, Arundhati Roy and Jhumpa Lahiri; that is their intense feeling of immigrant sensibility through their fiction with the help of portrayal of different aspects of women’s life. Our women writers seem to have lent a new dimension of sensitivity and perception to the fiction writing in English. They find it quite congenial to their sensibilities in confronting their brief, intense and often feminine experiences. Most of our women writers tend to respond to reality, with reticence, quietude and fortitude. But the emergence of second-generation writers of Indian origin in America, Canada and England, etc. in recent years has been

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a defining moment in literary circles in those lands as well as in India. This body of writers is radically different from that of the first generation expatriate Indian writers in its attitude and relationship with both, the country of their adoption and the country of their origin. But there is also the New Woman – the bold fearless creature who will not yield to social pressures, who will rather break than bend. Jhumpa Lahiri, a young writer of high acclaim, draws her literary excellence through her first collection of stories, entitled Interpreter of Maladies which has fetched her the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for fiction (2000), the New Yorker Prize for Best First Book, the PEN / Hemingway Award and was short-listed for the Los Angeles Times Award. She has to her credit a successful fiction The Namesake which is also drawing the attention of the readers in India as well as abroad. The Namesake is a major national bestseller and is named ‘ The New York Magazine Book’ of the year by the New York Times and ‘Best Book of the Year’ (2003) by the USA Today and the San Jose Mercury News. The film, The Namesake has been released in Feb 2007 in the United States, the United Kingdom and in India. The film is directed by Mira Nair and a screenplay adapted from Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel by Sooni Taraporvala. Bollywood stars Irfan Khan and Tabbu have played important roles. Kal Penn is playing the young Gogol. Jhumpa, herself, has made a cameo appearance in the film as Aunt Jhumpa. Jhumpa Lahiri, who was born in London and brought up in America, candidly admits that “in some fundamental way”1 India is a part of her make up, although she would feel completely out of place in India. A second generation Indian in America that Jhumpa Lahiri is, she is a product of vast cross-cultural fertilization without ‘negative feelings’ either about the culture of her origin or of the country where she was born and raised. Born and brought up in alien lands, the second generation Indian, nevertheless, carries his India with him by virtue of being born to Indian parents. As may be seen in their writings, India is alive in them in ways that are discernibly Indian.

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During her terminal visits to Calcutta she had become bilingual and bicultural. On being asked about her Calcutta roots, she explains her perplexing bi-cultural universe in which she inhabits and the expectations and assumptions between which she always shuttles. She says: My mother has lived outside India for nearly 35 years, my father nearly 40, since 1969 they have made their home in the United States. But there were invisible walls erected around our home, walls intended to keep American influence at bay. Growing up I was admonished not to ‘behave like an American’ or worse to ‘think’ of myself as one. Actually ‘being’ an American was not an option.2

She also admits: When I began writing fiction seriously, my first attempts were for some reason always set in Calcutta, a vast, unruly fascinating city so different from the small New England from where I was raised, shaped my perceptions for the world and I learnt to observe things as an outsider and yet I knew how different Calcutta is from Rhode Island. I belonged there in some fundamental way, in a way; I didn’t seem to belong in the US.3

Jhumpa Lahiri is an Indian by ancestr y, British by birth, and American by immigration and targets the Western audience by deliberately portraying the Indian-American life. This sense of freedom is one of the greatest thrills of writing fiction for her and she discovered her authorial freedom by publishing her debut book. By discussing her private sphere of creative power one may copiously categorize her as an American author, as an I ndianAmerican author, as a British born author, as an immigrant author and as an ABCD author (ABCD stands for ‘American Born Confused Desi’ which describes culturally challenged second generation Indians in the USA). To Indian academics she has written something known as ‘Diaspora fiction’ and to the USA academics ‘immigrant fiction’ and this kind of demarcation amuses her. Jhumpa Lahiri seems to be strongly influenced by William Trevor, Mavis Gallant, James Joyce and Anton Chekhov who had initiated her literary baptism but it changed her perceptions during her frequent visits to Calcutta. She accepts her tunnel vision of India

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which is clearly reflected in her writings. My own experience of India was largely that of a tunnel imposed by the single city we ever visited, by the handful of homes we stayed in, by the fact that I was not allowed to explore this city on my own. Still within these narrow confines, I felt that I had seen enough of life, enough details and drama, to set stories on Indian soil.4

Spanning a period of over three decades, The Namesake presents the graphic pen-portrait of the Gangulis, torn between the pull of the age-old traditions of their homeland and the American way of life. The story begins in 1968 when the newly wed Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli immigrate to Cambridge, Massachusetts and await the arrival of their first child. Gogol, who is afflicted from birth with a name, that is neither Indian nor American, nor even really a first name at all. Soon after his birth he is named Gogol after the world renowned Russian short story writer of the nineteenth century, Nikolai Gogol. Ashoke is deeply indebted to this Russian writer as he believes that it was the copy of Nikolai Gogol’s anthology of short stories that saved him from dying in a train wreck in India before he came to America to study at MIT and before his marriage to Ashima. As a form of tribute to the author, Ashoke, waiting with his wife for a prospective Bengali name to arrive from her grandmother for their new-born son, decides to call him by the pet name, Gogol. The parents are aware that Gogol is an ‘awkward’ name for their American-born son, but unfortunately the letter that contained the respectable Bengali name is lost. When her grandmother learned of Ashima’s pregnancy, she was particularly thrilled at the prospects of naming the family’s first sahib. So Ashima and Ashoke have agreed to put off the decision to name the baby until a letter comes, ignoring the forms from the hospital about filing for a birth certificate. Ashima’s grandmother mailed the letter herself, walking with her cane to the post office, her first trip out of the house in a decade. The letter contains one name for a girl, one for a boy.5

Though Gogol was his pet name, he would go to school with a good name, “Gogol does not want to go to kindergarten. His parents have

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told him that at school, instead of being called Gogol, he will be called by a new name, a good name, which his parents have finally decided on, just in time for him to begin his formal education. The name, Nikhil, is artfully connected to the old. Not only is it a perfectly respectable Bengali good name, meaning ‘he who is entire, encompassing all’, but it also bears a satisfying resemblance to Nikolai, the first name of the Russian Gogol.” (56)

But Gogol did not want a new name. He could not understand why he had to answer to anything else. But the parents told him that the new name will be used only by the teachers and children at school. His father consoled him “Don’t worry; to me and your mother, you will never be anyone but Gogol” (57). Gogol grew up as a bright American boy but later on he realized the oddness of his name. He had been told that he was named after a famous Russian author, Nikolai Gogol, born in a previous century. At school, the teachers always used to pause, looking apologetic when they came across his name on the roster. On his fourteenth birthday his father, Ashoke gave him a book, The short stories of Nikolai Gogol, but “he has never been inspired to read a word of Gogol, or any Russian writer, for that matter. He has never been told why he was really named Gogol, doesn’t know about the accident that had nearly killed his father. He’s been told only half the truth about Gogol that his father is a fan” (75). Once when Ashoke was twenty two, a student of B. E. , h e wa s t rave l i n g o n H ow ra h - R a n c h i E x p re s s to visit his grandparents in Jamshedpur. He was carrying a single volume of short stories by Nikolai Gogol, which his grandfather had given him when he’d graduated from class twelve. His favourite story in the book was the last, ‘The Overcoat’, which he was reading when the train pulled out of Howrah station. At two thirty in the morning the train with seven bogies derailed with a sound like a bomb exploding. Several people died in the accident. He felt like dying, crushed in the mangled bogie, the pages of the book got scattered only the page ‘Overcoat’ was still in his hand. The rescue team was just moving ahead when someone saw

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Ashoke’s hand raised and the wad of paper dropped from his finger. He shouted, “Wait, the fellow by that book. I saw him move” (18). Ashoke was saved and he thought he was born twice in India and then third time in America. Instead of thanking God Ashoke thanked, Gogol, the Russian writer who had saved his life. Gogol grows up as a bright American boy but is always ashamed of being called Gogol. Unable to bear the burden of his unique name, one day in the summer of 1986, Gogol changes his official name to Nikhil Ganguli with a feeling that he was overstepping his parents, correcting a mistake they had made. His parents approve it as a per fectly respectable Bengali good name. At first the change of name brings a new sense of self-confidence in him and he wonders if this is how it feels for an obese person to become thin, for a prisoner to walk free. As an adolescent, Gogol is not particularly rebellious, except about his name which he changes to Nikhil. His exasperation with his old-fashioned parents, who continue to call him Gogol, is tinged with affection. He refuses to read his namesake, but then he does not seem to read much. As a successful and good looking Indian American in New York, he awakens swiftly to the variety of pleasures he is entitled to, friends, wine, cinema and love affairs. He goes to Yale, has pretty girl friends, becomes a successful architect, but like many second generation immigrants, he can never find his place in the world. His unhappy relations with Ruth and Maxine leave him utterly disappointed. He finds himself rootless and for sometime he alienates himself from his family and from ABCDs, American Born Confused Desis, among whom he is still known by his pet name, Gogol. The sudden demise of his father is an eye opener that makes him interpret the age-old cultural values of India. His mother finally sets him up on a blind date with the daughter of a Bengali friend, and Gogol thinks he has found his match. Moushumi, like Gogol, is at odds with the India-American world she inhabits. Although Gogol marries Moushumi with the blessings of his family and their Indian friends, their

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conjugal life ends when Moushumi decides to live with a foreigner, Dimitri. The story ends in 2000 when Gogol fully understands the significance of the name Gogol which had earlier sounded ludicrous to his ears, lacking dignity and gravity, when he stumbles on a volume of Gogol, a discarded childhood gift from his father, and begins reading, for the first time, the sad tale of ‘The Overcoat’. Lahiri not only por trays the inevitable separation, because of the physical and psychological distance from South Asia, of the later generations from their cultural heritage, but also demonstrates another important factor that may complicate identity formation, the likelihood that the subsequent generations of South Asian immigrant families will marry both white and other ethnic Americans. Lahiri portrays the latter possibility as Gogol’s sister Sonia plans her life with her half-Jewish, half-Chinese fiancé Ben. The introduction of additional cultural prerogatives to the already complex process of identity formation for the later generations necessarily lessens the influence of any one cultural connection. Lahiri also reveals the transience of these cultural borderlands, for it is only the second generation who live in a world so deeply influenced by the culture of their parents’ homelands while also so firmly entrenched in the American way of life. Ultimately, Lahiri anticipates the prevalence of a global identity that relies upon neither nationality nor ethnicity, but personal prerogative, an identity to be forged by the third generation and beyond. The Namesake is also a narrative about the assimilation of an Indian Bengali family from Calcutta, the Gangulis, into America, over thirty years from 1968 to 2000. The cultural dilemmas experienced by them and by their America-born children in different ways, are the spatial, cultural and emotional dislocations and their efforts to settle ‘home’ in the new land. The New York Times writes, “ This is a novel as affecting in its Chekhovian, exploration of fathers and sons, parents and children, as it is resonant in its exploration of what is acquired and lost by immigrants and their children

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in pursuit of the American dream”.6 Like immigrants of other communities Ashima and Ashoke too make their circle of Bengali acquaintances, get known through one another. They know Maya and Dilip Nandi, Mitras, Banerjees and the young Bengali bachelors in the market who return from Calcutta with wives. They become friends only for the reason that they all hail from Calcutta. Thus, a member’s adherence to a diasporic community is demonstrated by an acceptance of an inescapable link with their past migration history. These Bengali families gather together on different occasions like the rice and name ceremonies of their children, their bir thdays, marriages, deaths and Bengali festivals like navratras and pujas. They celebrate these festivals according to the Bengali customs, wearing their best traditional attires, thus trying to preserve their culture in a new land. But their existential dilemma in this new country is, as pointed out by Lahiri, “For hours they argue about politics of America, a country, in which none of them is eligible to vote” (38). Thus, the immigrants face political displacement too. How these immigrants face cultural dilemmas in the foreign systems is also shown through the problems faced by Ashoke and Ashima. They find it difficult to make the ‘others’ understand their cultural practice of having two names – dak nam, pet name at home and bhalo nam, good name for formal purpose which will be decided on the receipt of a letter from Ashima’s grandmother to hospital authorities on their son’s birth and on his admission to the school. Hence on their daughter’s birth they decide not to give her two names. Jhumpa Lahiri, in this novel also presents that it is not only the Indian migrants who feel dislocated in other countries and face cultural dilemmas, the immigrants from any culture feel the same in other dominant cultures. For example, Graham, Moushumi’s fiancé, during his visit to Calcutta found the Bengali customs and culture taxing and repressive as there were no drinks and he couldn’t even hold

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her hand on the street without attracting stares. Hence he decided to break with Moushumi. Even Gogol and Sonia do not feel at home in Calcutta where their parents find solace and comfort. Whereas Ashima feels sad, staring at the clouds as they journey back to Boston, Gogol and Sonia feel relieved. Not only this, Lahiri also shows the power of the cultural politics in the majority group of one culture. Whereas at Maxine’s house, among the Americans, Gogol is made to feel ‘displaced’ by Pamela and then, in Gogol’s house at his father’s funeral ceremony Maxine is made to feel alien and out of place among the Bengalis, and she is not able to understand why she was “being excluded from the family’s plans to travel to Calcutta that summer to see their relatives and scatter Ashoke’s ashes in the Ganges” (288). This reflects Lahiri’s philosophical maturity. Her writing reveals that she “brings alive the multiple selves constructed so painstakingly to make sense of the unknown world that is as much a land of opportunities as it is of conflicts and confusion.” 7 Lahiri’s handling of the complexities of the immigrant experiences in their various nuances in a simple and lucid manner in her fiction undoubtedly established her as a mature emigrant fiction writer. Lahiri, like other writers writing of immigrant experiences also shows in the novel The Namesake that the immigrants and their children might adopt and assimilate the culture of the new country but they are not taken to be the part and parcel of the host country and their identity is related to the migrant history of their parents and grandparents. “The Orientals continue to be looked down upon by the Occidentals.” 8 This is evident from a few situations in the novel: (i)

The picture drawn by Gogol of his mother with a dot on her forehead, glasses on his father ’s face and his new sibling standing in a row in front of their house, called ‘the spitting image’ by Mrs. Merton, an American neighbour, who is babysitting Gogol when his parents are away to

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the hospital. (ii)

At the American Departmental store his parents are not properly attended and the cashiers smirk at his parents’ accents and the salesmen prefer to direct their conversation to Gogol, as though his parents were either incompetent or deaf.

(iii) Some miscreants in the neighbourhood remove the letters ‘ULI’ from the name ‘Ganguli’ on the mail box leaving it shortened to ‘GANG’ with the word ‘Green’ scrawled in pencil following it. Gogol’s ears burn at the sight and he runs back into the house, sickened, certain of the insult, his father will feel. (iv) In Maxine’s house during the celebration of Gogol’s twenty seventh birthday, though he is born and brought up in America and is accustomed to American life, yet in a frowning tone he is made aware of his Indian heritage, which would be making him weak and sick by Pamela, one of the American neighbours present there. Though Gogol makes a conscious effort to be different from his parents and he wants to live in a world free from Bengali culture, adjectives and history, he also does not join the Indian association in America but being a sensitive child he experiences the cultural dilemma and identity crises on a number of occasions like Lilia in ‘When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine’. While staying with Maxine in her parent’s home though: From the beginning he feels effortlessly incorporated into their lives and makes constant comparisons in their way of life and of his parents, their eating menus, eating styles, throwing parties, openness and frankness in their sexual relations, their holidaying spirit and manner, appreciating the former yet soon he starts feeling that a line has been drawn between him and Maxine’s family and becomes coconscious of his fact that his immersion in Maxine’s family is a betrayal to his own. (141)

The identity crisis, the feeling of in-betweenness and belonging nowhere is particularly experienced by Gogol

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more intensely than during his school trip to the cemetery where finding no grave of his ancestors he felt that being a Hindu and Bengali “he himself will be burnt not buried, that his body will occupy no plot of earth, that no stone in this country will bear his name beyond life” (69). A series of his broken relations with Ruth, Maxine, with whom he was seriously involved, and his wrecked marriage with the second generation Bengali girl, Moushumi initiated by his mother with the hope of his better settlement and conflict between the unconscious Bengali cultural way and the conscious adaptation to the American way make him sandwiched, broken and fragmented. Lahiri herself clarifies her aim in creating such a character in The Namesake “I just wanted to write something focusing on the experiences of Bengali American Kid.” 9 “Migrants” says Salman Rushdie, “straddle two cultures, fall between two stools,” 10 and they suffer a triple disruption comprising the loss of roots, the linguistic and also the social dislocation. Gogol, though having passed through many emotional setbacks, because of his bi-cultural identity, is shown to be feeling dejected, distressed, displaced and lonely in the end, not knowing what to do after the thwarting of his dreams, his father’s death, his wife’s desertion and his mother’s impending departure to India, but his desire to settle a home, have family and a son and rise professionally in other countries, hint at his quest for the new route which will dawn on him after his reflection in the company of the stories by his namesake, Nikolai Gogol, gifted to him by his father. His state of mind can be well understood through the following verse: No one behind, no one ahead The path the ancients cleared has closed. And the other path, everyone’s path, Easy and wide, goes nowhere I am alone and find my way.11

Jhumpa Lahiri’s fiction honours the complexity of identity inherent in the second generation of immigrant

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Americans. In her por trayal of South Asian Americans, Lahiri demonstrates how in occupying the cultural borderlands of India and the United States, these second g e n e r a t i o n A m e r i c a n s c re a t e a u n i q u e c u l t u r a l l i n k comprised of aspects from their South Asian roots and their contemporary American lives, thus their lives personify the energizing creation and transformation of culture that occurs within the cultural borderlands. Her fiction reflects the multiple identity of Jhumpa Lahiri. Her yearning for the Indian sensibility bears the stamp of a vagrant searching for her lost home. She is as if in self-exile. Jhumpa Lahiri’s Indian characters and the Indian sensibility is not all misfit in the American permissive society. She sincerely accepts the problems of settling somewhere else far from the native land: I have spent many months with relatives here and learnt about my parents’ home and where they lived. I have always felt integrated with the place where my parents never felt at home. Being the child of immigrants I did not feel at home too. It’s taken a long time for me to feel at home anywhere.12

Being an immigrant herself, Lahiri deeply felt the impor tance of family bonds which tie people to their homelands. She has undergone the trauma of failing to find her identity in a world where she could never have sense of belongingness and so tries to fall back upon the treasured memories of what Rushdie calls ‘Imaginar y Homeland’ which with its vibrant colours and versatility gave life to her starving existence and stimulated her very being. Most of characters keep hanging in limbo – between two identities – non Indian and Indian, a fact that brings Jhumpa Lahiri fairly close to Bharati Muk herjee, another successful interpreter of ‘immigrant angst’. REFERENCES 1.

Ramnarayan, Gouri; ‘Elegant Outsider’ “The Times of India”, 21 April 2000: p. 12.

2.

Lahiri, Jhumpa; ‘My Intimate Alien’ “Outlook,” Collector ’s

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edition, 2000: p. 116. 3.

Ramnarayan, Gouri; ‘Elegant Outsider’ “The Times of India”, 21 April 2000: p. 12.

4.

Lahiri, Jhumpa; ‘My Intimate Alien’ “Outlook”, Collectors’ edition, 2000: p. 117.

5.

Lahiri, Jhumpa, “The Namesake”, (London: Flamingo, 2003), p. 25.

6.

Rajagopalan, S.; ‘Jhumpa’s Debut Novel Gets Rave Reviews in the US’: “Hindustan Times” Sept. 17, 2003. p. 15.

7.

Aruti Nayar; ‘A Story Told with Sensitivity and Subtlety’ (A review) “Sunday Tribune”, Oct. 5, 2003, p. 15.

8.

Said, Edward W., (ed.), Orientalism Reconsidered: Francis Baker et al “Colchester: University of Essex”, 1985, p. 65.

9.

Kantrowitz, Barbara; ‘ The Namesake: Coming of Age’ “ The Week”, Sept. 7, 2003, p. 7.

10.

Rushdie, Salman, Imaginary Homelands: (London Granta Books 1991), p. 5.

11.

Sanskrit verse adapted by Octavio Paz and Translated by Eliot Weinberger.

12.

R amnarayan, Gouri; ‘Elegant Outsider ’, “ The Hindustan Times”, April. 23, 2000, p. 01.

14 Githa Hariharan’s The Thousand Faces of Night: A Silent Quest for Identity — Shirish More

The history of novel writing by a woman dates back to as early as late 18th century when Fanny Burney provided respectability to this kind of writing through Evelina in 1778. The next century saw the rise of female novelists like Jane Austen, George Eliot, and Emily as well as Charlotte Bronte. But it was nothing but a kind of addition to the novels written by their male counterparts. It was in the 20th century when writers began to write from a feminist point of view. The focus of such writings shifted from the patriarchal society to the place of a woman in this society. Not only British but even Indian women writers took up the challenge of laying bare the bitter and biting realities of the domestic and social life through the life of their protagonists. They tried to bring to fore the pathetic condition of the Indian women even decades after attaining independence. Novelists like Kamala Markandaya, Bharti Mukherjee, Nayantara Sahagal, Anita Desai, Shashi D eshpande, R ama M ehta, Githa Har iharan and K iran Desai portrayed the domestic and social life of their female characters and their desperate struggles to create their own identities in it.

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The works of Githa Hariharan carr y their special significance in the present scenario. Through her works, she attempts to tear apart the veil of sophistication and social equality by presenting the status of women even in the present age. She tries to portray the custom-ridden Indian society, especially in the southern part of India. The Thousand Faces of Night is her first novel, which was published in 1992. It received the 1993 Commonwealth Prize for the best first novel from the Eurasian region. This novel presents a vivid portrayal of South Indian family life. Here, she makes brilliant use of her story to bring to light a general state of affairs prevailing in many households not only in the southern part but even rest of the country. The present novel covers the life story of three women, spanning almost three generations due to age. But the novelist mixes these threads very dexterously in a compact fabric. She presents a chain of events related to men and women, love and death, and emotions as well as painful loneliness. She intersperses it with myth and folklore with the social status of women within the boundaries of time, space and region. This novel presents a story of three women namely Mayamma, Sita and Devi. Unlike their names, these three are completely human with nothing divine about them. They symbolize the endless struggle of womanhood. Devi, the central character of the novel, is born in a traditional Brahmin family. But thanks to her mother ’s support, she succeeds in flying beyond the four walls of the household. She spends two years in U.S.A. as a student. Her sojourn in America brings her face to face with the conflict between tradition and modernity. Though she dreams of living her life in a liberal set up like America, circumstances pull her back in the same conservative society in India, especially after her father’s sudden demise and an unexpected rejection of her love by her American friend, Dan. On her return, she finds herself getting married with an unknown individual as per the wish of her elders, which

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she accepts in a state of great dilemma. Nurtured with the mythological stories of her grandmother, Devi dreams of a ‘swayamvara’ for herself. But she tastes the real music of life when she “undergoes the humiliating exercise of appearing before prospective bridegrooms, to be chosen than to choose”1 quite unlike in a ‘swayamwara’. Her marriage with Mahesh, a Regional Manager in a multinational company, comes as a fresh air in Devi’s life. But it also proves to be a brief one. She realizes the true colours of Mahesh very soon as he treats her only from a business point of view. As a result, she fails to find emotional support and warmth of life from Mahesh. Quite naturally, she gets attracted towards another man Gopal, with whom she elopes by breaking the chains of marriage and social norms. But he also proves to be another ‘man’ in her life who (mis) uses her before deserting. Thus, this relationship also proves to be a mirage for Devi. In this state of emotional breakdown, Mayamma becomes her only consoler, friend and emotional pillar. She makes Devi realize that finding path from the obstacles of life is the only way destined for women in this society. Unable to cope up with the emotional trauma, in a mood of disillusionment and resignation, she returns forever in a world of affection and comfort of her mother, Sita, thus “arriving at a conciliation and affirmative acceptance of ‘the mother ‘as essential to the daughter’s quest for identity.”2 Devi’s mother Sita is shown as a middle-aged woman who makes her presence felt in the present narrative through her unique qualities. Though a dark- complexioned lady, she spreads the brightness of her character to enlighten her household. She emerges as a symbol of sacrifice, dogged silence and mute acceptance of the realities of life. As a young daughter-in-law of a conservative family, she takes the scolding of her-father-in law to heart and pulls apart the strings of her ever-melodious veena. The silence of this music stands for her willing silence for the reminder of life, which she embraces as her destiny. But she channelizes all her strength to become a good wife and mother. When her husband, Mahadevan leaves for Africa,

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she looks after the household most brilliantly. Moreover she endures Mahadevan’s death in Africa in the most stoic manner. Though concerned about Devi’s career and bright future, she compels her to come back from America. She gets Devi married with a well-settled boy, Mahesh. But Devi’s unexpected elopement with Gopal shatters her emotionally and causes great damage to the motherdaughter relationship. Since then she decides to live for herself and try to fulfil the ideal of her life of ‘being the ideal woman’ (107). She cleans and dusts her long-deserted veena to symbolise her possible decision to lead a life as per her own wish and to realize the unfulfilled desires. That is why, Pradeep Trikha rightly says, “Sita, as a young daughterin-law, had protested in Gandhari’s fashion,” but “She is very conscious of the main current of Indian tradition. She perceives her past with its relevance to the present. She explores various prospects of women in South Indian brahminical society”3 during her quest for identify and selfrealisation. The third female figure among the feminine trio is Mayamma. She is married at twelve to a useless gambler who gives her nothing but torture and tears. When he leaves her never to come back, he leaves behind a son who proves to be a complete brute. After the death of her son, she does not feel any pain, which suggests her deep sense of release. She arrives at Mahesh’s parental residence and becomes a trusted servant of his mother, Parvatiamma. She overcomes all her grief to become bedrock for this family in her capacity as housekeeper-cum-cook-cum-governess. She devotes herself wholeheartedly to the well being of this family. In return she only expects a symbolic recognition of her duties from Mahesh. But like her own son, he says, “Those days are gone and there is no point in listening to all her stories about them” (82-83). Thus, Mayamma struggles desperately to get recognition as a human being and only expects to be treated with dignity throughout her life. Through these feminine characters, Hariharan attempts to highlight their individual position in this

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society, their experiences with men in their lives, their encounter with bitter realities and their reactions to those circumstances. While presenting it, she subtly displays their individual quest for identify. These three female characters have their own notions of identity. Devi, a representative of the young generation, wants to make career and so studies in America for two years. She carries liberal notions about human existence and so does not find anything wrong in establishing relationship with Dan, a Negro American friend. She even proposes him for marriage, which he rejects very rudely. Sita, Devi’s mother, has her own concepts of identity. At the time of her marriage, she hopes to establish herself as a veena player. But the scolding by her father-in-law changes the whole course of her life. She pulls apart the strings of veena and does not touch it for a long period of time. In this period of silence, she performs the role of a wife, daughterin-law and mother to perfection. But after Devi’s elopement with Gopal, she feels as a defeated mother and so wishes to lead a life of an individual. Her cleaning of veena after so many years, symbolises the resurgence of an artist inside her and subjugation of a mother. Mayamma, the representative of the older generation, appears as a victim of fate. She gets married at an early age of twelve and that too, with a useless drunkard. If the tortures meted out by him were not enough, even Mayamma’s son proves to be nothing better than an animal. His death releases Mayamma from all the emotional and ethical bonds and propels her to create a new place for herself in this vast alien world. She devotes herself towards the family of her new master and wants to be treated with love and dignity as a human being Thus, these three have their own notions of identity, which they tr y to realise in their own ways. But the obstacles, which they face, have some similarities and differences. All the three female figures groom a dream of a happy married life but receive only disappointment.

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Mayamma’s marriage with a drunkard ends in a disaster; Sita’s marriage ends abruptly with the unexpected death of her husband Mahadevan and Devi herself destroys the threads of marriage -knot by eloping with Gopal. Thus, instead of happiness and safety, they get tears and insecurity out of their marriage. Besides these men, even the other men who come in their respective lives do not prove to be faithful and supportive. When Mayamma’s husband deserts her forever, her son takes the place of his father and tortures her for no reasons. Sita’s father-in-law gives her the first shock of life by asking her to stop singing forever, though indirectly. Devi’s friend Dan proves to be another man who fails to provide her emotional support. Thus, in this male dominant world, they all fail to receive a strong support from the men in their lives. Compelled by circumstances, they derive their own strategies to cope up with the situations. Mayamma leaves her house forever and seeks shelter with Par vatimma. Failed to receive a dignified treatment, she serves her new masters honestly and sincerely and in return, expects love and recognition as a human being. She also consoles and guides Devi during her period of estrangement with Mahesh. Thus, she treads the path of life in order to gain only love and compassion from her own people and the society. Sita breaks the strings of her veena to silence the music in her life for the stability of her domestic life. She allows her husband to go to Africa and daughter to America for honing their talent and securing a better future. She bears her husband’s death most bravely and brings Devi back to India. As a responsible mother, she gets Devi married to an educated and well-settled business executive. But when Devi brings disgrace to family by eloping with Gopal, she does not hesitate to break her ties with Devi. Towards the end, the mother inside her comes to terms with reality and she gives shelter to her daughter after a tragic realisation of her blunder. In the mean time, she decides to devote herself

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to her first love, music, by re-embracing the long deserted veena. Thus, she tries to find solace for her troubled heart in music, after getting disillusioned with human beings. Devi lands in America for her studies but comes back on her mother’s insistence. Her sojourn there brings tears and disappointment for her. After her marriage with Mahesh, she does not gain any emotional support from him. So she gets attracted towards Gopal and later elopes with him. But here, too, she receives failure and frustration. At last, in a mood of resignation and despair, she seeks shelter in the emotional comfort of her own mother. A close analysis of these three women from three generations, suggests individual ways of tack ling the problems of life. Mayamma is the greatest victim of destiny. Right from marriage till old age, she gets no love and compassion. But she never buckles down under the pressure of adversities. Though an uneducated lady, she gathers all her courage to face the troubled situations. She leaves her own ‘cursed’ house for the sake of a world of individuality and freedom. Putting aside her own tears, she becomes the pillar of support and consolation for Mahesh and his family, especially Devi. Sita reacts in her own way to the situation. As a young daughter-in-law, she imposes silence upon herself by breaking the strings of veena. But as a wife and mother, she performs her role to perfection and shows the strength of character in the moments of crises. Thus, she adopts a mixture of revolt and reconciliation while tackling the situation. But Devi, an educated girl, disappoints with her own attitude and behaviour. Her ways of tackling the situation suggest no strength of character and firmness of thought. She fails to convince Dan about her love. She readily agrees to return to India on her mother’s call. She mutely accepts Mahesh as her life partner. As a wife, she fails to establish emotional bond with him. On the other hand, she gets infatuated towards Gopal and elopes with him; thus

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bringing disgrace for herself and both the families. She even fails to pull on with Gopal. When he ditches her, she helplessly returns to her mother. In fact she shows no sign of resistance in the face of adversities and thus allows her own individuality to get subdued. In this way, it is clear that Mayamma, Sita and Devi face certain situations where they feel defeated and lost. Their identities seem to be lost in the chaos of problems and sufferings. But they find their own ways and means to establish their own identity in order to lead a life of dignity and peace. Thus, Githa Hariharan’s The Thousand Faces of Night is a kind of social document, which attempts to mirror the bitter social realities. It exposes the loud talk of liberal outlook and empowerment of women. It is a scathing criticism on the pathetic state of women in this society. At the end, the novel raises a few questions about the place of women in this male-dominant society; the ever-awaited time of their complete freedom from the autocracy of the men in their lives and about the freedom about choice of life, career and partner. In other words, the present novel is a symbolic story of the women’s unending fight for their rights and individual identity in this male dominant world. References 1.

Mukopadhyay, Arpita C. “ The Thousand Faces of Night: A Story of ‘Storytelling’”, Studies in Women Writers in English. Roy Mohan K. Ed. [New Delhi:Atlantic, 2005], p. 155.

2.

Ibid, p. 152.

3.

Trikha, Pradeep. “Githa Hariharan’s The Thousand Faces of Night: Straight from a Woman’s life”, Feminism and Literature. Ed. Dass, Veena N. (Ed.). [New Delhi: Prestige, 1995], p. 160.

15 Marriage as Misalliance: A Reading of Anita Nair’s Mistress — Sujata Chakravorty

Literature is a reflection of a society, it has a perspective and a cause to uphold for posterity. It concomitantly also portrays the psyche of the writer whose commitment to a cause is sacrosanct. Exposure of a theme is of primary importance. In the case of Anita Nair it is a sensitive as well as powerful writer who delves deep into people’s personalities and takes her readers on a wonder ful journey. She is a master story teller with characterization being her forte. Her earlier novels, the Better Man and Ladies Coupe are also intricately plotted, with blends of myth, history and human emotions. Nair displays a compassionate understanding of women, their complex world with all the entanglements of human behaviour. Her latest novel, Mistress, is an answer to the long wait readers had after the previous ones. Indo-English literature today has come centre–stage and has occupied a ver y impor tant slot in the literar y world courtesy novelists like Salman Rushdie, Shobha De, Amitava Ghosh, Vikram Seth. Also included in this category are sparkling names like Ved Mehta, Bharati Mukherjee. Preceding them are gems like Mulk Raj Anand, Nirad C. Choudher y, R. K . Narayan, Raja Rao, Khuswant Singh, Shasthi Brata, etc. Indo English Literature is a global

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phenomenon today, it has in effect globalized the literary movement and impacted the whole world of literature immeasurably. Neither imagi n at i o n n o r d i s p l a ce m e nt n o r e ve n Diaspora affected these writer’s beliefs and conviction in the area of politics, society, custom, culture, fanaticism, fundamentalism, etc. Literature is an exposition of culture and conviction; it unites and does not divide. It helps spread amity and communication across the international boundary. Anita Nair ’s Mistress is struc turally based on the highly stylized ancient dance form of K athak ali, from Kerala. The novel, divided into nine sections, named after the nine emotions – ‘navarasas’, is reminiscent of the various emotions portrayed in the dance. The plot of the novel is set within the framework of Kathakali. Two stories run parallel and at the same time are intricately woven around each other. The ‘navarasas’ are categorized into three books, each containing three ‘rasas’, aptly culminating in the ninth rasa – ‘shaantam’. The novel, entirely set against the backdrop of Kerala, spans about 90 years. The four main characters are surrounded by the turbulent currents of life and either try to fight against them or allow themselves to be enveloped by them. The narrative is multi-pronged, and the main characters offer first-person accounts on the plot. The mood of each segment is dictated and adheres to the rasa on which it is based. Myths find an important place in the narrative, with local colour being thrown in. Like her earlier works, Mistress too deals intricately with man-woman relationship. The difference in the present novel is its constant adherence to the rich gestures, facial expressions and nuances of ‘Kathakali’. In the modern times, man-woman relationship has become vastly different from what it was in the past. In earlier times, the Indian woman was bound by tradition, taught and trained from childhood to walk in the shadow of her husband. With the socio-political scene undergoing a

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sea change since post independence, and the advancement of education, many women started taking up jobs over and above their domestic work. The new found economic independence of women saw them undergoing extreme changes in bahviour, a very liberal attitude towards sex and sexuality. This less inhibited attitude towards a physical relationship before and during marriage finds expression in Radha, a very beautiful young woman in her thirties when the novel begins. The novelist takes us into her past where we find her getting into a relationship with a much older, married, senior colleague. They were lovers for two years, with him promising to marry her as soon as his son left home. This dream of hers was brutally shattered, when much to her chagrin his wife came to see her and made her aware of his other previous digressions. She told Radha “He is not a bad man, only weak, and he will never leave me. He needs me……. And I him. He is the father of my children, you see.” This complacency on the part of the man’s wife speaks volumes about the state of many a marriage in India today. The wife in this case symbolizes the dependant woman who has no alternative but to accept whatever injustice her husband doles out to her. She even accepts his many extra marital affairs as a part of routine. Her argument for her husband not deserting her totally being that he has fathered her children – another common reason for many unhappy and unwilling couples to continue a relationship. But one is tempted to ask at this point, would she have agreed to undergo such humiliation time and again – children or no children – had she a better alternative or had been independent, for that matter? R a d h a s o o n d i s cove r s t h at s h e i s p re gn a nt a n d decided to abort the child as she has no choice. When her father arranges her marriage with Shyam, she unwillingly agrees. It is however, an arrangement which she regrets having agreed to every day of her marriage. She is unable to conceive even after a couple of years of marriage. She is called barren by her sister-in-law and not taken along to

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religious ceremonies. She is tempted to reveal her infamous past when she had accidentally conceived. The irony of the situation is pronounced at the end of the novel when she finally conceives, but the father of her yet-to-be-born child, is not her husband Shyam, but her lover Chris. And this fact is made clear to her by none other than Shyam, who admits to his sterility. “I think of what it must have cost him to confess his sterility. I think of the hurt I have caused. I think of him waiting for me to start loving him” (Mistress, p. 401). It is very essential in a marriage that the wife gives birth to children. When she is not able to, she is maligned by society and her family. In the case of Radha, she knows that she is fertile and can give birth, but she does not know and does not for an instant think that Shyam could be sterile. The point here is that if there’s anything wrong in a marriage, it is entirely the woman’s fault, for the man is infallible – beyond reproach. Shyam too in this context is typical of the Indian male who would never want the world to know of any shortcomings on his part. He is a manifestation of an egoist, a giver, provider to all, not somebody who needs assistance. Radha is emotionally distanced and somewhat contemptuous of her husband, Shyam. When Christopher Stewart comes, she is easily drawn in by his easy charm. She considers her marriage dead and does not have any qualms about starting an extra-marital relationship. She must decide whether to stay in her marriage or throw caution to the winds and risk the ire of society for what she believes to be true love. Chris cannot correctly pronounce Shyam and ends up calling it Sham. Radha cannot help but smile at this. “I turned away in embarrassment. He wasn’t just a Sham, he was an uncouth boor, this husband of mine” (Mistress, p. 09). At another place she comments, “……. An action hero. Shyam knows that other women look at him. That he incites interest and perhaps even lust. I, however, feel nothing for him except perhaps a habitual annoyance” (Mistress, p. 13). Radha seems to have no respect left for her husband.

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Their marriage exists only in name, without any effor t on the par t of Radha to keep it alive. Shyam’s nature exemplifies the typical, Indian domineering male nature, trying to rule over every aspect of his wife’s life. He likes to think of her spending time at the beauty parlour or at the tailor’s shop, decking herself up for him. But if it comes to her spending time somewhere where her intellectual faculties are concerned, he puts an end to all her plans. She retaliates with, “Don’t I have a right to an opinion? I am your wife. Your wife, do you hear me? But you treat me as if I am a kept woman. A bloody Mistress to fulfill your sexual needs and with no rights” (Mistress, 73). On another occasion, Radha is shocked to find out that Shyam has been maintaining a record of her periods. She reacts furiously: ‘Isn’t anything sacred to you?’ Her voice rose. ‘These red crosses are my periods, aren’t they? Why are they here? On your calendar? If anyone should keep tabs, it should be me. Why are you like this, Shyam? You seem to want to rule me. You won’t let me breathe. It isn’t right’(Mistress, p. 203).

Thus proceeds their married life, with Radha hardly being able to disguise the revulsion she feels for her husband. In sharp, striking contrast to this is the immense attraction she feels for Chris. Shyam has an inkling of this affair and the novelist gives us his reaction in accordance with the various rasas – raudram, bhayaanakam, etc. It would be apt at this point to quote from Bernard Shaw, “Man and wife do not, as a rule, live together, they only breakfast together, dine together, and sleep in the same room. In most cases the woman knows nothing of the man’s working life (he calls it her home life)” (Bernard Shaw, Prefaces, p. 11). R adha is unable to establish a rappor t with her husband and considers her marriage to Shyam as already ‘fractured’ – as she tells Chris. It is only natural and readers know that a parting of ways will soon come by and wait for the manner in which it will happen. This marriage has turned into a misalliance. Parallel to the story of Radha and Shyam is the story

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of Koman, Radha’s uncle, & Kathakali dancer by profession. Little by little, details of his complex past are revealed. Reader are told of his birth, his parents Sethu and Saadiya, who decided to go against societal norms and start a life of their own. At that time, Sathu was a doctor’s assistant and Saadiya the daughter of a Muslim Community head. Sethu is considered to be a Kaafir. Saadiya’s family is very orthodox and conservative, so much so that she is branded with a red hot iron on her calf by her own father for daring to defy the norms laid down by him. Her offence being that she had merely stepped out of the limits set down by him in order to have a glimpse of their town. Going against the dictates of her religion and family, she moves in with Sethu, only to begin regretting it soon. The Christian doctor lectures to Sethu when the latter announces his intention to marr y Saadiya, “You talk of marrying her. But who will marry you? You are of one faith and she of another. In the eyes of your god and hers, this will never be a marriage. Of bodies, perhaps. But never of souls” (Mistress, p. 183). When Saadiya leaves home, she has stars in her eyes and idolizes Sethu. She insists on calling him ‘Malik’: ‘ B u t i t i s ! S a a d i y a w h i s p e r e d . ‘ Yo u a r e m y M a l i k . T h e incomparable one who came from across the seas. Strong and straight, a leader among men, one who could be trusted to brave the ocean and winds and unknown ways. You are Malik. Don’t you see’ (Mistress 85)?

So Sethu and Saadiya start living together, without the formal confines of marriage. Things are very cosy to begin with, “So Sethu went to work and Saadiya cooked, cleaned, stared at the sea, and waited. This was what wives in Arabipatnam did and Saadiya did it easily enough” (Mistress, p. 193). The problems star t when she asks him to bring a Koran. He responds by getting her not only the Koran, but the Holy Bible, the Thirukkural and the Ramayana. When she insists that she will not forget the Koran, because it is more than a book, and a way of life. Sethu retaliates

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by saying that Hinduism too does that and was an older religion. She says, ‘You don’t understand what I am saying.’ Saadiya shook her head. Was it an exasperation or sorrow? Sethu looked at her for a long moment and then turned away. He didn’t understand her any more. Why was she being so difficult? (Mistress, p. 195)

The difficulties in their perfect world begin when she, the wife, shows that she has a mind of her own and begins, to exercise her will. This can’t be easily fathomed by Sethu, and they drift apart emotionally. After Saadiya gives birth to a baby boy, she commits suicide, thus atoning for her ‘sins’. Sethu leaves the boy in the care of other women and makes a life elsewhere, in a small town called Shoranur. Slowly he amassed a lot of wealth and married Devayani. In the course of time two sons are born to them. He has to again confront his past when his son from Saadiya, whom he had named Koman is brought to stay with him. Sethu, the man, the husband, decides that Devayani will have to accept his past and his son. And so she does, remarking to another woman that a past wife is better than a present Mistress. She as the wife is not asked for an opinion – just told matter-offactly. She is happy in the knowledge that in this case she is the present, the fortunate one to enjoy the blessings of a husband, home and children. So she accepts her step son without a murmur. The step -son, Koman, grows up into a K athak ali dancer. Somewhere along the way, he has a student, Angela, who falls in love with him. The love is reciprocated and they have a live-in-relationship. He is so enamoured of her that he sees life as she wants him to. She even convinces him to shift to London with her and make a life there, be known to the entire world, rather than stay cooped up in this small place. Once in London however, he is jobless for three months and sits around idly. Angela is the bread – earner, and he merely waits for her to come back home. Koman is clearly

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unhappy in London. The tables are turned. As a man, he has to take on and face the anguish of living off somebody, always feel greatful for favours granted. His Kathakali being forgotten, for want of a chance to perform, he takes to washing dishes in a restaurant. He is happy that at last he is able to contribute to the family income, though very insignificantly. After some more time, he decides to leave London and comes back to India for good. Along the way, he has other relationships as well. One of them is with Maya, whom he has known for the past ten years. She also feels a deep sense of affection for him and although being married herself makes it a point to call him ‘every second and fourth Tuesday at a quarter to eight’. It is much later that he marries her at Guruvayoor temple, more so because he feels he should have a different relationship than being ‘Uncle’ to Radha. Therefore marriage as we find in the many alliances of the novel, between Radha and Shyam, Koman and Angela, Sethu and Saadiya, Sethu and Devayani, and also Gowrie and Babu (Radha’s parents) are not very happy affairs, but very much compromised upon. It is as if these people find happiness beyond the precincts of marriage. Marriage as portrayed by Anita Nair in Mistress is more of a misalliance than an alliance. WORKS CITED Nair, Anita, Mistress, (New Delhi : Penguin, 2005). Shaw, Barnard, The Complete Prefaces of Bernard Shaw, (London: Paul Hamlyn, 1965).

16 Reclamation of Inheritance: Biju’s Homecoming in Kiran Desai’s The Inheritence of Loss — Narendra Khandait

I I t is by necessity that this paper written to examine globalization’s impact on English literature begins with Economics. The term globalization is too steeped in the dynamics of Industry, trade, commerce, finances, etc. to be studied in isolation and without taking into account the relevant contexts. It is therefore necessary to briefly see how globalization operates before it is connected to literature proper. The underlying principal of globalization is to convert this globe, our planet earth, into a free economic zone and to effect free trade among the nations through two processes: by taking the global to the local and, freedom, and reverse, by taking the local to the global. This ‘globalization’ has only one culture: freedom and for it all checks, barriers, boundaries, etc. are anathemas. “Globalization thus aims at making the world “flat,” 1 as Thomas Friedman elaborates in his remarkable book. So now any entrepreneur from any part of the a world can set up his enterprise anywhere on the globe. The student of literature must have by now established a parallel to this process and realized with some degree of

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pride similar transcending of frontiers is not new to us. If in modern parlance literature is designated as a sector or a zone, it is already globalized. Marquez and Llosa, Achebe and Coetze, Tolstoy and Gorky and scores of other ‘foreigners’ have already crossed the borders of India to occupy their privileged places in our shelves just as Kalidas and Tagore had reached across the frontiers of this planet. The process of transnational and cross-cultural pollination has always been there and that is the reason Salman Rushdie, in as early as 1983, had advocated the category of world Literature in English. “I think that if all English Literature could be studied together a shape would emerge which would truly reflect the new shape of the language in the world and we could see that Eng. Lit. [sic] has never been in better shape, because the world language now also possess a world literature, which is proliferating in every conceivable direction.”2

Indeed, globalization has started showing its impact in other areas as well. Owing to wider and deeper accessibility to other literatures in the world, the students and writers are getting familiar with new forms and techniques which are beautifully applied to the local literatures. Rushdie’s practice of the Latin American magical reaslim would prove the point. But most significant contribution that globalization has made is in terms of themes. It has, more than any other time before, brought to fore the issues like trans and multiculturalism, hybridization, racism, morality, etc. which could give, for better or worse, new hues and shapes to the cultural and moral fabrics of various societies. It would be indeed worthwhile to watch globalization from this perspective. The present paper proposes to trace this impact of globalization on Indian literature in English and the sample text selected for the study is Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss3 which has won the Booker Prize for 2006. II The Inheritance of Loss (hereafter referred to as Inheritance), primarily centres around Sai’s failed romance

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with her Gorkha tutor Gyan. The setting is a Himalayan border town of Kalimpoing, which is, on one hand, a haven for retired inheritors of colonial legacy and, on the other, a hot bed for GNLF activists. The themes of globalization such as outsourcing, migration, multiculturalism or cultural encounters, racism, alienation, etc. are explored through Biju, a young Gourkha boy, and his trials and tribulations in America. Goaded by his father, the cook, whom outsourcing provides an opportunity to think ambitiously about his son’s prospects as a waiter or a cook abroad, Biju, at 15, makes his first attempt to get a job in America through a fake employment agency which promptly dupes him. Not disheartened by losing both the lifetime savings and an opportunity, the cook, earning extra money through illegal liquor trade, again prepares Biju to give it a try. Biju, at 19 now, makes a cautious approach and gets a tourist visa after telling a number of lies to the Embassy officer. The desire to make it big in America, as Biju learns later, is shared by other young men from the poor Third World countries where there are little job opportunities. In order to escape the poverty of their impoverished homelands, the young resort to even illegal immigration. Anything to be in America. Such is the joy of opportunity that after getting a tourist visa, Biju calls himself “the luckiest boy in the world” and when he gets his first job with an American employer, his cook father’s pride knows no bounds: “my son works for the Americans” (p. 14). Desai has handled this American dream part most astutely. She first projects Amercia as the most preferred destination for the jobless youth from the Third World countries. This, on one hand, could be seen as an acknowledgment of America’s success in selling its dream to the world and, on the other, could also be a critique on American policy of exploiting the poor countries for cheap labour. Well, cheap or else. Nobody is complaining. Not Biju

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either, since even the cheap wages enable him to eat the very Indian Basmati rice in America, something he could never do in India. Good money, however, is only half the story in America, especially, if you happen to be an illegal immigrant. Biju and scores of young men from various Third World countries, all working as waiters and cooks, and all of whom had entered America on tourist visa, and stayed back after its expiry to condemn themselves to the “shadow class” (p.102), are subjected to other exploitations, blackmail and even sexual abuse: Saeed Saeed, the Zanzibari, for example, leaves his first job because his employer had taken to grabbing his bottom (p. 121). With enough money but no status, with rat-infested basements to live but no social security, and hunted by the INS, the illegal immigrants suffer year after year, and even die, still waiting for the elusive green card. Inheritance also deals with another globalization related theme of cultural encounters. Biju’s co-existence with other youth from various religions and cultural backgrounds is shown to be a smooth affair so much so that he even finds it difficult to hate a fellow Pakistani waiter in spite of himself and is also filled with pride when Saeed, the Zanzibari, sings the Indian songs. How does it happen? The answer seems to be obvious. Ever y one is so pre - occupied with the big dreams of American dollar and green card that they hardly get time to enact on a neutral stage their national, religious or cultural rivalries. The American dollar, here, works as a great unifying force, a flattener of cultures and the promoter of a new ‘dollar’ culture. This new culture appears to be strong enough to erode immigrants past identities, histories and even memories. Some of them, though, are occasionally filled with remorse for having to adjust with inferior cultures and values at the expense of their better cultures. Take the case of Harish-Harry for instance. The Harishside of his dual self tries to cling on to the old Indian identity, he even names his cafe as ‘Gandhi cafe’ and makes regular

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donations to the cow shelter centres. He also wants his daughter to be brought up as an Indian girl. But she, now an American citizen, gives him the piece of her mind and the American morality. “But in this country. Dad, nobody’s going to wipe your ass for free” (p. 149). It is on such occasions that the Harry side of self, the reconciled identity comes to rescue. In trying to assume the American identity while retaining the Indian one, however, Harish-Harry is left with no authentic self. Even his generous act of donations to cow shelter centre becomes hypocritical as Biju observes, That support for cow shelter was in case the Hindu version of the after life turned out to be true and that, when he died, he was put though the Hindu machinations of the beyond. What, though, if other gods sat upon the throne? He tried to keep on the right side of power, tried to be loyal to so many things that he himself couldn’t tell which one of his selves was the authentic, if any. (p. 147-148)

The truth is that Harish-Harr y hates America. He would, in fact, “break their necks” p. 149 if given a chance. But his loyalty to the American dollar remains unquestioned. At the end of the day, it is the American dollar alone which brings about the reconciliation between his warring selves and provide him a new “morality to agree on” which is “A [a] nother day another dollar, penny saved is penny earned, no pain no gain, business is business, gotta to what ya gotta do” (p. 149). American dollar thus, besides being a flattener of cultures, also acts as the reconciliator of divided selves. So who is comfortable in America? In stark contrast with Harish-Harr y, there is a Gujarati who has named his cafe ‘Marilyn’ and finds no scruples in posing himself as a thorough American. Though he retains his Gujarati name Rajanibhai, no hypocrisy like Harish-Harry here, he does not flinch in disowning Gujarat, Gujarati Language, and even relatives in Gujarat. And India? In a pronounced American accent he declares: “One time I went to Eendya and, laet me tell you, you canaat pay me to go to that cannntreey agaaen”

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(138)! Biju may not like it, but Rajanibhai is absolutely authentic and per fectly comfor table with new culture, new identity and America.Equally comfortable is Saeed Saeed, a charaltan Zanzibari, who unlike Harish-Harry and Rajanibhai plays his games with America and American girls. He is a master forger and believes that “One skilled person at the photocopy machine.... could bring America to its knees” (179). Once caught by the INS, he is deported back to Zanzibar but comes back to America with a new passport in the new name and is cleared at the JFK immigration desk by the same officer who had deported him two months back. Illegal immigration is one of the major fall-outs of globalization. Drawn to the American dollar, like bees to honey, the Saeeds and the Bijus from the poor Third World ceaselessly keep on crossing the American borders leading to an unprecedented crisis. Through Biju’s failed romance with America, Desai appears to be transmitting a few messages. At the end of the third year in America, Biju is thoroughly disillusioned. If staying in America means being a hypocrite like HarishHarry or an India-hater like Rajnibhai, he would better be back in India since he didn’t want to be either. He also could not be like Saeed who not only “charmed”, “cajoled” and “cheated” America but also “felt great tenderness and loyalty towards it” (p. 79). Amidst the crowd of immigrants, Biju appears to be the only one who is willing to hold on to purist. His refusal to serve beef in cafes or keeping away from prostitutes distinguish him as a misfit in the new world. In this context, Desai surely departs from other writers who see in globalization a triumph of multicultura-lism and hybridization. See for instance, what Rushdie feels: “[D]o cultures actually exist as separate, pure, defensible entities? Is not melange, adulteration, impurity, pick’n’ mix at the heart of this all-shook up century? Doesn’t the idea of pure cultures, in urgent need of being kept free from alien contamination, had led us inexorably towards apartheid, towards ethnic cleansing, towards the gas chamber?”4

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Desai does not seem averse to multiculturalism either, she is in fact the product of it. Her Kalimpong is also a miniature world where several cultures and nationalities beautifully blend. But through Biju, she seems to convey that the assumption of a new identity at the cost of the old, or disowning of cultures and severing of roots are not her ideas of a healthy society. Thus in the novel where everybody ends up as a loser and every other relationship fails, there stands out Biju’s reunion with his father and homeland. Quite symbolically, Biju returns to his father in his purest Indian form as he is robbed of his American dollars and purchases by the GNLF activists. Among the general inheritances of losses, it is this reclamation of inheritance that adds value and wisdom to this novel. It is, as the Chief Judge for the Man Booker Committee. Prof Hermione Lee has remarked, “A magnificent novel of humane breadth and wisdom.”5 III The Inheritance of Loss cannot, of course, claim to be an exclusively written novel about globalization and so far there isn’t any. And themes of immigration, multiculturalism, pluralism, racism, etc., which globalization would further propagate in a very profound manner, have already found place in most of the expatriate and post-colonial writing. Inheritance also fits into the same pattern but for one area and that is its treatment of America. Like any typical novel by an Indian or expatriate Indian, Inheritance also has space for England. Kalimpong, with its sprawling British bungalows, gymkhanas and clubs, is depicted as an ideal retirement place for die hard followers of colonialism. There is the judge Jemubhai Patel who renounces all Indian relations and his homeland Gujarat to preserve his anglicized self; there is Lola Bannerji who still makes trips to England both to meet her daughter Pixie who is a news reader with BBC and to make such purcahses as Knorr soup and Marks and Spencer underwear which she regards

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as the “quintessence of Englishness” (p. 47). Quite content with her Anthony Trollope, British Council, and English clubs, she is prepared to spend the rest of her life listening to the BBC and relish every moment as her daughter gets nearer to achieving the perfect British accent. But much to her discomfort, Kalimpong also has Mrs. Sen whose daughter is with CNN. The BBC-CNN rivalry is quite representative of America’s vying for space in Indian lives. Mrs. Sen, unlike Lola, is not emotionally attached to America. For her America is only a place for job opportunity, a place for making money. Encountered with Lola’s criticism that American friendliness is fake, Mrs. Sen promptly retorts: “Better than England, ji. where they laugh at you behind your back” (p. 132). America is thus slowly but surely projected as preferred place for job seekers. Not that America is not without any faults. As Achootan, the dishwasher, remarks. “These white people!... Shit! But at least this country is better than England ....At least they have some hypocrisy here. They believe they are good people and you get relief. There they shout at you openly on the street. “Go back to where you came from’” (p. 134-5).

The infamous British racism which reduces the fictional Saladin Chamcha to a devil in The Satanic Verses and the real Shilpa Shetty to a weeping wreck in the ‘Big Brother’ is indeed undermining England’s position as a destination for globalization operations. It is this occupation of space by America in an Indian novel that is written without any colonial or expatriate points of view which marks distinct departure from pre-globalization Indian writings. In one of her interviews, Kiran Desai has expressed her views with regards to India’s stance towards the western culture in general and American in particular. As she puts it, “The novel tries to capture what it means to live between east and west. It explores what happens when a western element is introduced into a country that is not of the west, which is what happened, of course, during colonial times and is happening again with India’s new relationship with the States.6

The inching out of England by America in an Indian

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movel may be the beginning of a new trend which could rid Indian novel from, as Noni terms it, “colonial neurosis” (p. 46). Speaking about colonialism-globalization is also seen as an American or European imperialism. In The Empire Writes Back, Bill Ashcroft remarks that “we cannot understand globalization without understanding the structure of the sort of power relations which flourish in the twenty-first century as an economic, cultural and political legacy of western imperialism.” 7 Similar views are expressed by Leela Gandhi who sees in ‘globalization of cultures and histories’ a new kind of “postcoloniality.” 8 Doubtlessly, this new empire will also lead to equally rich literatures in the old ‘Empire writes back’ mode as this new brand of colonialism will be more and more written about. notes 1.

Thomas L Frieman, The World is Flat (London: Penguin Books. 2006).

2.

Salman Rushdie, Commonwealth Literature Does Not Exist in Imaginary Homelands (London: Granta Books, 1991) 70.

3.

Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2006), all references in parentheses.

4.

Salman Rushdie, ‘Globalization’ in Step Across This Line (London, Jonathan Cape, 2002) 297.

5.

Quoted in The Guardian, 11 Oct. 2006, books.guardian. co.uk.

6.

Quoted in The Guardian. op. cit.

7.

Bill Ashcroft, et. al. The Empire Writes 2nd ed. Back, (London: Routledge, 2002), 216.

8.

Leela Gandhi, Post Colonial Theory (New Delhi Oxford: 1998) 126.

17 Such a Long Journey: The Quest for Identity in Gita Mehta’s Raj — Renu Dalela and Alka Zade

Gita Mehta (b 1943) is an Indian writer, born in Delhi, in a family of freedom fighters and has completed her education in India and at Cambridge University. She has written, produced, and directed a number of documentaries for American, British, and European television companies and has published Karma Cola, Raj, A River Sutra and Snakes and Ladders. Raj, her first novel, tells a historical story, resplendent in the colours of Rajasthan. The narrative follows the progression of a young woman born in Indian nobility flourishing under the British Raj. The novel presents a parallel around the life of the protagonist Jaya, a princess and the political turmoil in the colonial background. The protagonist has her fortunes intertwined with those of two princely states - Balmer and Sirpur, which represent the country at large. Change comes in Jaya’s life in two major ways, one through a succession of deaths in the family (she loses her brother and father, and after marriage her brother-in-law, husband and even her son) and the other due to the changing political reality in princely India and British India culminating in the freedom of the country. Mehta depicts her protagonist grounded in traditional values, but unique in her feminine sensibility to

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be able to adapt to many changes, throughout her life. Gita Mehta’s Raj highlights the issues of Hindu women in Pre-independence and Post-independence India in a very realistic way. Through Jaya’s story, she shows the reader a portion of the British India’s struggle for independence as it affected a slim segment of high-culture society. Mehta’s focus is not just on the colourful pictures of Indian cultural extravaganza, but on the colonial perspective. Raj presents a re-reading of a significant chapter of Indian history dealing with human relationships in a colonial society. Raj is the first genuine counterpart to the imperial clichés of the popular British view of the Raj”. 1 Another critic evaluates Raj not just as another story of princely grandeur but more as a record of women’s lives behind the stateliness. Gita Mehta weaves a story of Jaya, the princess of Balmer and Maharani of Sirpur.It is intricately interwoven with the political events but it has the tears and romance of a woman’s existence in India which saves the work from being a mere record of the all- to well known history of our freedom struggle, or a racy account of the grandeur and frivolity of the exorbitant life style of the princess.2

Unlike the prose narratives that have used conventions of romance and vague historical past, Raj uses historicity to focus on the feminine point of view, adding a new dimension to it. The writer chooses to tell the story of the last 50 years of British rule through the eye of a princess of a small, remote and conservative kingdom. The novel highlights Jaya’s constant struggle to live with dignity. Her encounter with education is only due to the socio-political changes during the Indian renaissance. She spends most of her early years in purdah and truly emerges from social confines towards the end of the novel. She is forced to marry the westernized Pratap Singh, who does not respect her traditional upbringing, and finds her traditional appearance, complete with nose ring and painted hands and feet physically repellant. The novel reveals the feminist leaning of the writer,

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who wishes to liberate women from the patriarchal shackles of society. Jaya’s quest for identity reveals the various social, religious and economic facets of her royalty, under which the emotions and sentiments of the real women lay buried. The writer strongly protests against the various practices, which annihilate the dignity and rights of women. The narrative boldly projects the realistic condition of women of the royalty, making fiction a powerful means to do so. Raj has a ver y traditional setting, in two Princely states, and is ideal to analyze the status of women, in that period of time. The writer points to many social issues of marriage, widowhood, and education, through the protagonist evaluating them from a very feminist point of view. The writer describes this aspect in a very significant manner, through the letter written by a Maharani to the editor of The Bombay Chronicle quoted in the novel. Another prominent aspect is the dependence of woman in the patriarchal set up which is poignantly highlighted, through Jaya, who has no personal choices. The underlying politics in the marriage arrangements leaves her a helpless puppet. The institution of marriage and its related practices are depicted as a decadent and obnoxious tradition in the patriarchal system, in which women are turned into innocent victims. Another moribund tradition, the treatment meted out to widows, is also highlighted in the novel. The widow is ritually cursed by the old women assembled at her husband’s funeral as unfortunate, unclean and unholy, fit only to be cast out and abandoned (p. 159). Jaya, who in her revulsion at this humiliating practice on the occasion of her father’s death hits out at the old women shouting a litany of abuse, herself suffers the same humiliation when she loses her husband (p. 355). Her hair is shorn like her mother when she is in a state of widowhood. All these practices strongly symbolize a loss of identity for women who are forced to live within the parameters of society. The author to make the reader realize the magnitude of the loss a woman faces prominently portrays these meaningless rites and rituals,

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which make life hell for women. Donald Oken rightly points out that the loss of identity results in alienation. It would be interesting and instructive to attempt in depth analysis of Indian English novelist’s search for identity and to see how far they have progressed at all in exploring and affirming it in their works. Dennis Wrong rightly suggests that the term “identity” and “identity crisis” have become the semantic beacons of our time, “for these “Verbal Emblem” express our discontent with modern life and modern society and the term “Identity” has become a value charged, almost a charismatic term, with its secure achievement regarded as equivalent to personal salvation.” There are number of political-historical works of fiction which revolve around princely states and the British rule. Some notable ones are E.M. Forster’s The Hill of Devi (1953), Mulk Raj Anand’s Private Life of an Indian Prince (1953), Manohar Malgonkar ’s The Princess (1963), and Kamala Markandaya’s The Golden Honey Comb (1977). These works of fiction present a male sensibility while Raj presents the political scenario in a historical context from a very feminine angle. The protagonist finds herself pulled apart in three ways: by the old traditional set of belief, she has grown with, secondly by the loyalty to her husband and his kingdom and thirdly by her growing awareness and understanding of India’s need to be united. The princess is a woman who is mauled by the irony of fate, which has snatched her dear ones and left her alone to face the bitter realities of life. She is able to survive all the calamities around her by absorbing the wisdom and power of her traditional culture. Jaya is born and brought up in Balmer, a tiny Kingdom in Rajasthan. She is educated in the manner her ancestral princesses have been. At five, Jaya accompanies her father to hunting, at ten she kills her first tiger, and at twelve she is trained in the art of personal decoration, “the Sola Shringar” (p. 94). It is drummed into her that a “woman is a mood”, and that she has to be desirable to her man. While

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her father is intent on her outdoor training, her mother is skeptical of its value for a girl. Under her father’s command, she is trained in her riding, shooting, hunting, tent-pegging, and playing polo, by Major Vir Singh, a tough teacher, indifferent to the fact that she is a girl. Off the ground, her lessons in Rajniti continue with the Raj Guru, tougher still, whose austerity and discipline frighten her. The Raj Guru, in his dry and crackling voice makes her repeat the four arms of Kingship: Saam, Daam, Dand, Bhed; tells her that “merit and not birth, is the attribute of Kingship” (p. 89); and instills in her the ancient ideals which stand in good stead during her political and psychological difficulties. Jaya’s mother, the Maharani, worries at her educated status as a major disability in the marriage market. Her inhibitions are supported by many traditional religious superstitions and practices. The first book depicts a large span in Jaya’s life and the beginnings of much emotional turmoil like her engagement to Prince Pratap, death of her brother Tikka, widowhood of her mother and finally her marriage to a proxy sword. “After protracted negations, and after agreeing to pay a large annual sum to Prince Pratap as well as Jaya’s dowry, Raja Man Singh had finally prevailed on the Sirpur Council to permit Jaya to be married by proxy- to Prince Pratap’s sword” (p. 168). Eventually Jaya is ‘displaced’ from Balmer, her birthplace, in helpless and tragic conditions, shunning her father’s desire to train her into a modern empowered woman. Gita Mehta vividly describes the new home Sirpur in Book Two, where Jaya arrives grandly in her bridal conveyance. The Abyssinian eunuchs usher Jaya into the presence of the Dowager Maharani, the grandmother of Victor and Pratap. She is an old woman crippled with arthritis. Hard knuckles crack against Jaya’s temples to remove the evil eye. Following the tradition she hands over the storeroom keys to Jaya. The Dowager Maharani tells Jaya about Victor and Pratap and unscrupulously admits that she sent young concubines to remind them of their

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own customs, when they were in Sirpur. Jaya listens in shocked silence in the purdah garden, where the Dowager Maharani’s describes in rasping voice, how she used to send smooth limbed girls from the harem to seduce the awkward schoolboys during their holidays, hoping to recapture her grandsons’ souls from Britain through their loins (p. 180). After a year of Jaya’s arrival in Sirpur, the Dowager Maharani accompanies Jaya to the Kamini Temple. The Dowager Maharani thrusts her hand between the lips. Red liquid seeped through her stiff fingers as she smeared Jaya’s cheeks and forehead, chanting, “May your homage to the Goddess bring fruit to your womb and May you enrich our house with sons” (p. 185). In Sirpur, Jaya feels that a harsh reality had treaded on her dreams as she is filled with remorse, as she realizes the implications of colonial education forced upon the two Princes. The ancient Kingdom of Sirpur is steeped in tradition and rituals and like the masses, even the royalty is in a financial crisis. The British had sent Prince Pratap and Prince Victor to England as hostages under the pretext of education. The British were successful in alienating these future rulers from their cultural and social mores and develop in them a taste for everything European. It is the motherland (Sirpur), which becomes a prey to the ploy of the British. The rulers are conditioned to be alienated from their roots. The elder brother Prince Victor obsessed with Cora Hart, an American actress, does not wish to return, while Pratap a compulsive flir t, carelessly squanders away the royal treasur y by chasing white women. Jaya’s married life in Sirpur, acquire another level in her own quest for identity. Jaya continues to remain a married virgin and finally, when she meets Pratap, her excitement is nipped in the bud, when she realizes how her husband feels about her. The Empire has instructed me to stay in India. If I am permitted to travel abroad again, I shall have to be accompanied by a wife. That’s why I agreed to our marriage. So here we are, Jaya Devi. You cannot eat quail or wear a sari. You know no languages. Yet through you I must outmaneuver the Empire that forced me into

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this marriage (p. 191).

Jaya endures all kinds of insults and her husband’s wishes for her to change, with traditional patience and sense of obedience. Her transformation is depicted as a parallel to the socio-political changes Sirpur was undergoing for the forthcoming visit of Price of Wales. The renovations are undertaken at a huge cost, at a time when Sirpur was devastated by flood. Maharaja Victor raises loans to exhibit extravagance and progress. Jaya tries to change in the manner her husband desires, but is constantly emotionally and morally shattered as she learns about her husband’s conjugal betrayals. Once when Prince Pratap tells Jaya how he and other Indians, including Tikka, fought bravely on the front, in the First War and adds that it is the only time when they were permitted to be men, otherwise, living without pride is not a pleasant business; her immediate rejoinder is, “An unwanted wife shares that experience, Hukum.” A Critic’s comment on this aspect is absorbing: The heroine is both a mute observer and an active participant; a mute observer of the events she cannot control, be they political whereby the princes were stripped of their power, or pertaining to human weakness whereby her husband and other princes invited their own downfall by their vagaries; she is an active participant in life when tie demands her decisiveness and tests the strength of her character. (p. 48-49)

Book three portrays Jaya as a Maharani, though her status is changed, nothing else changes. After the demise of Victor, Prince Pratap takes over the throne as Maharaja of Sirpur. Jaya becomes the Maharani of the state for the people. But her requirements of love, satisfaction and human dignity especially from her husband, remain unfulfilled. All she finds is humiliation, and self-degradation. She realizes that her husband only touches her when he is in drunken state. Though she weeps over her fate, her husband blatantly gloats how, “Maharaja Pratap appeared in his wife’s bedroom and drunkenly plunged himself into her body as if she were a concubine brought to him for the night” (p. 278). Jaya’s status

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is no more than a concubine and Pratap’s love for her is only a farce, but still she remains a typically obedient Hindu wife. According to the British policy, Pratap is required to have a male heir, to be able to have the rights to his property. Jaya again becomes a means to provide the heir to Pratap. She conceives a male-child, but again her maternal rights are at stake, when she is not allowed to feed her own child. Pratap forbids Jaya saying that: ‘ The Maharanis of Sirpur employ wet nurses. I will not have my wife feeding a baby like a peasant woman” (p. 298). Pratap tries to keep her away from maternal happiness, making her bare and lonely from within. His own extra marital affairs and flings continue unabated and he becomes totally detached from Jaya. She depicts her condition to Lady Modi: “He can’t touch his own wife until she is turned into a toy who no longer represents a woman. Or until he himself is so drunk he can no longer pass for man. He shrinks from the sight of his wife giving breast to his son, but not from wearing his ancient crest on his feet to visit a brothel. Is this the conduct of a husband? Of a king”? (p. 329)

Pratap’s relationship with the dancer gradually turns into a scandal. Jaya’s political awareness increases and she realizes that it is high time she demanded her rights as the regent Maharani of Sirpur. If she fails to do this, perhaps she may lose everything. Pratap also realizes her growing maturity and he is frustrated at his inability to suppress her rights; therefore in anger and frustration, he gives it in writing. Pratap dies tragically in a plane crash, unable to bear the desertion of the dancer and growing nationalism against the British. Book four portrays Jaya as the Regent of Sirpur. She faces a period of turmoil and conspiracies as the Raj Guru of Sirpur tries to control the state administration. He tries to keep Jaya away from the administration and from her son, Arjun. He tries to turn the son against the mother. The traditional rituals, which kept the widow in seclusion, are used as a pretext to emotionally blackmail the son. “Your

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mother cannot be with you at this time. She is unclean” (p. 355). Rituals of widowhood keep her away from her son, who is too small to understand them. Her widowhood becomes a curse on her. She was treated thus: “There were no bangles to be slipped onto her wrists, no long minutes spent combing the thick hair that had once fallen to her knees, no sindoor to mark the circle of matrimony on her forehead. She did not even have to cover her shaven head. A widow was not considered desirable, only unlucky. (p. 355)

Jaya knows that the people of the state do not accept her as Maharani, but she desires security for her son, the future Maharaj of the state. When she meets her widowed mother after so many years, life seems to have taken a full circle. Her mother had joined an ashram and the national movement under Gandhi. She advises Jaya to go back to Sirpur and guard her son and the state of Sirpur. It was indeed time for anarchy in India. Communal riot burst out. Bloodshed took place in Bengal. The Maharani of Balmer died during that time. She told that she realized true meaning of Sati. She also told not to mourn her passing (p. 399). Political crises and calamity shakes Sirpur, and Jaya requires legal assistance. Arun Roy helps her, and gradually their friendship and understanding grow and she finds some comfort and peace in it. Misfortunes continue to follow Jaya, as war breaks out and she looses her young son, her friend and confidant Arun Roy. Her estate goes through many kinds of economic and political crisis. All her life Jaya has suffered silently. Her protests never found voice, but it is only at the end of the novel, she seems to finds her faith in democracy and applies to enter the government-thus suggesting the famous Maharani of Jaipur as a role model. She has come a long way from the world of concubines, eunuchs and purifying rites and rituals. Her quest for identity finally reaches a stage, where she begins to see her real self. Gita Mehta is able to offer a complete story without bias or bitterness and leaves the readers to formulate an independent position from which to read history, she tells.

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She is not interested in pressing her political impressions, but presents historical facts in a beautifully woven tapestry based upon her female protagonists strength of character. REFERENCES 1.

Pathak, R.S., “Gita Mehta’s River Sutra and its Concentric Polysemy.” Critical Practice, January, 1995, Vol. IV, No. 1, p. 17.

2.

Bande, Usha. “Raj: A Thematic Study in Indian Women Novelists”, Vol. 5 Ed. By R.K. Dhawan, (Prestige: New Delhi, 1991), p. 239.

3.

Mehta Gita, Raj. (Penguin Books, 1993). All references are to this edition and are indicated parenthetically in the text.

18 De-Analysis of Marital Relationships — Priya Wanjari

Shobha De has often been described as a novelist of romance and realism. She mingles them creatively. Her language is highly poetic and rich. Her novels mostly deal with the basic and important aspects of existence and survival in the highclass society of India. Her works have no existential and psychological bearing closely acquainted with the Bombay Cinema and the world of modeling. Ms. De says ‘Indians have lost touch with their history of erotic art and literature because of enforced sexual prudery imposed during the British Colonial and important aspects of existence and survival in the high-class society of India. Her works have no existential and psychological bearing closely acquainted with the Bombay Cinema and the world of modeling. Shobha De has discussed various themes in her novels. One of the major themes that figures prominently is the relationship between husband and wife. In most of the novels, this relationship is taken up as a major concern that forces her to discuss the status in the contemporary world in the most objective manner. Marriage in Indian tradition is an institution as well as destiny, but its nature is completely changed now. The novels bring out the picture of marriage and husband-wife relationship in the metropolitan cities strangely affected by big city fashionable life, industrial advancements, modern lifestyle, and capitalistic attitude,

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so on. The effects of these forces work on the individual’s attitudes towards this basic relationship. The husband-wife relation is strained in many of the De’s novels. The reasons for the tensions between husband and wife relationship vary from novel to novel. Shobha De portrays, …the lives of young men and women, particularly rich upper class (business community) people who no longer considered faithfulness and constancy in love a virtue. That is why she depicts the people in their true colours i.e. what they are rather than what they should have been. But the description of union between the lovers or wife and husband becomes too open and vulgar to be enjoyable. It offends our sensibility and distracts our attention.1

Socialite Evenings presents three couples disturbed by tension among their relationship as husband and wife. Women in particular are marginalized by their husbands, discarding their roles in the family. S.P.Swain has pointed out that Shobha De, …expresses the picture of woman not only as protagonist but also as motivating factor in society, initiating and regulating their own life as well as the lives of other in the voluptuously fascinating world of Bombayites, its enticing glitter and glamour enamoring many a Karuna ’s to its ensnaring and captivating gossamer.2

The relationship between Karuna and her husband is at stake and disturbed as it is loveless, joyless and bridgeless. The proper understanding as is expected between the husband and the wife is lacking. Because of indifferent attitudes and behavior of the husband towards her, she thinks that she had wedded ‘the wrong man at the wrong time’. She feels that her husband is an ‘average Indian husband unexciting, uninspiring, untutored’. She further feels, “He wasn’t one for introspection”3 [Socialite Evenings: 65]. Karuna is marginalized at the hands of her husband. She hates the lifeless and callous attitude of the husband keeping the latter busy in monotonous activities in their routine life. She acknowledges the confinement of women with “Roof over our heads and four square meals a day” with regret [SE: 69]. Karuna’s husband is an incompetent and inadequate

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person who does not possess qualities of an ideal husband. He turns to several defense mechanisms when he realizes the loss of dominance and control over his self-affirming wife. He exhibits his male chauvinism and power-assertion through inflicting atrocities upon his wife. It is his self-conceit and ego, which retreats him from free exchange of views with his wife. The reasons for development of rifts between husbandwife relationships in this novel are multiple. Karuna always finds faults with her husband, his reading of ‘Times Of India’, his ‘horrible Safari Suits’, his chewing of gum and manner of compulsive socializing, etc. Her restlessness lies in her selfexperience that her husband does not understand her feelings and emotions and does not care for her being, her personality and her inspirations. Karuna feels that she is a “well trained, Indian wife” [SE: 94]. She asserts that she is not a toy of a man. Lack of fulfillment, irresponsible attitude and absence of meaningful communication between them frustrate her. The realization that a fragile and futile marital knot does not provide satisfaction disturbs her quite often. Their relations are emotionally dry and silence prevails between them as they co-exist. There is no smile and laughter, no free exchange of thoughts and ideas, no queries and questions between them. She says, “It wasn’t that I never tried, but there was no question that my husband and I inhabited different planets” [SE: 68]. In a way Karuna is a Hindu housewife, conservative and traditional who does not protest but faithfully obeys her husband and maintains everything at home well. On the contrary her husband, without giving her freedom that she desires for, treats her as a mere object. Her extra marital relationship with Krish and illicit pregnancy upsets him and results in divorce. He is the representative of a typical traditional Indian husband. The bond of love between the wife and the husband is lost. They call each other ‘husband’ and ‘wife’ without affection. Karuna is an ambitious woman longing for a prosperous and wealthy life wherein she could

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fulfill her fantasies. Anjali, a Gujarati–half Jain and half Hindu woman, and Abe, a Muslim, find no rational, affectionate intimacy between them. Though married and living as husband and wife, they never develop intimacy and love which is the essence of a married life and they have a daughter of their own relations. Abe is a womanizer and Anjali is also pervert in attitude always in hunt of a new mate for new experience. After divorce from Abe, Anjali frolics from man to man finding no satisfaction, emotional or otherwise, and gets hurt in the process. Her search for a man, who can provide emotional and financial stability, ends in her marriage with Kumar Bhandari, a homosexual, but the marriage turns out to be fairy tale wedlock. However, she maintains that relation and takes refuge in spirituality. Her own sought out fulfillment in religious enactment shows her acceptance of the idea of a traditional Hindu wife. Similarly Ritu, a dashing and modern girl living in her youthful imagination, desires to treat “men, like dogs… conditioned through reward and punishment” [SE: 87]. She indulges in open relations with males. She is never faithful to her husband. In her view her husband lacks “drive and general unadventurousness” [SE: 108]. Ritu remains associated with him as a wife because she finds financial security in him. The emotional relation between husband and wife are dry. Their psuedo feelings keep them bounded together but both find chances to flirt with new selected companions quite ignorant of each other. Ritu hides her pleasure seeking endeavours from her husband but never looses a chance and secretly unravels her husband’s sexdeeds with other women. Ritu is a self-centered woman who approves of her outside adulterous connections but wishes to prohibit her husband from sex indulgences with other women. Their tussles grow into serious quarrels but Ritu finds pleasure in “Don’t be so shocked”, she says, “I think the beatings have brought us closer. I respect him more. He looks so macho in those moments” [SE: 130]. Despite attitudinal

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differences, the husband receives Ritu when she returns back home after her temporary association with Gul. “The original Earth Mother had finally come home to roost” [SE: 231]. Unlike others, to some extent Starry Nights provides us an ideal tie between a husband and a wife. Malini is faithful to her husband, Akshay Kumar. She is a traditional wife who intends to possess her husband forever. She is a symbol of complete devotion and dedication to her husband. Even Akshay Kumar reciprocates wife’s complete attachment constantly and cares for her. However, Malini could not seek fulfillment and could never enjoy life with her legitimate, own husband. She fails to possess her husband. Her over possessive nature makes her negative in her attitude towards her husband; she represses her sexuality and turns into a frigid body in bed. Akshay fails to find sexual gratification in Malini and therefore turns to Aasha Rani. Malini could not understand that being ‘a wife and being a whore were all that different’. It needed Aasha Rani to educate her, “It never occurred to Malini that bearing pregnancy and enjoying sex were two different things. That being a wife and being a whore were two different things”4 [Starry Nights: 44]. Aasha Rani marries the Kiwi, Jay Philips, after her passionate attempt to marry Akshay failed miserably. Her love at first sight in Wellington after a temporary gap results in marriage. “Jay proved to be an ardent passionate and imaginative husband” [SN: 127,128]. Aasha Rani felt relaxed and secure enough with him to teach him one or two tricks of her own. When Jay retur ns back to Wellington with their daughter, he establishes unlawful intimac y with the governess ‘Nanny’. Aasha Rani’s belief that her husband is faithful to her receives a shock when she learns about her husband’s faithlessness. Her attempt to retain the ‘top slot’ in the glamorous film Industry ends in a nightmare as she could only manage somehow secondary roles bringing misery and despair to her credit. Though Aasha Rani’s emotions shatter, Jay is a doting and caring husband. In Jay’s absence in India

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she recalls with gratitude the affection, warmth and security that Jay had offered to her. According to Kumar Sudhir, Shobha De shows Malini in Starry Nights as a traditional wife existing on one extreme of femininity who wants to possess her husband forever. She is all devotion and dedication to her starhusband, Akshay Kumar – who consistently shares his bed with Aasha Rani. De wants to convey the message that marriages are a means of the perpetuation of the patriarchal order. A woman’s being is annihilated on the altar of marriage. De seems to believe that a marriage is but an infructuous exercise undertaken by two partners to realize each other fully. Malini, Akshay’s wife, could never enjoy the consummation of sex with her legitimate husband. 5

Sisters provide us with another unexpected husbandwife relationship. The wife strives continuously to love and win her own man but the husband behaves totally against his wife’s expectations. Having realized that her first love Navin could not meet her demands and Shanay would not be a suitable husband, Mikki turns to Binny Malhotra, enjoys sex before marriage and marries him against the will of Amy, Shanay and Ramanbhai. Though educated in America and progressive in thinking and behaviour, Mikki loves Binny from the core of her heart, leaves her business to his supervision and intensely desires to become a good wife. Binny reciprocates her love, pays all attention towards her: “She enjoyed his experienced approach and found herself discovering aspects of her own sexuality she hadn’t guessed existed”6 [Sisters: 95]. It is through her intimacy with her husband that she realizes her self and finds a sense of security. She is proud of being a wife of Mr. Binny. She represents a typical traditional wife by completely submitting herself to her husband. Binny, a womanizer, is infidel, already having a mistress, family and children. He marries Mikki to keep up his pride and image in the society. Satisfied with his mistress and children, Binny, the husband, deprives his wife Mikki of motherhood and forces her to undergo abortion and threatens her that

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otherwise he would divorce her. The husband fails to realize his wife and fails to perform necessary moral deeds by denying individuality, independence and emotional security to the loving wife. The insincere and fraudulent attitudes of Binny are reflected in his statements: You are Binny Malhotra’s wife: And you better start behaving like her. In our family women are trained to obey their husbands. Thank your stars you don’t have a mother in law to please. You will never, I repeat, never, question me…or complain. You have nothing to complain about – got that? Your life is perfect. You have everything…everything. Where I go, what I do, when and with whom is my business. I will spend as much time with you as I choose to [Sis: 116].

Binny inflicts verbal scars on her sensitive and emotional mind and tortures her with his imposing and oppressive behaviour. Mikki was “willing to compromise her own life if it meant he’d notice her, listen to her, acknowledge her existence” [Sis: 140]. On the contrary, her dream to enjoy the fruits of marital life is shattered when Binny, suspecting her chastity, turns her out of his home. She begs and pleads innocence and worships earnestly: “Binny, why? Why are you doing this? What have I done? I love you. Only you. I’m innocent. Please Binny… I can’t live without you” [Sis: 141]. Mikki is an ideal wife whereas Binny is callous and indifferent person whose responsible behaviour destroys human bond between the wife and the husband. In Strange Obsession husband-wife relationship is disturbed by destructive obsession of Amrita with Minx. By marrying Rakesh, Amrita desires to escape from the clutches of Minx. At the same time, she creates a heap of doubts whether she would be suitable and fulfill the desires of her husband. The unethical sexual relations with Minx caused unwarranted effects on Amrita’s mind. Amrita was accustomed to, “smooth hands caressing her breasts or a soft face nestling between her legs”7 [Strange Obsession: 19]. She was disappointed when Rakesh made sexual advances to her; she confessed to Rakesh that the image of Minx continued

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to haunt her. Rakesh, attractive, prosperous and attentive man, loves his wife and shows happiness at the thought of a “naked woman, my gorgeous wife, in my car next to me” [SO: 165]. It is the chemistr y between the two, which binds them even more. Rakesh admits Amrita to get “ready to be devoured” as her “husband is a ravenously hungry man” [SO: 174]. This saves the husband-wife relationship and in the end the relationship is reinforced when both realize the affirmed bond between them when she conceives. Sultry Days presents couples giving us a glimpse of husband-wife relationship in the metropolis of our country. Nisha, the narrator protagonist observes the husband-wife relationship, which their parents share. Her father being a corporate executive and a family patriarch too, engrossed in his work realizes that he no longer commands the respect of his wife and this could be due to the existence of a mistress. The shocking Mrs. Verma, though shown to be obsessed with her home rather than the role of the executive’s wife gradually begins to reexamine her life and her priorities only after the disclosure of the mistress. Nisha feels that, her …mother was cracking up. The signs were all there. It was the uncertainty that was killing her. Was it on or was it off? Had she really heard my father telling her the marriage was over? Had he meant it? And, according to her, he refused even to discuss the whole business. She’d stopped wearing chiffons and I suppose that was her way of protesting8 [Sultry Days: 68].

Same is the case with the ad agency Roy D’Lima. He is a strange man with even a stranger wife. Karan Roy is proud in asserting “I am Mrs. D’Lima now” [SD: 70]. There is an understanding of a sort between the couple that though they would lead separate lives but put ‘joint appearances’ only for special occasions. It has been made very clear to Karan by Mr. D’ Lima that his adulterous relation has to be tolerated by the wife at any rate. Another interesting story of husband-wife relationship is of a Nagpur based girl, Pramila. The completion of wifely duty dawns upon her when she accomplishes the task of producing two girls and a boy. She

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feels that there is nothing more than that which will bind her with her husband Vilas, who though being a Mechanical Engineer is passionately in love with her. She runs away to Bombay for greener pastures and returns only to ask for a divorce, thus showing the pattern of independence wives seek for, inspite of having emotional, financial and mental security. The second couple of Mr. and Mrs. Khanna is worth taking a note of as both are in second marriages; Mr. Khanna’s first wife had left him for his best friend, while Mrs. Khanna’s first husband had committed suicide. The only reason why Mr. Khanna got married to Rukhi Khanna the second time was: “He wanted a glamorous wife in his second marriage to prove to the world he wasn’t impotent. He actually was” [SD: 166]. The reason why Mrs. Khanna got married was because she was looking for some very rich man, who had not just any home, but a big ‘Penthouse’ indicating the monetary dependence being the basis of husband-wife relationship. The case of Barooha couple is the perfect pair of husband-wife relationship, booze being the common factor between them. Same is the story of Bubli who is married to a male ‘whore’. Theirs husband-wife relationship is very strange. “She goes her way and he, his” [SD: 183,184]. In Snapshots the healthy husband-wife relationship has not been delineated with special intentions, as the emphasis is put on the trivial frivolous life enjoyed by the six romantic ladies in the parties. In order to keep their party profile up, these women either overlook the husband-wife relationship or remain indifferent towards its significance. The women do not remain faithful to their men. Aparna, ignorant of her husband Rohit’s true nature, loves him and tolerates his make-believe behaviour. The fact is that Rohit is entangled in an extra-marital relation with Swati, which creates problems in his devotion to his wife in-fact for the reason that “Swati had succeeded in seducing her husband”9 [Snapshots: 21]. In his state of anger showing the reasons that Aparna did not follow his commands, he leaves the house for good. Aparna’s ideal notion of husband-wife relations receives a shock when

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she realizes that he is a womanizer. She, as is disappointed, admits, “What she wanted was a steady, warm, attentive companion” [SS: 24]. When Rohit leaves her she admits that “it wasn’t just a man she missed, it was Rohit, her husband”. She hated herself “for continuing to think of him in those terms…husband, husband, husband” [SS: 24]. Aparna blames her mother for constant conditioning and brainwashing. She is too stunned at the changes in the behaviour of Rohit after the marriage. Her belief is shattered: “I thought you were the New Man. I expected you to care and share. But you’re like any other husband. The same old double standards. The same hypocrisies” [SS: 22]. Surekha’s relation with her husband Harsh is shabby. Harsh does not consider his wife as a being of flesh and blood but as a material being given to routine work. His expectation from her is ‘perfectly rolled round Chapattis’, everyday in the tiffin supplied by the driver. In order to keep Harsh pleased Surekha gets “fresh napkin for the tiffin box as last week she had forgotten it and Harsh had been angry” [SS: 28]. This make-believe relationship provides enough opportunity to maintain a lesbian relationship with her friend, Dolly, through whom she pours out “her daily frustrations, minor bickerings with her mother-in-law, major fights with her husband, arguments with her child’s class teacher, defiance from old servants, even dissatisfaction with her sex life” [SS: 158]. Rashmi shares a natural husband-wife relationship with Pips Sr. (Parminder). Her belief that he might settle down with Rashmi turns out to be a faux tale. Having lived a comfortable luxury life with Rashmi, the opportunist Parminder leaves her the moment he comes to know that she is pregnant. With this the relationship fails to culminate into a normal husband-wife tie. The husband-wife relationship between Reema and Ravi is imperfect, though the family is financially rich and stable. Ravi’s business flourishes on the parties he hosts with the support of his wife. Ravi is a considerate and truly loving

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husband who provides ample time and opportunities to his wife. Reema at the same time has many affairs with others and she also dares one with her own brother-in-law. Even though the affair is real, Ravi seems to ignore, and their own relationship remains unaffected. She has never been faithful to her husband even though he depends on her for business prosperity. Ravi is dependent on Reema for the prosperity of his business but the association seems to be very casual and Reema goes infidel, unwarranted. Swati gets married to one of her best ‘buddie’ and recalls that he was “the one who understood me best” [SS: 188]. The divorce came through not due to any extra marital affair but due to Swati being too “Self absorbed”. Closely associated with the breakdown of husband-wife relations is the destruction of the institutions of marriage. Madhumalti Adhikari says, Marriage a patriarchal enclousure” can no longer hold woman down. Marriage and motherhood, symbols of parental authority a nd p owe r a re d i ff u s e d by Sh o bh a D e thro ugh R ashm i, an unwed mother, Swati and Aparna are divorcees and yet sufficiently powerful to reject the sexuality of men. Swati may marry on her own terms but for Aparna husband is an ‘awful’ (24) and ‘dirty’ word.10

The husband-wife relationship in Second Thoughts is in no way different from the one expressed in the earlier novels. Though all kinds of necessary things for a successful life are available in the family, both husband and wife drift away in different directions. Maya, a middle-class girl from Calcutta, marries Ranjan, a man from a wealthy family background with all the glamour of an American degree. However in the course of time both realize that they are not well suited for each other. Maya is a romantic woman who has flung herself into the ‘Whirl of Bombay’, “falling inexorably in love with this Bombay”11 [Second Thoughts: 12]. She desires to be an ideal wife drawn in with her husband. Ranjan, completely obsessed with his mother, fails to understand his wife’s needs and her desire for freedom.

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Maya fails to find fulfillment in Ranjan. She loves music and the rhythmic life of Bombay while Ranjan discards the ‘jarring sounds’, of a popular filmi song and wonders. He feels, “how ‘civilized’ people can spend their important time watching such nonsense” [ST: 30]. They are poles apart in their nature too. Ranjan remains indifferent to his wife’s expectations whenever Maya makes sensual advances. Ranjan meets with a prosaic form a practical and hard response. Ranjan ‘inched away from’ her, stating that he was tired [ST: 260]. On her part she indulges in all kinds of tricks a faithful wife should do, to attract the attention of her husband but Ranjan being completely self-centered finds no time for her. She feels he was “someone who was so completely selfabsorbed that I often wondered whether he had actually ever seen me” [ST: 42]. She is emotionally starved because of the cold indifference Ranjan exhibited towards her. Her oppressed mind guides her that she should spell out openly her infatuation for her husband’s affection, “What had I expected – a serenade over the phone? Tender words of love? An extended cooling session? From Ranjan, my husband? Ranjan?” [ST: 207] Maya’s desire for companionship and love remains unnoticed. Both husband and wife are not made for each other. Ranjan is a conservative in respect of the role of husband. He opines, “I am earning well enough to support a wife and family. I believe it is a woman’s duty to run a good home” [ST: 11]. The husband-wife’s relationship lacked emotion, passion, love and affection. If the wife struggles to win over her man, the husband always remains indifferent under the pressure of mother’s guiding force. It is not her own case only but her parents too later in their life are seen suffering as she had watched them and their relationship as they “hardly ever talked to each other” and even their “quarrels or heated arguments were out of questions” [ST: 70]. In this novel in fact, the husband’s irresponsible attitude and behaviour is responsible for unsustainable relationship in life. Alka Saxena says,

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For those who have been taught to conform to the traditions, it is difficult to snap the pious card that binds them in matrimony. Freedom is permitted in a very restricted manner; it is the ancient stor y of sacrifice and adjustment that a woman is destined to. Sooner or later she learns to adjust, as there is no other alternative, if she needs to live a respectful life. Maya, too, accepts to remain enveloped in the loneliness and sadness. On Second Thoughts, she learns to survive the Sultriness of not only Bombay, but also of her marriage.12

The so - called divine institution of marriage and husband-wife relationship has crumbled down in the country after new developments. Science, technology and industry made inroads in the native culture. De has delineated this husband-wife relationship consciously in her novels and bared the naked reality audaciously. The changes in the relationship would certainly exert impact on Indian life style and family organization. References 1.

Bijay Kumar Das : Indian Women Novelists (Shobha De’s Sisters An Appraisal), 140.

2.

Swa i n , S . P. , Fe m i n i s t E n g l i s h L i te rat u re ( S h o b h a D e’s ‘Socialite Evenings’ – A Feminist Study), New Delhi: (Prestige Books, 2000), p. 128.

3.

De, Shobha : Socialite Evenings, (New Delhi: Penguin Books India (Pvt) Ltd.), 1989, All quotations are taken from this edition abbreviated as SE.

4.

De, Shobha: Starry Nights, (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1991). All quotations are taken from this edition abbreviated as SN.

5.

Kumar Sudhir : The Fic tion of Shobha De (A Feminist Approach to Starry Nights), 192.

6.

De, Shobha : Sisters, Penguin Books India (Pvt.) Ltd., New Delhi, (1992). All quotations are taken from this edition abbreviated as Sis.

7.

De, Shobha : Strange Obsession, Penguin Books India (Pvt.) Ltd., New Delhi, (1992). All quotations are taken from this

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8.

De, Shobha : Sultry Days, Penguin Books India (Pvt.) Ltd., New Delhi, (1994). All quotations are taken from this edition abbreviated as SD.

9.

De, Shobha : Snapshots, Penguin Books India (Pvt.) Ltd., New Delhi, (1995). All quotations are taken from this edition abbreviated as SS.

10.

Madhumalti Adhik ari : The Fic tion of Shobha De ( The Equation of Power in Snapshots), 257.

11.

De, Shobha : Second Thougts, Penguin Books India (Pvt.) Ltd., New Delhi, (1996). All quotations are taken from this edition abbreviated as ST.

12.

Alka Saxena : The Fiction of Shobha De (Second Thoughts: A slice of urban life).

19 Resolution of Akhila’s Dilemma in Ladies Coupe — Varsha Karmarkar

Anita Nair is a renowned Indian English writer. She is a fine writer with a great sense of characters, a vivid knowledge of Indian culture and an eye for telling detail. Among various Indian writers, Anita Nair is easily accepted as an efficient practitioner of the gem of fiction. Her books are set in the everyday world of India. Nair mesmerises the reader with her evocative language and descriptions in which her novels abound. For Nair, Kerala is the source of inspiration, weakness and strength. She is the author of Satyr of the subway and Eleven Other Stories (1997) and three novels, The Better Man (1999), Mistress (2005) and Ladies Coupe (2007). Today there are three kinds of women in the Indian society. A large group of Indian women, both uneducated and educated are very traditional. They are totally dependent on their husbands and are fully devoted to the family. Secondly, there are women who are educated and economically independent but want both economic independence as well as family life. They are unable to break the framework of the family. Such women are in transitory state. There is a third group of a handful of women who are educated, economically independent and empowered. They are ready to pay a high price for their ambitions and achievements and bother least about the social and traditional norms of the society. They

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are egalitarian. The present paper is an attempt to study the portrayal of Indian womanhood in Anita Nair’s Ladies Coupe. Akhila, the protagonist is the eldest daughter in the family. As she has finished her pre-university, her parents feel that her education is complete and she should get married. Akhila has been brought up to become a good housewife and a good mother. Her mother has trained her that way. Her father is a clerk in the Income Tax Department. He is a very simple man, far away from the moves and counter – moves of his colleagues. Corruption is very common, natural and simple for many of his colleagues. Akhila’s father is against corruption. Akhila’s mother is a per fect housewife and mother. She is a typical traditional woman for whom her husband is no less than a God. Her father’s simplicity and aversion to accept bribes makes him a target in the office. He is insulted, criticized and victimized by his colleagues. On every Sunday Akhila’s mother devotes herself to cooking her father’s favorite dishes for breakfast, lunch and dinner. She keeps him away from all family problems and nourishes his ego. This helps him in preparing himself psychologically to face his colleagues in the following week. Since her childhood Akhila has noticed that her parents are very happy in each other’s company. In fact they forget everything else when they are together. She could notice that they were able to communicate even without words. Sarsa Mami and Subramaniam Iyer were their n e i g h b o u r s . S a r s a M a m i i s A m m a ’s b e s t f r i e n d . Subramaniam Iyer is a peon in an office. He has one elder daughter, a blind son and two younger daughters. He is always cheer ful, he is the only earning member of the family, he has to work a lot in the office, but never complains about anything. Their family is a happy family. Akhila has observed him so many times walking towards his wife and embracing her. The relationship between Sarsa Mami and her husband and Akhila’s parents is perfect and it is

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a formative and an exemplary influence on Akhila. The relationship between these two couples gives Akhila an insight in the relationship of a husband and wife. Akhila has two brothers and one younger sister. After her father’s sudden and untimely death in an accident, her mother who is dependent on her husband and fully devoted to him, collapses. Akhila is nineteen years old, has passed pre-university exam in first class, and gets the job of a clerk in the Income Tax Department on sympathetic grounds. She has to take the responsibility of the family. She becomes the head of the family. Her mother brings her up in such a way that she should become a good housewife and a good mother. Naturally Akhila also dreams of such a kind of life as any other middle class Indian young girl. But she has to look after the family almost against her wishes because of the changed circumstances. One of her brothers gets a job. He declares that he has decided to marry. Akhila suggests that the other brother should also get married. Akhila’s suggestion is accepted immediately but no one talks about Akhila’s marriage. In fact Akhila is the head of the family’s destiny, some one who would chart and steer their cause. Akhila is at the centrist position because she is the bread winner and still continues to remain at the periphery because she is still seen as a woman and her needs are never considered important enough to take precedence over the needs of other family members. Akhila is surprised to see their selfish behaviour. Her mother is grateful to her as she is saved from any kind of disgrace as Akhila has shouldered the responsibilities as the head of the family. It is this feeling of gratefulness, which in a way compels her to accept Akhila’s decision of eating eggs at home. Although Akhila has stepped into her father’s shoes as the need of the hour, she wants to live a simple, secured life of a common middle class married woman. When she is touched by a stranger in the bus, she does not oppose him and looks forward to it. She is ordinary so her yearning for touch is also very natural. But one day the bus conductor

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notices it, becomes rather angry with her and makes a nasty comment, Akhila is ashamed of herself thinking about what the conductor must have thought about her. She has no courage to face the conductor, so she stops going by the bus. Akhila is ordinary in every sense of the word, so her longing for a happy married life is also quite natural, after all it is love that gives one security in life. Ultimately she finds it in her relationship with Hari, who is too young. Akhila would have enjoyed security in this relationship, but her sense of responsibility towards her family and societal pressures compel her to snap ties with Hari. After this short episode, her life continues as usual. Her brothers are settled, her younger sister Padma gets married. After her mother’s death, the other members of the family, especially her brothers, discuss and decide where and with whom she should live. They decide it for her just because they are males of the family. Akhila is taken for granted displaying a typical patriarchal attitude. Ultimately it is decided that she should live with Padma’s family. No one can think that an educated, economically independent woman can live alone even at the age of forty-five. Akhila continues to tolerate the invasion of her space and privacy when she starts living with Padma’s family. In fact Padma is an ordinary house wife, but does not miss single opportunity to criticize Akhila in every possible way. Actually Akhila supports Padma’s family but Padma does not want to accept it. Instead of being grateful to Akhila she criticizes her. Her marital status has granted a special place and thus has empowered her to criticize her spinster sister. Padma as a typical representation shows how much value is attached to marriage in the Indian society. One day Akhila meets her school friend Karpagam, after a long gap. It is Karpagam who is able to instill a sense of selfworth in Akhila which makes her realize to live her life on her own terms, and not be dictated by other members of the family, who are actually dependent on her. She suggests,

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insists and makes Akhila realise that she has every right to find happiness for herself. Akhila starts thinking about the term happiness. She remembers the lines on greeting – card, she has sent to Catherine. Happiness is being allowed to choose one’s own life To live the way one wants Happiness is knowing one is loved and having someone to love Happiness is being able to hope for tomorrow (p. 200).

Karpagam convinces Akhila to think about herself and not to bother about anything else.It is indeed ironic that the woman who took over the responsibility of the entire family years ago is not considered capable of looking after herself even at the age of forty five. In fact Akhila is clearly fed up with Padma, she decides to live alone in a separate flat. Akhila’s decision is a shock for Padma. Can a woman live alone? What will the society say? Ask brothers for their opinion before taking a decision is the advice given by her. The reactions of Narsi and Padma reveal the attitudes of the society towards a single woman. But this time Akhila is firm and declares that she has completed her responsibilities towards her family and now she has decided to live for herself and she need not ask anybody’s permission for it. It is the tendency of our society to lable a person. Akhila is a branded sacrificing elder sister and a spinster, but she realises that she needs the company of a man, not as a husband, but just a companion. For Akhila physical gratification is a must. So for the first time in her life, she decides to go away from the city. She decides to go to Kanyakumari. Akhila’s decision is significant in the sense that goddess Kanyakumari is also eternally waiting for her lover like Akhila. she gets reservation in the Ladies Coupe. Ladies Coupe refers to the wagon on overnight journey trains with second-class reservation compartments which the Indian railways set aside for women until early 1998 and the common gender identity that women from different

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backgrounds share in it. More generally it may refer to the second-class existence that a woman is condemned to assume in her life’s journey because of her birth in the female gender. Akhila meets five different women representing different generations. On their way to Kanyakumari her five co-travellers shed off their masks and in the process discover themselves and help Akhila in arriving to a decision. Fourteen year old Sheela Vasudevan tells the story of her grand-mother who was an ardent worshipper of beauty. She dies of cancer. When her body was prepared for funeral Sheela remembers her granny’s lesson to her. “ The only person you need to please is yourself ” (67) and dresses up her wasted body in costume, jewellary and gaudy makeup. As a result Sheela has to face the wrath of her parents. Her story has provided a new direction to Akhila. Instead of bothering about others, she should please her own self. Prabhadevi is the pampered daughter of a rich family. She is married into a rich family. She enjoys the role of an ideal wife and an ideal daughter–in–law initially. She is happy with her lot. She accompanies her husband to New York. This trip changes her. She is highly impressed by the pattern of the life-style of the American women, “with swinging hair and confident stride. Their lives were ruled by themselves and no one else. Such power, such confidence and celebration of life and beauty.” (p. 177). She becomes conscious of her beauty and sexuality. She starts reading magazines and visits beauty parlour very often. She looks more beautiful, charming, sensuous and confident woman. She is happy. She has got herself transformed into a beautiful object, a commodity to cherish. She is happy when her beauty is noticed and appreciated. The change in her is remarkable and it gives her immense satisfaction. She shocks her husband by asking him to use condoms as she does not want to become pregnant just then. She tries to lure Pramod by her beauty. When he appreciates her beauty, the woman in her is satisfied. But is jolted one day when he comes home thinking her to be ‘like

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those women’. Prabhadevi immediately comes out of her dream world and realises her mistake. Once again she enters into her own cocoon. She engages herself in performing the role of an ideal wife and a daughter-in-law. For many years she enjoys these two roles and the security of married life. She understands and appreciates the sanctity of married life. Many years later she wants to learn swimming that too without her husband’s knowledge. “Being able to stay afloat is a metaphor for being able to cope with life by standing on top of it.”1 Janak i Prabhak ar is a representative of the older generation. She gets married when she is eighteen and has had a happily comfortable long (forty-years) married life. Her husband is caring, she is fully devoted to him, she is totally dependent on him. There is perfect communication between them. She has a son and a daughter-in-law. She is a good wife, a good mother and a good mother-in-law. She has no hesitation in accepting the fact that in accommodation lay her true happiness. As they are living together for such a long period, she frankly tells her husband that, “I am tired of sharing you with everyone, I want you to myself.” A short stay at their son’s house makes her realise that she has developed friendly love for her husband at this stage of life. In the autumn of their life, their marital relationship has blossomed into companionship. This companionship would act as a bonding to unite them forever. For Margaret her marriage with Ebe Paulraj is no less than a fairy tale. Margaret as well as her family members are quite sure that he is a perfect match for her. His education, status, and personality, everything is perfect. In fact Margaret wants to do Ph.D. in Chemistry, but her husband suggests that she should go for in B.Ed. He is too dominating and takes every decision for her and she too is happy in accepting his decisions. But she realises his real nature when he almost compels her to abor t her first pregnancy. He becomes more dominating when he becomes the Principal of the school. She has to work where he works. He does not share any household chores. She starts hating him. Her family

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members are unable to believe that she is unhappy. They cannot accept the idea of divorce. They are unaware of his dual nature. His artificial politeness, warmth, cruelty, constant irrelevant contempt of Margaret, his favourite theories, his habit of defacing books by ugly drawings are facets of his personality hidden from the world. Margaret suffers a lot because of all this. She is confused, there seems to be no way out. She has to continue her routine. Until one day she discovers a gold-fish floating dead. This proves to be a turning point in her life. She has a unique and novel idea of taking revenge on her husband. Ebe is very conscious of his looks, he does a lot of exercises to maintain himself. But tasty food is his weakness. Margaret offers him tasty, oily food, and she also pampers him with sex. Ebe becomes fat, looses his vanity and cruelty and seeks her more and more. There is complete reversal of roles. Earlier Ebe used to control her life. Now she has him completely in her hands. He becomes a man with whom she can live again. After suffering silently for many years she finds a unique way of settling scores with her husband. It is more creditable as she does so without breaking family or making parents unhappy by seeking divorce. Akhila listens to the stories of these women. Janaki Prabhakar, Prabhadevi and Margaret Paulraj these three married women are victims of Pygmalion Effect. They are examples of adjustments. Janki Prabhakar realises that she has no identity as such, she is very traditional. Prabhadevi tries to obtain sexual autonomy (which is misfired). She does not understand its complications. She tries to flout the traditions by secretly learning how to swim. Margaret Paulraj is educated, financially autonomous, empowered, but even then has become crippled. No one believes that she is unhappy, what her husband does, and hence she becomes a ‘preying Mantis’. Her tragedy symbolizes the stor y of millions of educated and financially autonomous women. Akhila hopes to find answers to many of the questions that have been troubling her, but she realises that there can be no pet answers and that no one can teach her how to lead

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her own life, that she cannot model her life on the lives of others. It occurs to Akhila suddenly that she is doing it all wrong. She is treating other people’s lives as though they were books that would help her in finding clear cut answers to what she needed to do next. She also realises that all these women are ordinary women who are tied to the bonds of the family life and in turn want the security of married life. Prabha Devi, Janaki Prabhak ar and Margaret Paulraj are traditional in the sense that they have drawn a borderline or Laxmanrekha for themselves and they lack the courage to cross it. This Laxmanrekha is drawn by the patriarchal, androcentric society. A married woman is never supposed to take initiative. The same holds true for a spinster in the eyes of the society. Ak hila wants fulfillment in life, first gratification of sexual needs, then motherhood. She establishes a relationship with a stranger. She is not even interested in knowing his name. From typical Indian middle class traditional woman Akhila changes to a transitional woman. She finds out the way to satisfy her physical needs with a relationship. After reading Ladies Coupe, one notices that Indian womanhood is changing. Akhila is educated and economically independent but has no courage to establish a relationship and faces the consequences of it. She lacks initially the courage to defy the norms imposed by the society. Her experience in the bus, the comment by the conductor substantiates this. The conductor represents the society. But after fulfilling her duties as the head of the family, she decides to live for herself. Now she is mentally prepared to face the consequences of her decision. A strong feeling emerges from the novel that women like Akhila expect simple things from the society and that is, they should be considered and treated as human beings first and formost not as women or sexual commodities. Though there are so many female charac ters in

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Ladies Coupe, not a single of them is egalitarian. Various shades of Indian womanhood are depicted through various characters. If Janaki Prabhakar is at one end, Akhila is at the other extreme. As the novel is open – ended, Akhila’s journey would perhaps continue further depicting newer connotations of Indian womanhood. Akhila’s, personality has potential to become an egalitarian woman. In other words, Ladies Coupe is the story of Akhila’s repression, revolt and resolution. Books and References: Nair, Anita, Ladies Coupe, (Penguin Books, India Ltd., 2001). All quotes mentioned in the parenthesis re taken from the above mentioned edition. 1.

Nubile, Clara, The Danger of Gender (New Delhi: Sarup & Sons 2003) p. 72.

20 Evolution of ‘New’ Female Identity in Namita Gokhale — Vandana Bhagdikar

A major segment of the contemporary Indian writing in English is occupied by the fictions of women writers. Through their fic tions, these women writers have successfully projected the urges, dreams and desires of Indian women, in particular the middle-class housewife who refuses to be bounded and suffocated by her surroundings. They have depicted women in the context of the contemporary world as an individual with freedom of choices. Many writers have made the Modern Indian woman the protagonist of their novels. Writers like K amala Mark andaya, Ruth Prawer J habwal a, Ani ta D es ai , G i ta M ehta, N am i t a G o k h a l e, Shashi Deshpande, Shobha De, Arundhati Roy, and Manju Kapoor through their writing have very successfully and skillfully captured the Indian ethos. They exhibit deep insight into human nature and understanding of day-to-day problems. The themes dealt by them are varied depicting clash between modernity and tradition, identity crisis of the protagonist, Indian woman’s search for independence, the East-West conflict, freedom struggle movement and traumatic effect of partition. The novels of Namita Gokhale reveal her keen concern for welfare of women. Her first novel, Paro – Dream of Passion centres round the lives of two women characters, Paro and Priya. Both these women make an attempt to

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shake off the shackles of social convention. But it is only Paro who actually unloosens herself from the shackles. Though Priya also tries to liberate herself from her middle class mental and moral make up, she cannot reach the same level of emancipation as Paro does. Both the women use the same technique – manipulating the opposite sex to achieve their ends. In Gods, Graves and Grandmother, one finds oneself in a world dominated by women characters, with male characters existing as performers of secondary roles. There is the grandmother (Ammi), the grand-daughter (Gudiya). Gudiya’s comparatively insignificant mother, Mrs. Lamba (the Principal of St. Jude’s School for the Socially Handicapped in which the narrator studies) and the indomitable Phoolwati. Ammi was a ‘Courtesan’. She has been thrown out of her ‘Kotha’ and she finds herself without any money in a Delhi slum. Yet she manages to obtain not only respectability but a sort of ‘sainthood’ with a considerable following. A Himalayan Love Story presents Parvati as the frail, poor, and neglected daughter of a poor widow growing up in one of the most backward areas of the backward state of U.P. She is human, fragile, and stubborn and hungry for justice in an unjust, introverted and decadent society of Kumaoni Brahmins. In The Book of Shadows, the protagonist Rachita Tiwari, scared by her lover’s suicide and an acid attack that has left her permanently disfigured has sought refuge in a remote house in the Himalayan foothills. She lives alone in the ancient house battling for her sanity and fearful of a world she no longer trusts. The only anodyne for her pain is the path of self-discovery. Barely managing to emancipate her withering mind from the tyranny of an autodidactic self, she learns her lesson from nature. Woman in Indian social set up has received different treatment at different times. In the pre-independence era, woman was predominantly mild, docile and submissive with no choices to lead her life. She was compelled to accept the norms set up by the traditional male-dominated society. The ill practices of child marriage, sati and denial of education

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were imposed on her. She was the ‘object’ who had to look attractive and obey the dictates of her subject, the male. She was dependent for her survival and well being on her father, husband or son. The post independence era gave a new meaning to the role assigned to a woman. Education and changing social conditions paved way for the emergence of a ‘New Woman’ on the Indian social horizon. This ‘New Woman’, a product of the changes taking place in the society is strong-willed, self assertive, independent and free from her traditional, social and moral constrictions and is able to live with a heightened sense of dignity. She is aware of herself as an individual and can face boldly the adversities of life with determination and conviction. The emergence of ‘New Woman’ can be traced back to the novels of the great Victorians. Towards the end of the 19th century, Grant Allen’s The Woman Who Did, Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’urbervilles, and other works presented a new image of woman. A similar movement to propagate ‘New Woman’ ideas can be traced in Indian English novels. But there exists a major difference between the new woman of the English tradition and that of Indo-Anglian novels. Here the woman has to face complex social forces at work. The early Indian novels by male writers presented an idealized and romanticized images of the women taken mostly from histor y. Writers like Tagore in ‘Bandini’, Premchand in Nirmala, Sarat Chandra in ‘Shubhadra’ started drawing very realistic images from everyday life. Later part of 19 th century and earlier part of 20 th also saw the writers presenting the problems of women. This period also gave rise to a number of women writers like Toru Dutt, Krupabai Sathianathan, Mrs. Swarna Kumari Ghoshal and Cornelia Sorabjee. In earlier novels, women rebelled against age old practices like child marriage, denial of education and atrocities suffered by a woman in her in laws house. In the contemporary novels, women rebel against accepting the traditional feminine roles. They are not docile, silent sufferers but are revolutionary, creating a new character type a ‘New Woman’. The novelists like Kamala Markandaya,

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Anita Desai, Nayantara Sahagal, Namita Gok hale have given revolutionary pictures of the new woman, which do not conform to any traditional code of conduct. In the present paper, I wish to examine Namita Gokhale’s God, Graves and Grandmother in the light of the concept of the ‘New Woman’. Before discussing the emergence of the ‘New Woman’, it is necessary to understand the term ‘New Woman’. According to Usha Bande and Atma Ram, “…the ‘New Woman’ is one who, shown of her ‘feminine mystique’, is aware of herself as an individual, she is free from her traditional, social and moral constrictions and is able to live with a heightened sense of dignity, and individuality. The ‘New Woman’, then, is the product of a new economic order in which woman casts aside her ‘invisibility’, comes out of the metaphorical purdah and avails of the opportunities provided by education, enfranchisement and employment. She, with her male counterpart, struggles for achievements in the professional and economic spheres, and deconstructs the image of a submissive, repressed and self-effacing being. The picture that emerges is of a self-reliant, emancipated and happy individual, a person, sexually uninhibited intelligent, confident and assertive”.

The novel is dominated by women characters giving secondary status to men. The story is narrated by Gudiya about her illustrious, fearless, creative and dominant grandmother whom she calls Ammi who is the true representative of New Woman. Ammi belonged to the family of courtesans, once wealthy with a house of 130 rooms but due to changed circumstances is thrown out of the house and has now come to reside in a jhuggi near a construction site. They do not have any means of livelihood but Ammi being a woman with a positive frame of mind builts a make shift temple under the peepal tree behind their jhuggi. Although Ammi is a muslim yet she takes up the role of a pujarin of the temple and utilizes the proceeds from the temple for their livelihood. As she belonged to the family of singing prostitutes, she uses her sweet melodious voice to enthrall the audience by her bhajans and thus turning them into dedicated bhaktas. The number of devotees visiting the

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temple increases so also the proceeds of the temple. Slowly she becomes the power centre of the temple and controls the management with iron hand Pooja observes, In spite of her distraction, grandmother administered the temple with an iron hand. Everything had to be perfect. The premises were kept scrupulously clean, and all the devotees who constituted the ‘inner circle’, the little band on believers who had surrendered themselves to Ammi’s wisdom, had specific chores assigned to them. There was somebody to sweep the courtyard, to polish the brass and silver, tend the flowers, mind the chappals, count the change, keep track of the the holy days, distribute the prasadam and attend to all the other seemingly unimportant details that constitute the daily life of a temple. (p. 30)

Here Ammi has deviated from the traditional norm that men should earn and women should look after the household submissively. Another characteristic seen in Ammi is that she is courageous and fearless as she is not cowed by Sundar Pahalwan who is the Dada of the area. In return for giving protection to people of that area he would extract hafta from them but Ammi by sheer grit tames him. Gudiya opines “My grandmother had well-acquired knowledge of how to handle men” (P. 18). In the usual ‘honeyed-voice’ Ammi tells Sunder Pahalwan, “Seize out money Pahalwanji but spare our selfrespect. I am the widow of a Brahmin, my husband was a priest. Guard your tongue or else virtuous woman’s curses may follow you” (P. 12). The Pahalwan is further asked to come the following week and take his ‘cash’. But the following monday Sundar Pahalwan is surprised to find Ammi singing a bhajan in front of ‘a statue of Durga astride a tiger’ under a ‘glittering canopy’ with a band of worshippers assembled around the shrine. The result is that Sunder Pahalwan is completely overpowered and he does not leave the shrine before leaving eleven rupees in the ‘Thali’. Similarly, when the man from the Municipal Corporation comes with the demolition order for the ‘pucca cement structure’ which now houses Ammi and Gudiya he falls at Ammi’s feet and begs her forgiveness for the blasphemy”. She is practical and therefore could face the troubles that dog her and her grand-daughter’s

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life with determination, with these qualities engrained in her she not only makes a success of her life in this competitive world but also attains spirituality. She does not indulge in self-pity but faces the world boldly to eke out her living. She is not dependent on anyone. Here the novelist demonstrates that the woman has potential for both corporeal as well as spiritual world which is not less than that of the male and hence she has no reason for self-pity or seek the pity of the male. Another representative of ‘New Woman’ can be seen in the character of Phoolwati, widow of Shambhu, who hailed from district Madhubani, Bihar. She comes to Delhi after her husband’s death and effectively manages her husband’s tea stall. She had a commanding personality and possessed a better head for business than Shambhu had ever displayed. She was confident and focused. She fully knew what she had to do. She exhibits her business knack by negotiating a reduced five year rental from the street lord Sunder Pahalwan. She also diversifies her business to increase her earnings and sets up a stall just outside the temple and sold incense and marigold garlands and coconuts and little brass amulets. She also got coloured postcards of Ammi done and sold them on her stall. Phoolwati is no doubt depicted as a ‘New Woman’ by the novelist who is creative, innovative, courageous and having entrepreneurial skills. She does not spend time mourning her husband’s death but faces the world boldly. Phoolwati’s kicking Shambhu when he drinks alcohol and tried to beat her also marks the reversal of the patriarchal norm of wife being beaten by the husband. P h o o l w a t i a l s o h a n d l e s S u n d e r Pa h a l w a n v e r y tactfully. He becomes mild in front of her. She is successful in making Sunder Pahalwan admire her which culminates into marriage, but their marital relationship is not a conventional one in which the male is the dominant one. She puts certain conditions before accepting the proposal of marriage, which were – firstly, to build a pucca house for her whose ownership would be hers. Secondly, she would continue with her business and thirdly, Gudiya would be

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treated as their adoptive daughter. This indicates that she is aware of her well being and wants secured future and also is aware of her responsibilities towards Gudiya. The message here is loud and clear, if the woman desires she can shuffle the parameters of marriage. She can bring to an end the age old practices prevalent in the institution of marriage like dowry, etc. She can safe guard her identity. She also exhibits her dynamism and confidence when she encounters Mr. and Mrs. Roxanne regarding Gudiya’s future, who wanted to keep Gudiya with them. She deals with them on equal footing without being self-conscious of her economic and social status. Something in her encounter with Roxanne had clearly struck a deeply competitive chord. This was a completely revamped and re-upholstered Phoolwati. She wore an expensive silk sari, patterned in yellow and purple. A thick gold chain festooned her plump neck and a patent leather handbag was slung about her shoulders. A new found poise seemed to have accompanied these sartorial changes, and her already abundant confidence had transposed into a cool assurance. (p. 92)

Even when Mr. Roxanne makes it clear that they do not plan to adopt Gudiya nor will there be any transaction of money, Phoolwati replies spiritedly, “‘Don’t worry about your money on our account. We may not be rich like you, but we do have our izzat. By the grace of God, our Gudiya is not short of money’. Extracting a wad of money from her new patent leather handbag, she counted it out and handed it over to the startled Mr. Lamba. ‘Let me know if you require any more’, she said, triumphantly snapping shut the shining brass clasp of her purse.’’ (p. 93)

Gudiya – Kalki relationship is also presented as a break away from the usual man-woman relationship. Here she modifies the concept of a man as a subject seeking womanthe ‘object’. The author creates a situation where a woman is attracted towards the prince of her dreams and develops a desire to get him. Here Gudiya is the ‘subject’ and Kalki is the ‘object’. This reversal of position is an attempt by the author to displace the male from his dominant position which has been bestowed on him by the patriarchal system. As per

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the canon of this system if a woman desires a man then she is considered to be bold. This reversal of positions makes the novel a strong proponent of feminism. Another incident which asser ts the emergence of new woman is when Gudiya changes her name to Pooja Abhimanyu Singh as she dislikes her previous name since it hides her personality and makes her insignificant, “resolved to change my name, my identity, my very self ” (p. 12 ). The new name acquired by her brings a change in her, making her more confident, poised and graceful, the hint of which we get when she confronts Mr. Lamba and Roxanne’s nephew Cyrus regarding the will left by Roxanne Madam. Gudiya suppor ts K alk i in fulfilling his dream of becoming a famous star by giving him her ornaments so that he can go to Bombay to fulfill his dreams. But he is lost and the novelist does not tell us about what happened to him later on. inspite of losing Kalki, Gudiya remains composed. Kalki is recognized as the husband of Gudiya the grand-daughter of famous spiritual saint grandmother. After Kalki’s disappearance Gudiya joins Phoolwati and they carry on with life. Here Namita Gokhale has presented the concept of sisterhood which is again another aspect of new woman concept. Phoolwati also does not become helpless after Sunder Pahalwan’s death but faces the world with courage and determination. She does not get disheartened at the separation but feels that “I missed him, but I sensed in his absence an opportunity for growth, for escape, which I was determined not to miss” (p. 224). Though she loved Kalki, yet she thought “love is not life” (p. 224). This realization makes her strong and determined to face the world along with her daughter. The relationship of Mrs. Roxanne – Mr. Lamba and the relationship between Lila and her family when analysed confirm the postulate of ‘New Woman’. Mrs. Roxanne is depicted by the novelist as rich, and powerful where as Mr. Lamba is her shadow. He gains status, wealth, and position in view of his marriage to rich Parsi woman Roxanne.

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Roxanne is shown to be busy doing constructive social work by being the Principal of St. Jude’s School for socially handicapped while Mr. Lamba is shown as a person enjoying life because of his rich wife. Th e c h a r a c t e r o f L i l a t h o u g h a m i n o r o n e a l s o highlights to some extent the emergence of ‘New Woman’. She becomes an ardent follower of Grandmother devotedly serving her. Compared with her son, she is depicted as more determined. When the Grandmother dies, he displays her unflinching devotion towards Grandmother by throwing her gold jewellery in her grave much to the annoyance of her family members. Here again Lila is shown as a person taking her own decisions irrespective of the opposition and displeasure of her family. Thus, we notice that Gokhale’s novel is dominated by women who have evolved and emerged as ‘New Woman’. They are the ones who are fiercely independent and not depend on men for strength and survival. They can face the world bravely and boldly. They are decisive, determined, self assertive and dignified. They know what they want from life and strive towards achieving their goals with courage and determination. Gokhale has effectively made a paradigm shift in the position of her woman who are autonomous and do not depend for survival on their fathers, husbands and sons as is the case in patriarchal system. Bibliography 1.

B a n d e, Us h a a n d At m a R a m . Wo m a n i n I n d i a n S h o r t Stories – Feminist Perspective. (Jaipur and New Delhi: 2003) pp. 14.

2.

Chandra, Subhash. Indian Women Novelists: Set III: Vol. 6 Dhawan R. K. ed. (New Delhi: 1995) pp. 13-20.

3.

Chandra, Subhash. The Literary Voice: No. 3 (Feb. 1996) pp. 53-58.

4.

Gokhale, Namita. Gods, Graves and Grandmother (New Delhi: 1994).

5.

Shrivastava, Sharad. The New Woman in Indian English

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Contemporary Fiction: An Anthology of Female Writers Fiction: A Study of Kamala Markandaya, Anita Desai, Namita Gokhale and Shobha De. (New Delhi: 1996) pp. 101-117.

6.

Singh, Smriti. Studies in Women Writers in English: Vol. 2 Mohit K. Ray and Rama Kundu ed. (New Delhi: 2005) pp. 151-163.

21 Mother-Daughter Relationships in Fasting, Feasting and Difficult Daughters — Usha Kurjekar

Women in any society constitute the most important segment of the country ’s population. Their role in moulding the younger generation cannot be underestimated. The future of any society depends on the way a woman as a mother brings up her children and influences the process of their personality development. The harmony of family relations and its stability depends upon to a greater extent on the status and behaviour of women as wives and housewives. Anita Desai and Manju K apur have explored the problems of the Modern Indian society in its varying aspects. Like Kamala Markandaya, Anita Desai and Manju Kapur not only concentrate on the aspect of human relationship, but also trap their emotional and mental springs. The innermost psyche of the character is revealed through the interaction with the family which ultimately shapes their destiny. Kapur and Desai have depicted many other human relationships besides the mother daughter relationship. The relationship between an individual and society, the relationship between siblings, between friends and casual acquaintances, etc. has been highlighted in many works.

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The novelist, while presenting the Indian women and Indian modes of life, reveal their deep study of Indian culture and tradition in which they are rooted. The focus is on the predicament of human beings. The novelists are quite aware of the injustice implied in the forced silence of millions of Indian women. In a land where Goddess of Wealth, Knowledge and of Power are all women, the real situation is diametrically different. In their novels, Indian women have been more chained than liberated, more traditionally bound than modern, more restricted and confined than liberated. Some have broken off from the shackles and have moved towards freedom. Restlessness, uneasiness, a kind of turbulence persists even in their liberated or traditional states. They are all in a state of unsettlement- seeking something which is elusive. They reflect the image of Indian women caught between age old native traditions and unavoidable exotic influence. They have mostly related the problems of women who have difficulty in adjusting to people and circumstances, where in Uma and Virmati provide glaring examples, which show the novelists’ special insight, their feminine angle of vision. They have known and felt the grave traditional bound, conflicting, suffering and struggling aspects of the Indian women. The story of Virmati in Difficult Daughters and Uma in Fasting, Feasting is not at all new. It almost happens in every other household where the eldest daughter has to carry on the life long duties of nurturing and looking after the younger siblings. Their education remains secondary and from the very childhood, they are forced to accept the role of a mother. Thus, their primary job is to look after the household chores and caring for the children. Mother-Daughter relationships and its ambiguous pains and pleasures have become an integral par t of women’s fiction. Mothers share a very strange and complex relationship with their daughters. The mother may be affectionate and may saddle the girl child with her own destiny and think that she can make a traditional woman of

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her daughter. But the mother can also be hostile towards her daughter and treat her with a sense of rivalry. The societal atmosphere which has moulded the psyche of the mother as a woman also makes the young uninitiated girl child a special object of mother’s persecution. Mother daughter relationship forms the matrix of both the novels Fasting, Feasting by Anita Desai and Difficult Daughters by Manju Kapur. Uma and Virmati both grow up in their mother’s shadow. Horney, a psychologist, begins with the preposition that each human being is unique in himself\ herself and has real self. This real self can lead him to self realization which is the goal of human life, provided he finds a warm environment to grow from an “acorn to an oak.”1 Motherhood is the greatest joy in the world. It is an instinct that every woman cherishes. It is a gender specific relationship. Mother daughter relationship forms the core of the two novels Fasting, Feasting and Difficult Daughters respectively. It is on the background of this relationship that the story is built and the resultant confrontation provides a backbone to the gripping story. The role of the mother achieves significance as she is solely responsible to build or destroy the life of her daughter. If however, a child is surrounded by such elders who are absorbed in their own world of despair and conflicts then, they naturally fail to see the child as an individual. Under such circumstances, the child naturally feels alienated, lost somewhere within. This is truer for a girl child who needs the constant support of the mother who would understand her problems and help her to come out of the distress. But then the question arises, are these women free in the prevalent patriarchal set up to raise their voices and let their daughters enjoy a life of freedom and assertion? The feminist writers of 1960’s and 70 have attacked the mother as a tool of patriarchy who socialized the daughter into a subordinate role. Indian society is essentially a male dominated society in which the ascribed status of woman has been very low. Even with educational achievement and economic independence,

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she continues to be subservient to men in almost all fields. In free India, women are still bound by customs, traditions, which play an important role to keep their status low. The society has traditionally determined the role of the woman as a daughter, wife and mother, confining and constricting her to a family. Even the son is given due importance by backing the patrilineal social structure where a woman is always considered inferior to a man. A girl is denied freedom and liberty, unlike the boys. A negative self image develops right from the very childhood and the seeds are sown to make a girl - a woman, a mother to carry on the drudgery of the family. Uma in Fasting, Feasting is the pivotal figure who sees life in its sheen and observes how others live through it. Her father has completely overshadowed the mother. Her father rules her in a subtle way, where he leaves no space for the mother. The mother and father speak for each other and they seldom disagree. Since the father prefers a baby boy, the mother must agree to it. Uma’s mother is forced to lead a life that suits her father. She stands insignificant as far as the decisions are concerned. The father remains the hub of all activities and when a son is born, he becomes focal point in the life of the parents. Fasting, Feasting reveals human values and mother daughter relationship through the protagonist Uma. Uma is always denied basic happiness, which she longs for and wishes to obtain but fails miserably to get. She is forced to lead a life which denies her any freedom. She is shown as a simple girl cherishing the desire to lead a life that fascinates her. She is forced to lead a life amidst the four walls. She can be considered as an utter failure as far as the norms of the society are concerned. Who is then responsible for her present state? It is none other than her mother. It entirely depends upon the mother to make or destroy the life of the daughter. Uma lives in a family which has always neglected and ignored her as a human being. She is lonely in her despair. She was allowed to break into fragments due to the mother’s

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callous as well as indifferent attitude. The very ground for becoming a successful female was denied to her. She craved for love. She feels burdened up by the oppressive dominance of her mother who always insisted on her conforming to the traditional way of life. She took no personal interest in her education and personal advancement. Instead she always snubbed her for one thing or the other, denied her the love and affection. She also made rude remarks about her physical appearance without realizing how her words would affect the child. Hence she grew up as an unwanted, unloved and insecure child. Discrimination between a boy and a girl child is done by both parents. In Fasting, Feasting are moments of disagreement between them, but they are reconciled mutually. Initially, Uma and Aruna are the centres of attraction. Not a moment passes when parents do not need the help of Uma, their first born. The birth of Arun changes the life of Uma. Uma remembers how Papa exclaimed at the news of the arrival of a baby boy.Arriving home, however he sprang out of the car… in his elation, leaping over three chairs in the hall, his arms flung up in the air “A boy” he screams, A bo-oy! Arun, Arun at last.”2 Then onwards the hands of the clock moved only in one direction - Arun. For the entire day, things were done only for Arun in a proper manner. Everything was well planned for him. Papa insisted on, “the education of his son, the best, the most, the highest, the tutors came in a regular sequence, an hour allotted to each, for tuition in Math, in Physics, in Chemistry, in Hindi, in English composition”3 Being a male child, Arun is entitled to better facilities for his career. He is to be trained to have a modern outlook of freedom and individuality. His sister Uma is shaped and moulded to distort her personality. Papa’s dream of sending his son abroad for studies grew very strong. But did any one care for the education of Uma? Uma being dimwit must remain at home for the help of her brother instead of

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pursuing the progressive way of equal rank. She was denied and was burdened with the responsibility of looking after Arun. After the birth of Arun, Mama was not able to look after the household works and Uma had to fill the place. The role of the mother should have been to send her to school. The mother herself was not much educated and did not realize the importance of education in life. She says, “You know you failed your exams again. You’re not being moved up. What is the use of going back to school? Stay at home and look after your baby brother. I need your help, beti, she coaxed, her voice sweet with pleading.”4

Uma was unable to confide her agonies to any one, not even her mother, because she was stifled by the age old traditions to do so. She hesitates to speak about it because of the long habit and tradition which binds her. For her inner conflict was that of tradition against modernity, co n s e r v a t i s m a g a i n s t f r a n k n e s s, a c c e p t a n c e a g a i n s t rebellion. Uma too is conscious of her limitations but yearns to be free like a bird.Her mother was unable to pierce the cruelty which she was perpetuating. The birth of the son is not only a matter of pride to Papa, but even, “Mama sailed out with an added air of achievement, you could say, and they were now more equal than ever” 5. Her mother’s psyche was moulded to accept drudgery and self negation as norms of existence and to treat themselves as undesirable persons in their subconscious mind. Uma is oppressed in this patriarchal world not so much by her father, but her mother. It is in the hands of the mother to make or mar the personality of her daughter. The mother here becomes instrumental in contributing to Uma’s hysterical condition. The bleak circumstances leave Uma hysterical. Thus a normal child is pushed into insanity by maternal indifference. M a n j u K a p u r ’s D i f f i c u l t D a u g h t e r c a p t u r e s t h e complex relationship between a mother and daughter over a period of three generations. Set in pre-independence India, the novel unfolds the story of Virmati, a daughter and a mother. Virmati’s relationship with her mother is the most

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problematic one as she has to play the role of a mother to her eleven siblings. As she is only busy doing the daily chores of the house, she has no time for her own self. The mother looks upon her daughter as the governess of her children. The daughter has lost her individuality, where her education is treated secondary. “She could hear her mother telling her not to waste her time; there were more important things to do. Like looking after the children, thought Virmati bitterly, and then, as she thought of Paro’s clinging arms around her neck, she began to cry.”6 Virmati considers her cousin Shakuntala as her ideal who is pursuing higher studies at Lahore and wants to become like her. But her mother Kasturi has different plans for her where in studies find no place. Like other Indian girls she should be married and sent to her in laws place. “Kasturi found the fuss Virmati was making about failing unreasonable. It hardly made a difference to the real business of her life, which was getting married and looking after her own home.”7 Kasturi, the mother, sees a rival in her daughter, who would challenge her world in future. The mother remains confined to the bed as she is only involved in the work of procreation. Her unique position in the house is to be lost to Virmati and she has to yield unwillingly. As soon as Virmati shows signs of assertion, conflict develops between the mother and daughter. Virmati’s falling in love with the professor makes the matters worse. Kasturi does not want her daughter to form a separate identity which would make her identity fragmentary. The mother does not appreciate the freedom that the daughter demands and craves for. In this way unknowingly, the mother becomes the voice of patriarchy. She holds these values as ideal because she has been taught so, in the patriarchal set up. Virmati find herself in deep trouble and crisis. She tries to commit suicide and fails miserably due to the growing affection of the Professor and her imminent marriage. She becomes vulnerable to the outside influence. Virmati is

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compelled to suffer alone in silence, as she was not able to share her sorrows with her mother. The absence or lack of mother’s sympathetic shoulders at home forces Virmati to look for sympathy outside. Since Virmati does not have the support of a sympathetic mother her agonies are aggravated. Instead of showing compassion, the mother disowns her daughter altogether. Thus the mother daughter relationship marches from identification to alienation. The chord that binds them together is already broken and broken for ever. The mother does not realize that the daughter wants a separate identity and freedom, she wants her own existence. Since the daughter has no other option than to rebel – so she rebels. Virmati’s rebellion is the result of her mother’s tendency to ignore her. Hence, she rejects the world of domesticity, marriage and things associated with marriage and all that her mother stands for. She wants to transport herself into a new world, a world of knowledge and self assurance. Virmati thus excels in the end and fights against the engulfing and oppressive power of patriarchy. It is not important here that her voice was not heard, what is more important is that she at least tried to raise her voice. However Virmati is not the only difficult daughter in the novel, her daughter Ida also turns out to be equally difficult. The novel begins with the death of Virmati, the rebel who cannot be an ideal mother. The narrator Virmati’s daughter Ida can speak only because the mother is no more. Thus the novel presents the paradigm of two mother daughter relationships. “Now her shadow no longer threatens me. Without the hindrance of her presence, I can sink into her past and make it mine.” 8 The very first sentence of the novel reflects her antagonism for her mother. “The one thing I had wanted was not to be like my mother.”9 But the daughter Ida can also have no escape from her mother, just as Virmati the daughter could not have from her mother, Kasturi. Ida, nevertheless, confirms the centrality of her mother which brings about the positive stature of Virmati in the novel. She may be a rebel, an outlaw, the castaway to her relatives, but for Ida she must be the centre

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and thus she reconstructs the story of her mother and allows her imagination to flow: “In searching for a woman I could know, I have pieced together material from memories that were muddled, par tial and contradictory. The places I visited, the stuff I read tantalized me with fragments that I knew I would not be able to fully reconstruct. Instead I imagined histories, rejecting the material that didn’t fit, moulding ruthlessly the material that did. All through I felt the excitement of discovery, the pleasure of fitting narratives into a discernible inheritance.”10

Ida, in her quest for identity, begins the search of the person who was her mother. In order to survive Ida must also strive for centrality. She fights against the society and rebels against it and in the process frees her mother from the bounds of periphery, and in doing so, asserts her own individuality. She becomes Virmati’s creator and thus frees herself from the dominance of her mother. Thus the daughter escapes the mother’s engulfment by recreating her mother. “This book weaves a connection between my mother and me, each word a brick in a mansion I made with my head and my heart. Now live in it, Mama, and leave me be. Do not haunt me any more.”11 Thus a mature understanding is formed between the daughter and the mother. While it is interesting to note that in the mother daughter relationship, just as Virmati does not want to be like her mother - Kasturi, so also Ida, the daughter of Virmati resents being like her mother. She begins the resolution that she would not be like her mother. What started as alienation ends up in complete identification. In spite of the advancement in science and technology and the subsequent urbanization, India still retains the features of a highly heterodoxical culture, where currents and cross currents of practices present a vivid scenario, not easily explicable. What is static and common is the prevalence of patriarchy that relegates woman - a subordinate place in the social hierarchy. The novelists have endeavored to transmit the basic

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anxiety, loneliness and helplessness of their situation. The notion which the male charac ters express about the status of girls and women, their education, liberty, socializing, adjustment, marriage, etc. reveal the crudity and insensitivity of the traditional male ethos, which stifles and smothers the individuality of women in a gradual and planned way. The novelists portray the sufferings and deprivation of feminine life by presenting certain characters as stereo typed representatives of traditional motherhood. The novelists assertively exhibit that women should have an assertive individuality which includes the ability to take decision about their life and carry them out with a sense of responsibility. Within the societal roles of wife, daughter mother, she can be herself by erasing her conditioning and freeing her from her inhibitions. This is very hard for an individual, especially if she is a woman. This very same predicament has been portrayed by the two mothers-Kasturi in Difficult Daughters and Mama in Fasting, Feasting. Had they shown the courage to transcend the traditional barriers, then they would have served as better mothers and paved way for the success of their respective daughters. Th u s t h e c h a n gi n g s o c i o d y n a m i c s, e d u c at i o n a l rights have brought cognizance amongst the present women as daughters, but they still have to create a niche for themselves. Even the economically independent and financially liberated daughters are also driven to feel such constraints. The patience of silence and endurance should be broken and the outcome should be a new daughter with great affirmation and emotional explosions. Thus the two novels reveal the mother daughter relationship depicting the trauma of the daughters who are compelled to suffer at the hands of their own mothers. Their activities are curtailed by the mothers and hence they fail to assert their identity as autonomous individuals. It is the role of the mother which becomes significant as she has to mould

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the daughter to help her find a new meaning in life and also nurture a balanced perspective towards the diversified role that she has to take up in near future as a mother, wife, etc. It is the mother who has inculcated the norms of a closed minded conservative society in which a woman is morally bound to prefer a son and the daughter who is yet to come to terms with her mother dictates about her secondary status in the family. It is the mother who saddles her own child with her own destiny and thinks it wiser to make a traditional woman out of her. The two daughters on the other hand do not want to be like their mothers. It is quite disheartening to note that the contemporary woman has not only to put up with the social discrimination, but also has to cope up with the victimization of the mothers. Thus both the novels require the immediate attention for the transformation of the social ethos to make it more conducive for the daughters to develop individuality in themselves. It is a very central issue which would formulate the very foundation of her future development as a happy individual. The daughter’ reassessment of her relationship with her mother will enable her to re -identify her own self and come to terms with reality and equip herself with confidence to face the problems of her life boldly. Notes 1.

K aren Horney, Neurosis and Human Growth, (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1951) p. 51.

2.

Desai, Anita, Fasting, Feasting (New Delhi: Vintage, 2000), p. 17.

3.

Ibid., p. 118.

4.

Desai, Anita. Fasting, Feasting (New Delhi: Vintage, 2000), p. 22.

5.

Desai, Anita, Fasting, Feasting (New Delhi: Vintage, 2000). p. 31.

6.

Kapur, Manju, Difficult Daughters. (New Delhi: Penguin India,1998). p. 18.

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7.

Ibid., p. 19.

8.

Kapur Manju, Difficult Daughters. (New Delhi: Penguin India, 1998), p. 258.

9.

Kapur Manju, Difficult Daughters. (New Delhi: Penguin India), 1998, p. 1

10.

Ibid., p. 258.

11.

Ibid., pp. 258-259.

22 On Structures of Dyadic Mother-Daughter Relationships (An Analysis of Kamila Shamsie’s Broken Verses) Hell is nothing more or less than the absence of the beloved.

Literature by women presents an “imaginative continuum.” 1 Cer tain motifs recur in the novels of female novelists. They are the “unacknowledged sociologists of the world.” Women have been left out of history and to “rectify” this “women centered inquiry” should be conducted to see “what would history be like if it were seen through the eyes of the women and ordered by values they define.”2 Alice Walker too highlights the role of a female novelist. “A woman writer will recognize that along with her consciousness of social issues, she must incorporate racial, cultural, national, economic and political considerations into her philosophy.” 3 Kamila Shamsie’s Broken Verses incorporates various strands of national, socio-politico-cultural aspects of Pakistan. It is a “compassionate book, which intelligently discusses the dilemmas of educated women in Pakistan.” 4 Shamsie employs the technique of ‘a story within a story’ to acquaint readers with her plot. Samina Akaram, a female activist and a blazing beauty walked out of her home fourteen years ago after the death of her beloved Poet and just disappeared.

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She left behind her daughter Aasmaani, a fourteen year old girl. Aasmaani’s parents were divorced and her mother Samina was in love with an activist revolutionary Poet. This relationship of mother had distanced Aasmaani from her mama who always followed the exiled Poet round the world. Her father had re-married Beema and Rabia was his second daughter. Aasmaani’s rapport with her step-mother and half sister provided her emotional warmth and security. This is substantiated by her comment to Rabia, “My mother who left fourteen years ago, who used to leave so often before that, only my mother has power in my life. You’re the one who’s always been my rock, you and Beema together, the anchors who keep me marooned to sanity” (p. 178). In the opening scenes of the oeuvre, 31 year old Aasmaani had received clues suggesting that her mother could be alive. Her search for her mother and the Poet forms an integral part of the stratagem and mystery of the text. The void and grief in Aasmaani’s life has been subtly brought to fore by the use of sentences such as “She did not come back for me, Mirza. I was never reason to stay or to return for either of them” (p. 220); “She seemed lodged, like a tear, in the corner of my eye, evaporating in the instant I turned to look at her” (p. 65); “… and my newly found method of coping with her absence was excess, which meant drugs, drink, men, or any combination of the above” (p. 69); and “You’ re really not a normal mother” (p. 203). She admits frankly, … Every prayer of mine for the last fourteen years had been one single word:Mama. Every prayer and every curse. Without her here, I didn’t know how to create for myself any story but that of the daughter she deserted, time and again; the one who never gave her a reason to stay. The one who now gave her no reason to return. (p. 144)

In describing the relationship of the mother and the daughter, the writer points out aptly, “…we are only irreplaceable to those who love us?” After her mother’s disappearance, Aasmaani had soon given up searching for clues and conspiracies. She just waited for her to call

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and return till she became 31 years old. On getting some clues, she wondered what her reaction would be to her mother’s comeback. Shamsie’s craftsmanship finds fullest possible expression in her depiction of the parallels that existed between the life of Samina, Aasmaani’s mother, and another character, Shehnaz Saeed. Both these females were celebrities, with one child each (Shehnaz had a son called Ed). Shehnaz was returning to the silver screen after a hiatus of fifteen years. Her comeback to the ‘real-life’ drama would evoke responses akin to what they would be if Samina came back. Aasmaani suggested that Boond (the comeback serial) should start, Let the show start with her return to Karachi, after years away. Let those years be years of mystery, and silence. That allows her to step on the screen both as a character who has been away from her family for many years and as Shahnaz Saeed returning to all our lives. Those initial moments of recognition that her family has when she comes back, those gasps of shock, those searching inquisitions of every aspect of her appearance to see how she has changed, can both mirror the audience’s responses to her and set up the character’s position as ‘the familiar/unfamiliar mother/ friend/ enemy/ex-wife.’ You said the show starts with her ex-husband’s proposal to another woman. Think how the drama increases if his proposal coincide with Shehnaz Saeed’s return to town… (P. 15-16)

The ‘real life’ story of Samina has been moulded into the ‘reel-life’ story of Shahnaz Saeed. Aasmaani visualizes a woman disembarking a plane in Karachi- a woman who had ‘departed without explanation so long ago, leaving behind her only child.’ Part I A mother-daughter relationship is a unique and intense relationship that often determines the future development of the woman. Its specialness is characterized by the following features. (1) the mother remains the identification object for the girl…, (2) it is an intense and ambivalent relationship, (3) it is a relationship between same gender persons and (4) it requires fusion as well as separation for the proper

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developmental sequence to occur. Difficulties that arise along the way have effect on body image, self-esteem regulations, career choices and relationship to men. 5 Mother-daughter relationship has been the subject matter of many novels. Understanding the relationship is critical because daughters bond with their mothers in a complex, interdependent, intricate association that often inhibits a daughter from establishing her own identity. Amy Tan wrote The Joy Luck Club in 1989. Many other well-known feminist writers too have explored the mother/daughter relationship in their works of art like Paule Marshall in Brown Girl and Brownstones (1959); Alice Walker in Meridian (1976); Jamaica Kincaid in Annie John (1985); and Toni Morrison in Beloved (1987). Notar and McDaniel stated, “One of the earliest and most profound bonds women form with each other is that of mother and daughter”. 6 Although the relationship is complex, young adults often need to understand their mothers in order to understand themselves. John Bowlby examines the roles of women as mothers from a psychological perspective. He feels that “the infant and young child should experience a warm, intimate and continuous relationship with the mother.” Bowlby ’s arguments imply that there is a genetically based psychological need for a close and intimate motherchild relationship. 7 The intimate relationship with mother provides emotional security whereas ‘maternal deprivation’ in early years results in psychological disturbances.8 Part II John Bowlby’s insight into psychology is substantiated by the depiction of traumatic state of Aasmaani’s mind. Aasmaani doubts if she was a product of love. Comments she, “Not that I’ve ever imagined my conception, of course, but I’m sure it occurred entirely by accident. My mother must have bumped into my father in the dark as their paths crossed somewhere in the vicinity of the linen closet” (271-72). Aasmaani doubted her own conception, but for the world at large, her being the

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daughter of Samina was an obvious fact. Her face looked familiar and women confused her for her mother Samina, the activist. Her eyes were exactly like her mother’s. Samina’s skill for word usage, language, and voice was inherited by Aasmaani and people commented on it. Her father too found the resemblance amazing and remarked, “Sometimes there’s so much of her in you. Your voice, your eyes, your quickness with language. And it reminds me of the Samina I loved, that girl who stole my heart…” (p. 249). Shahnaz Saeed, her mother’s friend, also saw the reflection of Samina in her. She pointed out, All the time. You have all these gestures. Like now. The way you’re sitting. The way your arm is crooked on the back of the sofa and your head is resting on your hand. That. Right there. (p. 291)

In this novel, in the childhood of Aasmaani, her mother was often removed physically through travel, activism, and later on due to her disappearance. By removing the mother who was alienated from her husband and only daughter, Aasmaani, the daughter, was left alone, with more freedom on hands than she could cope up with, to face and solve problems on her own. This device brings to forefront the conflicts inherent in the mother/daughter relationship. The mother was absent emotionally in the daughter’s vital formative years due to her relationship with the Poet which precipitated a shift in the relationship between mother and daughter. Her yearning for Mama is evident from her dialogues like “I’ve spent my whole life missing Mama” (p. 182) and “She wasn’t there when I got my first period, had my first crush, bought my first music album. She wasn’t there for any of that” (p. 137). She adds, “After my mother disappeared I used to see her everywhere not just in the form of other women but in empty spaces, too” (p. 65). This maternal distance and deprivation had a deep impact on Aasmaani’s persona. The first bonding in infancy is with the mother. Although this initial bonding is true for both sexes, boys break away at an early age to identify with their fathers. In a recent journal article, “Mothers and Daughters:

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A Discussion of Theory and Research,” Carol Boyd reviewed theories that focus on the uniqueness of the mother/ daughter relationship. She cites Nancy Chodorow, a pioneer in researching mothers and daughters, who explained, “The mother is the early care giver and primary source of identification for all children.... A daughter continues to identify with the mother” (p. 292). For Aasmaani this was not to be. During adolescent years, Aasmaani’s trauma was intensified and found expression in words, Who was I to talk of odd households, when in between the ages of fifteen and seventeen I had lived under the same roof as a divorced couple, his second wife and their daughter? And after that I’d spent all those years shuttling between the picture perfect normality of life with Dad, Beema and Rabia and the utter unconventionality of my mother’s house with its connecting door to her lover’s garden. How unremarkable those arrangements had seemed to me. (p. 102)

The mother-daughter relationship undergoes added conflict and strain in the adolescent years because the mother is the primary role model and teacher of cultural values. Margaret Notar and Susan McDaniel wrote an article in the journal Adolescence describing the mother/ daughter relationship as “...often conflictual, particularly during their daughter’s adolescence, and [it] manifests many of the ambiguities and confusions about the social meanings of womanhood and motherhood.” 9 Like ever y motherdaughter pair, they too had faced communication gap. Even though her mother had abandoned her, the relationship had few moments of glory too. As Aasmaani reveals, “You had your moments, Mama, I’ll give you that. In those- what was it? ten years out of the first seventeen of my life when you weren’t absent in one way or the other, you had your moments” (p. 71). On another occasion, she comments, “When I was an adolescent, Mama had sat me down to tell me about the facts of life” (p. 202). This grim reality of life compelled Aasmaani to scan her relationship with Samina, to ponder how much of Samina’s remembered persona was reality, how much was myth, and how much was Aasmaani’s own — and false — creation. Thus, it was a quest for

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identity for 31 year old Aasmaani. Broken Verses is thus simultaneously a mystery, a romance, and an examination of the burdens and privilege that the children of celebrities are endowed with. Her unusual name Aasmaani Inqalab too is her mother’s only precious endowment. Aasmaani has fond memories of how her mother chose her name. “My mother’s choice, the name. My mother had made all the important choices regarding my early life; the only thing she left to Dad and Beema was the actual business of raising me. Aasmaani Inqalab: celestial revolution. Such a name never really admits the notion of childhood. But Beema used to whisper in my ear ‘Azure.’ Aasmaani can also mean azure. An azure revolution. Like Picasso’s Blue Period, she’d say, without the gloom.” (p. 3)

“I too, am of the sky, I said aloud. My mother named me” (p. 70), exclaims Aasmaani displaying her sense of pride in her name. The abandoned daughter’s relationship with her mother, the relationship of the mother and the Poet, the mother who always followed the Poet in exile and hence disappeared for long spells, abandoning the adolescent A a s m a a n i to e te r n a l u n ce r t a i nt y a s to h e r m o t h e r ’s whereabouts, forms an integral part of the narrative. In this disturbed state of mind, the daughter received coded messages. Only two people knew the code-the Poet and her mother Samina Ali. The message resulted in Aasmaani’s search for her mother and her hoping against hope that her mother would come back. The mystery is gradually unfolded with Shahnaz Saeed and Dad’s help. Shahnaz acquainted her with the fact that her Mama was in a severe depression after the Poet’s death. After a ver y disturbing night, Rabia asked for Beema’s help and instead of Beema, her Dad arrived. He made her aware of some acrimonious truths about her mother and her disappearance. Unable to face the truth, she literally threw her father out. ‘Has her faults? Fourteen years later you’re still saying, has her faults?’ He reached across the table and caught me by the elbows. ‘Aasmaani. Aasmaani, your mother is dead.’ I knew they’d been saying it, all of them for years, but it was for the first time I heard the words. I knew it would happen

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Rabia tried to pacify both of them but in vain. Even though Aasmaani loved her mother, she was aware of her faults. She knew that Samina had done injustice to Beema, her surrogate mother. Samina too had declared, “She’d [Beema] make a wonderful mother to our child.” Perhaps she had not realized the prophetic value of her own utterance. Beema too slipped into that tailor-made role effortlessly and even looked after Samina in her distress. Beema’s daughter, Rabia, too accepted her half-sister’s responsibility instinctively. Aasmaani confesses, “I t was the subtlest glance that they exchanged then, my mother and sister (because that’s what they were, after all-never mind, the steps-and the halfs-), but in it I saw a baton being passed, some responsibility for me transferring from Beema to Rabia.” (p. 22) She had witnessed Beema’s warm and intense relationship with her dying mother and in a way, she had yearned for such an exquisite relationship with her mother. Shamsie’s depiction of Beema’s warm relationship with her ailing mother makes Aasmaani remark, “Beema spent hours at a stretch sitting by her mother’s bedside, holding her hand, moving only when some one opened the door to let in a draught- then she’d smooth down the goosebumps that appeared on her mother’s skin, though the old lady was well past being aware of such things. Watching her, I sometimes envy.” (p. 324) She appreciated Beema’s relationship with her mother and Rabia and was able to analyze Ed’s relationship with Shahnaz objectively. She reprimands him, “Ed, have you any idea how lucky you are that she’s still here to forgive you?” (p. 238) Her plight was very tragic. She was ready and willing to forgive her mother but it was too late. With due support from her family, she had accepted her mother’s death but was unable to visualize a morally strong woman being carried away by the waves. She never returned.

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Her absence was proof of her death. She loved me too much to allow me to believe that she was dead when she wasn’t. Despite all the lies, some how that memory, that certainty, had come to me, urgent and unshakable. (p. 337-38)

Part III Literature is “cr iticism of life.” I n her Broken Verses, Shamsie discovered the world of real human experience and hence depicted in her fiction “life” as it is defined in terms of relationships. Life and literature are complimentary to each other as the raw material for literature is supplied by life itself. Shamsie has depicted characters and relationships (family and familial) specific to her cultural sensibility. That is why, her female characters in the novel are educated, emancipated, empowered, and diasporic like herself. Shamsie’s choice of professions for Samina and the Poet provide a fascinating window into Pakistan’s socio-political and literary scene. A reader desirous of having a glimpse into the life of common women in Pakistan would be disappointed. Socio-political-feminist and women’s rights movements in Pakistan have been projected with authenticity. The religious spirit pervading Pakistan finds an expression in usages like Ramzan, Sehri, Iftar, the chanting of Arabic from the mosques, a sneaking neighbour keeping a watch on the people who do not observe Roza, Eid and Eidi, etc. Her beautiful use of language, literary allusions, use of myths, and exquisite metaphors make a reading of Broken Verses a memorable experience. Above all, her deft handling of human relationships and an insight into their psyche sets her apart. These relationships include almost all bonds of human life like- the husband-wife, father-daughter, mother-daughter, mother-son, and siblings, etc. The novelist acquaints the readers with both traditional and non-traditional approaches to familial relationships. All relations have been explored not as per the cannons of romantic idealism but according to living life experiences. Human will, desire and determination mould and modify the dynamics of human relationship within and without the family. The most amazing bond is that of a

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mother and daughter, a relationship of same gender persons. A daughter’s first and closest bond is with her mother. The umbilical cord is, in a way, never snapped off. With the growth and development of the daughter, the intricate relationship assumes newer and more interesting facets. Daughters link with their mothers in a complex, interdependent association. As Aasmaani grew up, she found her mother farther and further away from her. She found that as she matured into an independent woman, sweet, unconditional feelings of love changed, leading to bittersweet relationships between a mother and a daughter. And this relationship continues even after the death of the mother. It reflects “timbres of love, jealousy, rage, friendship, admiration, passion, hurt and adoration” (p. 307). Death is inevitable and all relationships come to an end but says Shamsie, “No amount of love or pleading, no promises or entreaties, could slow the decay of that body of which she had once been a part” (p. 23). “Past literature shows that the mother-daughter relationship is considered the most significant of all intergenerational relationships,” says Dr. Mudita Rastogi, associate professor of psychology at Argosy University/Chicago and a licensed marriage and family therapist. “Estrangement between a mother and a daughter is a combination of individual, familial, and societal factors,” says Dr. Rastogi. “And the reasons why mothers and daughters become estranged can be varied and complex.” 10 The reasons of Aasmaaani’s estrangement from her mother were varied. Samina’s inner self was divided among her commitment as an activist, a mother, and a beloved. The first reason was her relationship with the Poet. Young, adolescent Aasmaaani was not able to understand the depth and various nuances of the same. Her intimacy with Ed acquainted her with the hitherto unknown aspects of that relationship. As a result, Samina’s attention was divided and for Aasmaani, her mother image was fractured/fragmented. Her maternal affection was subjugated due to her other commitments, and she had no will to break those hindering, obstructing ties. The Minions, for Aasmaaani, really came in the guise of Ed and it sounded like

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a new beginning, but alas! She realized, “They have it easy, the ones who can mourn the dead” (p. 323). Aasmaani wanted to forgive her mother, she wanted her mother to know that she was proud of her activism but her words always remained unspoken due to the traumatic, at times turbulent, nature of their relationship. Her Mama was an activist and a strong person but “She wasn’t an unbreakable creature of myth. She was entirely human, entirely breakable, and entirely extraordinary” (p. 332). Aasmaaani was able to understand her mother and accept the fact of her death. All those things my mother had done in the first fifteen years of my life which outsiders saw as signs she wasn’t a good mother-every time she left, every occasion she followed the Poet to another city or another country, every school play she missed because she was in prison or at a rally-I had, at the time, forgiven, understood, even been proud of. All those things could be understood as signs of her strength-strength of love, strength of purpose, strength of belief in my ability to understand why she couldn’t be ordinary. I forgave her all her strengths. But I couldn’t see her collapse for what it was because that, to me, would have been a sign of weakness-and I would have regarded that as betrayal. ‘I wasn’t willing to accept that she was human, Dad. I wasn’t willing to accept she could be broken.’ (p. 330-331).

Her Dad had given her the strength to face and accept the finality of the loss of her mother. Like her, he too was not able to understand her and he regretted this fact. His sincerity touched her and she too came out with “I would have liked to have known her.” For the first time, the fatherdaughter duo were close and the daughter spontaneously responds,” I’d like to know you.” She missed her mother and cried for her death. Her father’s able counseling resulted in her catharsis of pent up emotions, and in this role, her father unknowingly accepted the guise of a mother and proved that the feeling of motherhood is not gender specific. The insight that she had developed in her own relationship with her mother equipped her to counsel Shehnaz and urge her to forgive her son. Her advice to Shehnaz shows how well she has understood the relationship. She simply said that

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she could not forgive Ed but Shehnaz should as “you’re his mother. That changes everything.” That really sounded like a beginning for Aasmaani - Beema, Beema - Rabia, Rabia Aasmaani, Dad - Aasmaaani and Rabia, and Shehnaz and Ed. Shamsie’s deft handling of human relationships and her pertinent strokes in characterization, especially of the dyad of the structure of mother-daughter relationships indicate that in the Broken Verses, the patterns of familial relationships were not guided by social norms but were ruled over by independent female psyche for whom social or conventional taboos had no meaning or value. Notes 1.

Elaine Shoewalter, “ The Female Tradition”, Feminism:An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism, ed. By Robyn R. Warhol and Diana Pice Herndle and N. Brunswick, N.J., (Rutgers University Press, 1991), p. 273.

2.

Gerda Lerner, “ The Challenges of Women’s Histor y,” The Majority Finds Its Past, Placing Women in History, (New York: O.U.P.,) p. 52.

3.

Quoted from Payant, Katherine B. Becoming and Bonding: contemporary Feminism and Popular Fiction by American Women Writers, ( Westport: Connecticut, Greenwood press, 1993), p. 166.

4.

Ti m e s L i t e r a r y S u p p l e m e n t , b l u r b o f B ro k e n Ve r s e s, Bloomsbury, 2006.

5.

Fenchel, Gerd H., ed “ The Mother-Daughter Relationship. Echoes through time, an overview” Basics of Development, Part I, (Washington: WSI, 2007).

6.

N o r t a r, M a r g a r e t a n d S u s a n A . M c D a n i e l , “ Fe m i n i s t Attitudes and Mother-Daughter Relationships in Adolescence,” Adolescence, 21.81, ( Virginia Tech, 1986) pp. 11-21, 12-8-07, scholar. lib. vt. edu/ejournals/ALAN/ winter95/Nadeau.html.

7.

Harlamboss M. A and R.M. Heald, Sociology Themes and Perspective, (New Delhi, O.U.P. 1980), p. 372-73.

8.

Ibid, p. 410.

9.

http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/ALAN/winter95/Nadeau.

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html 10.

Mother-daughter relationship, http://www. pioneerthinking. com/ara-motherdaughter.html

23 Echoes of Realism in Manju Kapur’s Difficult Daughters — Shubha Mishra

Manju Kapur belongs to that class of Indian women writers, who live in India and write in English like Shashi Deshpande, Arundhati Roy, Githa Hariharan, Anita Nair and Shobha De. These novelists present in their writings the realistic social, economic, and political conditions, which are very special to the Indian life and culture. The innumerable class, caste, ethnic, religious stratifications, which cannot be easily discerned, require a typical sensibility, the conditioning of ‘collective consciousness’, and also the psychologically moulded cognizance of the multiple indigenous influences of epics, folk tales, etc. Perhaps an Indian sensibility in its true sense is accessible only to such Indian writers. All the three novels by Kapur present a very earthy, down to earth Indianness through her characters, themes and setting. Her debut novel Difficult Daughters (1998) based in the late colonial period highlights the lives of four generations of women. Her second novel, A Married Woman (2002) describes the women protagonists in a more contemporary period, the 90’s, while her third novel Home (2006) begins after independence and spans three generations of a single family. Her novels revolve around women’s issues, and superbly scan the socio-cultural and political environs of the times depicted in a very realistic way. The term realism and the emergence of novel writing

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are closely associated. Many critics trace this link and have established the fact that of all literary genres, the novel most “consummately unites an exploration of the subjective and the social” using realism as the basis. 1 Simply put, a character, setting or an event is regarded ‘realistic’, because it is based on our ever yday life ‘reality ’. The apparent contradiction in what is ‘realistic’ and what is ‘true to life’ leads to the various contradictions and arguments, which this concept has raised almost since the eighteenth century. Some definitions will show its vast scope, which have made this concept a ‘tendency’ or a ‘mode’ most frequently used in literature. According to Oxford Dictionar y, it is “an attitude of mind in which one accepts a situation as it is and is prepared to deal with it, without pretending it is different.” 2 The Cambridge International Dictionary of English states: “Realism is a way of thinking and acting based on the facts of a situation and what appears to be possible rather than on hopes for things which are unlikely to happen.” 3 Many recent dictionaries mark the term with a star, denoting it as one of the most used term. The Dictionary of the History of Ideas mentions: “The term “realism” was originally used by the thirteenth century scholastics as meaning a belief in the reality of ideas; it was contrasted with “nominalism” which supported the doctrine that ideas are only names or abstractions…. As a literary term, realism occurs first in a letter of Friedrich Schiller to Goethe (April 27 1798) asserting, “realism cannot make a poet.” Friedrich Schlegal in the same year formulated the paradox that “all philosophy is idealism and there is no true realism except that of poetry.” 4 The New Encyclopedia Britannica tries to define realism from a philosophical sense. “Understood in its broadest philosophical sense Realism connotes any viewpoint that accords to the objects of man’s knowledge an existence that is independent of whether he is perceiving or thinking about them.”5 The term realism, as is obvious from these definitions, has a wide spectrum of meaning, though its most general aim is to

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offer a truthful, accurate and objective representation of the real world. Realism, a critical term adopted from philosophy, has now acquired multiple variations, not only in literature, but also in all other fields of knowledge, gathering around it a huge gamut of critical analysis. Many novelists have felt the need to use this concept in their writings and for the realistic representation they have resorted to a number of strategies. Some of these are- use of descriptive and evocative details, avoiding mythical, imaginar y and fantastical, fulfilling requirements of probability and including characters from all strata of the society. The approach in realistic writings changed from excluding events that were improbable to focusing on the present and contemporary life rather than longing for an idealized past. Realistic writings began to focus on the individual as a social being with the use of everyday speech, colloquial idiom, and disfavoring refined, elevated language. The emphasis shifted to observations, induction of general truths and fac tualit y. I n the nineteenth centur y, this concept initially came to literature as a reaction against Romanticism, but over the years, it has had a long journey, through many literar y and ar t movements, gathering many kinds of debates, analysis and mistrust around itself. Lilian Frust comments in her book Realism: “As an artistic movement realism is the production and expression of the dominant mood of its time [the mid-to late nineteenth century] a pervasive rationalist epistemology that turned its back on the impact of the political and social changes as well as the scientific and industrial advances of its day.”6 The term realism is perhaps arguably indispensable to the novel and is also one of the most independent, elastic and prodigious of critical terms very similar to fiction. Peter Lamarque notes, “ … a fiction is realistic if it describes characters with combination of properties that would not be strange or out of place if exemplified in individuals in the real world….”7 In the post modern critical writings, the concept

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has enlarged its scope with many ‘ t ypes’ of realism, which have been applied in many forms of writing, art, science, aesthetics, photography etc. Inspite of its ‘chronic instability’ 8 its use persists. Manju Kapur in her first novel Difficult Daughters uses realism as a strategy to be able to present the “lives of women, whether in the political arena or in domestic space.” In an interview, she elaborates: “One of the main preoccupations in all my books is how women manage to negotiate both the inner and outer space in their lives – what sacrifices do they have to make in order to keep the home fires burning-and at what cost to their personal lives do they find some kind of fulfillment outside the home.”9 Difficult Daughters, Manju K apur ’s first novel, is located in the 1940’s and has won the Commonwealth Writer Prize for the Best First Book (Eurasian Section) and has been translated in six foreign languages (Dutch, German, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and also in Marathi). The theme of the novel describes the independence acquired by the nation and the independence desired by the protagonist Virmati. Every detail of these changes, turmoil in the nation and Virmati’s life is described in a very matter of fact, realistic tone. The aspirations of the girl to live a freer life are linked to the values of a traditional joint family, a very important aspect of Indian social life. Virmati is very representative of the women of the 50’s, who had their destiny chalked out by a patriarchal society. She rebels against the patriarchal set up to pursue higher studies and marry the one whom she loves. The story spans Virmati’s life from her school days to a married second wife of an English Professor, which their daughter Ida, hinged between the tensions of modernity and tradition, is trying to trace. The most prominent aspect of the novel is its being rooted in the milieu, in which the novelist herself was born and brought up. The Indian values and culture are prominently depicted in the background of Arya Samaj. The formation of Arya Samaj by Swami Dayanand Saraswati around 1900 and the educational reforms it brought about

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is one of the prominent sub themes used by Kapur. Arya Samaj brought about a very prominent social, cultural and educational change in the society, especially in north India. The change in social attitude is very realistically depicted through the mind-set of the four generations of a family. Educational reforms have been traced in the novel since 1904, when Virmati’s mother Kasturi is sent to a Christian school, but due to religious insecurity of her mother, her Uncle specifically starts a school for girls. Reference to educational institutions, throughout the novel, highlights the social change Arya Samaj was bringing about in the pre-independence era. Cultural aspects of the Samaj too have been depicted. Communal havan, a prominent r itual is prominently depicted with reference to Kasturi. “Above all, the school ground the rituals of Ar ya samaj havan, sandhya, and meditation so deeply within her that for the rest of her life she had to start and end the day with them.”(62). Similar description of havan and sandhya are constantly found in the novel. These rituals not only provide a sense of harmony in communal life but also remove the distinction of caste and class, because everybody is allowed to participate in them. At the individual level too this ritual provides inner strength, and emotional anchorage as Virmati describes that during her lonely confinement, “The first thing I do is my sandhya, slowly and with great concentration.”(89) It helped elevate her loneliness and guilt. The ideal of simple living and high thinking, which Dayanand Saraswati advocated, is also constantly focused through many of its sub themes. In the later part of the novel, gradually these ideals are intermingled with those given by Gandhi. Lala Diwan Chand and his whole family restrain themselves in any extravaganzas, even though they belonged to the prosperous business class. The writer shows this in the description of wedding trousseaus, eating habits, living standards and various celebrations symbolically but obliquely, depicting the innate simplicity Arya Samaj

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advocated. Similar subtle but repetitive references to the plainness and austerity of the educational institutions, can be found, which indirectly focus on the fact that these were built by groups of ordinary but progressive Arya Samaj followers. The school Ar ya K anya Mahavidyala, where Virmati studies is also a ‘single set of rooms’ in congested lanes in the old part of Amritsar. When she goes to Lahore for her teachers’ training course to the Rai Bahadur Sohan Lala Training College again this comparison is made, which points to many other social realities. “Past Government College, past DAV College, on and on the tonga went. The grand building receded, and to Virmati’s dismay they entered a more congested part. Finally, they reached a high brick wall, with a small, painted sign proclaiming that these were the premises of the RBSL School and College. To one side was a black gate, with the usual pedestrian opening let into it…Mother and daughter looked around speculatively. Kasturi was relieved. A plain no-nonsense place. None of those poems in stone and brick they had been passing. A good Arya Samaj Institution”(113-114).

The social attitude towards education is another aspect, which runs parallel to Virmati’s desire to study. Kapur very realistically and elaborately depicts how each generation reacts differently, towards various changes education brings about. K asturi’s mother sharply reacts to her praying to Christ, after attending four months of schooling in a missionary school and threatens to marry her off. Nearly twenty years later, when Virmati fails her FA exam, her mother simply says, “I told you it was too much for you”(21), without taking cognizance of the fact that, as the eldest Virmati had been a mother to her other ten children. Kasturi’s attitude is reflected in her curtness with which she tells Virmati, “Leave your studies if it is going to make you so bad-tempered with your family. You are forgetting what comes first”(21). Through out Virmati’s life, she hardly receives any affection or encouragement for studies, especially not from her mother, though she constantly craves for it. Though Kasturi had studied till class VII, but for her generation,

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family was the first priority. The burden of traditional upbringing of her generation echoes through these words when she comments on independent Shakuntala, her niece. “She’s become a mem”, Kasturi said disapprovingly. “Study means developing the mind for the benefit of the family. I studied too, but my mother would have killed me if I had dared even to want to dress in anything other than what she bought for me”(17). While Shakuntala’s mother constantly worries for her daughter. “Hai re beti! What is the need to do a job? A woman’s shaan is in her home. Now you have worked and studied enough”(16). Marriage and education have been described like two parallel lines, which don’t meet, inspite of social awareness due to the teachings of Arya Samaj. Kasturi had studied for five years in the girl’s school especially started for her. “During Kasturi’s formal schooling it was never forgotten that marriage was her destiny”(62). A similar fate is destined for Virmati, though she is allowed to complete her FA even after her engagement. An exception like Shakuntala is there in the family, who is a postgraduate, employed and independent, but is never referred to in a positive manner, especially by other women of the family. Her refusal to marry, together with her education is regarded as a dark spot on the family. Shakuntala sows the seeds of education as a ‘means of freedom’, into Virmati’s young mind, though she does not have a ver y great flair for it. Eventually education becomes a center of focus in her life, leading her through many ups and downs. It becomes her strength in achieving some level of freedom from the shackles of patriarchy but also her weakness and a façade to hide her illicit love affair. On the individual plane, the contrast between illiterate Ganga and the young educated Virmati symbolize a large segment of women. Though Virmati’s education becomes instrumental for her meeting the Professor, it also makes her realize the disparity between the couple the highly educated Professor and his illiterate wife. This issue focuses

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on another aspect related to education and marriage. The England educated Professor makes efforts to teach his illiterate wife, but fails miserably, because she is too steeped in looking after the family and its comforts, being conditioned in a very traditional way, since childhood. Besides her typical feminine fatalism makes her feel, that perhaps in future “sometimes, when I have the time. If God wills I will learn.”(94) She is unable to realize her husband’s needs of an “educated companion, a thinking woman”(94). Her attitude eventually brings Virmati into her house as her husband’s educated second wife and becomes the cause of her lifelong misery. The contrast between them begins in the first meeting as friendly neighbors, when Virmati boasts to Ganga, “My mother, my masi, all studied. It is the rivaz in our family” (39). The writer also points at the contrast in attitude between partially educated Kasturi and the illiterate Ganga in a very subtle manner. Education eventually evolves into one of the major issues in the novel. When Virmati joins the Arya Sabha College, she is the seventh girl in her batch, because it is regarded as the “bastion of male learning. It had four hundred boys to six girls” (45). How these girls survived in the backdrop of male students is very interestingly described. The Professor knew the seven girls spent their time between classes in a small room meant for them, next to principal’s office, on the inner side of the courtyard. Through the thin bamboo curtain that covered the door, they could see what was going on in the morning assembly, could see when all the boys had reached their class, and when it was safe to venture forth, heads muffled in dupattas dashing to their reserved seats in the front (46).

These lines speak volumes, focusing on how change came about in the social attitude towards women and education. When Virmati’s affair with the married Professor becomes public knowledge, and she refuses to marry her fiancee, the whole tone of the issue- marriage and education, suddenly acquires a different shade. On the personal plane, it becomes a cross for Virmati to bear, because she wants

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both, her freedom and happiness for the family. Virmati is constantly afraid of humiliating her grandfather, who is publicly associated with female education (57). While for Kasturi education suddenly becomes unfathomable as her thoughts reflect the generation gap and her inability to understand her daughter’s point of view. What had come over the girl? She had always been so good and sensible. How could she not see that her happiness lay in decent boy, who had waited patiently all these years, to whom the family had given word? What kind of learning was this, that deprived her of reason? She too knew the value of education, it had got her husband, and had filled her hours with the pleasures of reading. In her time, going to school had been a privilege, not to be abused by going against one’s parents. How had girls changed so much in just a generation? (60)

Through out the novel, Vir mati constantly faces emotional and physical turmoil, which her mother refuses to acknowledge, and constantly feels that her “education has only achieved the destruction of the family.” Her mother’s feelings constantly nag Virmati, destroying her peace of mind and happiness. She is torn between her guilt and her desire to keep the family happy. Swarna Lata’s character adds another dimension to the polarity depicted through education and marriage. She has also come to Lahore for higher education, escaping her parent’s efforts to get her married. Unlike the confused Virmati, she is in full control of her life. The emergence of the ‘new woman’ is seen, who openly bargains, to achieve her freedom, does not cry or try to commit suicide. Swarna Lata says, “I was very clear that I wanted to do something besides getting married. I told my parents that if they would support me for two more years I would be grateful. Otherwise I would offer satyagraha along with other Congress workers against the British” (117). There are other related aspects with education, which the writer brushes upon, like education and modernity, education and women’s rights, education and patriarchy and also education and morality. All theses are symbolically depicted through Virmati’s emotional plight, Ganga and

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her family insecurities, Swarn Lata and Asharfi’s episode, Virmati’s abortion and her marriage with the professor and also Ida and her loneliness. In the fourth generation, Ida’s education and divorce are again looked upon as a thing of ‘family ruin’, same as Kasturi and Virmati. Kapur very intricately intertwines the major issue of education with many social, economic, religious and moral nuances pointing very realistically at the multidimensional effects of education. The writer also puts a mirror to many other aspects of the society which have not changed inspite of independence, affluence, education, social reforms, etc. These are reflected in Ida and Virmati’s relationship. Virmati is very strict in the upbringing of her daughter, who eventually finds many escape routes, similar to what Virmati had also done in her time, but the generation gap persists. Marriage is still regarded as the ultimate aim of life, and education only a secondary aspect, even in the fourth generation of the novel. This is also reflected during Ida’s journey to Amritsar, when other women in the ladies compartment give her suspicious looks. Her mother’s family also looks down upon her with pity at her childless, divorcee status in the society. Cu l t u re i s a v e r y p r o m i n e n t s u b t h e m e, w h i c h highlights the strategy of realism Kapur uses in her novel. The setting of the story is in north India, and the writer, as an insider, depicts many indicators of Punjabi culture intricately with the social milieu. ‘Food’ is a strong symbol used to depict multiple social, economic, emotional and cultural nuances. In all the four generations the life of women revolves around cooking and serving the family. They are groomed in this craft from childhood and take great pride in doing it. Kapur provides some interesting details of north Indian cuisine, like she describes Kasturi’s training in seasonal pickles made of ‘turnip’, ‘carrot’, ‘red chillies’, ‘dates’, ‘ginger ’ and ‘raisins’, then ‘kanji with sour black carrots’, all very special to Punjab. Food for celebration, food as a means of ‘neighbourliness’, food to celebrate rains,

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food as a means of keeping the family together, importance of hot food, etc all find place in the narrative, symbolizing communal living and many other social realities. Clothes are another important cultural symbols used to depict socio-cultural reality linked to every day life of the characters. Preparation of a dowry for the daughter, embroidery and phulkari work, running the charkha at home, clothes and various ceremonies, are all described in a very even tone, as part of the main narrative, but they significantly highlight the life and condition of women in the society. Types of clothing are also used as social indicators like simplicity through Khadi, fashion through Shakuntala’s matching outfit, extravagance through Sohanlal’s clothes, modesty indicated through the dupatta, and the disuse of it as modernity. Clothes have not only been depicted as social symbols but also as indicators of morality. When Virmati attempts suicide and is rescued, her wet salwar kameez receives different reactions. She burns with shame as she faces her-grandfather, her brothers, and the servants. Her emotional trauma is severely highlighted through her wet clothes. Later her change in style after she marries the Professor, her sense of possessiveness for him and the tussle between the two wives are all depicted very realistically and symbolically through clothes. The joint family culture, which symbolized communal living and sharing in the family is another realistic aspect constantly hinted at through out the novel. A strong sense of ‘sanjha’, (togetherness) prevails in the older generation of the family, who respect and accommodate in the common land, common money, joint business and shared space. The values of Arya Samaj are also reflected in this feeling of togetherness. Kapur very authentically describes how the whole joint family system begins to show cracks, when individual interests begin to replace it. The collective family property is broken up and shared as many vested interests seek their personal gains. On a parallel, the breaking of the patriarchy and the joint family is reflected in the trauma the

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partition of the country causes to the common man. Within the confines of the novel, Kapur critiques many social, national and gender issues using the realistic mode. She spans four generation of relationships, social changes, growing nationalism with reverberations of partition like a very artistically shaded painting, which depicts various levels of realities, as one complex work of art. Each strand is beautifully interwoven, mirroring the growing tensions in Virmati’s life and in the nation. Human relationships are very sensitively portrayed, reflecting social changes in the framework of one enlarged family. The author also critiques the formation of the nation and forthcoming partition by mapping Virmati’s relationship with the professor. Virmati is influenced by Swarna Lata and feels she should also exhibit the ambition of Hindu nationalism, but is instantly curbed by doubting the male approval in the patriarchal construct of the society. A constant parallel is depicted through her emotional turmoil and patriotic fervor around her. There are many references to nationalism and the growing tensions in the society due to partition, that are very realistically described to highlight Virmati’s world subdued due to her upbringing. The writer very realistically deals this aspect of nationalism, partition and its association to Virmati’s emotional evolution. Imperialistic labels and colonial undertones constantly add realism to the setting of the novel. Some prominent phrases will suggest the large span-and usage like ‘Manchester Cotton’, ‘English nipple’, ‘a western educated allopath’, ‘Burma teakwood and marble’, ‘carved rosewood’, ‘age limit to ICS examination and Indians’, ‘fair like a mem’, ‘teaching daffodils’ ‘killing sleep like Lady Macbeth’ etc. Similarly the actual locations have been used, like Lepel Griffin Road and Lawrence Road in Amritsar, Company Bagh, English Men of letters, Roerich exhibition, Madonna, etc. There are many such strands in Kapur ’s narrative, which transport the reader in the retro world she creates. S ocial and psychological modes of realism are most

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prominent in her writing. The whole plot, which connects the four-generation of a family, leaves the reader deeply involved in their celebration and mourning. The generation, which had actually witnessed partition, the novel brings back floods of memories for them. The simple form of her narrative, description of every-day life, enmeshed with variety of issues, highlight realism as a powerful mode in her writings. She does not resort to any fantasy or magical realism, like many of her contemporaries to express the mundane or the exalted. Her kind of social realism and its easy acceptance by the readers goes on to prove that all doubts, which surround this ‘ism’, are quite baseless. The sub-themes are very realistically related and intertwined with each other and go much beyond than just the ‘difficult daughters’ of the family. References: Kapur, Manju. Difficult Daughters (London: Faber, and Faber 1998), All Subsequent quotes from this book are given in parentheses. 1.

Hawthorn Jeremy. Studying the Novel (London, Fifth Edn.: Hodder Arnold, 2005) p. 2.

2.

C r o w t h e r J o n a t h a n , ( e d ) O x fo rd Ad v a n c e d Le a r n e r ’s Dictionary, Fifth Edition, (Oxford Univ. Press, 1999,) p. 969.

3.

Proctor Paul, (ed) Cambridge International Dictionary of English, (London: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1995.) p. 1179.

4.

Wicner P. Philip (ed in chief ), Dictionary of the History of Ideas, Vol. IV, (New York: Charles Scribner ’s Sons 1955), p. 51.

5.

The New Enc yclopaedia Britanica.1943-1973, (London: William Benton Pub. 2004), p. 1117.

6.

Frust, Lilian. Realism (New York & London: Longman, 1992) p. 47.

7.

Lamarque, Peter. Fictional Points of View (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996) p. 38.

8.

Grant, Daniel. Realism (Great Britain: Nethven & Co. Ltd., 1996) p. 3.

Echoes of Realism in Manju Kapur’s Difficult Daughters 9.

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[http://in.rediff.com/news/2006/jun/07spec1.htm] Pande Iva, ‘Exploring Space in Relationships,’ In the Hindu (23 Oct 2007).

Index

A A Himalayan Story, 216 A Married Woman, 118, 121, 125, 127, 250 A River Sutra, 181

British Prize, 50 Broken Verses, 237, 243, 245, 248 Brone, Charlotte, 156 Burney, Fanny, 156

Abhijnana Shakuntalam, 140 Adhikari, Madhumati, 201 Ambedkar, Dr., 80 American Culture, 109 Amy Tan, 240 Anand, Mulk Raj, 164 Annie John, 240 Arranged Marriages, 103 Arya Samaj, 254, 255 Asian Lesbian Conference, 19

C Carson, Rachel, 93 Chekhov, Anton, 145 Child Marriage, 62 Choudhary, Nirad C., 164 Coastes, Peter, 94 Cracking India, 78 Custom of Feudal of Rajasthan, 62

D

Austen, Jane, 156

B Bandini, 217

Darkness’, 69 Das, Kamala, 15, 16, 18

Beloved, 240

Dayanand Saraswati, Swami, 254

Better Man, 164

Desai, Anita, 156, 215, 218, 225

Bhabha, Homi, 6, 104

Desai, Kiran, 156, 176, 177, 179

Binding Vine, 91, 95, 101 Brata, Shasthi, 165

Deshpande, Shashi, 70-73, 76, 156, 215, 250

Brick Lane, 49-51, 57

Deshpande’s Women Characters

Index

265

(Deshpande’s Character), 72-74

G o g o l, N i k o l a i , 1 4 6 , 1 4 7 - 1 4 9 , 151-153

Difficult Daughters, 112, 114, 115, 117, 119, 120, 122, 125, 127

Gokhale, Namita, 135, 215, 218, 222, 223

Divakaruni, Chitra Banerjee, 103, 110

Goltfelty, 92

Dudley, Andrew, 29

Gour, Neelam Saran, 1-3, 6, 7, 10, 12

E

Gorky, 173

Greek Literature, 93

Eco-criticism, 92-95

H

Eco-Marxism, 92 Eliot, TS, 67

Haveli, 58-61, 63-66

Eliot, George, 156

Hindus, 7, 79, 84, 86

Emily, 156

Holder of the World, 69

English Literature, 172

Home, 116, 118, 121, 124, 127

English Romantic Poetry, 93

Hooks, Bell, 23

F

Humour of British-Bengali Culture, 53

Facing the Miror: Lesbian Writing from India, 16, 22, 23, 25

I

Fasting Feasting, 226-229, 234

If I Die Today, 71

Feminine Mystique, 70

Image of Indian Women, 225

Feminism, 92

Indian Culture, 9, 143

Freud, Sigmund, 4

Indian English Literature

Friedan, Betty, 70, 72

Indian Literature in English, 143, 173

Friedman, Thomas, 172

G Gandhi, Leela, 180 Gandhi, Mahatma, 79, 83 Garrad, 93, 100 Ghosh, Amitava, 164 Ghoshal, Swarna Kumari, 217 Githa Hariharan, 156, 250 Geotze, 173

Indian Writers in English, 1, 143 Indian Kargil, 8 Indian Lesbian (Lesbians in India), 20 Indian Women (Women in India), 70, 156 Indian Womanhood, 116 Indian Writers in English, 91 I ndian Wr iting in English, 91, 215

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Indo-English Literature, 164, 165 I nheritance of Loss, 173, 175, 176, 178

Lesbian Women in India, 24 Love Relationship in Suleman’s Novel, 10

M

Inside Haveli, 58, 59 Islam, 7

Mani & Palash, 23

Issue of Dowry in Haveli, 61

Markandaya, Kamala, 156, 215, 225

Issue of Girl Child in Haveli, 61

J

Marshall, Paule, 240 Marxism, 92

Jain, Madhu, 84

Meeting Mrinal, 103, 105, 108

Jasmine, 69-71, 74, 75

Mehta, Geeta, 143, 181, 185, 190, 215

Jhabwala, Ruth Prawer, 215 Jinnah, 79-83

Mehta, Rama, 58, 66, 68, 156 Meridian, 240

Joyce, James, 145

Middleman & Other Stories, 69

K

Midnights Children, 123

Kakar, Sudhir, 8

Mistress, 164, 165, 168, 170, 205

Kalidas, 135, 141, 173

Models of Victimhood, 64, 65

Kapur, Manju, 111, 127, 215, 225, 253, 260, 261

Mohammed M. Hafez, 10

Karma Cola, 181

Morrison, Toni, 240

Kerridge, Richard, 92

Motherhood in Haveli, 61

Kidwai, Saleem, 19

Mountbatten, 81

Kincaid, Jamiaica, 240

Mukherjee, Bharati, 11, 69, 71, 73, 75-77, 143, 156

King Dushyanta, 136, 140 Kulkarni, Dr., 71 Kumar Sudhir, 196

L Ladies Coupe, 205, 206, 209, 213, 214

Monica Ali, 49, 50, 54

Mukherjee’s Portrayal of Women, 74 Mukherjee’s Women Characters, 72 Muslims, 7, 79, 83, 84, 86 My Story, 16

Lahiri, Jhumpa, 28, 32, 38, 39, 41-43, 143, 145, 150, 154 Learning & Waking, 23

N Nadu, Sarojini, 82

Index

267

Nair, Anita, 164, 171, 205, 250

Roy, Arundhati, 143, 215, 250

Nair Mira, 28, 33, 37-43

Rushdie, Salman, 1, 123, 164, 173, 177

Namjoshi’s Works, 21 Nand-Kumar, Pratibha, 98 Narayan, RK, 165 Natarajan, Kanchana, 24 National Federation of Indian Women, 20 Nehru, Pt., 79, 81

S Sahagal, Nayantara, 156, 218 Sakhi Collective (Lesbian Resource Centre), 19-21 Sandal Tree, 15, 16 Sarat Chandra, 217

Nirmala, 217 Non-fiction Writings, 58

O Oken, Donald, 184

P Paro-Dream of Passion, 215 Parsi Community, 84-87

Sathianathan Krupabai, 217 Satyr of the Subway of Eleven Other Stories, 205 Saxena, Alka, 203 Second Thoughts, 201 Seth, Vikram, 164 Shakuntala, 135 Shamsie, 245 Shetty, Shilpa, 179

Plato, 48

Shubhadra, 217

Portrayal of the Lives in Havelis of Rajasthan, 58

Sidhwa, Bapsi, 78, 84, 88

Portrayal of Women, 71 Powell, 49 Powell’s Report, 49 Premchand, 217 Private Life of an Indian Prince, 184 Purdah, 60, 63 Raj, 181-183 Rajkumari, 23 Rana, Madhav, 85 Rao, Raja, 1, 165

Sikandar Chowk Park, 1-3 Silence & Invisibility, 20 Singh, Khushwant, 165 Sanakes & Ladder, 181 Socialite Evenings, 193 Sorabjee, Cornelia, 217 Starry Nights, 195 Strange Obsession, 197 Stree Sangam in Bombay, 20 Sukthankar, Ashwini, 16, 22 Sultry Days, 198

Rastogi, Mudit, Dr., 246 Roots & Shadows, 69, 70

T Tagore, 173, 217

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Teachings & Shakespeare, 123

Train to Pakistan, 83

Tess of the Dubervilles, 217

Trevor, William, 145

Thadani, Giti, 19

U

Tharoor, Shashi, 84 That Long Silence, 69

Uma, 226-230

The Better Man, 205

V

The Book of Shadows, 216 The Darkling Thrush, 3

Vanita, Ruth, 19

The Empire Writes Back, 180

Virginia Woolf, 40, 70

The Hill of Devi, 184

W

The Joy Luck Club, 240 The Letter, 24

Wagner, Geoffrey, 29

The Namesake, 28, 30, 34, 37, 38, 41, 42, 146, 151

Walker, Alice, 237, 240

The Princess, 184 The Quilt, 21 The Thousand Faces of Night, 157, 163 The Woman Who Did, 217 Thomas Hardy’s Poem, 3 Tiger’s Daughter, 69 Toru Dutt, 217

Widowhood, 62 Wife, 75, 76 Words, Yours & Mine, 23 Writings of Diaspora, 49

Z Zoroastrian Community, 86 Zoroastrian Philosophy, 85