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RECRITIQUING WOMENIS WRITING IN ENGLISH (VOL -1)
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RECRITIQUING WOMENIS WRITING IN ENGLISH (VOL -1)
Editor
DR. M.F. PATEL PRINCIPAL, SMT. c.c. MAHILA ARTS & SHETH C.N. COMMERCE COLLEGE, VISNAGAR, GU]ARAT.
SUNRISE PUBLISHERS & DISTRIBUTORS E-566, Vaishali Nagar, Jalpur - 302021 (Raj.)
Published by :
SUNRISE PUBLISHERS & DISTRIBUTORS E-566, Vaishali Nagar, Jaipur - 302021 (Raj.) Ph.: 9413156675,9772299149 Email:
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First Published - 2009
©Reserved
ISBN: 978-81-906067-7-6
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any mean without permission in writing from the publisher.
Printed at: Jaipur
Dedicated to
MY DEAR WIFE, LEELA
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First and foremost, I am extremely grateful to Dr. V.5. Patel, Former Principal, Shri. & Smt. P.K. Kotawala Arts College, Patan for his encouragement, gui~ance and inspiration. His benevolent approach has always been a source of inspiration to me for editing this volume. I am also indebted to my esteemed friend, philosopher and guide Dr. Jaydipsinh Dodiya, Associate Professor, Department of English & Comparative Literary Studies, Saurashtra University, Rajkot for his generous help and advice. I have received great help and support in making of this book. So, it is my pleasure to record the obligations to all the contributors of India who contributed their tremendous co-operation for their scholarly papers. I am thankful to the President, Dr. Motibhai Chaudhari and Honourable Secretary, Shri Yogeshbhai Maniar and Shri Niketubhai Maniar of Shri Maharshi Dayanand Saraswati Kelavani Mandai, Visnagar for their positive attitude for my work. I am also richly grateful to my better-half, Leela, without whose co-operation this book would not have been possible. I must not forget to express my thanks to my dear daughter Khyati and dear son Aryan who never disturbed me in my work inspite of being deprived of my love and affection. Finally, I must express my heartfelt sense of gratitude to Shri Jitendra Gupta, Sunrise Publishers & Distributors, Jaipur, India for publishing this volume in very short time. Dr. M.F. Patel Principal
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CONTRIBUTORS Dr. M.F. Patel, Principal, Smt c.c. Mahila Arts & Sheth CN. Commerce College, Visnagar, Gujarat. Dr. Poonam Rani Gupta, Senior Lecturer, Department of English, Baikunthi Devi Kanya Mahavidyalaya. Agra. Vinod Kumc>r Maheshwari. Reader, Department of English, Agra College, Agra. Dr. S. John Peter Joseph, Reader in English, St. Xavier's Autonomous College, Palayamkottai, Tamilnadu.
Dr. Ram Sharma, Senior Lecturer in English, Janta Vedic College, Baraut, Baghpat, Uttar Pradesh. Dr. Bhagabat Nayak, Department of English, Kandarpur College, Siddheswarpur, Cuttack- 754117, Orissa. Dr. Mallikarjun Patil, Reader, Department of English, Kamatak University, Dharwad- 580003. Dr. Basavaraj Naikar, Professor & Chairman, Department of Englisl, Kamatak University, Dharwad- 580003, Karnataka. Dinesh B. Chaudhary, Visiting Lecturer, Department of English, Arts College, Dhanera, Gujarat. Prof. Sankar Prasad Singha, Head, Department of English, Vidyasagar University, Midnapore-721102, West Bengal & Dr. Joyjit Ghosh, Senior Lecturer, Department of English, Mahishadal Raj College, East Midnapore, West Bengal. Dr. B.K. Sharma, Assistant Professor, Department of English, M.L.B. College, Gwalior.
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CONTENTS
• •
Acknowledgements
1.
Indian Feminine Sensibility in Current Indian-English Women Poets
Contributors
Dr. M.F. Patel 2.
4.
5.
24
Rukmani as an epitome of Indian Womanhood: A Critical Consideration of Kamala Markandaya's Nectar in a Sieve Dr. S. John Peter Joseph
35
Feminist Voices in The Novels of Kamala Markandaya
9.
49
Shashi Deshpande's The Dark Holds no Terrors as a Feminist Work
67
Shashi Deshpande's That Long Silellce: A Feminist Approach
Dr. Blzngnbnt Nnynk 8.
16
Vinod Kumar Maheshwari
Dr. MnlliknrjuJ/ PnW 7.
1
Feminism Reconsidered: A Study of Anita. Desai's Cry, the Peacock
Dr. Ram Sharma 6.
v
Existential Dilemma in Anita Desai's Voices in the City
Dr. Poonam Rani Gllpta 3.
iii
The Stolle Angel: The Story of a Woman with a Will Dr. Bnsavnraj Naikar
75 105
Role of Society in the Novels of Nayantara Sahgal
Dr.
l~nlll
Shnrma
128
10. Gita Hariharan's The Thousand Faces of The Night: A Study Dinesh B. Chaudhary
138
11. Feminist Element in Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's Get Ready for Battle Dr. Rudra Prasad Mahto
144
12. Abhiyatri: The Story of a Rebellion Woman Dr. Basavaraj Naiknr
151
13. Kamala Das's The Looking Glass: A Woman's Writing Prof Sanknr Prasad Singha & Dr. Joyjit Ghosh
189
14. Narrative Technique and Symbol and Myth Pattern in the Shorter Fiction of Shashi Deshpande Dr. B.K. Sharma
195
INDIAN FEMININE SENSIBILITY IN CURRENT INDIAN-ENGLISH WOMEN POETS - Dr. M.F. Patel
Indian women poets writing in English from Toru Dutt to Kamala Das and from Sarojini Naidu to Suniti Namjoshi reveal the mind-boggling variety of theme as well as style that poetry is capable of offering. In the last fifty years absorbing a variety of influences, dealing with a range of themes and generating diverse strategies of poetic expression. Each one of them has tried to speak in a distinctly personal voice, yet they form a part of chorus, a collective voice asserting the autonomy of women. It needs to be remembered that poetry written by women need not be viewed only as feminist poetry. In fact the belief that one is a woman is almost as absurd and obscurantist as the belief iliat is a man. However, literature by women tends to get marginalized because of the disparate tendencies of reception to their writings. In writing and particularly in writing poetry women are allotted personal but not public space, a private but not a political or rhetorical voice. Women poets have often raised their voice against social and cultural conventions that constrained their freedom and perpetrated a sort of institutional subjection of women. Women writers assert that the creation of a community of women is necessary antidote to the excess of individualism. They
2
Indian Feminine Sensibility in Current Indian ...
believe that women need to explore their collective consciousness and shared experience in order to transcend the fragmentation and isolation of their lives. With regards to the new trends and techniques in women's poetry there is a remarkable movement connecting the domestic with the public spheres of work. Increased metropolitan activities, sophisticated life styles, globalization, urbanized influences of pop, disco and cafe culture, Anglo-Americanization and the public and convent education of the present generation of women poets have made their poetic language, chiselled, sharp, pithy and effortless. The deconstmctive strategies of narrative and conceptual frames, along with the simultaneous assimilation of pan-Indian elements have made their poetry a formidable area of study and research. Other than the skilful use of standard poetic devices, the semiotic, symbolical and metaphorical properties of language help to emphasize the feminist strategies of interrogation. The fissures and fragments of post-modern life are questioned and reflected in the highly experimental diction. The problems of sociological vis-it-vis literary politics, of gender inequities of margilization and subhumanisation of women, of their social and artistic exclusion and of the dominant need for inclusion and democratization, all contribute towards the distinctive character of this poetry. For the first time, mapping out new terrains the poetry of such Indian women poets bring forth the suppressed desires, lust, sexuality and gestational ~xperiences. This new poetry is new forms of new thematic concerns of contemporary issues have changed the course of human civilization as the country entered the new millennium. As such, it does not remain isolated from the global trends and can be corroborated by the fact that it has incorporated itself the manifestations of the feminist movements that swept through Europe, America, Canada, and Australia since 1960s. At the same time in India appeared the poetry of Kamala Das, Eunice de Souza, Mamta Kalia, Tara Patel, Imtiaz Kalia, Gauri Deshpande, Suniti Namjoshi, Gauri Pant, Lakshmi Kannan, Vimla Rao, Meena Alexander, Charmayne D'Sollza, Sujata Bhatt, etc. Tcjdeep Menka Shivdasni and a few other women poets who not only totally upset the phallogocentric discourse of Indian
Indian Feminine Sensibility in Current Indian ...
3
English poetry by introducing in it a new array of thematic contents in new voices, but relate their experiences in their art from a broad spectrum of styles. Kamala Das is one of pioneering post-independence Indian English poets who have contributed immensely to the growth and development of modern Indian English poetry. Her poetry could be divided into three categories-positive poems negative poems and poems about her grand mother and ancestral house, leaving aside of few poems of some minor observations. The love poems where she expresses her happiness and the poems where she expresses her resentment against unfulfilled love may be termed as positive and negative poems respectively. The Freaks is a negative poem in which love turns to lust. The woman in the poem complains bitterly against the attitude of her man because there is no love between them and what keeps them together for a moment is the lust of the blood. The physical appearance of the man is repelling to the woman because his cheek is 'Sunstained', mouth 'a bark cavern' and teeth 'uneven.' There is no love between them and as he puts his right hand on her knee, "they only wander, tripping/Idly over puddles of Desire". 'Desire' here is personified. It stands for lust-mere carnal desire devoid of warmth of love and affection. Thus, the Woman asks angrily:
Can't this man with Nimble finger tips unleash Nothing more alive than the Skin's lazy hungers? What she wants is tenderness, heart correspondence and love beyond desire, which the man fails to fulfil as he is indifferent to her as a person. She knows that no ~)Utsider will rescue her as love is a matter between a man and a woman and exclusively a personal and private affair, thus she asks: Who can Help us who have lived 50 long And haw failed in love?
4
Indian Feminine Sensibility in Current Indian ...
The answer to this question is an implicit 'no'. The heart of the woman becomes empty and ironically it is filled up with 'Coiling Snakes of silence ... '. A snake that 'Coils in silence' will bite at the first opportunity and that is what she does when spits venom on the loveless life between a man and a woman. The imagery used here is appropriate to the context. The snake is an archetypal symbol of sex. When love becomes mere lust, the woman expresses her disgust. Because what she needs is tenderless both lovable and lasting resulting in their consummation of love. In desperation she concludes: I am a freak. It's only To save my face, I flaunt, at Times, a grand, flamboyant lust. Kamala Das' Reminiscences of childhood at Nalapat House, her family home, are tinged with nostalgia as in My Grand-mather's House and A Hot Noon in Malabar. Her Grand-mother and the ancestral house dominate quite a few memorable poems. The house is a symbol of rootedness and sense of belonging to a place, In My Grand Mother's HOllse, the poet recalls the house, where she once received love and the old woman (i.e. the Grand-mother) who loved her dearly. She is nostalgic about it and the memory of the Grandmother makes her pensive. The poem begins with a note of nostalgia: There is a house now for away where once I received love ...... the woman died. Following the death of the Grand-mother a great change comes over the house. In the words of the poet, The house withdrew into silence, Snakes moved Among books I was then too young To read, and my blood turned cold like the moon. Through subtle imagery and figures of speech the poet brings out the changes in the house in the form of unused books and books that have been damaged due to lack of attentiull, which turned the blood of the poetic persona 'cold like the moon'. In almost a
Indian Feminine Sensibility in Current Indian ...
5
Wordsworthian vein she recalls the past to write poetry as 'the emotion recollected in tranquillity". Thus she writes: How often I think of going There, to peer through blind eyes of windows Or just listen to the frozen air, Or in wild despair; pick an armful of Darkness to bring it here to lie behind my Bedroom door like a brooding Dog ...... You cannot believe, darling, Can you, that I lived in such a house and Was proud and loved. Kamala Das deeply loved and admired her grandmother. In a different situation, Kamala Das laments over the death of her Grandmother and decline of her ancestral place. In Compositiol1 Kamala Das writes: The only secrets I always Withhold Are that I am so alone And that I miss my Grandmother.
A Hot Noon in Malaber is another poem about her ancestral place. Here she recalls the activities of the people in a hot after noon. With all its peculiarities like 'beggars with whining voice,' men coming 'from hills with parrots in a cage and fortune-cars', 'brown Kurava girls,' 'bangles-sellers,' 'strangers,' and 'wildmen' coming to Malabar, the place fascinates her without end. Staying away from Malabar is a kind of torture for her. The hot afternoon seems to bubble with activities like buying and selling of bangles, 'fortune-telling' by fortune tellers and giving arms to beggars. But the afternoon is not without its perils for 'stranger' and 'wildmen' visit the place. The poet puts it in its proper perspective in the following lines: Is this a noon for strangers with mistrust in Their eyes, dark, silent ones who rarely speak At all, so that when they speak, their \,o;ces
6
Indian Feminine Sensibility in Current Indian ... Run wild, like jungle-voice. Yes, this is A noon for wild men, wild thoughts, wild love.
Betrayal in love and physical exploitation underline the agony of the woman expressed in The Sunshine Cat. The poet describes the plight of a woman who has become a victim to the lust of many men. The poem, as usual with Kamala Das, begins abruptly with a conversational tone and colloquial speech rhythm. The opening lines almost read like news paper item imparting sensational news: They did this to her, the men who knew her, the men/she loved, who loved her not enough, being selfish/ and a coward, the husband who neither loved nor fused her, but was a ruthless watcher, and the band/ of cynics she turned to, clinging to their chests where/new hair sprouted like great winged moths, burrowing her / face into their smells and their young lusts to forget. To forget, oh, to forget. The woman is complaining as it were, against male chauvinism but the remedy is out of her reach. They were king only to be cruel when they "let her slide from pegs of sanity into/a bed made soft with tears." Her husband was the worst of the lot who confined her "to a room of books till she was cold and/half-dead woman, now of no use at all to men." This is one of the negative poems of Kamala Das in which the bitterness is loudly pronounced. The Invitation is not easy to read, for here, a complex thought pattern has been infused into the loose structure and thereby demands a close study of the text. The beloved invites the sea to take her away or wipe out her bitter memory of being jilted in love. She, CIS it were, invokes the sea: Oh! Sea, let me shrink or grow, slosh up, Slide down, go your way. I will go mine.
Indian Feminine Sensibility in Current Indian .. ,
7
The complaint against the lover is bitter and images chosen area appropriate to the context: He came to me between Long cOllferences, a fish coming up For air, and was warm in my arms And inarticulate .......... . The lover is likened to fish coming up for fresh air and diving deep when the need is over. The image of sex and note of betrayal go together. Since 'the man is gone for good', it would be foolish to wait for him. Bu t the memory lingers on and the pangs of separa tion abides. Thus she recalls: On the bed with him, the boundaries of
Paradise had shrunk to a mere Six by two and afterwards, when we walked Out together, they Widened to hold the unknowing city the sea. The sea seems to console her and offers a way out by saying 'End in me, cries the sea'. The woman (i.e the protagonist) of the poem to have entered into a dialogue with the sea by unveiling her heart and seeking consolation in order to get rid of this mental tension and physical separation. Thus, she recalls: All through that Summer's afternoons we lay On bees, our limbs inert, cells expanding
Into throubbing suns. The heat had Blotted our thoughts ..... Please end this whiplash of Memories, cries. The woman being young, the waiting is still there for the lover to come. "1 am still young/and need t.hatman for construction and/ Destruction", says the woman. With the rise and fall of tides in the sea, the passion of the woman rises and falls and the longing for the man becomes irresistible. Thl's the poem ends with an invitation to the lover, jllstifying its ti tie:
8
Indian Feminine Sensibility in Current Indian ... The tides beat against the walls, they Beat in childish ..... . Darling, forgive me, how long can one resist
Gauri Despande is a name that the critic and reader of Indian English poetry cannot bypass without leaving a conspicuous lacuna in his repertorie. The canon of her poetry so far includes three collections namely Between Births (1968), Lost Love (1970) and Beyond the Slaughterhouse (1972). The first collection Between Births opens seriously with the reflection on death for whom poet is waiting. The relationship is immediately defined in metaphor of a tardy lover, further strengthened in the concluding lines of the poem where a characteristically Indian allusion to the saptapadi (seven steps), the ritual that confirms a Hindu marriage, is used, And walk the seven steps, With him that'll make him, My ally. (P.1) Unlike an established poet like Kamala Das whose flights are usually circular, Gauri Deshpande's encounter with life is multipronged, subtle, restrained and mature, with a cultivated idiom, making her a more impressive and readable poet. Menka Shivadasni's poetry holds together a private world of chaotic emotions through its logical development and its strikingly imaginative icons. Her Nirvana at Ten Rllpees (1990) is a careful selection spanning twelve year's work. Shivdasni, a well-travelled journalist who worked for a year in Honkong, was one of the founding members of the Bombay Poetry Circle in 1986. In her poetry, she had anticipated many of the new characteristics of Bombay poetry as it would develop during the 1990s. Her poems can be broadly categorized under three types of sceptical altitudes which reveal the writer's preoccupation with pessimism. The first category deals with the relationship between man and God, the second, with the human predicament and the third with the women's condition. In all three cases the life has hit her so hard that the situation is desperate and pathetic and death seems to be the only escape from the generally disturbing experiences of life. Her horrors and
Indian Feminine Sensibility in Current Indian ...
9
temptations of living alone in a small flat, the anxieties of a single life which get complicated by being a woman, the sordid world of sex, drugs, broken relationship and the aftermath are portrayed in stark reality. She traces her own transition from a believer to an atheist in the very first poem of the collection, The Atheist's Confession. The poem starts with nostalgia of rosy faith in the "earth god" when she "ate Prasad only after a bath" is contrasted with a later stage when" gods no longer smiled when I prayed" because she had framed her cold logic that "They couldn't/They were of stone./ "and eventually comes the final word that "God didn't exist." The writer's uncertainly regarding the existence of God is further evidenced in the poems Are YOll Three and Somewhere on the Streets. The tedious nature, the sheer monotony of the modern mechanized existence is described in Destination where the daily commuter's journey in the second class railway compartment is between Church gate and insanity. Another poem Schoolgirl No More displays the modern women's predicament that having spent a lifetime in acquiring bookish knowledge at school, "nothing measures up to what it should. "Geography taught her the vastness of space, history not to live in the past and English Literature "That I belong nowhere. Physics, Einstein and his theory of relativity taught her to hate everything including herself. So mere acquisition of knowledge is fruitless without its moderation through contact with wisdom, seems to be the leitmotif of many of Shivdasni's poems. In the poem Safe-I Think, the human being is compared with a palm, tree, the coconuts of which are likened to the tears of human beings. The coconuts are "wrenched" for profit. Despite thinking that it is safe for the next one hundred and fifty years the trees are surviving under the permanent fear of destruction. The modern man's threatened condition is reflected in the concluding lines that offer a comment on the ever-growing materialistic attitude of people who are simply not concerned with the life and feelings of others: ...... Twenty four ridges on a coconut tree are not 150 years, unless some bureaucrat worried about his job, orders
10
Indian Feminine Sensibility in Current Indian ... me cut because I'm standing in the middle where a building ought to be.
The little of the volume Nirvana at ten rupees comes from the poem Loser, Lose, Addict: When you are happy, only cliche's come to mind - the sky is blue, grass is green, butterflies are free then something happens, and solitary as a murderer, you twist the knife and stalk the streets, your brain being crushed to powder like the contents of vial of smack. Nirvana at tern rupees is cheap, but the sky has a silver tinge you could rather perceive as grey, the butterflies are pinned, heads down, their backs to the wall, like you. Highly metaphoric, at times almost surreal, her poems show a woman alienated from the expected conventions of social life, strongly aware of sexuality and mental unrest where her inner and outer life it is at odds. In the above mentioned poem though Shivdasni apparently mocks at the heart of the volume lurks a similar wage for a paradise or a nirvana, something better than the anxieties, dishonesties, repression, false needs hypocrisy and basic ugliness of ordinary life. The woman is still a 'football' who is kicked around, used and abused and when the man "scores his goals," he leaves her into the drain where it belongs once the game is over. She gets disturbed and angry at the maltreatment meted out to her but is there anything that she can do to alleviate her miserable plight? Another woman poet who is aware of the discrimination of the genders in the society is Tejdeep. The alienation and marginalization as the inevitable rate of woman in patriarchy is portrayed by her in her volume of poems entitled Fiut' Ft'et Six alld a Ha~f [Ilclles (1977), abbreviated F.F. in the following extracts:
Indian Feminine Sensibility in Current Indian ...
11
It is always made solstice if they could
the sun would be spelled son (Five Feet Six, P.9)
and again a woman is depicted as a one holding a bruised soul in six yards of nylon. (Five Feet Six, P.9) Gender typing is one of the frightening consequences of conformity to patriarchal norms. The poet significantly observes in a poem Visionary. Visionaries at dawn do strange things with a handful of flour or chalk. (Five Feet Six, P.2S) Because it is her attempt to hoodwink evil form strangers: with chalk and powder she must attempt to hoodwink evil from under a stranger's spell. (Five Feet Six, P.29) fhe powerful subversion in "must attempt" makes is clear that the vitality hinted at the title is noticeable through its absence. In her case it is perhaps writing of poetry that provides the much needed healing and acts therapeutic: This has the raputised my aches of ferocious despair symbolized my attempt to search for the broken filament in a hundred watt bulb. (Five Feet Six, P.17)
[n another powerful metaphor she reminiscences and muses over the core of timeless wisdom and existential dilemma. Striving toward the process of self-actualization and recognition of the essential ingherent self her poetic outburst speaks volumes: Time seals memories in trunks of trees agitates pages in a diary ............ time erodes friendship burnishes new
12
Indian Feminine Sensibility in Current Indian ... friends ............ time just does not leave it squats on eyelids endlessly. (Five. Feet Six, P.35)
Thought subjective and limited in scope, the works of Tejdeep compel the reader to take note of the underlying significant intent of her verse where she is trying to raise her lonely voice not only for herself but for many upcoming Tejdeeps to charter a new territory for themselves. Sujata Bhatt born in India and educated in the United States, now living in Germany has been shaped by cross-cultural experiences as reflected in her three collections: Brunizem (1988) which won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize (Asian Section), MonketJ Shadows (1991) won a poetry Book Society Recommendation and her third anthology The Stinkin Roe (1997) is the recent book with a selection from the first three books introduced by one new poem, the title poem. Rajana Ash in The Oxford Companion to Twentieth Century Poetry describes Sujata's poetry as "the anguish of immigrants when they start lose their first language," and she comments approvingly on the poet's attempt use Gujarati line interspersed with English ones" onomatopoeia effect, and because for her certain subjects cannot be described in English." In fact, her bi-lingual poem explores the conflict of the self fragmented between different cultures. One can argue that incomprehensibility thus created is poet's deliberate design to draw the reader into her own sense of otherness in order to experience a predicament which allows only a peripheral existence. At the beginning of Search for My Tongue, an eight page poem, the Gujarati sentences are translated quite literally into English. As the poem progresses the Gujarati lines remain flat, prosaic and closed, while the English sentences that flow become longer and richer, spinning off associations and graphically building on them so that they work quite independently of the Gujarati original. Bhatt seems to be obsessed with the question of language, which she looks at from different points of view at different times. Aware of the limitations of language, she confesses:
Indian Feminine Sensibility in Current Indian ...
13
The bets sLory, of course is the one you can't write won't write il's something that you can only live in your heart
YOll
not on paper. Bhatt's recent work evinces her growing interest in the character sketch and its more evolved form, the dramatic monologue. Her exceptionally wide range of reference enables her to present characters as diverse as a young Indian girl during the partition and an old Spanish woman working in her field. The monologues are more numerous; a swimmer in New England, the snake-catcher; the artist in Dublin; Jane addressing Tarzen; and even Hannibal's personal elephant Sums talking to its master. What is generally missing however, is the under current of irony which constitutes the chief strength of Browning's dramatic monologues. By ~he large her poems do not seem Lo develop from social or personal relations; they are poems of the self experience and self definition. The title poem of Point No Point begins: Why name a place Point No Point? Does it mean we are nowhere. When we reach it? Does it ml'an that we lose our sense of mcaning, or sense at direction when we stop at Point No Point? In many other places, almost the same urge of exploring the implications of dislocations and tensions of living in an alien land get c\'ident as in the poem The Ollt' Who Goes Away from the book The Stll1kil1g Rose where she is searching for a place in order to keep her soul from wondering. Sometimes I'm askcd if I wen' searching for a place that can keep my soul from wondering
14
Indian Feminine Sensibility in Current Indian '" a place where Tcan stay without wanting to leave. This poem concludes tritely with: lam the one who always goes away with my home which can only stay inside in my blood - my home which does not fit with any geography.
Moving between countries and cultures, Bhatt is concerned with the construction of the self and its relationship with memory, history and iden tity. While honouring the importance of her heritage, she also seems to be striving to discover who she is; she fosters both the values of her birthplace and her Western self-confidence, bunt at the same time she revels her sense of alienation in the envimnment of the country of her domicile. The poems, therefore, in general are marked by the twin metaphors of loss and recovery. While the loss is real in terms of spatial and temporal distance from the motherland, the recovery can only be imaginary -or at best aesthetic. It is indeed remarkable that Sujata BhaLt has not only the right idiom at her command but also a native mode to express a new consciollsness. Meena Alexander's A HOllse ofl1 TllOllSI111d Doors for instance is an Indian woman living in United States. She often hears voices of the village women she left behind. During her birthing pains in New York these women come in dream to deliver her. In a moment of this primeval pain, all barriers collapse and women come together in mutual sympathy, understanding and concern. Suniti Namjoshi directly addresses the need to legitimize lesbianism and argues that a ,>"oman's love for a woman b both natural and quite ancient. She complains that books, stories and society all collude in propagating the myths of compulsory heterosex.uality and in all these versions men lo\'(' women and women love men, and men rick off and have all sorts of adventures while women stay at home. [n a numiwr of poems included in her collections Jl1ckass 1111£1 tile Lady and RIll!' DOllkey Fl1bl!'s /\l1l1ljosili celebrates lesbian eroticism.
Indian Feminine Sf'nsibility in Current Indian .. ,
15
These and many more recent women poets bring out the conflict of gender through the Indian female psyche in its interaction and correlation with the male psyche. Written in a personal and confessional style, their poetry acts as a social document because they themselves are victims and agents of social change. In the twilight zone in which the creative mind dwells, there is a natural feminine ability to turn inwards, to accept intuition and tenderness as values long with the gentle sensitivity to one's natural environment and to the latent communications among human beings which mobilize the feelings and imageries and bring forth the new feminine voices creating new terrains. Female bonding in literature has thus taken a variety of forms, the agenda being common, women need to come together and call into question all the diverse strategies of patriarchy. Works Cited 1.
Souza, Eunica de , Nine Indian Womcn Poets, Mumbai: Oxford University Press, 1977.
2.
King, Bruce, Modern Indian Poetry ill English, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 200l.
i.
lan, Hamilton, The Oxford Companion to Twentieth Ce11t1lry Podr.lI ill English, Oxford: OUP, 1994.
4.
Shivdasni, Menka, Nirvana at TI:'I1 Rllpel:'s, Bombay: Praxis, 1990.
"l.
Tejdeep, Fipe Fl'et Six alld a Half Inches, Rupa, 1997.
6.
Bhatt, Sujata, Bnllli::t'111, Delhi: Penguin, 1993.
7.
Bhatt, Sujata, Point No Point: Selected Poems, Manchester: Ca rcanet, 1997.
R.
Rahman, AnislIr, Expressh.,l' form ill the Poetry of Kamala New Delhi: Abhina\' Publication, 1981.
9,
Dwi\'edi, A.N., Kamala HOllse, 1983.
Oa~
(/1/(/
OilS,
Her Poetry, New Delhi: Doaba
10. Nair, Rama, ed., Tr('llds mId leclllliqllt's ill Ctmft'mpornryllldiol1 EIl'~lisll Poetry, New Delhi: Prestige Books, 200 I.
DOD
EXISTENTIAL DILEMMA IN ANITA DESAI'S VOICES IN THE CITY - Dr. Poonam Ralli Gupta
In an age of chaos, confusion, 'fever and fret', man has to face variolls problems and difficulties in the form of spiritual stress and mental strain. Heavy materialism of today, the desire to be a face in the crowd' in no time, the complexities of life, home and society, have made man so materialistic, self-centered and egocentric that he can not help suffering from the inner problem - a conviction of isola~ion and meaninglessness. In day today life people suffering from existential problem fail to understand the purpose of life and their existential relation to this hostile world. Existentialism is a modern philosophical idea which deals with man's disillusionment and despair. It also implies human assertion to life. "Existentialism is the philosophy which declares as its first principle that existence is prior to essence" Udarjorie Green, 194'1: 4). Encyclopaedia Britannica defines: It as a protest against views of the world and policies of action in which individual human beings are regarded as the helpless playthings of historical forces or as ",holh' determined bv thp regular operation of nature}1 processes. All existential writers seek to jllstih' in some way the treeJom and importance 01 human personality.
Existential Dikmma in Anita Desai's Voices in the City
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They all emphasize, too, the place of will in human nature by contrast with reason. (Britannica: 1968: Vol.8: 946)
It can further be defined as:
A philosophical movement, esp. of the 20 th century that stresses the individual's position as a self -determining agent responsible for his or her own choices. (Webster's College Dictionary: 1928: 468) Thus, existentialism deals with man's disillusionment and denial of reason and rationality. Existential sensibilities like loneliness, alienation, quest for identity, self assertion, sacrifice, problem of space, desire for independence etc. form the themes of various modern writer's works.
In the contemporary Indo-Anglian fiction Arun Joshi, Shashi Deshpande, Anita Desai etc. have come out as strong exponents of existentialism. Anita Desai, a distinguished, second generation, Indo-Anglian novelist has made significant efforts to delineate the existential dilemma of the modern man and woman. Her central theme is the existential predicament of the individuals which she projects through the problems of the self in an emotionally disturbed milieu. Delicately conscious of the reality around them, her protagonists carry "vith them a sense of loneliness, alienation and pessimism. Her characters are beset by the existential dread to such an extent that all of them directly plunge into this abyss to get at least an inkling of the affairs of life. The question 'what does it mean to exist?: sets them at fire with varying intensity. The uneasiness of 'how' comes much later and remains in background. Like Robert Browning she gets deep into the psyche of these characters ,md unscrambles their true nature lacerated by the forces of self, family and society. Anita Desai's second novel Voices ill the ('lty (196:;), understudy, in this paper is marked by tl1l:' same tendency of alienation and estrangemenl. The leading protagonists viz. Monisha, Nirode, Amla and Dharma are afflicted morl' or less bv estrangement from society and circul11st.mces they li,'e in, They are tortured b) their hollow existence ,1I1d llwaninglesslll'sS. All of them are ~truggling against
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Existential Dilemma in Anita Desai's Voices ill the City
the odds. Some of them suffer because they are not happily married; for them marriages are not made in heaven. Some other face existential dilemma for they find themselves dislocated in the society. Nirode, a typical Bengali youth who has gone bitter against the entire well off people, is a rootless character drifting directionlessly, shifting from one goal to another, finally faced with a void, a sense of emptiness. He quotes Camus: In default of inexhaustible happiness, eternal suffering at least would give us a destiny. But we do not have even that consolation and our worst agonies come to an end one day. (Desai: 2001: 40) Like a true existentialist, he keeps on experimenting with failures in search of an abiding meaning in life. Although he achieves nothing, except for a couple of realizations in the end. This existential search of Nirode shows his intellectual inevitability engineered by emptiness. He has been portrayed by Desai as a predestined tryst with detachment for all the objects under the Sun. He says: You know, Bose; 'and his voice was swathed in cheap smoke, almost inaudible'. I've reached a point now - I always knew I would arrive at it one day -- when I would be impossible .. .I loathe those automatons at the top - I loathe their superciliousness, their arrogance, and their blindness. How dare they be arrogant when working at such senseless jobs? Spend their lives, their entire energy and intelligence at something that does not matter? l-low can one? Better to leap out of the window and end it all instead of smearing this endless sticky glue of senselessness over the world. Beller not to Ii\'e. (P.IS) Though consequences compel him to follow strange routes into a world where a person evolves into a meaning of life or failing to handle the dialectics of his personal angst and the daring to
Existential Dilemma in Anita Desai's Voices in the City
19
participate in life, an individual turns into a suicidal course. There are apparent reasons for that. It is after his father's death that his relationship with his mother undergoes a metamorphosis. Next, it is his own fixation to his mother and the latter's abandoning the house at Calcutta that generate in him a desire to extricate himself lock, stock and barrel. However, hard he may try; Nirode is unable to get away from his relationship with his mother. It infiltrates his sleep, and entering the world ordreams turns into a nightmare. Anita Desai puts his plight as: He soon saw why: he himself was not an inhabitant of it, he stom some distance away from it and between him and his mother's territory was erected a barbed wire fence all glittering and vicious. (P.128) Nirode's existential anxiety and withdrawal from the world is a withdrawal from the self which loves his mother. He feels loneliness and hollowness all around and hence when he folds his arm closely about himself wanting to announce to the world that he is a leper, it is a disease of his existential dilemma: I am a leper, leave me, do not come near, I am a leper, diseased with the loneliest of all diseases. (P.132) He does not want contact with other human beings, turns away from love, wants nothing to do with marriage, disapproves of his mother's friendship with Major Chaddha and resents her claims on him, which has alienated him from her and in turn fro m the rest of the world. Like a true existentialist Nirode realizes that his journey of life is doomed from the very start. He can not get away from the city that holds him down. He tells David: I want it (Voice) to fail quickly. Then I want to see if I have the spirit to start moving again, towards my next failure, I want to move from failure to failure, step by step to rock bottom. I want to explore that depth. (P.65)
20
Existential Dilemma in Anita Desai's Voices in the City
Thus, he experiments with failure like a true existentialist hero. Wearied by his own unsureness: He swept back and forth like a long weed underlating under water, a weed that could live only in aqueous gloom, would never rise and spring into clear day light. (P.63) Finally, his existential search for meaning and value in life ends in emptiness and bankruptcy. Nirode's married sister Monisha is another existential character. Her sha ttered married life to Jiban is marked by loneliness and lack of communication. Although she frantically tries to search for real meaning in her life, she ultimately fails. Her extraordinary powers of visualization endow her with sharp reactions against the degrading social values and ethical degradation. Married for three years to Jiban in an arranged, loveless marriage, she is confined to the big ancestral house with Jiban's extended family in BowBazar. She is propelled into the artificial love behind the threshold. Her experience consists of touching the feet of her various in-laws "rimmed with red alta" (P.1 09). The raised balconies with dar kened country yard are like "enclosing shadows like stagnant well water" (Ibid), "through the thick iron bars I look out on other walls, other windows - other bars" (Ibid). They create cold response and hatred and the city seen through the details of daily life, Monisha sees as a menace, a 'threat' which it arouses existential dilemma in her. In fact she is a sensitive soul oppressed by existential anxiety and alienation. She can not tolerate being a part of a joint family that leaves her with no privacy hence Depression! Tension! further Depression! And desire to ascertain her existence. Monisha herself discusses her plight: "Ah Yes, Yes, then it is a choice between death and mean existence" (P.119,). Again she concludes: "traceless, meaningless, and uninvoh'ed - does this not? amount to nonexistence? (P.140) Added to all this is the indignity of being unable to bear a child. She can not conceive as there is something wrong with her fallopian tubes. Thus, all routes to creativity and passion are blocked by an emotional and physical frigidity. She becomes an object of pity and
Existential Dilemma in Anita Desai's Voices in the City
21
neglect and ultimately of indifference. Her home is a place where she is merely tolerated and there she leads a life of utter humiliation and desolation. She has missed passion all her life that's why instead of moving towards fullness she retreats into a frozen state of a being. In her desire to be non-obtrusive, to obliterate herself she decides to go to the hog withholding from herself every single way of sustenance. Ironically when she actually destroys herself, it is not in search of anonymity but in search of existence, which she is unable to have. Monisha expresses the absurdity of woman's existence: Lives spent in waiting for noting, waiting on-men self-centred and indifferent and hungry and demanding and critical, waiting for death and dying misunderstood always behind bars, those terrifying black bars that shut us in, in the old houses, in the old city. (P.120) She asks: What does it all mean? Why are Jives such as these lived? At their conclusion, what solution, what truth falls into the waiting palm of one's hand, the still pet of one's heart? (P.121) Thus, Monisha, like Nirode looks for loneliness and longs for privacy. She prefers non, existence to a meaningless existence. She fails to relate to the reality of her life. She also fails to hold in harmony all the varying yet vital demands of her life. There is nothing in her Ii fe to sustain her. She herself utters: To pretend to have forgotten, to pretend to believe in these trivialities, these pettiness of our mean existence is that right. (P.40) This Clll pervading idea of nothingness has made her an e)"istential character the thing that she yearns more than anything else is 'pri\'<1Cy' and gets nostalgic about her days at Kalimpong and the solitude of jungles thert'. CalcuttCl with its crowd does not fascinate her. It is, for her, is a dull, hopeless and devil city.
22
Existential Dilemma in Anita Desai's Voices in the City
Amla, one more character in the novel shows the same existential anxiety. Growing exhaustion and frustration paralyses all seeds of hope and thrill in her. Under the great pressure and pull of the changing currents of established values and all the fine discretion between high or low, right or wring, start freezing. Later it draws her of all the vitality and zest of creative talent. The city robs of her art, of her ambition of the career of a designer and the conglomeration of thoughts, the clash of desires and growing existential dilemma cluster around Amla. Now, she is terrified even by the unusual wetness and rain in Calcutta. Humanity and individuality seem to be drowned tmder the surging wave of struggle for living. She utters in depression: They share one face, one expression of tiredness, that even bitterness is merely passive and hopelessness makes the hard extend only feeble, and then drop back without disappointment. Two faces - one rapacious, one wearly - gaze me from every direction. (P.179) This kind of explorations evoke a sense of existential nothingness and degradation in Amla. Very soon the city of Calcutta engulfs her in its morbidity and melancholy. The round parties which she initially enjoyed now become a meaningless activity: Despite all the stimulation of new experience, new occupation, new acquaintances, and the mild sweet winter air, this sense of hollowness and infertility persisted. (P.llO). Calcutta becomes a living person that impinges on her and lassitude overcomes her like a fever. A flicker of brightness and change comes into Amla's life when she becomes a model for the artist Dharma but soon she realizes that it was her folly for having tried to enter into his world as a beloved, for she precepts deceit and meaninglessness there too. She seeks to opt out of the absurd into a life of parties, dinners and dances, yet hollowness dogs her and existential dilemma pervades all her life. Thus, existential problem hovers round the major characters in the novel Voices ill the City and images of a cloistered and still
Existential Dilemma in Anita Desai's Voices in the City
23
existence can easily be perceived scattered here and there in the pages of the novel. Moving between the two extremes of existence and non-existence the protagonists fail to analyze their true selves. There is a violent clash between the desire to love and live and the desire to withd raw and achieve harmony. There is a strong longing or desire of striving on the part of all the three important characters viz. Nirode, Monisha and Amla, towards finding out or arriving at a more authentic way of life, then the life they lived. There is a need to be loved but in this absurd world of neglection and selfishness love is difficult to achieve. The search for identity on the part of these existential selves also assumes a socio-psychic dimension. These protagonists do not shy away from the assaults of existence. They face the problems of life single handedly with courage and determination. Experiencing disgusting absurdity of the world, they try to discover meaning in self-immolation or self-affirmation in" a world irremediably absurd where one is a stranger to oneself as well as to other people." (Camus: 1960: 52) In brief, Anita Desai is obsessively preoccupied with the individual's quest for meaning and value, freedom and truth that provide spiritual nourishment to the estranged self in a seemingly chaotic and meaningless world. For this purpose she chooses her characters that are under stress and tries to peep inside their psyche and comes up with an explanation to their roles. All her characters have existential pangs and they are on a spree to find out the root cause and reach at some sort of realization to complete their cycle of search of life. References
1.
Desai, Anita, Voices in the City, New Delhi: Orient Paperbacks, 2001. (All textual quotations from the same edition).
2.
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Volume-8, Chicago: William Benton, 1968.
3.
Green, Mayorie, Introdllctioll to Existl'lltialism, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1945.
4.
Webster's College DUiollary Random HOllse, New York: Printed in U.s.A. 1928.
DOD
FEMINISM RECONSIDERED: A STUDY OF ANITA DESAI'S CRY, THE
PEACOCK - Vinod Kumar Maheshwari
From the standpoint of linguistic expression, the writing of Cry, the Peacock is commendable. Sunday Telegraph, London considered it 'a poetry-novel. Has a great sense of place: One just cannot disagree with the well-meaning comment; but if any assessment of this novel is made in terms of the postulates of modern feminism, one finds that Maya, the queen of this novel, did not understand the challenges of married life, neither did she develop enough stamina to face them. On the other hand, her husband, Gautama - apparently a well-to-do person - had the native agility of mind to face the reality without making any hubbub whereas Maya ran into tantrum as soon as something went wrong in her immediate surroundings. Self-restraint is a virtue needed by both man and woman; but Maya rhapsodized even over small mishaps. Right at the beginning of this novel, Maya notices: 'All day the body lay rotting in the sun of April. CP.5) Her pet had died and before it got putrid, she wanted il to be removed. Coincidentally, her husband was away; only the gardener was there trying to comfort her that the sweeper \\'ollid be coming to do the job of removal as soon as he .. relurns from his brother's place. It was afternoon now, and the sweeper had nol returned. Crows sat in a circle around the corpse,
Feminism Reconsidered: A Study of Anita Desai's ...
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and crow will eat anything - entrails, eyes, anything. Flies began to hum amidst the limes, driving away the gentle bees and the unthinking butterflies. She thought she saw the evil glint of a bluebottle, and grew hysterical. The gardener sent his wife to take her into the house and keep her there. She sat there, sobbing, and waiting for her husband to come home. (P.5) Apparently, Maya suffered from hysteria and frustration. The psychology says that the problem of hysteria has to be traced to the weak, unresponded uterus in woman. If she is too pliable and nonaffirmative in social life, she is bound to develop hysterical tendencies. All her fulminations against her evil Fate rna f be traceable to her physiological disequilibrium. In the opinion of those Western feminists who have struggled hard to be selfconsciously creative, the cases like that of Maya are most unfortunate and self-defeating. One of the most significant American womenpoets, who is a critic of distinction on her own merit, is Adrienne Rich. She is an accomplished poetess and knows how hard it is to become creative as a married woman. Being conscious of this facet of life:-- 'Struggle to be Oneself' Adrienne Rich writes poetry not only for herself but also for other women as well, who have not lost the womanly spirit to change. While the American poetess has a message for other women to selfaffirm their destiny despite the existential obstacles ptJ forward by the champions of the patriarchal system. Maya - the tictionalised character by Anita Desai - apparently a woman character from the well-ta-do Indian middle class family, lacks the wherewithal of self-affirmation. She lives in a cushiony, comfortable house solipsistically with her husband Gautama. While Gautama has a sense of reality, Maya cocooned within her mental reveries goes off and on in despair. Maya's case is that of a woman who has not known how to grow with worked-up personality. If the Bhagm.'at Gita has given an utmost importance to work and labour, the western civilisation considers doing one's work through hard labour with sound education is very much crucial for personal development and for understanding the immediate surroundings. It is unfortunate that the heroin of the novel, Cry, tire Peacock remains unconcerned about the importance of work-ethic and for
26
Feminism Reconsidered: A Study of Anita Desai's ...
understanding the world. Remaining enclaved merely within one's despairing reveries is not womanhood. To remain tagged to the chaotic run of reveries is a form of blasphemy to the overall reality which is dynamic and is a changing amalgam of many things. Both the western science and the ancient Indian wisdom concur on this viewpoint. Apart from this fact of multi-dimensionality, the Theosophical Society in India and abroad - which influenced W.B. Yeats and Mrs. Annie Besant through Occultism - have also popularized the concept of 'multi-planear' reality. Broadly speaking, two planes- the lower, and the higher orders - shape human existence. Ancient Hinduism conceptualised this philosophical distinction in terms of STHULA MAYA AND SUKSHMA MAYA which are essential for race perpetuation, and race refinement and cosmic religion. Maya and her friends in the world of women constitute the vast majority - all of them belong to the region of STHULA MAYA; but they are either linked to body (materiality) or to its images. Maya essentially belongs to the lower order of existence in the sense she could not develop the strong fulcrum of imagination, without which one just cannot lift up from the morass of STHULA KA Y A. From the extracts being cited here, it is apparent that Maya as woman became a part of the earthly profile where her dead pet lay rotting in the April heat. The key images, with emphases underneath them show their placement with strange lividness which is indicative of the fact about Maya to have failed in generating the all-powerful imagination which alone can save the distracted men and women from the material thraldom. Maya's case is similar to the fate of thousands of Indian women who being glued down to the limited profile of things go rotting in misery. (1) Now and then she went out into the veralldah, and looked to see if he were coming up the drive which lay shrivellillg, mclting and then shriZ'cllillg again like l1loltCll/ead in a grooz'c cut into the earth, and out of the corner of her eye could not help glancing, as one cannot help a tic, at the small Wllitc corpse laying at one end of the lawn, under a sheet, under the limes. (Pp.5-6).
Feminism Reconsidered: A Study of Anita Desai's ...
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(2) Later in the evening, when the sun hUllg pendent from the topmost branches of the trees, swelling visibly like -- She thought - a purulent boil, until it was ripe to drop, her husband came home. (P.6). Soon after coming to the house, Gautama (her husband) managed to get the bad-smelling corpse removed with the help of the public works department staff with instruction to get it burnt also. To soothe the agistated Maya, her husband came and said: 'It is all .... Come and drink your tea, and stop crying, You mustn't cry.' (P.6) Gautama as husband was considerate and sensitive to his wife's misery. 'Maya', he said, patiently, 'Do sit down. You look so hot and worn out. You need a cup of tea.' (P.7) As the agitated Maya was trying to pour out the tea, it got spilt. Coincidentally, at that time an advocate called on Gautama. (3) And Gautama rose immediately, ordering tea to be sent to the study, forgetting her, forgetting her woes altogether. 'No' she cried, and fled to the bedroom to fling herself onto the bed and lie there, thinking of the small, still body stiffelled illto tire panic-stricken postllrc of tire momcnt ofdeath, and of the small sharp yelp in the throat as it suddenly contracted. She did not know it was a scavenger's truck that had taken it away, but she sensed the sordid horror it had brought with it, and left behind, and she began to cry. (P.7) (4) But the pillow, Gautama's, was hard, did not relent, forced me to admit that the strange horror had not yet been recognized even though it was, surely, connected with the corpse, the small, soft corpse and the odollr of flesh, once sweet, once loved, then, suddenly, rotten, repulsive. That Maya had begun to feel estranged from her husband Gautama is apparent from the lines quoted above. Her response towards Gautama had begun to cool down. T.5. Eliot in his play The Cocktail Party has deliberated on Edward Ghamberlaine (a practising barrister). He is estranged from his wife Lednia who one day left her husband without any reasonable justification. There is also a character, Ullidmtijied Gllt'st, \\'ho slowly wins the confidence
28
Feminism Reconsidered: A Study of Anita Desai's ...
of both husband and wife. This guest apparently was a shrewd psychiatrist and had talked with Edward at different intervals. To quote:
And nobody likes to be left with a mystery.
Unidentified But there's more to it than that there's a loss of personality. Guest
Or rather, you've lost touch with the person You though you were. You no longer feel quite human. You're suddenly reduced to the status of an objectA living object, but no longer a person.3
In differentiating a living object from a living person, T.5. Eliot provides an interesting insight into the life of men and women. A little later in the unquoted lines, Eliot refers to the general human situation in which it is found that as men and women play different roles, they may suffer a jolt in their moving forward, they in haste forget the physical terrain; and before they fall down, it is their living self cautions them and then, they are saved.-wtrenmen play different roles, they act as objects; and then, when they are selfcomposed, calm and serene, their living person saves them in emergency. In the context of T.5. Eliot's observation, it is possible to say that Maya lacked the integrity and natural spontaneity of a living person. D.H. Lawrence would like to call it naivete which connotes the sense of primal innocence. In man-woman relationship, innocence plays a crucial role; but in Maya-Gautama relationship there was some fault. Conjugal and communication gap between them caused deep, permanent fissure. In unsophisticated male and female, physical sex play can work about tension-free stability; but in sophisticated human beings, like Maya and Gautama, sex play is not a remedy. The remedy is through sublimation which cannot be acquired easily. Asceticism in daily practice would lead to the broadening and sharpening of human consciousness. However, Maya could not arrive at this awareness. Gautama overbusy with his legal work could not afford to have relaxation enough to think about sublimity and its miraculous powers.
Lacking the will to experience the higher beauty of sublimation, Maya remained niggling with patchwork solution of emerging
Feminism Reconsidered: A Study of Anita Desai's ...
29
tensions and problems. She could not wean herself from the cantharis towards material and sex-filled attachments. The death of her pet had become obsessional with her. "It is all over', he had said, as calmly as the mediator beneath the saltree. 'Your need a cup of tea, 'he (Gautama) had said, showing how little he knew of my misery, or of how to comfort me. But then, he knew nothing that concerned me. Giving me an opal ring to wear on my finger, he did not notice the translucent skin beneath, the blue flashing veins that ran under and out of the bridge of gold and jolted me into smiling with pleasure each time I saw it. Telling me to go to sleep while he worked at his papers, he did not give another thought to me, to either the soft, willing body or the lonely wanting mind that waited near his bed. And now, seeing me bereaved, seeing tears on my face and my pet gone, "You need a cup of tea," he said. Yes, I cried, yes, it is his hardness- no, no, not hardness, but the distance he coldly keeps from me. His coldness, his coldness, and incessant talk of cups of tea and philosophy in order not to hear me talk and talking, reveal myself. It is that - my loneliness in the house.' (Pp. 8-9) It would be entirely uncharitable for Maya to blame Gautama for her loneliness. She alone of all persons should be blamed for her miserable plight. Who told her not to grow intellectually? Modern feminism would just not tolerate such a negative attitude on the part of an educated wife of a practising advocate. Even the Hindu tradition in terms of pristine glory of the distant past would not allow a wife to playa passive role in her life. The first task of a newly married woman is to understand the nature of her husband. Intelligence on her part would have enabled to know that her advocate husband did not belong to a beastly sort of a male who derive 'happiness' from the dermal sensations and sex-play of his wife's body. Marriage is an occasion for self-discovery for the married couple and more especially for a woman; for at her husband's place she has an opportunity of knowing the wider world. Being improperly lettered and educated, most of our country men and women are unacquainted with the basic life-principles of ancient Indians. The oneset oi the British rule and law through the institutionalisation of the centralised political State disturbed the traditional caste-structure along with ancillary sub-structures and their value system.
30
Feminism Reconsidered: A Study of Anita Desai's ...
The traditional marital ties and the status of women got damaged irretrievably. New townships and urban centres made inroads upon the weakened and weakening village economy. As the village economy got weakened, there started an unceasing exodus from villages to cities and towns; and it has increased all the more after independence. While women suffered grievously hard as a result of this migration, their men-folk specially the poor ones accepted hard labour jobs, just to survive. The petty property owners opened shops for able-bodied women to play their trade linked to the perambulating of sexuality. Decades passed under the British rule with conditions worsening. When Mahatma Gandhi rose on the political horizon, he as a social thinker found the lives of poor women deplorable on account of their displacement from rural surroundings to towns and cities to works as menials or to play their trade in the hunddled-up shops financed by the money-lenders in league with the property-owners. While the superior jobs in the centr~lised British administration were held by the English people, the staff at the lower level was held up by the local people. In their limited sphere, the local people exercised power; and so, they took advantage of poor women; and they were mercilessly exploited. Having become maimed bodily, these fallen sisters - (the name given to prostitutes by Mahatma Gandhi) agreed to accept their miserable fate. Woman is more than a tamed creature of sensations for the benefit of man. Mary Wollostonecraft (1759-97), one of the prominent feminists of the Western society, wrote a book A Vindication of the Rights of Women, (1792), in which she argued vigorously for the view that women, as rational creatures, should reject the vision of their nature, role and education that had been imposed on them by men, and cease to regard themselves as creatures to the control of another and stronger sex. The weakness and dependency of the female as well as the particularised sexual role and mores to which women have to conform are the creation of men, for which there is hardly any rational justification. Mary Wolloslonecraft's comment that women are as much rational creatures as men is unassailable. But Anita Desai's Maya was of a different mould. She had no belief for rationality. She only craved for sensational pleasures of both in subtle guise. Had she been rational and intelligent, she
Feminism Reconsidered: A Study of Anita Desai's...
31
would not have allowed her husband Gautama to fall from the roof to the bottom (P.208). Even as the novel, Cry, the Peacock is wellwritten, the characterisation of Maya calls for a qualified, literary assessment; and it is more so in the context of modern feminism. Maya's personal failure and frustration is turned only to a literary fantasy without any justification. Maya was fighting not against any kind of injustice but against herself. She failed to grow enough to cope with the increasing coolness of her husband, Gautama. Vis-a-vis her husband, Maya should have been analytical to understand the plus and minus-points in Gautama's life. Matrimony allows enough scope for a wife to reorient her outlook, but she lingered on to stay put with her troubles, stagnating from one situation to another. Relying upon her uterine impulses, Maya remained unresponsive to higher impulses of life. This comes out of religious belief in the existence of a11- sovereign God or through the development of creative view of life which has become absolutely in these days of consumerism. During the early phase of capitalism, Karl Marx knew the real face of dehumanising; forces through the multidimensional movement of money-commodity-money along with the commodification of women. The overall impact of the rise of dehumanising forces is that women by and large develop a docile and passive attitude to life. Being commodified they become more objects to be priced and exchanged. Maya was not a slut; still, she accepted the inevitability of her passive role. But, in the eye of modern feminists, this is an attitude of decadence. From the quote by Adrienne Rich, one of the foremost poetess of the twentieth century America, it is possible to say that women should affirm their destiny and should not capitulate before their adversaries, associated with the patriarchal system of values: I am a woman in the prime of life, with certain powers and those powers severely limited by authorities whose faces I rarely see.
A woman with a certain mission which if obeyed to the letter will leave her intact.-l
32
Feminism Reconsidered: A Study of Anita Desai's ...
The emphasis is on woman's integrity, and not on woman becoming a commodified object. What matters in life is one's feeling for wholeness. According to the Holy Bible, human body is a temple of God; and woman like Maya should not allow herself to be eroded by self-attrition. This kind of women have two ways to redeem themselves: one is through the Indian saintly tradition; and the other is through the secular culture of the West in affirming themselves by consciousness and creativity. Maya got bogged down through the half-baked, uncrystallised notions. One must see through and through the surrounding world. Guru Nanak has a point when he says: 1{
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m
~ I
In the modem world when science and technology have created a legion of short-term pleasurable comforts for man; but ultimately, he goes chafing in dissatisfaction. Maya should have known that the pursuit of carnality in one form or another is not desirable. It also brings about mental perversion of various types. With a perverted sense of life, man gets alienated from the path of rectitude, serenity, tranquillity and celerity of mind which pave human beings to see the divine play at work in the universe. The partnership between one's healthy body and developed mind is a profound source of happiness. But, Maya remained traumatised by her own contradictions, and tossed within herself. The solution to the worldly tensions is only a patchwork wherein persons like Maya move in tension from one situation to another. Maya was a traumatic personality being always in despair. Instead of blaming the world or her husband, Gautama, she should have made a deep-heart-searching in the crucible of her pristine SELF which transcends the phenomenal world. The faculty of transcendence has been granted to everybody by God. Guru Nanak's reference to MRIG-TRISHNA was used to make all of us aware of the altendant dangers of MRIG-TRISHNA equivalent to human obsession for worldly things, one after another. Through transcendenc(', man can free himself from the obsessional craze for worldly things.
Feminism Reconsidered: A Study of Anita Desai's ...
33
The constitution of human body and mind is such that nobody can have the selfsame pleasure for any longer period. It is bound to get reduced and then vanish in course of time; it being so, any obsessional craze for anything or idea is detrimental. Maya, in Cry, the Peacock, faulted on this score. Life manifesting in physical form as well as in its epiphanic contours can make one agree with D.H. Lawrence: What man most passionately wants is his living wholeness and his living lmison, not his isolate salvation of his 'soul'. Man wants his physical fulfilment, first and foremost, since now, once and once only, he is in the flesh and potent. For man, the vast marvel is to be alive. For man, as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive ... The dead may look after the afterwards. But the magnificent here and now of life in the flesh is ours, and ours alone, and ours only for a time. We ought to dance with rapture that we should be alive and in the flesh, and part of the being, incarnate cosmos. 5 If Lawrence's view point is forward-looking, the viewpoint that comes out in Cry, the Peacock is not as life-affirmatory as that the Lawrence or for that matter, or of Adrienne Rich, the American poetess. Maya fails to face the vital questions of life and remains afflicted with 'Despondency-syndrome'. Pursuing a discussion point with Maya, on logic or faith, Gautama commented:
Are you, after all, one of those females who will, each day, bathe and cloth ... plaster gods and goddesses, and feed them with sweetmeats, making yourself believe in their life, when your logic tells you they are made of mud and it is your hungry children real? Dear God! Maya, to discover this in someone who has livt;d with you for years. -But, Gautama, I cried, 'what have YOll said? I turned to stare at him (the pet, Tala, dead long back) see his face in white moonlight, .... (p,123)
34
Feminism Reconsidered: A Study of Anita Desai's ...
The passing away of her pet, Toto haunts her now and again. A little later, one finds her down with dejection: But to perish? Who? Tell me who? Gautama woke up. What is it?' he said, and held me in his arms. That is it, Maya? What are you dreaming of? After I had let myself by soothed by his fleshly presence, I turned away from him. He was hot, unbearably hot. So was my bed. The sprinkled earth had dried even in the moonlight. My tongue was thick with thirst. It seemed to me that death was, after aU, very real, very probable. (P .125) As Maya lacked sufficient life-force, she sank into the slough of despondency, receding from one stage to another. In terms of the living palpitating self, no worldly thing can quench the thirst of men and women. Women should be more cautions in getting themselves commodified. They must mobilise all their bodily and mental resources to overcome the depression mania. It looks Anita Desai sketched the character of Maya in terms of contemporary Indian film demands to attract all concerned through the portrayal of a female who is sad, sentimental and agonised. Such an image ill-suits a novel which belongs to an entirely different genre. Films are meant for mob satisfaction whereas the novel is a literary pursuit. References 1.
Desai, Anita, Cry, the Peacock, New Delhi: Orient Paperbacks, 1980. p.5.
2.
Ibid., p. 5.
3.
Eliot, T.5., The Cocktail Party - The Complete Plays and Poem, London: Faber, 1987, p.362.
4.
Rich, Adrienne, The Will to Change Poems 1968-70, New York: W.W. Norton, 1971, p.19.
5.
Lawrence, D.H., Apocalypse, New York: Penguin Books, 1980, Pp.125-26.
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RUKMANI AS AN EPITOME OF INDIAN WOMANHOOD: A CRITICAL CONSIDERATION OF KAMALA MARKANDAYA'S NECTAR IN A SIEVE - Dr. S. John Peter Joseph
Women are forgiving, kind and affectionate; women are God's highest creation, his own shadow, while men are God's common work. Women are lights and men their shadows. (Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Pp. 295-296) Indian Writing in English has been accredited as an integral and a fundamental constituent of Commonwealth Literature. Known for its great vibrancy and resilience, it occupies a prominent place in World Literature. The writers of Indian Writing in English, like the accomplished writers of British, American, Canadian, Australian, South African, Pakistani, Sri Lankan and West Indian literatures, have contributed significantly and abundantly to modern World Literature in English. They illustrate in their works the ancient and glorious cultural, social, political, religious and time-honoured philosophical traditions and the enduring values of Indian society. Their works represent an artistic and imaginative perception of the changing phenomenon and the shifting values of contemporary Indian life and reality.
36
Rukmani as an epitome of Indian Womanhood: ...
Fiction, being a unique form of literary expression, has undeniably occupied a significant place in Indian Writing in English. In fiction the Indian English novelists naturally find a genuine medium for the expression of their artistic skills and perceptiveness. They manifest in their novels different sections of the Indian pluralistic contemporary society, its cultural ethos and glorious heritage. While experimenting with new stylistic techniques and language nuances the novelists depict not only the sociopolitical and cultural problems faced by Indians but also the psychological problems such as alienation, rootlessness and search for identity in their works. Undoubtedly the corpus of Indian novels in English has been widening rapidly and remarkable novels are being written by Vikram Seth, Amitav Ghosh, Salman Rushdie, Chitra Banerjee, Rohinton Mistry, V.s. Naipaul, Shobha De, Shashi Deshpande, Manju Kapur, Diva Karuni, Arundhati Roy and Kiran Desai. Fiction by Indian women novelists occupies a prominent place in Indian Writing in English. They have made a substantial contribution to the growth and the enrichment of Indian novels in English. Their novels are essentially concerned with the gender discrimination and other problems related to women who are exposed to both physical and psychological abuse and ill-treatment in the male-dominated Indian society. While analysing the character and the inner mind of the Indian woman from the view point of feminine sensibility and insight the women novelists depict how women struggle not only against aggressive male domination but also against the social, cuI tural and religious oppression prevalent in contemporary society. They also illustrate how legends, myths and orthodox attitudes and traditional beliefs strengthen the patriarchal practices which have made women inferior creatures and mere objects of pleasure. With their keen understanding and observation of contemporary Indian society women novelists deal with women's aspirations, hopes, desires, anxieties and emotional and social insecurity with artistic discernment. Besides exploring the moral and the psychological dilemmas and externalizing the inner conflicts and the mental agonies of the victimized women in society they portray women characters who endeavour to face harsh
Rukmani as an epitome ofindian Womanhood:...
37
reality and struggle for their identity and meaningful existence. Through their writings the women novelists try not only to redefine the position of women in society but also to bring out their identity and assert their independence as women. Moreover, the women characters they portray strive hard to overcome psychological impediments such as inferiority complex, inhibition, reluctance, diffidence, self-doubt and timidity and social barriers such as traditional beliefs and biased religious opinions, in order to achieve freedom and individuality and also to affirm independence in concrete ways. Prominent among these women novelists are Kamala Markandaya, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Nayantara Sahgal, Anita Desai, Shashi Deshpande, Santha Rama Rau, Vimla Raina, Bharati Mukherjee, Veena Nagpal, Kamala Das, Rama Mehta, Arundhati Roy and Kiran Desai. Outstanding among the post-independence women novelists is Kamala Markandaya. Endowed with an artistic genius and creative talents Markandaya is unquestionably an acclaimed artist in the contemporary Commonwealth literary scene. As a woman novelist Markandaya represents: "the creative release of the feminine sensibility" (Goyal, P.140) in India. Described by William Walsh as the "most gifted" (19) of the women novelists she is certainly not a "female R.K. Narayan or an Indian Jane Austen using the modes of highly skilled artist" (Goyal, 140). Markandaya is tmdoubtedly remarkable for the impressive depiction in her novels of "a rich sensibility characterised by an intellectual suppleness, an imaginative freedom and a philosophical cultural attitude that invests them with a subdued spiritual glow." (P.140) Kamala Markandaya is not an aggressive, forceful and confrontational feminist. In her fictional universe women characters are more important than men characters. The spirit with which she delineates women characters in her novels clearly indicates the paramount importance she attaches to the role of women in society. While projecting the image of the changing traditional society in her novels she does not fail to bring to light the awakened feminine sensibility which is emerging rapidly in modern India. Commenting on Markandaya's treatment of women characters in her novels ]allleeia Begulll observes:
38
Rukmani as an epitome of Indian Womanhood: ... In exploring the feminine consciousness of Indian women Markandaya has sought to fuse her own imaginative conception of traditional images with the bare, changing realities of existence. Her wQmen characters are memorable in that they portray ... an in-depth study of the human psyche caught in the net of social, traditional and spiritual values. (Pp.22-23)
As an artist with a thorough understanding of women's posi tion in contemporary society Markandaya shows how social and economic factors affect women more than men. Shantha Krishnaswamyobserves: Kamala Markandaya portrays the double pulls that the Indian woman is subject to: between tradition and modernity, between Indian and Western ways of living and values, between her dignity as a human being and her duty as a daughter, wife and mother, between marrying for love and urunarrying for the family, between her desire for autonomy and her need for nurturance. (P .354) Markandaya's women characters are strongly rooted in traditions and they are to a very great extent conformist. Though they are staunch believers of established customs, mores and cultural practices they never give up their individuality. While discussing the treatment of women characters in the novels of Markandaya K. Meera Bai comments: Her novels are characterized by feminine sensibility. Markandaya's women are well drilled in the tenets of Indian ethos. They possess an admirable strength to face the calamities of life and are adept at the wisdom of compromise and adjustment. (P.37) Kamala Markandaya's Nectar ill a Sieve (1954) is a remarkable novel which illustrates how Rukmani, a peasant woman of preindependence rural India resolutely struggles for survival with
Rukmani as an epitome of Indian Womanhood: ...
39
undaunted courage, determination, fortitude and an indomitable of endurance. Set in an anonymous village in South India the novel movingly depicts the events which centre around the life of Rukmani, the protagonist and narrator of the novel. Markandaya with her artistic imagination and feminine sensibility presents the trials and tribulations of the simple, naive and traditional character Rukmani who accepts and endures sufferings with innate strength of character, vigour of mind and a true spirit of tolerance and resilience. The novel can also be considered a genuine chronicle of the hardships and misfortunes of a peasant family. The novel is written in the first person narrative and Rukmani, who is both an observer and participant, recollects her tale in a reminiscen t mood. The novelist portrays how the harsh vagaries of Nature, the cruel Zamindari system and the intrusion of modernization bring about misfortlmes in the lives of peasants and especially in the family of Rukmani. ~,pirit
Rukmani, the youngest of the four daughters of a once powerful village headman, is given in marriage to Nathan, a tenant farmer, who is poor in everything but "in love and care" (Nectar in a Sieve, P.2) because she is "without beauty and without dowry" (P.2). She happens to be a bride at the age of twelve, a mother at thirteen, has six children at twenty four and is evidently old at forty. Her initial reaction to her new surroundings is one of despair and sadness. "Such a disgrace for me," she reacts. "How shall I ever live it down?" (P.3). The man that her family found for her is below her status. When she looks at the house built by Nathan for her she reflects "this mud hut, nothing but mud and thatch was my home. My knees gave in, first the cramped one, then the other, and I sank down" (P.4). But as a woman who possesses serenity, a sense of balance and strength of character, Rukmani accepts her adversity with poise and grandeur and reveals her stoic acceptance of the inevitable. In her relationship with her husband she learns the values of mutual love, understanding, respect, acceptance and adjustment. Both she and her husband lead a simple and contented life with the fundamental necessities such as food, clothes and shelter. Rukmani finds a critical situation in her life when she begets her first child. As the first born child happens to be a girl Rukmani
40
Rukmani as an epitome ofIndian Womanhood: ...
sheds "tears of weakness and disappointment for what woman wants a girl for her first born? (P.2S). She knows that irrational conventions and anachronistic traditions decry and frown at female offspring. A successful woman in the eyes of the society is the one 'who begets as many sons as possible. As a typical village farmer Nathan also believes in the notion of the superiority of a male child. Rukmani says: Nathan at first paid scant attention to her: he had wanted a son to continue his line and walk beside him on the land, not a puling infant who would take with her a dowry and leave nothing but a memory behind ... (P.lS) Rukmani then seeks help from Dr. Kennington, an English doctor, who enables her with his medical treatment to beget a son. As years pass on she begets five more sons. Since the family becomes larger Rukmani and Nathan find it difficult to manage things economically. Soon poverty and misfortunes befall her one after another. The quiet and the peaceful life of Rukmani's family is affected by the undesirable advent of a tannery - a symbol of industrialization. Rukmani is shocked to see a group of townsmen coming to her village and starting the construction of a tannery. She hates it from the beginning because she strongly believes that the intrusion of industry and modern technology will certainly bring about sinister consequences in the lives of the peasants. She pathetically recalls: They had invaded our village with clatter and din, had taken from us the maidan where our children played and had made the bazaar prices too high for us. (P.28) Rukmani had seen changes in her life but the change brought about by the tannery is quite sudden. She reflects: Change I had known before and it had been gradual ... But the change that now came into my life, into all our lives, bLlsting its way into our
Rukmani as an epitome of Indian Womanhood: ...
41
village, seemed wrought in the twinkling of an eye. (P.2S) Rukmani denounces: The change because after the establishment of the tannery the tranquil village has all noise and crowds everywhere, and rude young hooligans idling in the street and dirty bazaars and uncouth behaviour, and no man thinks of another but schemes only for his money. (P.46) The change has made people highly selfish and self-centred forgetting their earlier characteristics of generosity, selflessness and concern for others. Though the tannery people live in their midst Rukmani never accepts them. She is worried about the rapid and the monstrous growth of the tannery. She admits: It was a great sprawling growth, this tannery. It
grew and flourished and spread. Not a month went by but somebody's land was swallowed up, another building appeared. Night and day the tam1ing went on. (P.4?) Another blow strikes Rukmani when Ira, Rukmani's only daughter, is brought back home by her husband for her temporary barrenness. She is rejected by her husband because she is unable to bear children. In the patriarchal society barren women are considered to be cursed and inauspicious. They are not recognized and respected. Men have the social sanction to reject barren wives. Nathan understands the situation and says: "I do not blame him. He is justified, for a man needs children. He has been patient" (P.50). But ironically when Ira is fit to conceive especially after getting medical treatment from Dr. Kenny, Ira's husband has married another woman. Rukmani accepts this unavoidable poignant and distressing situation with mental equanimity and reconciles herself to the ill-fate of Ira. She consoles her daughter: "yOli must not blame him. He has taken another woman." (P.65) Markandaya also depicts how the peasants in rural India fall a prey to the cruel vagaries of Nature. The no\'el vi\'idly show~ how
42
Rukmani as an epitome of Ind ian Womanhood: ...
Nature when unrestrained can bring havoc and destruction to the lives of peasants. The peop Ie in the village face severe loss of crops not only because of incessant rain but also because of frequent droughts. Reminiscing the unpredictable characteristic of Nature and its role Rukmani observes: Nature is like a wild animal that you have trained to work for you. So long as you are vigilant and walk warily with thought and care, so long will it give you its aid; but look away for an instant, be heedless or forgetful, and it has you by the throat. (P.39)
For the peasant who is also a lease-holder problems do not end with floods and droughts. Nathan as a tenant farmer has to pay his dues to the landlord for using the land irrespective of weather prospects. He, therefore, pathetically says: " ... there was no money left-every pie had gone to pay the land dues. Nothing left to sell" (P.83). The cruel and heartless nature of the landlord is revealed when Nathan laments: Now the landlord can wring from us his money and care not for the misery he evokes; for indeed it would be difficult for any man to see another starve and his wife and children as well; or to enjoy the profits born of such travail. (P.77) Rukmani and Nathan undergo a nightmarish and traumatic experience when the entire family finds itself in the grip of devastating hunger and agonizing fear. Rukmani understands that hunger and fear have become a part and parcel of peasants lives. The villagers can not easily overcome these malignant factors as they are always the outcome of the unpredictable prospects of Nature and the evil system of landlordism in rural India. Apart from the vagaries of Nature and the cruel system of landlordism Rukmani and her family greatly suffer due to the establishment of the tannery. The tannery happens to be the root cause of the total disintegration of Rukmani's family. Due to dire poverty and fierce hunger Rukmani's eldest sons become workers in the tannery despite their mother's stiff opposition. Rukmani's
Rukmani as an epitome of Indian Womanhood: ...
..1.3
mental agony and anxiety cannot be easily measured when she feels that the tannery has started attracting young people who have so far belonged to the earth. The tannery is quite responsible for Rukmani's sons to give up their traditional job of agriculture. No doubt the tannery creates in the minds of young people a craze for money. Tannery is the main cause of the forces that uproot the elder sons of Rukmani: Arjun and Thambi from their native soil and force them to go to an alien place. After losing their jobs in the tannery they want to join the tea plantations in Ceylon to earn more money . As a traditional and 10vingl11:0ther Rukmani is against her family getting shattered. When she appeals to her sons to give up the idea of going away from them Arjun tells her: "It is not fitting that men should corru pt themselves in hunger and idleness" (P .67). Realising that her sons are too much engrossed in earning money and becoming affluent Rukmani becomes quite miserable and sorrowful.. What makes her more downhearted and unhappy is her realization that she would not be able to see them again in her life. Unable to find work in the tannery and at the same time finding it difficult to help his father in the fields Murugan, the third son of Rukmani, leaves the village in order to get a job in the city. The separation of another son makes Rukmani more depressed and disconsolate. Yet she endures the ordeal without giving up hope in life . The tannery represents money-oriented and materialistic values which make human life quite futile and meaningless. After alluring two of Rukmani' s sons who have become victims of false values the tannery happens to be the main cause for the death of Raja, the fourth son of Rukmani. Rukmani is terribly shocked and horrified when the dead body of her son is brought home by the tannery officials. They tell Rukmani that her son was caught in the act of stealing of a calf-skin and when he tried to escape him accidentally died. Rukmani's mental agony and pain find no limitations. The death of Raja appears to be a nightmare. Afflicted with great sorrow and heartache Rukmani sadly narrates: For this I have given you birth my son, that you should lie in the end ,1t my feet with ashes in your
44
Rukmani as an epitome of Indian Womanhood: ... face and coldness in your limbs and yourself departed without trace, leaving this huddle of bones and flesh without meaning. (P.89)
The tannery is also responsible for the moral degradation of Ira, the only daughter of Rukmam and Nathan. She is compelled to become a prostitute in order to save her youngest brother, Kuti, from hunger and starvation. When Rukmani and Nathan find out Ira's immoral way of earning money they become thunderstruck. Unable to endure the absolute moral deterioration of her daughter she poignantly laments: Ira had ruined herself at the hands of the throngs that the tannery attracted. None but these would have laid hands on her, even at her bidding. (P.l34) When she and her husband try their best to prevent her from continuing her immoral act Ira does not heed their advice. She tells her parents firmly tha t she will never allow herself to go hungry nor will she allow her brother to do so. The serious and momentous crisis in her married life surfaces when Rukmani learns about Nathan's illicit relationship with Kunthi, a notorious woman in the village. She becomes heartbroken and inconsolable when she comes to know that her husband whom she has been loving deeply has betrayed her for the trivial and insignificant woman who had been blackmailing her about her innocent and blameless relationship with Dr. Kennington. With so much pain and sorrow in her heart she says: Disb,elief first; disillusionment; anger; reproach, pain. To find out, after so many years, in such a cruel way .... At last I made an effort and roused myself. "It is as you say a long time ago", I said wearily. "That she is eyil and powerful: know myself. Let it rest. (P.120) Rukmani accepts her husband's betrayal and moral weakness with calm resignation. She suffers silently. It does not mean that she lacks sufficient strength and courage to protest against her husband. She accepts her husband with all his weaknesses and limitations because she loves him deeply and profoundly. Her genuine love for him enables her to forgive him and accept him wholeheartedly. Uma Parameswaran observes:
Rukmani as an epi tome of Indian Womanhood: ...
45
Without the least break or imbalance of body, mind, or spirit, she lives on now supporting her husband and her younger children. (P.94) Rukmani's sufferings become intensive and grim when her last son, Kuti dies due to hunger and starvation. Kuti's struggle for life is pathetic and unbearable. It becomes a horrible and a harrowing experience for Rukmani to see her own son becoming quite frail and dying gradually. She painfully recalls: Yet, although I grieved it was not for my son, for in my heart I could not have wished it otherwise. The strife had lasted too long and had been too painful for me to call him back to continue it. (Nectar in a Sieve, P.102) Finally the setting up of the tannery leads to the complete dispossession of Rukmani's family. The land which they have been cultivating for nearly thirty years has been bought by the tannery owners for the expansion of the tannery at a high price from the landlord. Rukmani and Nathan receive the terrible and cruellest blow when they are asked by the landlord to vacate the land. The lamentation of Nathan is quite moving. "Where are we to go? What shall we do?" (P.33). Despite being a tenant the peasant is very much attached to the land. Land is a symbol of hope to him. How industrialization affects the simple lives of peasants deeply is revealed in the words of Rukmani: Somehow I had always felt the tannery would eventually be our undoing. I had known it since the day the carts had come with their loads of bricks and noisy dusty men staining the clean soft greens that had once coloured our village and clea\"ing its cool silences with clamour. Since then it had spread like weeds in an untended garden, strangling whatever life grew in its way. It had changed the face of our village beyond recognition and altered the lives of its inhabitations in a myriad ways. ( Pp.133-134)
46
Rukmani as an epitome of Indian Womanhood: ...
Rukmani becomes a pathetic woman when the land is taken away them. While expressing her anguish for her miserable condition she recounts: This hut with all its memories was to be taken from us, for it stood on land that belonged to another. And the land itself by which we lived. It is a cruel thing, I thought. They do not know what they do to us. (P. 135) After eviction from the land Nathan and Rukmani migrate to a city for their livelihood. Unable to find out their son, Murugan, who is supposed to be working there, both Nathan and Rukmani take up the work of breaking stones in a quarry. Nathan who cannot cope with the new surroundings and the alien work dies. The untimely death of her husband happens to be an appalling and a horrible blow to Rukmani. The heart-rending mental agony, anguish, pain and suffering can be understood from her words: If I grieve, it is not for you, but for myself, beloved,
for how shall I endure to live without you, who are my love and life? (P.188) Rukmani then returns to her village with her adopted son Puli who is an orphan. The novel ends on a positive note. Selvam, the fifth son of Rukmani, who has been assisting Dr. Kennington to construct a hospital in the village, assures his mother "Do not worry ... We shall manage" (P.189). Commenting on the universal appeal of the novel K. Venkata Reddy obsen'es: In its particular theme of the tragic plight of Rukmani and her family, there is uni\Oersality of love, loyalty and suffering that will appeal to readers all O\Oer the \vorld. Rukmani and Nathan are the representatives of thousands of uprooted peasants under the pressures of industrial economy and the vagaries of Nature. Rukmani's dllage is indeed symbolic of the entire rural India. (P.84)
Ru kmani as an epitome ofIndian Womanhood:...
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Kamala Markandaya shows how certain virtues like honesty, perseverance, simplicIty, selflessness, faith in God, fortitude and courage enable the peasants in rural India to cope with the misfortunes and the natural calamities with calm resignation. Though Rukmani and Nathan are subject to adversities and vicious forces one after another they reveal the true spirit of endurance. They strongly believe the philosophy that like grass they should not break. For Rukmani miseries and sorrows are essential characteristics of life. According to her one should accept both the good and the bad with the same mental equilibrium. Her approach to life is quite optimistic. She says: We would be pitiable creatures indeed to be so weak, for is not a man's spirit given to him to rise above his misfortunes? (P.113) This grand and dignified philosophical outlook is the outcome of the inner strength of her character, her stoic endurance, her heroic struggle for survival, her mute sufferings and her acceptance of life with its varied experiences. She tells Dr. Kenny that there is grandeur in endurance. While trying to explain the essential trait of Indian philosophy regarding life to Dr. Kenny she further adds: Yet our priests fast, and inflict on themselves, and we are taught to bear our sorrows in silence, and all this so that the soul may be cleansed. (P.1l4) To Rukmani nothing is beyond endurance and acceptance. She may bend due to excessive sufferings and tribulations in life but she, as Nathan has said, never breaks. Thus the novel portrays the travails of Rukmani who faces crises in life with exceptional courage and extraordinary confidence. As a typical Indian woman she is a loving wife to Nathan, an admirable mother to her children and a helping woman to her neighbours. With an uncommon spiritual and mental strength she absorbs all miseries and misfortunes that come her way. As an embodiment of invincible optimism and hope she resolutely fights against the social and the economic forces which crush her and her family malignantly. Though she grieves like an ordinary human being whenever she is subject to the cruel vagaries of cosmic forces
48
Rukmani as an epitome of Indian Womanhood: ...
and the man-made evil systems she tides over the hurdles with great resilience and acceptance. Undeniably she symbolizes the indefatigable Indian rural psyche which sometimes buckles under insurmountable pressures but does not break. Though she seems to be quite passive she never gives up her spirit of individuality and will power. The innate strength and the deep-rooted singlemindedness enable her to carryon valiantly in this obviously remorseless world. On the whole, Rukmani is a memorable character who stands like a rock among women characters in Indian English Fiction. Works Cited Bai, Meera, K., Tradition and Modernity: The Portrayal of Women by Women Writers, Indian Women Novelists, Volume-I, ed., R.K. Dhawan, New Delhi: Prestige Books, 1991. Begum, Jameela, A., Glimpsl's ofIndian Woml'l1 ill Knmala Marknndaya's Novel, Commonwealth Quartaly Volume-13, No.36, December, 1987-March, 1988. Chatterjee, Bankim Chandra, The Poison Trl'l': Three Novt'/as, Translated by Marian Maddem and S.N. Mukherjee, New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1996. Goyal, Bhagwat, S., Clllture and Commitment: Aspects of Indian Literature in English, Meerut: Shalabh Book House, 1984. Krishnaswamy, Shanta, The Woman in Indian Fiction in English, New Delhi: Ashish Publishing House, 1984. Markandaya, Kamala, Nectar in a Sieve, Rpt., Bombay: Jaico Publishing House, 1973. Parameswaran, Uma, A Study of Representative Indo-English Novelists, New Delhi: Vikas, 1976. Reddy, Venkata K., A Classic of the Hunger Thl'me: Nectar in a Sil've, Major Indian Novels, New Delhi: Prestige Books, 1990. Walsh, William, C011l11l0llwI'alth Litaature, London: Oxford University Press, 1973.
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FEMINIST VOICES IN THE NOVELS OF KAMALA MARKANDAYA - Dr. Ram Sharma
Indian women novelists in English have been presenting woman as the centre of concern in their novels. A woman's search for identity is a recurrent theme in their fiction. Kamala Markandaya is one of the finest and most distinguished Indian novelists in English of the post colonial era who is internationally recognized for her masterpiece Nectar in a Sieve published in 1954. She has achieved a world-wide distinction by winning Asian Prize for her literary achievement in 1974. Endowed with strong Indian sensibility, she depicts women's issues and problems very deeply in her novels. A woman's quest for identity and redefining her self finds reflection in her novels and constitutes a significant motif of the female characters in her fiction. Her deep instinctive insight into women's problems and dilemmas helps her in drawing a realistic portrait of a contemporary woman. She explores and interprets the emotional reactions and spiritual responses of women and their predicament with sympathetic understanding. The chief protagonists in most of her novels are female characters who are in constant search for meaning and value of life. In some of her novels she presents an existential struggle of a woman who denies to flow along the current and refuses to submit her individual .self. The woman emerging out of such situation is a defeated
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Feminist Voices in the Novels of Kamala Markandaya
individual undergoing much pain and suffering. Such characters exhibit a sense of. insecurity due to their traumatic psychic experiences and also due to the collapse of one value system and the absence of any enduing values. In her novels Kamala Markandaya traces a woman's journey from self-sacrifice to self-realization, from self-denial to self-assertion and from self-negation to self-affirmation. The feminist voice is heard in all her novels. In her first epoch-making novel, Nectar in a Sieve (1954) the narrator-heroine, Rukmani emerges a greater and stronger character than her husband. The author displays Rukmani's life which is full of hopes and frustrations, pleasures and pains, triumph and defeat, rise and fall. In fact, before writing this novel Kamala Markandaya went to live in a village to seek an opportunity of getting the first hand experience of village life and the problems of rural folk and therefore this novel is mainly a product of her personal experience in rural living. Kamala Markandaya shows that before the advent of tannery the life of Rukmani with her family was simply peaceful with her simple joys and sorrows. She was proud of the love and care of her husband. She needed nothing else, no wealth, no luxury, and no material pleasure. Rukmani struggles hard to survive the relentless strokes of Nature and society. However, her calm and placid life suddenly begins to change under the impact of the industrialization i.e. the establishment of a tannery by an Englishman. The building of tannery brings about a change in the life of Rukmani and her village. From the very beginning Rukmani opposes the advent of tannery, the symbol of modernity and industrialization which spoils the natural calm and beauty of the countryside. Rukmani feels great pain in her heart when her tranquil and serene life is spoilt by the din and bustle, the filth and dirt. The loss not only of natural beauty but also of human virtues and values is the natural outcome of industry. The sweet peace and tranquillity of the village fade away giving rise to the urban squalor and vice. Rukmani stands for the traditional values of life and so she revolts emphatically against the encroachment of the western industrial values on rural life. The simple rmal human values are
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replaced by those of materialism. Rukmani becomes a mute spectator to this horrible scene, while the tannery flourishes and creates havoc in her life. She says: Somehow I had always felt the tannery would eventually be our undoing. It had changed the face of our village beyond recognition. (Pp.133-34) Tannery had effaced the identity of the village and its inhabitants. Till now Rukmani along with other rural folk was living in a world which had got a name and habitation, which had got an identity of its own. In a village human beings are easily recognised and respected by each other. This small rural world gave an identity and recognition to all its inhabitants. Villagers did not feel lost and abandoned. But the onset of the process of industrialization effaced their identities and distorted their personalities. The urban culture is encroaching upon their simple and peaceful life, leading the two elder sons of Rukmani, Arjun and Thambi to join the tannery. Another son Murugan goes to the city in search of a job. While working in the tannery her sons experience the impact of new values. They actively participate in protests and strike not relished and digested by Rukmani because it eventually leads to the disintegration of their family and their village. When a woman is married in India whether in a city or a village, she gradually finds a name and recognition, though this name is invariably associated with her husband, for she is generally called the wife of such and such a person, still she is known by her distinct virtues. If the inmates of the house live in peace and harmony, she finds a kind of fulfilment, sharing the joys and sorrows of the family. She has got a name and a habitation. All the family members have got some recognition in that place. Their identity is not lost. If in a village people live in peace of harmony, recognizing their selves and their identities, that life is better for them than that of socalled urban life. Peace and harmony, lmity and integration provide the solid foundation on which the life of human beings rests. Kamala Markandaya highlights the stoic patience of its heroine in the face of suffering. Arundhati Chatterjee aptly remarks:
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Feminist Voices in the Novels of Kamala Markandaya Rukmani has imbibed the spirit of acceptance and endurance. This helps her to put up with the adversity that follows the period of drought. (Chatterjee, P.87)
Harrowing poverty and terrible drought lead to the death of her younger son Raja. Her daughter Ira revolts against the false norms of traditional society because she is unable to bear the starvation of her family any more. She is forced to take resource to prostitution to save her younger brother. Under the impact of modernity and industrialism, she thinks the preservation of life more pious than the observation of so-called moral values which fail to feed her family. Tannery is indeed the root cause of tragedy in the life of Rukmani and her family. The author suggests here that the spirit of resignation and stoicism strengthens one like Rukmani in times of suffering. The advent of tannery has resulted in the loss of the traditional values, in social degradation and moral debasement) and ultimately it leads to the disintegration of Rukmani's family. Thus the encroachment of industry causes the decay of human values and creates havoc in village economy. Industrialization pollutes completely the serene atmosphere of the village with its smells and clamours and corrupts the values of people (as in the case of Ira) and dehumanizes them completely. However, Rukmani, unstung by the bug of industrialism, displays her faith in human dignity by assimilating the destitute leper boy Puli into the nectar of her love and warmth (a natural feminine virtue) and gets him cured of his disease. Thus by infusing meaning into his life, she finds a new meaning in her own life. In the so-called modem society humanity and human values are dead and people prey on each other like vultures. The erosion of human values continues ~nd so the-voice of Kamala Markandaya heard in the novel is still relevant, for we have to protect the eternal human values from decay. In her second novel, Som£, IllIler FlIry (1955) Kamala Markandaya gi\"es a \"ery vi\"id and graphic account of the East-West clash in the
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backdrop of national struggle for freedom, by projecting three wonderful female figures -- Mirabai, Roshan and Premala who exhibit rare and unique virtues of love and loyalty, friendship and understanding. We notice a great difference among the female characters of Nectar ill a Sieve and Some 11lller Fllry. While.in the first novel her women are mostly uneducated and unprogressive in their ou tlook to life, accepting, without protest, the kind or cruel treatment of their husbands or society. In the second novel, being educated they assert their selves and individualities. For example, Mira loves Richard, an Englishman against Govind's and her parents' wishes and Premala adopts a child against Kit's wishes. In Some Inner Fury Markandaya projects a national image and patriotic consciousness in myriad forms by presenting the peculiar sensibility of the modem educated and progressive Indian woman. In fact, like the author, her woman character Roshan has a cosmopolitan outlook and seems to be the truly liberated woman of modem India. Mira and Roshan, like Markandaya, have close affinity and sympathy with the individual westerners and like the author again they participate, a least by heart, in the political struggle against Britain. Both of them love the Western values, yet they have a deep lOVE for their motherland. Roshan sacrifices her parents, her husband and aristocratic life at the altar of national loyalty and does not hesitate to go to jail. To Mira's query about her life in prison, she exclaims enthusiastically: What do you think? Of course, I'm not sorry! I'd rather go to the devil my own way than be led to heaven by anyone else ... (P.161) Roshan stands as a symbol of new awakening among Indian women during the period of national struggle for freedom, who do not mind giving up the comforts of their life for some noble cause. Markandaya presents love and intimacy between another female protagonist Mira, an Indian girl and Richard, an Englishman in the background of India's independence movement. Though it reaches the romantic pinnacle, yet it is developed with caution and carefulness. However, Mira's love for Richard is full of warmth and intensity as Krishna Rao observes:
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Feminist Voices in the Novels of Kamala Markandaya Her inner fury is completely quenched when her love for Richard results in an ecstatic experience of the sweep and surge of love. (Krishna Rao, P.48)
Mira and Richard dream of solemnizing their love in the form of marriage, but they are allured to enjoy the consummation of the romantic love and then comes the tragic end of it. Richard is mercilessly killed by Indian revolutionaries giving a shock to Mira. This conflict between the Indians and the English reaches its peak at the end of the novel when the Indian crowd moves ahead to lynch Hickey and the fellow Englishmen rush to protect him from the clutches of the Indians. The end of the novel leaves Mira filled with despair, as she says: "Still my heart wept, tearless, desolate, silent to itself." (P.285) The liberation movement may annihilate a few individuals, but it is immaterial in the larger national interest. Mira reflects at the end of the novel: But what matters to the universe, I said to myself, if now and then a world is born or a star should die? or what matter to the world if here and there a man should fall or a head or a heart should break. (Pp.285-86) Mira ruminates that individual fall or suffering is irrelevant in the event of a great cause. Through the character of Mira, a mentally I liberated woman, Kamala Markandaya emphasizes that personal losses do not count for a noble cause. Mira sacrifices her love at the altar of national loyalty. In the beginning the ardent love of Mira for Richard seems to cut across boundaries of hatred, but it ultimately fails because they belong to two different cultures or races of the ruler and the ruled. Premala, another female protagonist leads a different kind of life. She is an idealized stereotyped girl who symbolises Indian traditions and culture. She is deprived of love even within married life. She exhibits great patience, the spirit of sacrifice and love. Kit, her husband who is an Anglophile does not reciprocate her feelings of love. Her love is subdued and is ultimately sublimated to the social cause; when she becomes a helping partner of an English
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Missionary Hicky in maintaining a school in a village. Govind, a great Indian revolutionary develops intense love for her. Despite her responding to it from the core of heart, this love does not flower and she is burnt up within the school by the Indians. Hereafter we discern the transformation of Kit, her husband, who repents but all in vain. He is also engulfed by the fire of revolution. When Govind is tried in court on the charge of murdering Kit, Mira decides to leave Richard who belongs to the community of ruiers. The final parting between Mira and Richard is symbolic of the parting between India and England. The internal conflict of Mira reveals her spiritual agony: Go? leave the man I loved to go with these people? What did they mean to me, what could they mean, more than the man I loved? They were my people those were his. (P .285) The strong communal forces separate them and thus Mira's efforts to meet an Englishman on emotional and romantic level for bridging the gulf between the two cultures fail miserably. In her third novel A Sill'llce of Desire (1960) Kamala Markandaya portrays the assault of the views of western scepticism on the oriental faith of Sarojini, the female protagonist. The novel unfolds a family drama by shldying the husband-wife relationship. It reveals how men and women torment themselves and each other by silence on many occasions when they actually require to unburden their hearts by giving vent to their feelings. The novel stresses mainly the internal conflicts of Sarojini, the female protagonist. A.V. Krishna Rao points out:
A Silence of Desire is an imaginative commentary on the psychological maladjustment of a middleclass woman, deeply religious and traditionalist. (Rao, Pp. 72:65) Thus Kamala Markandaya focuses on the psychological torments of Sarojini, the heroine who is a God-fearing and religious and a \Oery cJring wife. Dandekar, her husband, a government servant with his modem and western attitude to life opposes her deep faith in a Swamy who, she believes, will cure her of a tumour
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Feminist Voices in the Novels of Kamala Markandaya
in her womb. She has no faith in medical treatment of her malady. She undergoes great spirihlal crisis when her westernized husband asks her to give up her faith in the spiritual powers of the Swamy. She clearly tells him: I have beliefs that you cannot share ... because faith and reason don't go together and without faith I shall not be healed. Do you understand that? (P.87) She ridicules him for his ignorance of the efficacy of faith and prayer: Yes, you can call it healing by faith, or healing by the grace of God, if you understand what that means. But I do not expect you to understandyou with your Western notions, your superior talk of ignorance and superstition. When all it means is that you don't know what lies beyond reason and you prefer not to find out. (P. 87) Thus Sarojini asserts herself by expressing her personal views on faith - healing, which gives her a kind of identity and distinct personality. She strongly believes in spiritual faith and sticks to it and does not even hesitate in defying her husband. The deaths of her mother and brother in hospital have strengthened her faith in God. In his poem, Morte De Arthllr, the great Victorian poet Tennyson also expresses his faith in the efficacy of faith and prayer when he says: More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of. The strong character of Sarojini with firm faith in spiritualism saves many a time her husband, with his so called modem, progressive and scientific outlook, from moral degradation when he is reminded of her loyalty and fidelity. Thus being a perfect housewife and embodying the ideal and traditional feminine virtues, Sarojini becomes an integral part of Dandekar's life and a pivot of the family. The author shows that Dandekar with his scientific "iews is filled with doubt and scepticism, while Sarojini ~ith her spiritual faith is firm and stable in her principles and thus she emerges a stronger person than her husband. Kamala Markandaya makes London a partial setting of her novels Possessioll (1963) and Tlw Nowhere Mall (1975).
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Though she lived in Londen, yet she considered herself as a part of the Indian mainstream and inseparable from her motherland. She, in fact, has double loyalties, since she lived half of life in the East, half in the West. The author belongs to the westernized upper middle-class society of India. This impact of western upbringing is discernible in Mira and Roshan in Some Inner Fury and in Anasuya in Possession. These female figures may be identified with the author to a great extent. Anasuya, the narrator in Possession is a typical Indian girl loving and self-sacrificing and possesses all the feminine virtues. Still like her creator she is a kind of liberated women of modern India and like her again, she writes novels and often moves between India and England for the publica tion of her novels. Like Roshan and Mira, Anasuya in Possession has close affinity with, and sympathy for, the individual westerns, but is patriotic at heart and does not relinquish her Indian values, though she is men tall y liberated and is not confined to the four walls of home. Though Kamala Markandaya had been living in London for a long time and realizing her artistic potentialities there, yet India, its culture and its people are never effaced from her memory. Her novels present mostly the female protagonists and their quest for self realization in a chaotic world of conflicting cultures - 'one dead, the other powerless to be born'. In fact, Kamala Markandaya has presented a variety of female figures in Possession. A young divorcee Caroline Bell constitutes the central figure of the novel. The search for sensuous pleasures brings her to India where she comes across a young fourteen year old rustic poor boy Valmiki, a talented painter who requires patronage and economic help. She escorLs him to London where his talents are flourished. She exploits him physically and provides him with all comforts and luxury. Suddenly, Val is tortured from within and teels that his talents are being w'asted. Caroline shows him a fake letter from the Swamy, his spiritual guide and mentor in India. He feels inspired again and resumes painting. She even arranges an exhibition of his paintings. However, unable to tolerate his intimate relation with Ellie, his housekeeper, Caroline brings about a separation between them very cleverly. When Val begins to live with Annabel, Caroline poisons his mind again. It is Anasuya, the enlightened and liberated Indian woman who saves him from crisis
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by arranging his return journey to India where he is deeply rooled. He returns to his old ambience and to Swamy, his mentor. He decides never to return to Caroline who had acquired and possessed his soul. She, in fact, stands poles apart from other female figures of Kamala Markanda ya. These women stand for grace and beauty of life, Caroline suggests British dominion over India. The possessive and dominating Caroline, according to R.K. Srivastava, becomes "an active victimizer ot an adolescent male". (Srivastav, P.126). In her effort to ·imprison the soul of val, she is herself imprisoned in her own ego. Kamala Markandaya's fifth novel A Handful of Rice (1966) concerns itself like the first novel with the theme of conflict between oriental stoicism and western revolt. Like the first novei, this novel also gives vent to Markandaya's anguish over social injustice. In the first novel she has treated it in a village, now she shows ii:s effect in a town. In the first novel Rukmani's son Murugan leaves the village hoping to make a better living in town; Ra vi, the protagonist in A Handful of Rice, follows tne same pattern. The first novel has a female protagonist Rukmani, the nilrrator heroine. The fifth novel has a male protagonbt Ravi. Rukmani in Nectar in a Sieve and Ravi in A Handful of Rice, in village and town respectively, represent starvation, social injustice and exploitation of poOl people. The first novel shows the hard struggle for existence in a rurai society, the fifth one displays the same in a modern city. The former novel depicts this struggle in the life of Rukmani, and the latter novel shows it in the life of Ravi. Here Markandaya probes deeper into the misery of human predicament, and sows the seeds of revolt in the heart of its hero. Poverty pollutes the characters of Markandaya'l' fiction. She shows that extreme poverty is a gateway to all kinds of crime. In the first novel poverty leads to the exploitation of Rukrr..ani's sons and to the immoral life of her daughter- Ravi becomes the victim of the same poverty and exploitation in this novel. Once while caught drunk by a policeman; but going scot-free, he forces his way into the house of Apu, a tailor and father of Nalini, the heroine. Due to his infatualion for Nalini and at the sugg~stion of Apu he decides to stay there and gi,-e up his marauding liie for an industrious career. By marrying her he starts life afresh under her love and inspiration.
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Nalini's pure love inspires him to abandon his immoral ways. For her sake, Ravi decides to reform himself completely. Extreme poverty leads him to violence again. Once he joins a mob with a stone in his hand, but he drops it soon because of Nalini's influence on him. Like Rukmani and Sarojini she stands for the sweetness of home and hearth and a healthy traditional life. Nalini exercises a very powerful influence on the life of Ravi turning him into a respectable and honourable person. Thus she sustains him through all his struggles as a wife, guide, friend and philosopher. Though not very strong, Nalini still works as a force, to be reckoned with, to check him from straying. Sometimes even her voice was a source of consolation and solace to the wounded Ravi. To sum up, we can say that by the force of her character she emerges stronger than Ravi while Ravi avoids the vicissitudes of life, she faces them boldly and proves to be a blessing in disguise in Ravi's life. She awakens: Within him an itch to better their lot. He contrasts the little he can offer his wife, with the luxury of the houses he visits in the course of his work. (Joseph, P. 59) In her sixth novel, The Coffer Dams (1969), Kamala Markandaya delineates the theme of East-west encounter in the form of a clash between the human values of India and the technological views of the west. The novel revolves round a dam under construction by a British Engineering firm 'CJinton-Mackendrick Co' to channelise a turbulent river. Here again Kamala Markandaya highlights the character of a woman Helen, the young wife of Harward Clinton, the British engineer. The inhuman behaviour of her husband towards the Indian tribals repels her from him. She develops great feeling of love and compassion for the poor Indian workers and takes great interest in Indian values and customs, culture and tradition. More specifically, she is fascinated by an Indian tribesman named Bashiam for his honesty and integrity, sincerity and devotion to work. To her, human beings are superior to inanimate machines and to inhuman Clinton and other English officials. However, another female character Millie, the wife of Rawlings, a British officer, arrogantly remarks: "Never trust the blacks. That's my motto and I stick to it." (37)
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Unlike other Britishers, Helen thinks of the Indians on equal terms. She perceives the vastness and depth in the soulful East and in the tradition-sustaining tribal people. To her, they are not 'black apes' but alive and feeling men and women. She remarks: But these people aren't different clay, they're like me, like people. What is for me, is for them, there's no other kind of yardstick that's worth anything. (49)
In fact, Helen, the English lady belongs, by heart, more to the mysterious and humane East than to the West and therefore she does not keep away from the Indians. She is overwhelmed by their overflowing warmth, courtesy and hospitality. However she is infuriated by their docility in leaving their land without protest. She asks Bashiam: "Without protest, just got up and walked away, like animals." (P.4S) She wants to sow the seeds of revolt in the hearts of Indians against the inhumanity of the Britishers because she only thinks of them as human beings. Helen seems to be the mouthpiece of the author in voicing her views against the injustice of the English people. She takes so much side of Indians who are filled with human feelings that she feels perhaps she was born in India in her previous life. Once later in the novel, during the shattering noise of blasting, the English sit comfortably in their solid houses and the tribals suffer in their flimsy huts. Clinton callously remarks, that they will get used to it'. But like her creator Helen does not believe that onf' gets used to suffering. Out of despair, she cries out to her husband: Can't you care? Don't human beings matter anything to you? Do they have to be a special kind of flesh before they do? (P.105) In fact, humanity at the very core of her heart distinguishes Helen from other self-conceited Britishers who embody the modern civilization and progressive outlook. She shares with her creator the bitterness of insulted human dignity of the native inhabitants. She bitterly criticizes modern European civilization in her outburst before Bashiam:
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Our world ... the one in which I live. Things are battened down in it. Under concrete and mortar, all sorts of things. The land, our instincts. The people who work in our factories, they've forgotten what fresh air is like. Our animals - we could learn from them, but we're Christians you know, an arrogant people, so we deprive them of their rights ... (P. 138)
Helen drifts away from her husband farther and farther each day because he sees himself only as a 'builder'. For him concrete and steel are more important than human beings. Helen is obviously the mouthpiece of the author and gives free expression to her indignation at the insensitivity and the inhumanity of the British people who think themselves superior to other races in the world, but who, in fact, are subhuman. It seems that in her views, Helen belongs more to India than to the west. In fact, the author depicts Helen as a white woman in quest of harmony in an alien culture which suits her temperament. A. V. Krishna Rao truly opines: Helen represents the new genera tion of young men and women of the west for whom India is not a contemptible colony of Macaulays and Mirtos and Montagues but a cultural commonwealth of Huxleys and Fosters and H::tldanes. (Rao, Pp. 84: 87)
In her next novel The Nowhere Man (1972) Kamala Markandaya delineai:es the problem of identity of elderly Indian immigrants. The protagonists, Vasantha and her husband Srinivas find it not only difficult but impossible to create their own identity in England, the land of their adoption. The theme of racial rancour and hatred figures more prominently in The Now/lere Mall than in any other novel of Markandaya. Vasantha, who embodies the Indian traditional values and virtues of patience, tolerance, bve and fellow feeling, dies of despair and frustration in this atmosphere of racial antagonism, leaving her husband in a E:tate of shock. The novel depicts mainly the tragedy of Srinivas, the lonely man in an alien land. Old and alone, Srinivc1S is befriended bv an English widow, Mrs. Pickering w ho loo~" alter him and protects him and develops
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Feminist Voices in the Novels of Kamala Markandaya
intimacy with him still she can never replace Vasantha, Srinivas's Indian wife, in her calm and intense spiritual love. Kamala Markandaya observes: But she cannot fill the gap left by Vasantha because the affection between Srinivas and Vasantha is the product of India marriage, the union of two souls. (P.1 %)
When Fred Fletcher, an arrogant Englishmen, tells Srinivas that he has got no right to live in England and torments him by abusing and slandering him, Srinivas accepts all this humiliation stoically because he has nowhere to go now. At this moment, Mrs. Fletcher, the good and kindly mother of Fred, apologises to Srinivas: You don't want to pay any attention to Fred ... He doesn't know what he's talking about, you've got as much right to live here as what he has. More .... (P.165)
Mrs. Fletcher, though a white woman, is full of love and understanding and tries to right a wrong caused by her son to a good and gentle -- hearted Indian, Srinivas. In this novel also woman are shown in a better light than their counterparts. The novelist makes us hear the distinct voice of a woman for the cause of mankind. In her eighth novel Two Virgins, (1977) Kamala Markandaya portrays the encroachment by the modern Western values on the traditional beliefs and old established relationships within the family and the village. Markandaya has presented the story of two virgins or girls, Lalitha and Saroja, in this novel. The need for individ ual freedom is the central concern of this novel. The fema Ie characters so deeply rooted in the Indian culture, struggle to be free and pure human beings. Greatly fascinated by the wEsternized outlook of Mr. Gupta, a film director, Lalitha, the heroine, displays her revolt against all the conventional ideals and values of traditional Hindu society. Lalitha is mor~ beautiful a'1d charming and ambitious than Saroja, her s;ster, therefore she becomes an easy prey to the temptations of 1',,1 r. Gupta who allures her, enjoys with her and ultimately Ica\'es her
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when she is pregnant. She had gone to the city in search of her identity, a name and fame by becoming a film star. Her quest proves hollow, She loses completely whatever she had in her village. She had some identity, a home, a name .:md fame for her beauty which was appreciated by all as long as she belonged to the village. However, to her utter disgust and shock, all that is lost now, devoured by city monsters or dt:vils in the disguise of Mr. Gupta, who roam about the city in search of tbeir easy prey like Lalitha. Ont of fmstration she even tries to comm;t suicide, but is prevented from doing so by her younger sister Saroja. She is so much shocked that she leaves her house and village which fail to rcstor~ her lost name and identity. In fact, she has nowhere to go now. The author seems to suggest in the novel that a woman can experience safety and security in her home where she is deeply rooted. Once she becomes a victim to the lust of a male like Mr. Gupta, she is uprooted from her home and village and becomes a nowhere woman, losing her identity A.K. Bhalnagar aptly observes: Lalitha's life is a living example of the tragedy of the modern woman particularly in India (Bhatnagar, P.89) The modern western values of urban life destroy Lalitha's self and annihilate her personality completely. In this novel Markandaya has presented the existential stmggle of a girl who refuses to flow along the wave and denies to surrender herself. However, her effort to find a new self and identity, she gets completely lost. She undergoes much pain and agony and displays a kind of insecurity on account of her traumatic experience and due to the collapse of one value system and the dearth of any sustaining values. However, all these traumcltic experiences teach a lesson to Saroja, the YOlln3er sister who retLl;"ns to her village to be secure there and '1ot to be led astray like her sister. Rukmani, Val, Ravi and Srinivas are uprooted by natural and worldlv forces which are b~yond their control. But Lalitha is uprooted bv her own weakness. }-,er ambition to become a fi!m star and therebv. get a new name, fame and identit:;. Her dl1,bilion displays lh:.: uprooting of humall \'allies and culture in Indian society. ~
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Feminist Voices in the Novels of Kamala Markandaya
Kamala Markandaya's ninth novel, The C(lldell HOllcycom/J, (1977) a saga of princely life in India, portrays the life of a Maharajah who is merely a puppet in the hands of the British. The novel is written in a political background and is fully charged 'with the feelings of patriotism and nationalism. However, Rabi the illegitimate son of Maharajah, becomes a revolutionary since his education is supervised by his mother Mohini and by his grandmother who instil in him the patriotic feelings. Under their influence from head to toe, Rabi can't tolerate his father bowing to the English Viceroy. In this novel also, as in some earlier novels, Kamala Markandaya has glorified the life of a woman Mohini who is presented in a light better than that of other female fIgures in the novel. Mahini is very clever and wise, full of love and romance and has all the feminine charms and qualities of Shakespeare's Cleopatra. A paramour of the Maharajah she exercises a greater control on him and her son Rabi. She is a kind of liberated woman ,·"ho is not confined to the four walls of Maharajah's palace. Unbound by the familial or homely ties, she enjoys complete freedom of movement, and though living in colonial days, she appears to be a liberated woman of modern India. In her last novel Pleasure City q982) Kamala Markanda ya strives to bridge the gulf between two cultures of the East and the West, by developing love and intimacy between Rikki, a poor and rustic Indian boy and Tully, an English officer. As Dr. Kenny, the missionary in Nectar ill il Sieve establishes a hospital where the poor Indians may get the treatment for their ailments, Mrs. Bridie in the Pleasure City is running a school for educating the fisherman's children. She is a kind of female missionary ever extending her helping hand to the people of the fishing colony and always sharing their joys and sorrows. Like some great persons, this English lady i~ a person of simple living and high thinking. Her noble and sublime thoughts associate her not to a particular comlTlUnity, but to the entile humanity. Her character reminds us of Helen in the Coffer Dams for hpr respect of human beings. She lives and dies for the sake of mankind. Kamal
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By the study of Kamala Markandaya's fiction we can stirn up that the feminine voice is heard in nearly all her novels. The one persistent theme that underlies all the novels of Kamala Markandaya is a constant search for identity] mainly by the female protagonists. We witness an internal and external conflict in them] in their process of discerning and affirming their self identity. A.V. Krishna Rao observes: "Kamala Markandaya has shown the creative release of the feminine sensibility in India." (Rao, P. 80 Her female characters such as Rukmani, Mira, Premala, Roshan, Sarojini, Caroline, Anasuya, Nalini, Helen, Vasantha, Lalitha and Mohini all have asserted their identity in their own way. They have been in quest to locate their acceptable place and identity. Nearly all of Markandaya's women characters exhibit a positive and optimistic outlook on life and emerge much stronger than their male counterparts. Each one of them responds in her unique way to her dreams for a better and meaningful life. By exercising their own free will, exhibiting their own self, they get fulfilment and recognition in life. In this way they are able to establish their true identity.
In her novels Kamala Markandaya has shown that women are not lesser human beings, rather they are sometimes more dignified than men because of their greater human virtues and qualities. It is they who enhance the be<1uty and charm of life and provide grace and dignity to it. They provide the solid foundation to the edifice of family which is impossible without their active participation. They need to be given their rightful place and dignity in the family and society for their well-being. Markandaya has made us hear the pronounced voice of women in her fiction, as it may lead to the welfare of entire mankind. The suppression of the feminist voice may calise havoc in ollr life. In her fiction Kamala Markandaya has shown a woman's gradual journey from self-effacement to self-realization, from selfdenial to self-assertion and from self-sacrifice to self-fulfilment. She has traced a woman's transformation from self-sacrificing Rukmani in her first nO\oel to sell-asserting Mohini in her ninth novel, kindling her son R,)bi with the flame of revolution. Re,~d with keen inll'rest her novels have elicited wide critical acclaim from both the Indian and foreign critics of repute. She is
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Feminist Voices in the Novels of Kamala Markandaya
really the glory of India and pride of the world. By creating such female figures in her fiction, who leave an indelible imprint on our hearts, Kamala Markandaya has immortalized herself in English literature. Works Cited
Markandava, Kamala, Nectar in a Sit'Pt', Bombay: Jaico Publishing House. 1956.
_ _ Some Inner FlIry, London: Putnam, 1955. _ _A Silence of Desire, New Delhi: Sagar Publications, 1968. _ _Possession: London: Putnam (1963), _ _A Handful of Rice: New Delhi: Orient Paperbacks, ] 966. _ _ The Coffer Dams, Delhi: Hind Pocket Books Pvt. Ltd. _ _The Nowhere Man, Oriented Longman Ltd. 1975. Bhatnagar, A.K., Kamala Marknndaya: A Thematic Study, New Delhi: Sarup and Sons, 1995. Chatterjee, Arudhate, Rllkml11zi: the motherfigllre in Nectar in a Sieve Stlldit's in Indian Fiction in Ellglish, ed., G.5. Balaram Gupta Gulbarga: JlWE Publication: 1987. Joseph, Margaret P., Kamala Markl1l1daya, New Delhi: Arnold Heinemann, 1980. Rao, A.V. Krishna, Continuity and Change in tlze Novels of Kamala Markandaya, Perspectives all Kamala Markandaya, ed., Madhusudan Prasad, Ghaziabad: Vimal Prakash an, 1984.
_ _ The Indo-Anghan Nol'cl and the Chl11zgillg Tradion, Mysore: Rao & Raghwan. 1972. Srivastava, R.K., Tile NO'1'c/s of Ka lila la Markl111daya, Amritsar: Guru Nanak Dev University, 1988.
DOD
SHASHI DESHPANDE'S THE DARK HOLDS NO TERRORS AS A FEMINIST \\lORK - Dr. Mallikarjun Patil
Shashi Deshpande is an Indian novelist, short-story writer and an author for children. She was born in Dharwad in 1938 and had her ed uca tion in economics and law from the universities of Mysore, Bangalore and Mumbai. She had an M.A. in English later. She did a course in journalism. Shashi Deshpande did not think of writing until she was thirty and bored of family life. She has settled down in Bangalore and has two children. Shashi Deshpande began writing short stories first. The same were published in various Indian magazines and books. Later she published some collections like The Legacy (1971), The Miracle (1986) and It was Dark (1986). Her famous story My Beloved Charioteer appeared in the anthology The Inner Courtyard, edited by Lakshmi Holstrom. This collection had stories from other Indian women writers like Kamala Das, Suniti Namjoshi and others. Shashi Deshpande has now emerged as an important novelist from South India. Her main works are The Dark Holds No Terrors (1980) which has been translated into Russian and German; Come lip al1d Be Dead (1983), Roots al1d Sl1adows (1983) and Binding Wine. Shashi Deshpande's Roots and Shadows was awarded the 1984 Thirumathi Rangammal Prize for the best Indian novel in English.
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Shashi Deshpande's The Dark Holds no Terrors as a ...
Shashi Deshpande has written several books for children. G.5. Amur writes of Shashi Deshpande: Women's writing can be seen at its best in Shashi Deshpande's fiction. An important reason for this is that its main motivation comes not from borrowed ideology but from authentic experience and understanding of what it means to be a woman in the Indian context. Compared to the fictional world of some of the other Indian woman writers in English, Nayantara Sahgal or Anita Desai, for example, the world of Deshpande's stories and novels, essentially a woman's world where men are relegated to the background or reduced to shadows, is narrow but it is explored with a thoroughness and honesty not easily found elsewhere. 1 Shashi Deshpande in her Thllt Long Silence portrays a woman called Jaya, ironically. 'Jaya' in Kannada means victory. But Jaya's life is tragic in the novel. Jaya, as a married woman, is trapped in her household life. For years she has been unable to express herself. All her observations to her husband, children and outsiders have been determined by her conviction that she must present a picture of a happy family. She is so conscious of having forced herself to meet society's conventions that she cannot believe it when her husband finally accuses her of being empty and selfish, of putting no personality or interest into their marriage. Only when she begins to accept some of the responsibility for her own emotional crippling can she begin to unravel the damage caused by the years of silence. Shashi Deshpande's important novel The Dark Holds No Terrors deals with a very modern woman Saru or Sarita. The novel is about her upbringing in a traditional Brahmin family, her medical education and her love for a low caste man, first her protest against her parents and ther'. against her own husband. She claims equal liberty and even falls in love with her colleagUE, violating the law of marriage as men do it (Extra-marital affairs). Saru is ju-.[ an Indian woman, or a house-wife. She is a well-educdted modern Indian woman, a doctor bv profession, a feminist lady who demands f' '..
.
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Shdshi Oeshpande's The Dark Holds
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Terrnr'i as a ...
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equality with men, and c1 rebel who protests dgainst man's 'whi"ky and cigar' politics. The novel is written in four parts each part having many chapters. The novel makes use of R.K. Narayan's flashback technique in narration. The story is narrated by many, though the chief of which is thle' heroine herself. Shashi Oeshpande makes use of abundant italics and ellipse to denote past actions. The no\'el is about modern Indian woman's household life. It is really splendid. The story begins in the life of Saru or Sarutai as she is called in her nath'e town, probably Bangalore. Saru has just come from Bombay where she works as a lady doctor. Recently she has heard of her mother's death, Now she recollects her whole life in d cinematic technique, To be simple, Saru was born in a Brahmin family of a south Indian city. Her mother KamaIatai is herself a depraved woman, I30th the father and mother, rather mother more, are very rigid about Brahminical rites and rituals, They have even brought up their daughter Saru and son Ohmva, three years junior to his sister, in an orthodoxcal way. Both the littlens grow as happily as Ourga dnd Opu in Bibuti Bhushana Banargee's ,vorld renowned novel Patht'r Pallchali. This is also indicated. But the Brahmins do not encourage their daughter for good culture, upbringing, even higher education. They discourage her. They encourage the boy. Yet the girl and boy grow together. The mother often hates her daughter just for she is a daughter. One day the two children while playing in water find a crisis. The boy is drowned in a puddle. This is a greal debacle for the family. The mother, amidst sorrow as much as aversion for her girl child tells Sam: "Why you are still alive". why didn't you d ie?"2 (P.3') Recollecting her dominance over Oruva Saru remembers: Just three years between them. But what immense advantages those three years ga\'e her. She had ruled over him complL'tely, No dictatorship could have been more abslliutc, (P.35) This rem,uk is very characteristic of Indian \".'oman. Til" 1110t\1l'r does not J Ike' her 0\"-"11 d ,HIght,,!". This is qu ite true of Indian women as well as Ind [,111 men, S,1[U did not like to be \\'oman, hO\\ \:,\'CL She
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Shashi Deshpande's The Dark Holds no Terrors as a ...
is not happy to have been born a woman. She knows womanhood is a source of sorrow. \"lhen she develops periodinty she feels regret. She says: "I you're a woman, I don't want to be one." (1'.63). Amidst this Saru qualifies to get medical education. She does an MBBS in Bombay. While doing her MBBSshe has her own Sf'riOllS life. She falls in lovewitha young writer called Manohar. His height, good look, fashionable manners, flapping hair and his poetry charm Saru, herself a little ugly woman. So Saru loves the man as much as a college lady. The two fall in love with each and decide to mMry. She talks of his charm: Sometimes I worked with him, for him, subordinating myself. So completely to him that I was nothing without him. And yet he could do nothing without me, either. (P.54) Yd we need not think that she was unaware of the difficulLies of love marriages. She knows that road not taken is quite a cumbersome one. She intones the thoughts as explicit hither: I know alllhese 'love marriages: It's love for a few days, and then quarrels all the time. Don't come crying to us then. To you? God, that's the one thing I'll never do. Never!.(P. 69) The author writes: She thought of her grandmother who had been deserted by her husband only a few years after marriage, leaving her, a young woman, with two little daughters, one of whom had been her mother. He had disappeared, no one knew where, though there was a family legend that he had taken sanyas. Her grandmother's father had taken the deserted woman and her daughters into his house, looked after them, got the girls married. But there had been, obviously, the burden of being unwanted, of being a dependent. Yet her grandmother had ne,'er so she had heard, complained. It's my luck, she said. My fate. Il was written on my forehead. (P. 70)
Shashi Deshpande's The Dark Hold"
IW
r{'fror~
as a.......
7J
, Sarti informs of her decision to her parents ;1I1d her mother asks the following: What caste is he? I don't know.
A Brahmin? Of course not. Then, cruelly ... his father keeps a cycle shop. Oh, so they are low caste people, are they? (P.96)
Thus Saru is discouraged to marry a man of her caste. But Saru is a modem woman with medical education. She marries Manohar, Manu for short. They start their household life in a small house ot" his friend in a chawl in Bombay. Saru's life is not so happy as she anticipated. This is for the reason that Manu does not get a good job. He is just part time lecturer in a college and runs a tutorial. While she is jobless. She knows just MESA will not be enough for doing medical practice. So she registers ior doing MD under a professor called Boozy. He is called Boozy for his life is ind ulgen!. He drinks and smokes. Besides, he is a debauch. A womanizer. Although Manohar hates Iwr go to him, she says she is helpless. She says he will get the degree. She says, "Within a few months he gave me work in a research scheme that brought in some badly needed extra income every month and kept me longer hours from Manu. He sulked and T was either impatient with him or ignored him." (P. 92). Sam told Manohar: And Manu? I told myself my relationship with this man couldn't, wouldn't hurt MantI. It was just a teacher-student relationship. If he put his hand on my shoulder, slapped me on my bc1Ck, held my hand or hugged me ... that was just his mannerism and meant nothing. (P. 91) Saru, as a mother of two children"- Abhi and Renu - even de\ ('lops ,111 affair with the man in the work place. Afterwards Saru st'ls up I:er 0\\ n clinic in .1 Bombay <;uburb. She h,15 a nur:-e servant Normal.l and dol'S pr,lctic,"'. l )1ll' day she
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Shashi Deshpande's Th,' l hnk I folds
/IV
Taro,-::; as
,1 ...•
hears from a relati\'f' that her mother dlf'd in a Tata ho..;pital, Mumbai. Sorry to say that Baba, Saru's father did not inform the death news to his daughter. So remorse stricken, Sam one day goes to her nalive just to see her father at least. The nmoel starts from this point. WhcJ"('as Shashi Oeshp,ll1de's technique of narration does not convince the simple readers casilv. Saru, however, does not find her father's affection for her. So she feels lonely, or deserted rather. He speaks to her as though she must have not come. She says: "Baba docs it trouble you to have me here? Tell me if it does, I can go to a hote\." (p.18). The father does not want to know anything about her family, her two children. She said: Their names are Renu and Abhi, as if he had asked her for their names, as if she was speaking to a deaf man. (P.21) The novelist "vrites ironically: The loving daughter rushing home to comfort the afflicted father, Manu had mocked, laughing, his facetiousness barely concealing the underlying bitterness. She could admit it to herself now that she knew she had failed. It was nol to comlort her father that she had come. It was for herself. But what had she hoped to find?(P. 43) Indeed, she wanted this relationship even for her two children. They often wanted to know their grandparents. For example, Renu asked Sa ru often: My grandmother, mummy? I never knev\' 1 had ,1 grandmother. Why didn't you tell me I had a grandmother? Why did I never meet her, mummy? Why did she nen'[ come here? (P. ,')3) Later a relative lVlai-Kaki tells ~aru: At last 1 spoke to your father myself. He tried to persuade her to go to a doctor.' 'No doctor for me,' ..;he said. '\ don't want to see their face. (p. 10~).
Shashi Deshpande's The Dark Holds
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Terrors as a...
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Kamalatai's hatredness for her doctor-daughter is explicit here. The daughter is so upset of her mother's hatredness at the same time. She observes: I hate her, sapping me of happiness, of everything. She's always done it to me ... takenhappiness away from me. She does it even now when she's dead. (P.109) Saru's life with Manohar does not run a smooth air. She finds him odd. She is bored of working too much for the family. Once even she declares that she cannot work: 'I said 1 want to stop working.' 'You're joking.' 'No. I'm noLl'm serious.' (P. 80) Saru is bored of life, one may say. She writes of her anguish: "Nobody likes me. Nobody cares for me. Nobody wants me .... " (P.83). Saru is not scared of her husband as she was never scared of her parents and even Boozy. She thinks how she never worried of the dark in her life. In a reference to her brother she knows" the poor little scared boy, who never grew up to know the dark holds no terror"(P. 85). The dark referred to her context is the dominance of tradition, ignorance and of course, the dominance of male over the female. She says: Perhaps there is something in the male, she now thought, that is whittled down and ultimately destroyed. It is not so with a female. She can be dominated, she can submit, and yet hold something of herself in reserve. (P. 85) Thus we find that Shashi Deshpande goes on depicting the elite of Sarita and her problems, particularly in relation to her father, her obsession with her mother and brother and others. She is worried of her loss of love, mother's affection for her, and her future with respect 10 ivlanohar. In her own words, 'the fear of happiness' is \·ery elusive. Saru talks of her trip to Ooty and her friendship with Smita .md Naill. She speak.s of Smita and Nalu and herself having differt'nt attitudes. She finds that Smita is changed due to her husband's iniluence. Nalu remains a spinster. NaIll is not happy
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Shashi Deshpande's The Dark Holds no Terrors as a ...
yet. When they meet they discuss of the matters closely. Saru broaches upon a friend Padma Rao's matters. He is an eccentric. Madhav's family matters engage our attention. The young man's family of father and Satish, his brother and his typical mother are interesting characters. In fact, Madhava, though a Brahmin, feels the same way as that of Saru. He is modern. When he says that he has to think of his life, his words impress Saru and she thinks that what she has done is right. His words sound to her as though practical and realistic. She utters such words again and again. Saru tells her father that she did not do anything for Dhruva's death. She elicits his reply about mother's and his good opinion. Both talk of this and that for a long time when Madhav has gone off home. The father convinces her that her mother did not worry about her afterwards. Yet she did not forgive her. Even she cursed her daughter. She did not remember her when on deathbed. This hurts Saru. Thus they go on thinking of their life. At the end, Saru receives a letter from her son to the effect that he would arrive there. But he does not. Then she decides to go to Mumbai. She thinks her life is her's own even when there is an area of darkness all around. The closing of the novel is not so clear. Saru goes to give treatment to a patient instead of departing for Mumbai. I do not think Shashi Deshr nde has given the novel a fine end. Even the novel fails to convince us. HOWEver, there are several fine passages here and there. In conclusion, the novel The Dark Holds 110 Terrors is about Saru's assertion of herself, her personality, her position in human society. She gets medical education even in the teeth of opposition; she marries outside the caste and she does what an educated woman can do. So the' dark holds no terror for her.' References 1.
Amur, G.S., Shashi Deshpande, Critic on the RUIl, Writer's Workshop, Calcutta, 1999, P.S4.
2.
All the textual references are from Shashi Deshpande's The Dark Holds No Terror, New Delhi: Penguin, 1990.
DOD
SHASHI DESHPANDE'S THAT LONG SILENCE: A FEMINIST ApPROACH - Dr. Bizagabat Nayak
Feminism in Indian English fiction is experimental, confessional and polemical in the realistic or autobiographical accounts of the novelists. It is often considered a literary tOllr de force or a Slll1ll11l1l11 bon/llll in the fictional accounts of a few Indian women novelists in English. Historically the 'firsl wave' of feminist movement had started socially and culturally in India during Bengal Renaissance but its 'second wave' had the epicentre in the rural and urban India with a new kind of awakening and consciousness in the middle class educated women mass after 1960. A group nf women novelists like Shashi Deshpande, Dina Mehta, Namita Gokhale, Nina Sibal, Arundhati Roy and a few olhers have concentrated on women's problems Ll their works and have gh'en \'ent to a new approach to women's consciousness in the emerging phenomenon. The sale aim of these women novelists is to project the predicament of women in Indian society with an attempt to liberate them from their surroundings full of taboos, orthodoxy and social customs by sanctioning the right to speech. But while freedom of speech is a birth right in socia-political dynamics. Silence is used as a euphemism for women's \"irtuC'. Shashi Deshpande in her Sahitya
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Shashi Deshpande's That L01lg Silence: ...
Academy Award Winner That LOlIg Silence (1988) "shows how the silence imposed on women is partly 01 their own making, though society and tradition have a hand." (Naik, Pp.86-87) In an analysis of Indian tradition and culture she gives a plausible explanation for women's oppression with her feminist assertions. t\.'1aking her woman protagonist Jaya, a prototype for ed ucated middle class Indian women, she asserts her calise for woman's liberation. A feminist approach to her novel enlarges one's understanding of it as a feminist thesis. It exposes women's oppression in family and society, on gender and sex bias. In the zeal of a feminist and zest of a socialist she has analysed the Aristotelian maxim: "The virtue of man is in eloquence and that of women in silence," a fallacy in her fictional fervour. Comprehending women's body and anatomising her organs in her novels she narrates that all restrictions against women are biologically biased, culturally obsessed and calculatively constructed to abuse her in the societal structures of her 'otherness'. Deshpande's women protagonists grow and become in thl' patriarchal environment of the family tradition. Their creative possibilities and impulse is prevented by the 'ruling ideology' of their kinsmen. In That Long Silence .laya has become the victim of her society's phallologocentric culture. The manipulating power of man in 'sexual politics' and the viccisitudes of her life are due to the phallic fantasy that restricts her body and feelings. Home is not sweet for her but this makes her sweat in her 'wifely' and 'motherly' roles. Stereotype life, physical and psychological oppression and male made restrictions create a kind of homophobia in her. Kinship without care and relation without reciprocation make life unbearable for her. She disco\'ers "marriage is thus a dramatic: encounter between nature and culture, between alliance and kinship (Levi-Strauss, P.489). She finds all the possibilities of her life limited in the routine jobs like changing the sheets, scrubbing bathrooms and cleaning fridge and performing her traditional feminine roles like child bearing and mothering the children. Her family creates a suppressi\'e atmosphere due to its "interior colonization" (Millet, P.2S) where she is maimed, mutiliated and made dependent for ever. The institution of marriage is manipulated in sexual politics
Shashi Deshpande's Thnt Long SileJICC' : ...
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and phallocentric complexity. In this kind of environment her struggle for self-liberation is turned to a failure. She maintains her self-idealised method of adopting 'silence', an antilogos weapon, a political process for self liberation and a psychological" guerrilla warfare" (P.9) to encounter the volte-face altitude of male hegemony. Marriage for Jaya is a kind of bondage, a kind of slavery, a liminality and alienation. It is allegedly fundamental to male sexual appetite that prescribes rules for procreation and nurturing children. At parental home she is under constant surveillance, at husband's house she is in servitude for her acceptance of traditional and cultural ties and enjoys a minority status without self's autonomy. In silence she suffers from oppression and realizes, "In truth woman has not been socially emancipated through a man's need-sexual desire and the desire for offspring which makes the male dependent for satisfaction upon the female" (Beau voir, xxvi). When Jaya faces self annihilation in her failure to protest she prefers to 'silence,' 'a non-combatant method' in her strategic alliance to counter the violence against her. In Deshpande's fictional manoeuvre Jaya indicates the arrival of new Indian women. Her Jaya is eager to defy rebelliously against the well entrenched moral orthodoxy of the patriarchal social system that creates violence against her sex. Projecting the cross-currents of feminism Deshpande makes her novel a comprehensive thesis of philosophy, psychology and cultural anthropology. While the philosophical analysis deconstructs Jaya in her subordination as a private property, she focuses her divine construct, a progeny in the kinship theory and social relations. Deshpande focuses her existential suffering and the CIrcumscribed family environment where her husband Mohan Kulkarni rationalizes male crimes against her. Psychology helps to understand the life of women in the societal structure. Cultural anthropology estimates her in sex and gender consciousness. But all approaches analyse her past, present and possible future sanctioning the rights Lo make her a bridge maker between man and WOl1lan. In the portrayal of Jaya, an educated middle class Indian housewife Deshpande as.;;crts her rights as a liberal feminist and projects women's problems in general without any prop,lgandlst and sexist purpose. Her concern lies more in the
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projection of women's unhappy realitie<; where they live in depressing, mel,lIlcholic and claustrophobic psyche. Deshpande helps her protagonist Jaya "to open some of her windows and let the morning light fill her dark rooms" (The Hilldllstall Times SlIllday Magazine). In Java's predicament she focuse,; the frustration and alienation of middleclass women who face the problems due to the conflicting forces of tradition and moderni ty, right to self assertion and reason for adjustment in aggravated marital life. In novelist's imaginative flashes laya represents her rural and urban middle class contemporary women who crave for independence in their predicaments. Although her women characters fight against all natural and man-made odds they are not the suprehumans in strength and knowledge that they can tackle in the faces of challenges and hostilities of life. They are the authentic human beings of flesh and blood with recognizable credentials. laya is more or less similar to other women characters in the novel who has her trials and tribulations. She occupies: The pivota I posi tion for her struggle in the context of contemporary Indian society, to find and preserve her identity as wife, mother and most important of all, as human being. (Amur, P.lO) Her inner conflict is due to her private dilemma between duty and loyalty; and public attitude as many Indian wives keep on: Perennially groping about their fate, but unwilling to do nothing that could result in their being tossed out of their comfortable ruts and into the big, bad world of reality, to fend for themselves. (Sheshadri, P.94)
Decon'structing the novel in feminist perspectin:' one can assess the necessity of understand ing the text's socin-psychological structure, categorization and consciollsness of gender and sex, female and feminine. It is an analysis of woman's interior position and emotional landscape. Ni.urating the interior position of Mohan Kulkarni, the novelist doesn't believe in the realitv of the relevance of biologicd I difierences between man and woman but take,:> it more
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a determining factor to play the social roles. Jaya is surprised at the unequal position of women in society where men decide the right of women and this breeds her subordination and seclusion. Projecting Mohan's emotional indifference and misogynistic attitude towards Jaya the novelist analyses the irrationality of male psyche. As Alpha males are slow to praise but quick to blame women Mohan suffers from Alpha male synd rome. Jaya' s familiarity with Mohan breeds his contempt for her and silence breeds her predictability. Mohan's ego affects Jaya's honour and instinct. This causes a devastation to the entire business of trusting in conjugal life. Jaya realizes that neither the patriarchal atmosphere nor the distinction of marriage promotes her condition rather perpetrates emotional stress in domestic violence. Reconciling the erotic and harsh realities of life in domestic front she prefers to' silence' as the best possible method of self-defence and mode of response. Deshpande is agreeably identical in her opinion with Simone de Beauvoir that sex is a biological and gender is a social construct. Analysing the basic differences between man and woman she thinks "sex is a word that refers to the biological differences between male and female: The visible difference is genitalia, the related differences in procreative function. 'Gender', however, is a matter of culture: it refers to the social classification into 'masculine' and 'feminine'. (Oakley, P. 16) In the patriarchal culture her protagonist realizes that sex is seen as a primary division on which gender is predicted. Further, if gender precedes sex it brings the distinction between nature and culture in which Jaya and her milieu are the parties. In Deshpande's fictional presentation: It is oppression that creates sex and not the
contrary. The contrary would be to say that sex creates oppression, or to say that the cause of oppression is to be found in sex oppression, in a natural division of the sexes pre-existing society. (Witting, P.25)
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In the social construct and man-woman relationship power of sex and gender consciousness pervade our society. In Indian context sex as a moral object has no autonomy and it is taken as a privileged definition to silence woman's voice through marital violence. Deshpande conveys this concept in her 'female' protagonist Jaya who is a biological category and her behaviour and roles as 'feminine.' Assessing the woman's world and woman's' otherness' in her feminist assertion the novelist thinks that sex and gender consciousness must not be a problem in man-woman relationship as they are the natural and social constructions. Morality is a euphemism used for sex in Indian socio-cultural context in much eulogized form. But gender is a privileged definition in sexual politics that Deshpande fights against in her reformative zeal and tries to shut the inequalities in their social condition. She defends her protagonist's biological construct and social role playing reminding us the truth: One is not born but rather becomes a woman - it is civilization as a whole that produces this creature .... (Beauvoir, P.143) Jaya's struggle against inequalities and injustices in her existential suffering and her attempt to protest male power of restrictions are considered as her virility. She questions her imposed inferior status in the domestic chores where her rights are rigorously threatened by Mohan's rationalization of atrocity and oppressive attitude which helps her to have a sway for modernity from tradition. She says in an interview to Lakshmi Holmstrom: I have read a lot of feminist novelists ... while my writing was ~eflected feminist ideas right from the start. (Eve's Weekly, P. 27) Realising the inferior status of women and the burden of tradition and culture on them, she says: I must say that it is not consciously done. It is because the world for women is like tha t and I am mirroring the world. (The Sunday, Observer)
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While in the domestic chores women's rights are violated due to male hegemony and stringency of cultural and traditional rules in pan-Indian situation: Deshpande points the uneasiness of woman in the traditional role, which expects her to be an embodiment of sacrifice and suffering, a moment of patience and devotion and a selfless bestower of love and affection. (Sinha, pp. 171-172) Estimating marriage as a bondage in life's mysterious process she finds sex a more determinative factor claims its dominance. Catharine Mackinnon observes rightly: Sexuality, then, is a form of power ... which institutionalize male sexual dominance and female sexual submission. It is true, sexuality, is the linchpin of gender inequality. (P. 533) In the narration of laya-Mohan relationship while something is obvious about the aspects of feminism Deshpande does not need to be categorized as a feminist novelist nor her works to be included in women's studies separately. She makes her stand clear in an interview to Ashvini Sarpeshkar Tandon: I do not like to be branded this or that because life is more complex than that. My enduring concern is for human relationship. I certainly do not think my novels are a man vs. woman issue at all. (Femina)
In Indian social context feminism is an insurrection, not a coffee morning. Women's sexual freedom is allegedly fundamental to sexual appetite is under parental surveillance before marriage and bolstered by the male superiority after marriage. Religion, custom, tradition and social systems idolize sex as a moral object and seek its procection and security from man's physical force. In an interview she says to L. Holmstrom "Men do use their power, their sexual power in order to subjugate women" (P.244) however they are sufficiently intelligent and educated. This is the reason why the
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novelist defines Jaya's existence in her traditional claustrophobic existence where she is confined and restricted traditionally in the routine works of her family. Marriage does not bring any solution for her problems rather it becomes a menace to her. The imagination of this romantic landscape and fascination for it gets rhumatised in the traditional notions of family and society. She gets disillusioned in Mohan's anxiety for identity by marrying an educated and cultured wife. It has further demeaned his love for Jaya. This leaves Jaya in alienation, frustration and subordination, and she is apparently denigrated to the status of a domesticated animal. She keeps her fascinations in animated suspension for a long time in the hope of liberation. Realising Mohan's insensitiveness towards her suffering she prefers to maintain silence and lives in the status of a proletariate because "The proletariate can propose to massacre the ruling class ... bu t women cannot even dream of exterminating the males" (Beauvoir, xxv). While her private self models her 'silence' in a self-propelled strategy for peace of the mind without any irritation with the other self, the public self reveals the former an obstinate, disobedient and not loyal to her cultural past. But the societal structure of culture and tradition is so rigid that she is almost sandwiched between her 'wifely' and 'motherly' roles. All her energy and spirit to fight against sex and gender biases are exhausted in the ruling ideology and she develops the symptoms of homophobia. Jaya does not enjoy the pleasures of domesticity in the phallocentric environment rather suffers a lot in manmade gender inequality. Realising this situation of middle class educated Indian women Deshpande remarks in an interview to Vanamala Vishwanath: It is necessary for women to live within relationships. But if the rules are rigidly laid that as a wife or mother you do this and no further, then one becomes unhappy. (Pathak, P. 236)
Mohan's masculine self-esteem formulates Jaya's psychological suffering which Ardrea Dworkin remarks: The sexual colonization of women's bodies is a material reality; men control the sexual and
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reproductive uses of women's bodies. The instruments of control include law, marriage, prostitution, pornography, health care, the economy, organized religion and systematized physical aggression against women. (P.48) In our traditional set up marriage does not always initiate Platonic concept of love nor it is confined in one's commitment. She regrets over the practice in our tradition where "two people are brought together after cold-blooded bargaining to meet, mate and reproduce so that the generations might continue." (Deshpande, 1983:3) Life in matrimonial alliance creates an emotional alienation for Jaya. She knows her past and future but makes a futile attempt to search her identity in the present. Life appears differently in "Ten different mirrors" (P.1) for her. The institu tion of marriage appears as an anachronism as it reduces Jaya's freedom. She discovers that her body is not her own and it is legitimately claimed by her husband for his 'needs and desires'. In the male canonization her soul is encouraged for salvation and body is anatomized for macho assaults. In her circumscribed status she fails to defend her body and becomes a victim of marital rape, pseudo-purification, shame and torture. In an emotional blankness she realizes "sex is only a temporary matter" (Deshpande 1982:139), love is a philosophical orientation in a repressive atmosphere and her sacrifice in wifehood and motherhood is a kind of martyrdom. Unquestionably she accepts the idea," A husband is like a sheltering tree" (P.l37) without whom life becomes futile. She had dreamt the pleasures of domesticity but in nervousness she spends her time like "a lamb's waiting for the butcher's knife to come down upon it" (Deshpande, 1982:63). She desperately narrates the secret philosophy of woman's body and says: We seemed to be left with nothing but our bodies, and after we had dealt with them we faced blankness. The nothingness of what had seemed a busy and full life was frightening. (P.25)
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Her curiosity for freedom is needed for he! sanity. Her silence stifle her cheerfulness in marital life. Both Mohan and Jaya estimate themselves equal and lock horns like a pair of bullocks yoked together" (P.8). B.K. Das rightly observes the irony of the animal metaphor in the clever phrase: II
... the image of a pair of bullocks yoked together suggests a world of meanings. It means that the bullocks so yoked share the burden between themselves but no one knows whether they love each other or not. The image of beasts performing the duty mechanically undermines the husband-wife relationship, who are supposed to be united in marriage for love and not for leading a mechanical life terminating in mutual hatred and distrust. (Pathak, P.127) Realising the emptiness of her life Jaya pleads that her "body must be heard and "silence" must be listened by her husband's conscience. She knows, "Mohan has always had very clear ideas about himself. He was a dutiful son, he is a dutiful father, husband, brother" (P .9) but in distrust narrates her state: II
A man and woman married for seventeen years. A couple with two children. A family somewhat like the one caught and preserved for posterity by the advertising visuals I so loved. But the reality was only this. We were two persons. A man. A woman. (P.8)
In the phallocentric culture and male complacency Jaya's feminne sensibilities are carapaced and she is relegated to a moribund state without sympathy and solace from Mohan. She knows tha t her'silence' is unheard and with this she can not bargain for male sympathy but she can storm the male bastion. Her subordinate status to men for her sex cannot cure the ills of her lite but in response to this she continues a crushade for equal rights with men and for her emancipation.
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In Oeshpande's fictional world woman does not have vetoing capacity against social mindsets. In her middle-class status she is either engaged in domestic service or plays the role of a child-bearer. She is not pro-woman but prefers to the protection of woman from abuse at home. Her feminism is a crusade against male hegemony. In Indian literary tradition woman is a silent sufferer for years. Her freedom of sex is welcomed in the periphery of marriage though often it is in the guise of righteous horror. Her marriage is an area of darkness that provides a tortuous upbringing. Sex is always a subject of repressions. But sexuality of women is tightly controlled and ceaselessly monitored. It is believed that her salacious pleasures of sex may destroy the delicate fabric of family system. The complications of sexual politics make women the victim of her appeal for sex. She bears the horrors of sex stoically within marriage also. In the concephlal onslaughts of male hegemony she is only idealized in her roles as a wife, mother, sister and daughter with self-chosen sufferings from self-denial, sacrifice, patience and love for others without being loved. Enjoying her life as a subordinate to her parents, husband and children she becomes a victim of domestic violence. In the family atmosphere and her societal tradition she faces a lot of difficulties in her adjustment yet she prefers to 'silence' and weaponises it for a strategic alliance for peace and bliss. She knows that her rebellion would make her to face social ostracism. Taya like many of her contemporaries knows that her silence has a long history in human civilization which leads her to slavery. She cannot fight alone against the tradition nor she can right the wrongs as her "Feminism emerges as a concept that can encompass both an ideology and movement for socio-political change based on a critical analysis of male privilege and women's subordination within any given society" (Signs). Taya endures what she cannot cure alone in her alienated self. Deshpande conveys a message that unless they are united as a class they cannot dispel this injustice and will live in the circumscribed status as imaginary houyhnhnms under the rule of yahoos reminding us Simone De Beauvoir's words: But women do not say "we" ... The reason for this is that women lack concrete means for organizing
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Jaya realizes male view of 'biological determinism' that invites her inferiority. But she is emotionally exploited for the relational demands of her parents, husband and children. Her 'private sphere' is frequently intruded by her husband and all instruct her at finger points without sharing their responsibility. Deshpande's feminist assertion in Jaya's cause appears appropriate in J. Donavan's remark: Women will remain trapped in age old patterns of enslavement and they will lose hard-won freedom unless they learn and transmit their history. (xi) In Deshpande's fictional imagination parent-child relationship is determined on the sex and gender bias. Jaya is the worst victim of it. In her parents' Saptagiri house she was Jaya. She was differently looked from other male children. She was forced to do the works like scrubbing and cleaning the bathroom which the boys were not supposed to do. When she grumbled to do the works she was taught to prefer 'silence' since this is woman's virtue. After her marriage she came with her husband to Lohanagar and then to Dadar flat where Mohan Kulkarni was working as an executive. She discovered that her name Jaya means 'victory' was erased and it is Suhasini chosen by Mohan. Mohan wanted to see Suhasini distinct from Jaya, a soft spoken, smiling, placid and motherly woman, readily made to nurture her family, cope with others and idiotic. Slowly she discovered her much aspired romantic world a dull and dreary one. Her happiness turned into an illusion. By and by she realized her life a "chorus of Greek drama" (P.4) in the "post-wedding ceremonial games" (P.6). She understood how "pseudo-puritanism"
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(P.3) in male psyche is responsible for her catharsis in the macabrian dinginess of a drab building in the heart of Bombay. Outside her family the environment was full of superfluity and steadfastness but inside the family she enjoys a balanced relationship in a kind of battle with Mohan. She comes to know that her husband is not happy with a well-educated wife, secure job, insurance, provident funds and healthy school going children. Narrating her past and present experiences she counts her predicament in the existing male indoctrination of woman's subordination and exploitation. She becomes the victim of gender apartheid: Physical touching is for me a momentous thing. It was only Appa who hugged me as a child, and after him there was Mohan. We were husband and wife and he could hold me, touch me, cares me. But it was never a casual or light-hearted thing for either of us ... I can remember how his gift of casual, physical contact had amazed me. His unawareness of my shock the first time he did it had told me ... his dispassionate tone, his detached touch, had somehow angered me. (P.lS) Mohan's apathy, complacency, insensitiveness, irresponsibility and callousness make her desperate and she sighs in a choky, emotional and agonizing helplessness. She is frightened in an emotional extravagance how her life with Mohan was a "monstrous burden" (P.97). In loneliness she says: I had always thought him a man devoid of curiosity. Often, I had envied him for his indifference ... I had thought, it shows his superiority, the fact that he is above the kind of petty curiosity that devours me? (P.57)
Further narrating her most awful moment in life she counts the emotional distance in their togetherness: "I had been egar ... for sex ... I had responded passionately to him - and then it was over. He had turned away from me" (P.98). She is reminded of the words of Ramu Kaka, "the happiness of your husband and home depends
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entirely on you" (P.138). She thinks of her envy towards Mohan is inauspicious for her "auspicious wifehood" (P.68). Being "apprehensive of not pleasing him as a woman" (P.96), she takes her 'physical togetherness with Mohan a failure and a responsible cause for her "disolate wifehood" (P.97). If Jaya's sex is energy for her life Mohan's devoid of curiosity in it metamorphosises her craze into a perversion. Jaya's self-chosen silence is a compromise between benevolent motherhood and non-violent wifehood. This is a kind of sanyasa, a principle of non-participation, non-attachment and nonreactiveness to Mohan's interference in her affairs that subdues her independence as a human being. Mohan's insensitiveness and apathy towards her suffering and Gandhian ideology make her a failure in self-eulogisation and self-assertion. Her rationalizing of 'silence' relegates her to the sublimal state where her "silence seemed heavy with uneasiness" (P.27). In her blind devotion for Mohan she says: If Gandhari, who bandaged her eyes to become blind like her husband, could be called an ideal wife, I was an ideal wife too. J bandaged my eyes tightly. I didn't want to know anything. (P.61)
With the heart of a Gandhari and brain of a Kaikei she expresses her loyalty to Mohan: It was enough for me that we moved to Bombay, that we could send Rahul and Rati to good schools,
that I could have the things we needed ... decent clothes, a fridge, a gas connection, travelling first class. And, there was enough for Mohan to send home to his father - for Sudha's fees, Vasant's clothes and Sudha's marriage. (Pp.61-62) Jaya's flatness is opposed with two contradictions - tradition and modernity. She is Deshpande's new woman of postindependent India. She loves and respects her husband and is loyal to tradition but with a new consciousness of modernity she struggles against repressive orthodoxy, ignorance and inequality in a crusade
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with a hope to re~ain her due for her sociological, psychological and spiritual growth. She is exploited physically and decimated emotionally in her family atmosphere where her husband creates a homophobia for her. But under no circumstances she can come back to her parents' house since she knows that there the patriarchal command would compel her to "Go back home and obey your husl-and. And never mind whatever it is he has done he's your husband, after all, and a husband can do no wrong" (P.llS). Imagining her sorry state of affairs she thinks her life with Mohan is an "absurd exercise (which) we call life" (P.122). She is caught between tradition and modernity, dominance and control and is thrust upon the duty of a role player and hOIl)e-maker. Analysing her opportunity and awareness one is reminded of Veena Noble Dass's remark: The Indian woman caught in the flux of tradition and modernity the burden of the past and the aspiration of the future is the crux of feminism in India. A search for identity and a quest for definition of the self have become prime features of women in literature under the sway of feminism. (P.ll) Jaya can not think of betraying Mohan as this will make her a "Protean monster" (P.l34). She honours the traditional belief of sex as a symbol of morality in Indian and confines herself in the unforgettable oracular solemnity in Vanitamani's words" A husband is like a sheltering tree" (P.137). Jaya's silence may be an act of diffidence, an act of neutrality, an act of compromise and a kind of protest. The act of diffidence is due to the dominance of Mohan's sex hegemony that causes an assault on her emotion. The act of neutrality is the most difficult method to centralize her ideology in diplomacy. The act of compromise is for her children and existential adjustment of life in the present for a future. The protest is passive in a survival strategy. Her silence is a metaphor for her helplessness, and failure which may not obstruct male superiority but juxtaposes her status of
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equality. However, her silence is the hardest argument to refute the male superiority. She suffers from the worst kind of emotional labour and sexual boredom in Mohan's cruelty of indifference. This makes her to prefer 'silence' as the possible way of her response. Silence is her strength and it promotes her to work with resilience in orde\~ to lead her career and family in the domain of diverse traditional mindsets. The institution of marriage does not provide her the serenity of mind. Rather in it male superiority drags her to a kind of servility that causes senility in her existential reality. Silence is a superior virtue she maintains for her adjustment but she fails to check her rebellious nature which makes an outlay in her writings. Her writing of stories as a contribution to Women's World brings a moderate success .out the thematic perceptions in them are not appreciated by Mohan. She says "To Mohan, I had been no writer, only an exhibitionist" (P.144). Mohan takes pride in her writerly career but does not prefer to her success. Before enjoying the light of the day the stories face the objections at horne. Mohan thinks Jaya's stories are overdosed with feminist assertions and over toned with autobiographical elements. Jeopardising her career he restricts her freedom as a creative writer. He likes to see her in the role of a house-wife in his male ego and compares "women's writing to women's masturbation" (Cixous, P. 159). Jaya changes her creative career from story writing to column writing for newspapers. A sociopsycho analysis reveals that Mohan's desire to marry an educated and cultured wife for his success ends in a failure for his selfishness and exploitation of Jaya. Since man and woman are the two sides of human life Deshpande is disillusioned with male psyche that victimizes women in sex and gender bias. Social psychologist, Brian Lewis analyses that men prefer to subordinate women for long term relationship as: The findings provide empirical support for the widespread belief that powerful women are at a disadvantage in the marriage market as men may prefer to marry less accomplished women. (P.6) Jaya's success in writing is apprehended for establishing her superiority and this demeans the conventional role of Mohan as
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husband, the bread winner of the family. Assuming a solution to this problem in Indian context Ritambhara Hebbar writes: Women are expected to move into their husband's house after marriage makes the man seek a woman who he thinks would take to his family members; which often translates into choosing a woman with lesser qualifications than him. (P.6) Mohan denigrates Jaya's success as deterrent to the accomplished notion, of a husband. He thinks that prospective woman is a disadvantage in a misconception that too much of liberty would make her proud and she will not take care of home and kids and it will enable her to establish dominance and control over her husband. Jaya's role playing as a daughter, wife and mother is terribly affected by the male-prescribed roles which is a traditional construct. Without awareness and dynamic orientations in patriarchal mind set and social set up women become an easy prey to men in 'sexual politics.' The family and social atmosphere compels her for submission and surrender to male superiority. Like many women in their suffering Jaya is physically exploited and emotionally mutilated without any sympathetic heed to her identity, upbringing, quest for freedom and she is traditionally restricted in her" feminine role playing" (Tong, P.208). Idolising her for her role in home making and preserving the progeny for future gep~ration she feels as if her anger, passion, ambition and rights are snatched away in a calculated way. She is encouraged to preserve the pseudo-ethics of tradition in her 'silence'. Jaya is well aware of the fact that she is trapped in the male urge and estimated always in male ego. She is initiated in the belief: A woman can never be angry; she can only be neurotic, hysterical, frustrated. There's no room for anger in my (her) life, no room for despair, either. (Pp.147-148)
She i.., belittled as a human being for her role playing. Her ambitions, emotions and freedom are shattered in family chores-
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slavishly doing the works at the wills of Mohan and engaging herself like a machine for producing children. Any act of her creative impulse for self-expression and quest for liberation in a defence mechanism is accepted as a thought crime and the society cannot tolerate it. She compromises, cares and remains cautious in her words and actions. She knows that for her the doors in the past are closed, the present is full of predicaments and the future needs very calculative and cautious steps. The rigid customs and societal traditions humiliate her like a baser human being. When she is a part and parcel of family and society's construction her role is unrecognised. Her independence is obstructed, femaleness is intruded and psychology is traumatized. She is inspired to initiate the eternal virtue of 'silence', a poetics of sexual politics and a penalty for her gender role in social construct. She knows that her revolution will make her a heretic. Between responsibility for family duty and quest for self-identity she maintains a delicate balance between submission and revolt. She hypothises the philosophy of 'silence,' "It was so much simpler to say nothing. So much less complicated" (P.99) for a compromise. But her silence neither makes aware nor sensitizes Mohan for her plight. If speech is golden for Mohan, silence is virtue for Jaya. Jaya accepts her virtue as a defeat without honour. Her silence interrogates the creamy layer of sexual politics, and decon.,tructs the patriarchal and social constructs of family where her daughterhood and wifehood are defined. Realising her potentialities Jaya prefers to autonomy in selfactualisation. Preferring to silence in her survival strategy as a pique for Indian women who are the" creatures of conventional morality: They are the ones who are unfairly abused, misused and illused. But they believe in conformity and compromise for the sake of retention of domestic harmony rather than revolt which might revolt in the disruption of familial concord. (Gupta, P.39) It is her most cerebral step in a defensive mechanism not to damage or dampen her familial relationship in "the habit of being a wife" (P.4S). It is a self-imposed virtue needed for quietitude, loyalty, security and preparation in her hawkish attempt to snatch
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her privilege. The ethic of silence proves also her endurance and endurance proves her strength in meditative patience. She is disillusioned to see woman's entire world in her household where she realizes: There had been incredulous anger in her tone, the angry amazement of one betrayed by something she had thought innocuous. (P.121)
In the service of others in her family she has become a domestic subaltern, a mistress of the house and a caretaker of her husband and children. She "ledrnt it at last - no questions, no retorts. Only silence" (P.143) would be the safety methods for her peace. Apart from this she continues writing and gets happiness in publishing them. Neither in life nor in career prospect as a writer she gets support from Mohan. Rather Kamat, a stranger who lives as a neighbour in the same fla t comes to her life when she had gone to deliver a letter to him which was wrongly delivered to them. Kamat is an emotional interlude in Jaya's catharsis. The novelist makes her a shadowy figure in Jaya-Mohan relationship to assert Jaya's feminine qualities. Her philosophy of 'silence' is the sign, creative impulse is the signifier and her relationship with Kamat is the signified purpose that proves Jaya's rendering of "love, wisdom, understanding and nobility" P.173). Being an advertiser Kamat had enough sensibilities to understand man and the mankind. Jaya takes him as a friend, philosopher and guide in her career. She finds him decent and objective in outlook for women. His objective may not be exploitative like that of Mohan but socialistic in approach. She derives from Kamat "the best of her father's concern for her - assurance and comfort - and the best of attention that she would like to have from Mohan" (Mittapalli, Pp.68-69). She takes Kamat, as an elder brother when he advises her, "spew out your anger in your writing" (P.147), becomes generous enough to her in distress by banking upon his counsel and offers type-writer and address for mail purpose. At the same time he can compliment her cordially and 'asexually'; "Your name is like your face" P.152), calls her a "good humoured, pea brained but shrewd" (P.149) and encourages her, "you'll never fail" (P.150) whIch make her proud.
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She had never heard these words from Mohan even in spite of her natural bond with him. Her body responds to his gentle look as she finds "There had been nothing but an overwhelming urge to respond to him with my (her) body, the equally overwhelming certainty of my (her) mind that I (she) could not do so. Later, there had been confusion" (P.lS7). However, she trusts in Kamat who provides her a therapeutic effect on her emotion as psychotherapist. Anjali Chhabria's remarks appropriately, "Women trust strangers based on some remote connection on an emotional and intuitive level" (P.2). Women can open up to anyone who listens to them and shares with their problems which is found in Jaya-Kamat relationship on the network of laya's extended relationship. Deshpande makes it clear that trust is not gender specific and no culhtral connotation or social restriction determines who she trusts. laya's feminine urge is suspended by her filial responsibility that reminds her virtues of an Indian woman. Her instinctual urge is for an emotional ease but not for her marital bliss. Her relationship with Kamat may be Platonic but the plethora of her sensual desires gets shaped in romantic illusions because of her failure at the domestic front. Mohan is a cOluplex character very careless, neither verbal, nor emotional, nor communicative nor reciprocative in his relationship with Jaya. Love and sex are momentary imaginations for Mohan. This makes Jaya to confess: "We lived together but there had been only emptiness between us" (185). Jaya establishes her credential as an enlightened woman. For the sake of her emotional present she cannot forbid her traditional past just in a flash of romantic imagination. Conscience and morality refuse her to fall prey to her passion for Kamal. She realizes that it would be idiotic to make her a slave again to a man's obscure desire. She asserts her self's sovereignty; when Kamat skillfully invites her in a trapping voice, "come and join, me". In discomfiture, and self-discovery she says, "Love? No, I know nothing of it. I knew only my need of Mohan. And his need of me" (P.lS3). Spinning out of fantasies she says, "I am Mohan's wife. I'd thought, I'm only Mohan's wife, and I had run away" (P.186); and how can she betray to her identity as "Mohan's wife, as Rahul's and Rati's mother" (148). Any
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advancement with Kamat will be an act of treachery for a strange satisfaction. However Jaya's living in a milieu of obedience, loyalty, and sacrifice have degenerated her to the state of dogged subservience. But coming out of it for Kamat she discovers the macabrian atmosphere of Mohan's world; and hawkish and crazy world of Kamat are the same. And she cannot be a docile sparrow to the clever crow Kamal. Her life will be the story of "the foolish crow who built his house of dung, and the wise sparrow built hers of wax ... "(P. 16). Kamat the foolish crow, improvident, irresponsible and gullible; but Jaya the sparrow is careful, worldly wise, dutiful and shrewd. For Jaya's feminist role Suresh Chandra rightly observes: Jaya easily slips into the role of the family-centred sparrow and leaves the outsider crow Kamath to die unattended instead of setting her own world on fire by condescending to cling to him. (Srivastava, P. 207) Jaya remembers her Ai's story how the sparrow provided shelter to the drenched crow in its nest, the silly crow hopped to the oven to get warmth but was burnt to death. Kamal's reaching out to Jaya's loneliness may be crow's success but her unattending to Kamat at the time of his death proves her wisdom as a victorious sparrow. Jaya's transition from girlhood to womanhood is a cumbersome process. When she was a girl she had no love and sympathy from others. She had marked the differential treatment to the boys and girls in her parental house. After marriage she realizes that her convent school education, family culture and refined manners have no use in Mohan's house. All her ambitions are bolstered by the hard facts of her destiny. She accepts her life" a battlefield of dead hopes and ambitions" (P.82) and the society as a whole raises war against her bod y. This d ra ws a sense of blankness and nothingness inher life. She realizes that the habit of being a wife for "sustaining and supporting" (PA8) with Mohan is a diffICult job. She disapproves the male-defined virtues for women and questions the rationality behind it. During her pregnancy she develops nausea
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for the smell of oil and spice in the kitchen. This makes her to say to Mohan "Why don't you do the cooking today?" (P.81). Mohan in her male ego and apathy thinks cooking is a woman's business and acuses Jaya, "I never thought my wife could say such things to me" (P.82) and counters to Jaya's search for support and assistance, "My mother never raises her voice against my father, however badly he behaved to her" (P.83). The jeering attitude of Mohan does not undermine Jaya's search for support and assistance, "My mother never raised her voice against my father, however badly he behaved to her"(P.83}. The jeering attitude of Mohan does not undermine Jaya's love for him. In the spirit of an Indian wife she thinks Mohan a jeerer yet he is the Adonais reincarnate for her. Her apprehension for Mohan is an assessment but she is aware that Mohan is her profession, her career and her means of livelihood: I had lived in constant panic that he would die. I had clung to him at night, feeling with relief the warmth of his body, stroking his chest, letting my palms move with his even deep breaths. The thought of living without him had twisted my insides. His death had seemed to me the final catastrophe. The very idea of dying had made me feel so bereft that tears had flowed effortlessly down my cheeks. If he had been a little late coming home, I had been sure he was dead. By the time he returned, I had, in my imagination, shaped my life to a desolate wifehood. (Pp.96-97) For Mohan's satisfaction she can play her role as a faithful wife. She wears dark glasses, gets her eye brows shaped, shapes her hair cut to look like the wife of an executive for Mohan's pleasure and annihilates her traditional reservations for Mohan's strange satisfaction. Her termination of third pregnancy with the help of her brother is assumed as a "great act of treachery against Mohan" (P.130) in her guilt consciousness but itis an escape from her wifely role asserting that moLherhood is a right and pride as well as should be in woman's choice. She knows that she has no magic light to remove the darkness from Mohan's heart.
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Jaya asserts her rights when Mohan's male ego overrides her feminine sensibilities. In her existential suffering any attempt to liberate herself physically or emotionally from male superiority is counted as a disobedience. She is surprised to see in the way her family members welcome the birth of a male child and the mother gets a pat for it but a girl child's birth is most unwelcomed. Her creative impulse is restricted by Mohan, she is dubbed in the domestic roles; and her emotional turmoil is perpetrated by phallocentric culture that undermines her position to a subaltern in sexual politics. In an oppressive atmosphere she surrogates for Kamat in silence. But in prerogative she opposes the existing tradition that demeans the status of woman in the unnoticed tendencies of men. Her spatialization in oppressive social system favours to her selfevolution and her struggle for existence in Darwinian sense. Jaya's fight against machismo conveys a message to the phallocentric pundits for a social change. The reality of her life compels her to be silent but this self-imposed discipline is an effort to self-distancing from existentiality. Her thought of traditional woman's idealism fails in society's pseudo-philosophisation of relationship as somebody's daughter, somebody's wife and somebody's mother. She is cynical in life for her parents' advice to remain passive, Mohan's attempt to jeopardize her career as a writer, Rahul's extrasensitiveness and Rati's materialistic attitude and loss of values in macro sense with the Chinese aggression in 1962. Her silence reverberates manifold voices of oppressed women who suffer tmder the umbrella of protection by their parents, husbands, brothers and children. She is disillusioned with Nayana's craving for a male child who in apprehension of her husband says: "he'll" throw me out if I have another daughter"(P.28) and curses her husband, her brothers and her father with a thought that another daughter means another woman who will roll in the gutters.
laya is bold enough to assert her rights in silence. She thinks her life is not a curse but a crusade against male hegemony. She does not like to die in silence like that of Kusum and Vimala, the symbols of Indian traditional wives. She does not like to be a maker of myth like Sita to follow her husband or mythical Gandhari to bandage her eyes at Mohan's weakness when he becomes
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insensitive and is charged with corruption. She does not like to be eulogized like Sita, Savitri and Draupadi nor she likes to become "Sita following her husband into exile" or "Savitri dogging Death to reclaim her husband" or a "Draupadi stoically sharing her husband's travails ... "(P.l) in her postmodem and post-colonial outlook. In Indian tradition woman is the symbol of Mother and Martyr, a symbol of Mahimata (literally Mother Earth) and Shakti (female energy), the essential aspects and incarnation of womanhood. She symbolizes six forms of Lakshmi who bestows wealth (Ohan), food (Ohanya), children (Santan), learning (Vidya), courage (Dhairya) and victory (Vijaya). But her divine image is demeaned and defiled by the brute passion of man who forces her to live and behave in the periphery of tradition and compels to play her submissive roles in the defined rules of men. She is Deshpande's new woman different from her traditional counterparts desires neither to be deified nor eulogized rather becomes exemplary for pan-Indian women in the post-modem context. Her silence may be a virtue in the eyes of Mohan in order to preserve the ageold tradition but this formulates her predicament in the disgusting, absurd and hysterical atmosphere of life. Y.5. Sunita Reddy ironically remarks on the fu tility of her silence: Episodes from history and mythology bear witness to men who were venerated for their selflessness while no thought was given to the silent suffering and martyrdom of their wives. Lakshmana's steadfastness and devotion finds no parallel in Indian mythology, while Siddhartha is hailed for spuming the luxury and comfort of princely life in pursuit of knowledge. Their respective spouses U rmila and Yashodhara, however remain shadowy figures in the background, dooml7d to live a life of anonymity and insignificance. (Pp.115-116) Yet Jaya is desperate in the emotional and domestic fronts. She is a tom self between her filial relations and quest for autonomy. In a determined self she tries to remove the illusion of despondency and illustrates her quest for identity like Ibsenian and Shavian
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women protagonists without surrender or vanquished thoughts. For her the golden age of Indian women is a myth. For her Sit a, Savitri and Draupati are deciphering figures in Indian womanhood as their voice was choked and body was not cared. Her quest for autonomy asserts that she cannot be commodified like Draupadi in the Mahabharata nor can be mercilessly sold like Susan in Hardy's Mayor ofCasterbl'idge to please Mohan's boss. Opposing the male options in the zeal of self-empowerment she tries her best to remove the depressing and gloomy aspects of life. A feminist would like to support Jaya's cause in Raman Seldon's words: Woman must uncensor herself, recover her goods, her organs, her immense bodily territories which have been kept under seal. (Pp.150-151) Jaya's evolution of feminine consciousness is not an absurd process. While the novelist makes her the conscience of her age Mohan is not a character but a concept in whom the signs of ignorance, illusion and temptation are signified which affect the imperishable values of Indian feminine sensibility. As a meliorist the novelist expects Jaya's possibilities in her vicissitudes and says in a positive mood: We don't change overnight. It's possible that we may not change even over long periods of time. But we can always hope. Without that life would be impossible. (P.193) Overloading her silence with morals she cannot welcome the morbidity in her feminineness for Mohan's fascist and sexist mind sets. She is also not so foolish to be easily duped by Kamat for climbing the ladder of her literary success. No doubt the catharsis of her life is an outcome of stress, guilt, ambition, vulnerability and responsibility but the novelist expresses her concerns for Jaya in her protagonist's feminine assertions. Jaya's self-discovery and guest for autonomy is not an abnormality but it establishes credibility for every ,,'>'oman in her subalternity. Deshpande presents Jaya as a devoted wife, a 'pati\'fata' who celebrates her patidlw/'ma for her
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salvation without being corroded by moral corruptibility. Viewing this nature of Indian middle class woman Oeshpande remarks: I have a very strong feeling that until recently women in our society have been looked upon just as 'breeding animals'. They had no other role in life. I have strong objection to treating any human being in that manner ... The whole chronology of their life centers around child birth ... The stress laid upon the feminine functions, at the cost of all your potentials as an individual, enraged me ... May be too much of thinking has made me express a sort of dislike for the purely physical aspect of feminine life, making it seem as if I am totally against all feminine functions, which is not the truth at all. (Indian Communicator) Jaya's inner conflict is of every educated middleclass Indian woman's who struggles for her identity and quest for liberation from patriarchal and phallocentric authority. The novelist's concern is propagandistic with her sympathetic involvement in Jaya's suffering. Protesting to male chauvinism Oeshpande says in an interview to Lakshmi Holmstrom: But to me feminism.isn't a matter of theory; it is difficult to apply ... to the reality of our daily lives in India. And then there are such terrible misconceptions about feminism by people here. They often think it is about burning bras and walking out .. .1 always try to make the point now about what feminism is not, and to say that we have to discover what it is in our lives, our experiences. And I actually feel that a lot of women in India are feminists without realizing it. (Wasafiri , P.26)
The novel evokes the traditional Indian philosophical wisdom from Blzagwadgita in which Lord Krishna has conferred humalUless on Arjun saying Yathecchasi tatha kuru which means "1 have given
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you knowledge. Now you make the choice. The choice is yours. Do as you desire" (P.192). Jaya becomes very realistic in her approach to Krishna's philosophy and in the practical experience of life's Kurukhetra she removes her despondency with her insensitive husband. She realizes that her silence is meaningless. Rationalising the reasonable man-woman relationship for a better humanity she raises a rhetorical question, "Why do I presume that the understanding is mine alone?" and without its reciprocation "life would be impossible"(P.193). Deshpande shows how woman is "bereft of love, understanding and companionship", and "traditional Indian society is biased against woman" (Naik, P.130). In the doctrination of her role as a daughter, a wife, a sister and a mother she suffers from a kind of emotional deprivation. Deshpande expresses her concern through her fictional Jaya about man's controlling of women's mind and body for whom "life has always to be made possible" (P.193) out of it. For her Indian woman is not born to "stay at home, look after .. , babies, keep out the rest of the world ... safe" (P.l7) but she has many alternatives for which Jaya thinks, "there are so many crossroads, so many choices" (P.192). In her authorial assertion Deshpande instrumentalises Jaya for women empowerment in her psychological conditioning for identity and autonomy. With Mohan's return from self-imposed exile after his acquittal from corruption charges she decides to clarify the matter to him in a compromise, "I will have to speak, to listen, I will have to erase silence between us" (P.l92) in order to make Mohan realize his self-deception and artificialities in a positive direction to maximize life. Deshpande's feminism is a euphemism for humanism. She believes that for the happiness in conjugal life both man and woman need to internalize their traits and attitudes in a negotiated relationship. Avoiding society's rigid definition of daughterhood, wifehood and motherhood she instructs in her authorial voice to share tenderness, compassion, passivity and openness with women for the demonstration of male identity. Deshpande belie\'es that the primary objective oi feminist criticism is against politics of sex and gender bias: as it exposes the poignancy in patriarchal practices. Like the Marxists and liberal feminists she discloses that the
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capitalist development of society and family status under male hegemony is the major cause of woman's oppression. In the novel it is economic dependence that invites subordination and sexual exploitation for Jaya. She is stifled in the oppressive system of patriarchal family structure where sex roles and gender inequality matter more for her subordination and exploitation. This is the reason why for sometimes he has searched for emotional satisfaction in Kamat as Indu seeks in Naren. She avoids unwanted pregnancy like many educated middleclass Indian women and in the role of New Woman tries to overcome the oppression asserting her rights over her sex, womb and motherhood for personal fulfilment. Experiencing the gravitational pull of patriarchy and tradition she pledges not to be confined in the strait-jacket wifehood and dares to break her that long silence against patriarchal establishments for her safety security and serenity of mind. In challenge and selfconfidence, revolt and compromise, agony and despair, heaves and harassment she decides "life has always to be made possible" (193). In the narrative Oeshpande projects her fictional Jaya with a purpose to share our consensual resonance for her quest for liberation from bondage and slavishness through self-assertion, empowerment and compromise. Thus, she breaks her silence in theory but maintains it in reality. Works Cited Amur, C.S., Prefaa, The Legacy and Other Stories by S. Oeshpande, Calcutta: Writers Workshop, 1978. Brown, Stephanie, Times Lift'!, Sunday Times of India, October 8, 2006. Chandra, Suresh, Semiotics of Ft'11lil1istic Discollrse il1 Shashi Des/zpandt"s T1wt Long Silence, Symbolism in Indian Fiction ill English, ed., Ramesh K. Srivastava, Jalandhar: ABS Publication, 1997. Chhabira, Anjali, TiI1lt's L~fe!, Sunday Times of India, November, 26, 2006. Cixous, H., New Fr£'llc/z Feminism: All AlltllO/O.'{I/, Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts Press, 1980: 159.
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Das, B.K., That Long Sill'llce: All Indiall Paradigm of Charactl'r Progression, The Fiction of Shaslzi Deshpande, ed., R.S. Pathak, New Delhi: Creative Books, 1998. Dass, Veena Noble, Feminism and Literature, Feminism and Literature, New Delhi: Prestige Books, 1995. Sheshadri, Veena, That LOllg SilCllce, Literature Aliul', 1:3, 1998. Deshpande, Shashi, An Interview to Cectha Cangadharan, Indian Communicator, November 20, 1994.
___ Women's Minds and Bodies, Indian Review Books, 2:4, 1993. _ _ Shaslti Deslzpande talks to Lnkshmi Holmstrom, The Fiction of Shashi Deslzpandt', ed., RS. Pathak, New Delhi: Prestige Books, 1998.
_ _The Sunday Observer, February, 11, 1990. _ _ Roots and Shadows, New Delhi: Disha Books, 1983. _ _That Long Silenct', New Delhi: Penguin India, 1989. _ _ Billding Vine, New Delhi: Penguin India, 1982. Donavan, )., Feminist Theory: TIll' Intellectual Traditions of American Feminism, New York: Continuum, 1992. Dworkin, Andrea, Pornography: Mell Possessing Women, London: Women's Press, 1981. Gupta, GS. Balarama, Illdian f.ngli:>h Women Short Story Writers: An Overl'iew, Vikrmn Joumal of English Stlldies. Volume-I, No.39. Hebber, Ritambhara, Times 2006.
L~fe!,
SlInday rimes of India, October 8,
Holmstrom, Lakshmi, An Interview, Wasafiri, Vol. 17, 1993. Levi-Strauss, The Elementary Stmctllres of Ki11ship, Trans, J.H. Bell and R. Needham, Boston: Beacon Press, 1969. Mackinnon, Catharine, Feminism, Marxism and the State: All Agenda For Theory, Signs 7:3, 1982. Millett, Kate, SeXlial Politits, New York: Doubleday, 1970. Mittapalli, Rajeshwar, 171t' Trauma (~fa I-Jollsew~fi': SJrasJri Deshpande's Thilt tOllg Siit'llcl', Slwsl11 Oes/rpallde: A Critical Spectrum, ed., T.M.J. Indra Mohan, New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers, 200..J.
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Naik,M.K. &ShyamalaA.Narayan, The Indian English Literatllre 1980-2000: A Critical Survey, New Delhi: Pencraft International,2001. Oakley, A., Sex, Gender and Society, London: Temple Smith, 1972. Offen, Karen, Dt:filling Feminism: A Comparath'e Historical Approac1z, Signs, 14:1, Autumn, 1988. Sinha, Urvashi and Gur Pyari Jandial, MarringI' and Sexuality ill the Novels~fShashi Deshpande, Slzaslzi Deshpande: A Critical Spectrum, ed., T.M.J. Indra Mohan, New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers, 2004. Tondon, Ashvini Sarpeshkar, An Interview', Femintl, May, 1993. Tong, Rosemarie, Feminist Thought, London: Routledge, 1993. Vishwanath, Vanamala, Interview, A Woman's World ... All the Way! , The Fiction of Shashi Des/zpallde, ed., R.S. Pathak, New Delhi: Prestige Books, 1998. Wasi, Muriel, Review of Slzaslli Deshpande, The Intrusion and Other Stories, Tl1e Hindltstall Times Sunday Magazine, 26 March, 1994. Witting, M., The Category of Sex, Sex ill Question: French Materialist Feminism?, eds., D. Leonard and L. Adkins, London: Taylor and Francis, 1996.
000
THE STONE ANGEL: THE STORY OF A
WOMAN WITH A WILL - Dr. Basavaraj Naikar
Margaret Lawrence is one of the very important women writers of Canada. She has written many novels like The Fire-Oult'llers, A Bird ill tht' HOllse, A GlIest of God and The Stone Angel and short stories like The Tomorrow Tamer mId Other Stories. She is 1<nown for the typiCal feminine sensibility nourished on Canadian culture expressing itself in her delicate style. In all her novels she has portrayed aspects of human life, which transcend the specificities of Canadian culture and attain the height of universality.
The Stolle AIl~e/ which deals with the life of Hagar Shipley is a fine example of Margaret Lawrence's understanding of human nature in general and feminine nature in particular. In it, she depicts the life of the protagonist, Hagar Shipley in its evolut:onary aspect, but punctuated with tragedies, losses and separations. The life of Hagar Shipley as delineated by Margaret Laurence may be divided into three phases: one, girlhood; two, )outh and three, old age. But the technique employed by the nO\'elist is an unusual one in that the life of the protagonist is not presented chronologically, but shown through an alternation between past and present, between memory and experience. The reader, therefore, has to be \'ery alert in classifying the events of the past and the
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present and rearranging them mentally for a coherent understanding of the protagonist's life and personality. The novel begins with Hagar Shipley at the age of ninety remembering her entire past life in bits. The picture of the childhood as remembered by her may be buill up as follows: Hagar's father had bought a large and blind stone angel and erected it in the Manawaka cemetery to mark the death of his feeble wife. It was the largest and costliest statue in Manawaka. As a child she did not understand why her father had brought it from Italy at terrible expenses. Summer and winter she viewed the town with sightless eyes, she was doubly blind, not only stone but unendowed with even a pretense of sight. Whoever carved her had left the eyeballs blank. It seemed strange to me that she should stand above the town, harking us all to heaven without knowing who we were at all. But I was too young to know her purpose .... (p.3) As a child, Hagar used to walk in the cemetery and "vatch the flowers of different kinds. At that time Hagar, perhaps, had no consdousness or fear of death. She was the black haired daughter of Jason Currie who was a self-made man who used to compel her to study weights and measures. Hagar had two brothers namely Matt and Dan whom Jason used to whip with birches for not studying well. Once he beat Hagar also with a foot-ruler when she spoke the truth about insects in the barrel when Mrs. McVitie wanted to buy brown eggs. Right from her childhood, Hagar was frank and straightforward. Her father knew that she took after him. She started going to school. Her father advised her to concentrate on her studies and work hard. Jason had donated substantial money to the Presbyterian Church. Aunt Dolly told Hagar once that Jason was a god-fearing man. But Hagar knew that her father l1l'wr feared anybody including e\'en God. Hagar lost her mother when she was very young. AfLer the death of his wife, Jason ne\'er married ,myone. lIe did nol \\' ant to
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marry his own housekeeper Aunt Dolly who had protruding rabbitlike teeth. Hagar knew the difference between her two brothers, i.e. Malt and Daniel. I ler father never allowed Matt to take a gun to the mountain, but insisted that he should serve in the store after school hours. By contrast, Daniel had poor health and dodged school repeatedly. Hagar's father used to arrange many parties and invite friends like Charlotte Tappan, Telford Simmons and Henry Pearl. They had a craze for Japanese lanterns. Hagar remembers that the Wachakwa River used to freeze in winter and they used to go to the river and cut and bring ice-cubes home. In her childhood, Hagan-vent to south Wach;1kwa for two years and returned after learning embroidery, French, menu planning and dressing her hair. Her father had refused to send her to Wachakwa for teaching lest she should go to the dances and be pawed by the farm boys. Hagar obeyed her father and kept accounts in his store. Hagar, who has lost her mother quite early in life, remains an obedient daughter of her father. She never dares disobey him on any count. But a change can be seen in her behaviour when she attains puberty. Her biological urges become quite powerful and she becomes more and more assertive in her behaviour. For example when she stays ir. Manawaka for three years, once she happens to meet Brampton Shipley by chance. When Aunti Doll takes her to a dance at the school, she dances with Brampton Shipley. She knows that she has been undergoing a change in her mental attitude, perhaps because of her biological growth. While she is dancing with Brampton, he presses his groin to her thigh. Although she pushes him away out of a sense of embarrassment, she again dances with him when imited by him. Lottie Dreisser dislikes Hagar's dancing with Brampton as he is dirty and has been seen with half-breed girls. But goaded by sexual attraction 2"1d independent will, Hagar decides to marry Brampton. Although her father does not allow her to marry him, she decides to marry him. She resists the patriarchal control by selecting a man of her choice for a husband thereby asserting her identity. Her knmdedge of Br'1mpton's marital history does not prevent her from marrying him. For eXLlmple, Brampton Shipley is fourteen years older than
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her. He has returned from the East. His first wife Clara who has died of burst spleen was as inarticulate as a stabbed beast. Hagar does not pay heed to the wanling by her father or others. Her wedding takes place in the local church, but neither her father nor her brother Matt attends it. Only Auntie Doll attends it. Charlotte Tappen arranges a reception for Hagar's wedding. Hagar hopes that her father would soften after seeing Brampton's progress. The relation<;hip between Hagar and her father is strained on account of Hagar's self-assertiveness and disobedience to the father and non-conformity to the familial opinion. Her matrimonial life with Brampton Shipley forms the second phase of her life. When she goes to her husband's home i.e. the Shipley House, she is received warmly and presented with a cutglass decanter with silver top by her husband. Hagar's first sexual experience is characterized by pain, embarrassment and wonder. She is surprised to learn that Brampton Shipley who is an experienced husband wants to devirginate her not at night, but during the daytime. Hagar is embarrassed by his eagerness for sex. "Let's see what you look like under all that rig-out, Hagar." I looked at him not so much in fear as in an iron incomprehension. "Downstairs," he said, "Is that \"'hat bothers you? Or daylight? Don't fret - there's no one around for five miles." "It seems to me that Lottie Dreiser was right about you," I said, "although I certainly hate to say it." "What did they say of me?" Bram asked. Theyknowing more than one had spoken. I only shrugged and would not say, for I had manners. He said: Never mind that now. I don't give a good goddamn. Hagar - you're my life. (P.51) Brampton Shipley forces her into sex. Having had no premarital sexual experiepce, Hagar undergoes the pain of being deflowered and at the same time wonders at her own capacity to contain his large manhood: "It hurt and hurt, and afterward he stroked my forehead with his hand." "Didn't you know that's what's done?" I said not a word, because I had not known, and when he'd bent, enormous and giant. I would not beliE'\'e there could be \\'ithin me a room to house sllch magnitude. When I found there was, Ilelt as
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one might feel discovering a second head, an unsuspected area. (P.52)
After having the first experience of sex, Hagar discovers the mystery of her own biological world. Concurrently she is transformed from a girl into a woman and wife. After assuming the new role of a wife, she also learns the new responsibility of keeping the house. She scrubs the floor for the first time in her life. She tries to understand her husband and encourage him in his profession. When she gets a child (Marvin) in course of time, she sends words to her father, Jason Curie, that she has no objection to his seeing his grandson. She wants to repair the strained relationship with her father. But Jason never cares to see his grandson. Jason Currie dies of stroke rather unexpectedly, but he has written his will and donated his money to the town. His magnanimity is praised in the local newspaper Manawaka Banner. Within a year after his death a Jason Currie memorial park is started in the town. The father-daughter relationship is characterized by mutually uncompromising egoism. Neither the father nor the daughter yield to the other in the case of marital choice of a husband. Hence the relationship between the two is severed permanently. Hagar has a great emotional attachment to her husband's home, especially some objects which act as reminders of the past or of the love that people bore for her. She is deeply attached to the pottery pitcher in her house, which one belonged to her paternal grandmother, to the cut glass decanter, which was presented to her by her husband, and to the armchair. Hagar's matrimonial life with Brampton is marked by a sort of temperamental incompatibility and conflict of personalities. Being an expert in marital and extra-marital sex, Brampton Shipley has shocked her at the initial stage of marital life by forcing her into sex during the daytime. Brampton Shipley provides a sharp contrast to Hagar in that he is rough, uncouth and uncultured in his behaviour whereas she is delicate, cultured and sophisticated. But in spite of her dislike for his uncultured behaviour, she tries to compromise with the situation. At the same time, she admires his physical hand some ness and feels proud of his big build, beard and smartness.
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She thus has an ambivalent relationship with her husband. One day when Hagar and Brampton Shipley go out for marketing, they happen to meet Charlatte Tappan on the way. Brampton Shipley talks very rudely to Charlotte. But Hagar does not like his rude and uncultured behaviour. Similarly when they go to a shop, Brampton Shipley tmashamedly fingers the female undergarments and speaks in a rude language. "In Simlow's Ladies' wear, the oiled floor boards smelled of dust and linseed, and the racks of hung garments were odorous with the sizing used in inexpensive cloth ... I'd done my utmost to persuade Bram not to come with me, but he couldn't see what I was making such a fuss about. Mrs. McVitie was there, and we bowed and nodded to one another. Bram fingered female undergarments, and I, mortified, looked away." "Look, Hagar this here is half the price of that there one. If there's any difference, you couldn't hardly tell." "Sh-sh -""What the hell's the matter with you? Judas priest, woman, why do you look like that?" Mrs. McVitie had sailed out, galleon-like, having gained her gold. I turned on Bram. "This here! That there! Don't you know anything?" "So that's what's eating you, eh?" he said. "Well listen here, Hagar, let's get one thing straight. I talk the way I talk, and I aren't likely to change now. If it's not good enough, that's too damn bad." "You don't even try." I said. "I don't care to," he said." I don't give a Christly curse how I talk, so get that through your head. It don't matter to me what your friends or your old men think." (P.71) A delicate and cultured lady as Hagar is, she feels ashamed of her husband's ruffian behaviour and consequently stops going out with him. Instead, she lets him go out alone on horseback and return home dead drunk. Hagar thus tries to tolerate the angularities and eccentricities of her husband in order to have a good marital life with him. Hagar who is very keen on cleanliness does not like Brampton's dirty habit of blowing his nose. I remember a quarrel I had with Bram, once. Sometimes he used La blow his nose with his fingers, a not unskilled performance. He'd grasp the bridge between thumb and forefinger, lean 0\ cr,
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snort hefty, and there it'd be, bubbling down the couch grass like snake spit, and he'd wipe his fingers on his overalls, just above the rump, the same spot always, as I saw when I did the week's wash. I spoke my disgust in no uncertain terms, not for the first time. It had gone on for years, but my words never altered him. He'd only say:
Quit yapping. Hagar-what make me want to puke is a nagging woman. He couldn't string two words together without some crudity, that man. He knew it riled me. That's why he kept it up so. (P.79) Such incidents, obviously, throw light on the opposite directions and natures of the couple. As days go by, tbe opposition between the two becomes intolerable to each other. And yet-here'S the joker in the pack-we'd each married for those qualities we later found we couldn't bear, he for my mam1ers and speech, I for his flouting of them. (P.SO.) Brampton tells Hagar frankly: "There's men in Manawaka call their wives 'Mother' all the time. That's one thing I never done" (P.SO). He is neither delicate nor demonstrative in his love for his life. He always calls her by name 'Hagar' which she likes. There is a world of difference between the two in their philosophy of love. Whereas Hagar believes in the poetry of love, Brampton Shipley is a believer in the drab prose of functional sex. Hence there is no alignment in their attitudes. His banner over me was love. Where that line comes from, I can't now rightly say, or else for some reason it hurts me to remember. He had a banner over me for many years. I never thought it love, though, after we wed. Love, r fancied, must consist of words and deeds delicate as la\'ender sachets, not like
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The Stone A I1gel: The Story of a Woman with a Will the things he did sprawled on the high white bedstead that rattled like a train. (P.80)
Although Brampton Shipley is rough, crude and uncultured in his behaviour, there is some innocence about him. By contrast, although Hagar is delicate and cultured in her behaviour, she conceals her pride as well as her enjoyment of sex because of her Presbyterian background, which is, therefore, not perceived by her husband. It was not so very long after we wed, when first I
felt my blood and vitals rise to meet his. He never knew. I never let him know. ) never spoke aloud and I made certain that the trembling was all inner. He had an innocence about him, I guess, or he'd have known. How could he not have known? Didn't I betray myself in raising sap, like a heedless and compelled maple after a winter? But no. He never expected any such a thing and so he never perceived it. I prided myself upon keeping my pride intact, like some maidenhead. (P.8l) The contrast between Brampton and Hagar would be seen in their attitude to fine arts. Whereas Hagar has a fine aesthetic sensibility, Brampton lacks it conspicuously, as he is a hard-boiled realist. That is the reason why he does not care to put any picture on the walls of his house. On the contrary Hagar wants to beautify the walls by putting up a few pictures like Rosa Bombeur's The Horse Fair. Brampton Shipley does not appreciate Hagar's artistic attitude as he cares more for hard reality than for artistic reality. He, therefore, accuses her: "You never gave a damn tor living horses, Hagar," he said at once. "But when you seen them put into paper where they couldn't drop manure, then it's dandy, eh? Well, keep your blood v paper horses. I'd as soon have nothing on mv walls" (P.93). Whereas Brampton is crazy about horses, Hagar never cares for horses because she is frightened by their muscularity and smeJliness. Horses, obviollsly, symbolize high energy and sexual potency, which are indicati\'e of Bramplon's personality. When 1iagar
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objects to his investment of all his money into buying and raising horses, and his negligence of the a{'sthetic upkeep of the house, he, bursts out, "All right, all right," he said furiously, "You can buy your goddamn carpets with the money there-does that suit you?" (P.84) Hagar knows that her husband has no practical sense or head for business and therefore she worries about the livelihood. Their quarrel finally ends up in sex. "Wrangle, wrangle. It ended that night with Bram lying heavy and hard on top of me, and stroking my forehead with his hand while his manhood moved in me, and saying in the low voice he used only at such times, "Hagar, please." I wanted to say, "There, there, it's ClIl right," but I did not say that". (P.95)
Brampton persists in his love of horses by buying a grey stallion and a few mares. But he fails in the business of selling them, as he does not have the right capacity for bargaining. But Brampton's love for the horses is passiona te and extra-ord inary. He has named his stallion as "soldier." One day the stallion and a mare go out for grazing. The mare returns after some time, but the stallion does not come home. Brampton is so much worried about the stallion that he lights the storm lamp and goes in the storm at night in search of it. Poor Hagar fears for Bram as well as for herself. The blizzard is terrible. After some time, Brampton returns deeply disappointed, without being able to get the stallion. Hagar tries to console him. When we went to bed that night, he started to turn to me, and felt so gently inclined that 1think 1 might have opened to him openly. But he changed his mind. He patted me lightly on the shoulder. (Pp.8788) Brampton finds the stallion in spring after the melting of snow. But the horse has been caught in a barbed wire fence and frozen to death by cold. Brampton buries it in the pasture. Brampton believes in the patriarchal set up of society and therefore, desires a male progeny. When he takes Hagar to the hospital for delivery, he expresses his dynastic desire and hope for a male issue because he \"'·ants his dynasty to be continued. "1 sure hope it's a boy," he said. "Why should you care if it's a boy?" I
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asked. Bram looked at me as though he wondered how I could have need to ask. "It would be somebody to leave the place to," he said. I saw then with amazement tha t he wanted his dynasty no less than my father had."(Pp.100-10 I). Brampton's dynastic desire and hope are fulfilled when he gets a son whom he names as Marvin. Hagar is not much bothered about the gender of the progeny. As Marvin grows into a boy of eight or nine, he develops a protesting kind of behaviour. The clash of personality continues between Brampton and Hagar. Once when Hagar learns from Marvin that Brampton relieved himself near the steps of Currie's store, she shouts at him by calling him everything under the sun. "God damn it, he complained defensively. "It was late at night. Hagar, and no one was about." "The steps of my father's store - that was no accident. Who saw?" "How in hell should I know who saw? I never did it for an audience. Shut up about it, Hagar, can't you? It's over and done with. I'm sorry. There, is that enough?" "You think it fixes everything, to say you're sorry. Well, it doesn't." "Judas priest, women, what do you want me to do? Get down on my bended knees?" "I only want you to behave a little differently." " Well, maybe I'd like you to be different, too./I "I don't disgrace mysclL""No, by Christ, you're respectable. I' II give you that./I (Pp.115-156) This incident adds up to the image of Brampton's uncultured behaviour and of Hagar's protest against it. Her entire matrimonial life is marked by such temperamental incompatibility and contrast. "Twenty-four years, in all, were scoured away like sandbanks under the spate of our wrangle and bicker." (P.116) Though mentally and emotionally they are opposed to each other, their only unifying force seems to be sex, which keeps the marriage going. Yet when he turned his hairy belly and his black haired thighs towards me in the night, I would lie silent but waiting, and he would slither and swim like an eel in a pool of darkness. (P.116) When Man'in is seventeen, hl' joins the Am1y for the First \Vorld War. But after his departure, Brampton neglects John who is onl\'
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seven years old, and cannot help the parents in household work. Once Hagar and John go to sell eggs to families in the town but felt deeply embarrassed when they have to sell them to Lottie. Hagar is humiliated to be called an egg woman. Depressed by her poverty and goaded by a desire to enable John to lead a decent life, she decides to leave her husband to take up a job somewhere. Hagar who is a self willed woman couldn't pull on with her husband for long. She therefore, decides one day to leave him and seek a job somewhere as a housekeeper, and bring up John. She does not want to sneak away from her husband. On the contrary, she tells him her wish to go away. Brampton is so heartless that he neither prevents her from going nor worries about it. "He didn't seem surprised. He never even asked me to stay or showed a sign of caring about the matter one way or another. "When do you plan on going?" he said at last. "Tomorrow morning." "If I was you," Bram said, " I'd hard -boil a few eggs and take them along. I've heard the meals are high on the trains." I wouldn't take eggs into a train," I said. "They'd think we were hicks." "That would be an ever losing shame wouldn't it?" he said. "That's all you've got to say?" I cried. "Food, for heaven's sake?" Bram looked at me. "I got nothing to say, Hagar. It's you that's done the saying, "Well, if you' 're going, go" (Pp.14l.1-l2).
Far from being sentimental about Brampton's callousness, she takes John with her and goes in a train to the coast. She succeeds in getting a job as a housekeeper in Mr. Oatley'S house. Mr. Oatley is a rich old man who is a great lover of classics and who wants his gigantic house to be kept spic and span. He stays alone in the big mansion and Hagar has to keep everything in order and serve him milk, tea and food at regular timings. Mr. Oatley's mansion has many valuable things in it like the Chinese carpets donated to him by a grateful Orientals whose wives he had smuggled in successfully. Although Hagar has boldly left her hu~band and joined service as a housekeeper in Mr. Oatley's House, she som~iml:s misses Brampton's sexual company. I didn't care to dwell on the thought of his manhood. I suppose it reminded me of the tbings
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The Stone Angel: The Story of a Woman with a Will I'd sealed away in day time, the unacknowledged nights I'd lie sleepless even now until I'd finally accept the necessity of the sedative to blot away the image of Bram's heavy manhood. I never thought of Bram in the days any more, but 1'd waken, sometimes, out of a half sle~p and turn to him and find he wasn't beside me and then I'd be filled with such a bitter emptiness it seemed the whole of night must be within me and not around or outside at all. There were times when I'd have returned to him just for that. But in the morning I'd be myself once more, put on my black uniform with its white lace collar, go down and serve Mr. Oatley's breakfast with calm deliberation .... (Pp.159-160)
Anyway, Hagar gets used to living with her son, John in Oatley's mansion. After a few years, Hagar feels that she shouldn't have come to this outlandish place. Days and months roll by. Once John feels bored with Mr. Oatley's house and wants to go back to his father's place. Hagar opines that Bram must be dead by now. But she is surprised to know from John that John and Marvin have been writing to their father and receiving replies from him and that Brampton has been living with a half-breed girl who cooks his food. Hagar has no money to give to John for his fare. But somehow John manages to go away to Shipley place. Hagar is forced by the contingencies of her life to live away from her husband and sons. Her marriage has failed in a way. That is the reason why she thinks. Td be the last one to maintain that marriages are made in heaven .... (P.167) After a lapse of two years, John writes to his mother that his father is very sick and may not Ih·e long. Hagar instinctiwly goes to Manawaka ,md is sorry Lo observe that Brampton has grown very
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emaciated, and he sits in an armchair fully covered in a sweater. He neither recognizes her nor speaks with her. John has been looking after Brampton in all ways-cleaning, washing and medicating etc. Once Marvin comes to Manawaka and sees his fa ther and apologizes, "Sorry, dad." Although Hagar has been staying in Shipley place and observes Brampton's sinking health, she does not feel any sympathy for and pride about her husband. On the contrary, she feels disgusted with him. "Bram referred to me as 'that woman' like hired help, when he spoke of me to John. In the night once only, I heard him call "Hagar!" I went to his room, but he was only talking in his sleep. He lay curled up and fragile in the big bed where we'd coupled and it made me sick to think I'd lain with him, for now he looked like an ancient child" (P.182-3). Obviously, Hagar has no real matrimonial attachment for her husband. One morning Hagar finds Brampton dead. Marvin cannot come to his father's funeral, but sends some money to meet the expenses. He has got a new baby called Christina. Hagar sees that Brampton is buried in the Currie plot beside the white statue. After returning home from the funeral John cries, but Hagar does not cry over her dead husband, because of the desiccation of her emotions towards him. For from being sentimenta I, Hagar Shipley has the courage to live alone and away from her uncultured and ununderstanding husband and face the problem of survival single-handed. One may easily see strands of feminist philosophy of emancipation within the limited framework of the institution of marriage and family. What is admirable in her is that unlike a modem feminist she never goes in search of another man for sexual or emotional company. Her attachment to her second son, John may be seen in her struggle to see him settled in life. It is only when Brampton Shipley neglected the seven year old John after the departure of Marvin for joining the army, that Hagar takes a decision to leave her indifferent husband and goes in search of a job as a housekeeper in Mr. Oa tIey' s mansion. Before that, she is compelled by the dire situation to sell the family things like opal earrings; silver candelabra and dinner set for t weh"e. "You hear of people selling family things and being
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mortified, as through it meant-disgrace. I didn't look at it that way at all" (136). Hagar seems to be very practical in her life to face and solve the problems of survival. In spite of the bond of affection between Hagar and her son, John, there is a conspicuous difference between their temperaments. A lady with some aesthetic sensibility, Hagar has bought a gramophone with a great black cornucopia on top and a handle. She wants to listen to Ave Maria and Beethoven's Fifth etc during the daytime. But "John did not take to music very much." (P.127) Hagar does not like John's quarrelsome behaviour, use of swear words and association with uncultured boys. He was wild as mustard seed in some ways, that child. He'd come out -ivith swear words that would curl your hair, and I knew where he'd got them. After he started school, the teacher sometimes sent me a note saying he'd been caught fighting again, and I'd scold him all right but I don't know that it ever did much good. (P.127) Hagar worries more about John's friendship with uncultured and indecent boys. Once when I was picking out saskatoons near the Tresle Bridge, I saw him with Tonnerre boys. They were French half-breeds, the sons of Jules ... I wouldn't have trusted any of them as far as I could spit. (P.127) John happened to be very mischievous and irresponsible as a boy. Hagar has to worry about his safety. He used to walk on the rails on the trestle bridge thereby frightening his mother out of her wits. The trestle bridge was where the railway crossed the Wachakwa river a mile or so from town. The boys were daring each other to walk across it. There were great gaps between the beams, so they teetered along the thin steel tracks as though they'd been walking a tightrope." (PI28)
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It is rather difficult for Hagar to control her naughty son. John has also taken a fancy to girlfriends at the age of twelve. Hagar does not approve of his premature interest in the opposite sex. In this re~pect he resembles his father.
He never introduced me to any of his girlfriends, and it was a long time before I realized why one night in summer, thinking I heard a prowler in the garden, I went down and entered the big veranda quietly without turning on the lights. They were in the bushes, the two of them. I did 't mean to eavesdrop, but for a moment I couldn't move ... He laughed too, and I could hear the murmur of their clothing as they tumbled and their hungry brea thing as they kissed, and I ran like an angry ponderous shadow back to my room. (P.159) Though Hagar does not want to intrude upon John's privacy, she does not approve of his behaviour either. Intent upon improving the lot of John, Hagar invests some money in shares but unfortunately loses it. John has discontinued his education and therefore wants to work and earn. In a year he has two temporary jobs, one in a soft drink factory and one in a popcorn pushcarts. Again bored with life at Mr. Oatley' house and to escape from the maternal domination John goes away to Shipley place at Manawaka to take care of his father. When Hagar joins him at Shipley place, she is again shocked by John's irresponsible behaviour. One day she goes to the town with John to sell eggs. On the way John introduces Arlene Simmons (daughter of Telford and Lottie) to his mother, and later tells her that he does not want to marry Arlene, but wishes to lay her if he gets a chance. Hagar snaps at him angrily and asks him not to talk coarsely like that. Hagar further notices that John goes out after dinner in his car- buggy and return at day breclk. But she does not ask him abouL it, as she knows he does not answer her properly. One day she is surprised to know thaL Arlene brings John from a dancing party at the Legion Hall. John is feeling sick. The next morning John tells her that he was beaten by a boy in the dance hall
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and that Arlene and her parents were there. Hagar feels deeply insulted by her son's behaviour. She does not know how to control him. She, therefore, wants to return to the coast, but John is not willing to go with her. Hagar is angry to know from Arlene that the latter wants to marry John. But Hagar warns her not to marry John as he has been drinking heavily for years, that neither of them has any money between them and that John is not the right man for her. But Arlene wants to improve him. Whereas John is thirty years old, Arlene is twenty-eight years. Hagar advises John also not to marry Arlene as she belongs to a poor family. But John replies that marriage is his private concern. Hagar feels insulted by his insolence. One day Hagar returns from town and takes rest in the front room. Jolm and Arlene think that she has not rehlrned home. Hagar silently overhears their talk. Thev want to get married as soon as Hagar is gone. Then they close the backdoor and have sex. Arlene wants to have a child by John. Hagar pities them for their passion combined with poverty. At the some time she is angry with them for desecrating her bed and clothes. Hagar goes to Lottie's house and talks to her about Arlene's infatuation for John and opines that they can marry a little later when their financial condition will improve. But Littie does not listen to Hagar's advice. Hagar strongly objects to Arlene's visit to her house. John angrily agrees not to bring her home anymore. There is thus a lot of difference of opinion between mother and son. John wishes to escape from his mother's domination. One afternoon, John comes home and tells Hagar that Arlene is going to East within two months that he wants to bring her home every night and make her pregnant. Hagar scolds him severely and orders him not to do that and to avoid evil. Hagar seems to be irritated by John'S irresponsible, shameless and mischieyous premarital relationship with Arlene. She calmot rectify the behaviour of her son, as she could not rectify that of her husband. Hagar's dream of settling John's life is shattered by Fate. Henry Pearl takes Hagar in his truck and tells her on the way how John met with an accident and is hospitalized now and how Arlene died on the vva), the spot. He further lells her details of the accident. John
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had drunk fully and drove his vehicle on the trestle bridge when a goods train came and hit him. Hagar sees John lying unconscious in the hospital. After a few moments John opens his eyes, apologizes to his mother and dies. Hagar sees the dead body of Arlene sent to the funeral parlour. I lagar's struggle to give John a permanent and happy life has come to nothing. As a mother, she suffers a deep sense of loss. Getting reconciled to her fate, she sends all the furniture to Marvin's, assigns the sale of the Shipley place to a lawyer and returns to Mr. Oatley's house to stay. Hagar has become a puppet at the hands of Fate. After her stay in Mr. Oatley\s house for a year, Mr. Oatley dies, but luckily for her, he has left te~ thousand dollars for her in his will. The money
comes to her a~ a reward for her honest service to Mr. Oatley. Hagar buys a house ~ith that money. She is no longer obligated to her late husband. In a ~ay she has come into her own, by owning a house with self-eame\i money, though at a late stage of her life. She enjoys a bit of economic security now, but emotionally she has to depend upon her only surviving son Marvin and daughter-in-law, Doris. Here begins her third and last stage of life. In spite of all the past sllffering like the loss of husband and of son, she has not lost her courage. Endowed with a strong elan pitai, she continues to brave the vicissitudes of her life. Hagar's life with her son and daughter-in-law is beset with many problems like her deteriorating health, assertive nature, and dependence upon other's mercy and clash of personalities. Although Marvin is duty-bound to take care of his mother, he is at time influenced by his wife Doris who does not have an equal attachment to Hagar because; she is, after all, only a daughter-inlaw and not a daughter. There is a conspicuous difference in the sensibilities of Hagar and Doris. Whereas Hagar has an aesthetic sensibility, Doris lacks it. Hagar wears lilac silk on Sundays, though Doris does not like it. But Doris wears a mouse mask and likes drab coloured garments. Hagar is now in the advanced age of ninety, whereas her son is sixty-five. She has to suffer the old age problems like ill health. She suffers from arthritis and other problems like chest pain and gastric
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trouble. Sometimes she falls down suddenly, and cannot walk properly. She feels she has grown fat because she did not lise foundation garments in her early life. Sometimes, she feels a sharp pain inside her ribs and experiences a breathing problem. Sometimes she farts uncontrollably. The varied problems of her health make her miserable. She has no choice but to live with them. One of the remarkable strands of her personality is that she has a great and admirable gusto for life. She never thinks of dying early. But her old age and its concomitants of ill health have, unfortunately, made her a parasite on her son and daughter-in-law. She is very conscious of her deep attachment to her house, which she has bought with her own earning. She is no longer obligated to her late husband for his property. She is even proud of having been able to own a house of her own. She is deeply attached to her house and to the jug and a picture gifted to her by her own mother. She does not allow Doris and Marvin to have her oak chair and tells them that she is not going to die very soon. She is fond of her room and the pictures of her father and of her sons, Marvin and John. She has no picture of her husband. There seems to be a generation gap and clash of ideas between Hagar and her son and daughter-in-law. Doris objects to her motherin-law's ideas and to her calling Marvin a boy, though he is sixtyfour years old and suffers from ulcer. But Hagar does not understand Doris's point of view, because of her egoism and adamancy. Because of her ill health, Hagar requires almost around the clock a ttention from her son or daughter-in-law. They also attend to her inevitably. Hagar is so self-willed that she does not wish to yield to others in any matter. Once Marvin and Doris want to go to a movie and arrange for a sitter, Jill to take care of Hagar in the house. But Hagar objects to the arrangement so strongly that they cancel their programme of going to the movie. She does not understand how much inconvenience she is causing to her son and daughter-in-law. Fpx from adjusting herself to their life and mentality, she continues to remain adamant. The son and daughter- . in-law feel it a burden on them to take care of her around the clock. One night Hagar discovers that her son and daughter-in-law haye
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gone out of home withou t informing her. When they return, they tell Hagar gently that they would like to send her to a Nursing Home, where professional care will be taken of her. But Hagar shouts at them and does not want to leave her home. "You make me sick and tired. I won't go. I won't go to that place. You'll not get me to agree ... If you make me go there, you're only sIgning my death warrant. I hope that's clear to you. I'd not last a month, not a week I tell you ... How can I leave my house, my things? It's mean it's mean of you-oh, what a thing to do"(P.76}. Marvin and Doris yield to her sympathetically. But the problems of ill health force Marvin and Doris to take Hagar to Doctor Corby's hospital Doctor Corby gives Hagar a whi te gown, examines her and recommends three X-Rays, of kidney, gall bladder and stomach. Then they return home. After supper all the three of them go for a drive in the countryside. Marvin and Doris take Hagar to see Silver Threads building. When the car stops outside the building, Hagar refuses to enter it lest she should have to stay there. She thinks inwardly. "Can they force me? If I fuss and fume will they simply ask a brawny nurse to restrain me? Strap me into harness, will they? Make a madwoman of me? I fear this place exceedingly. I cannot even look. I don't dare. Has it walls and windows, doors and do closets, like a dwelling? Or only walls? Is it a mausoleum, and I, the Egyptian, mummified with pillows and my own flesh through some oversight embalmed alive? There must be some mistake"(P.96). She shouts at her son disgustingly: "It's mean, mean of you. I've not even any of my things with me" (P.96). Then Marvin clarifies her doubt: You don't think we were bringing you here to stay, did you? We only wanted you to have a look at the place, Mother, that's all. (P.96) Hagar is finally convinced by Marvin and Doris. The matron of the Nursing Home gently conducts Hagar and shows her different parts of the building and offers her a cup of tea. During her all too brief a visit to the Nursing Home, Hagar observes that the nurses talk tauntingly and insultingly about the old women staying there like Mrs. Torlakson. Mrs. Steiner and Mrs. Tyrrwhitt. She also talks
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with a few patients who have varied pxperiences of life. She experiences a brief delirium before she is brought home. Next time, Hagar is taken to the hospital where she is given barium to drink before her stomach is X-rayed. After the X-Ray is over, Marvin and Doris tell her the doctor's opinion that it is better for her to be kept in a Nursing Home. But Hagar resents it strongly. When the priest Mr. Troy tries to reason with her, she rebuffs him with her down to earth realism, frankness and agnosticism. She proves to be a very tough woman in spite of her decrepitating health. "Sometimes, you know, Mrs. Shipley, when we accept the things, which we can't change in this life, we find they're not half as bad as we thought." It's easy enough for you to say." "Oh yes, indeed." His smooth face goes pink as a Mother's Day carnation. "But think of your daughter in-law. She is not as strong as she used to be, by any means. She's gladly cared for you for quite some time." That is a do downright. Gladly, indeed. And she'd be crazy if she had been glad. Doris is none too bright, but she's not an imbecile. It's on the tip of my tongue to say it. But when [speak, J say something else. "How can I leave my house? [ don't want to leave my house and all my things". "Of course, it's hard, J realize that," says Mr. Troy, although it seems to me he doesn't realize a blessed thing. "Have you tried asking God's help? Prayer can do wonders, sometimes, in easing the mind." So wistful is his voice that I'm on the verge of promising I'll try. Then the lie seems not inexpensive but merely cheap. "I've never had much use for prayer. Mr. Troy. Nothing I prayed for ever came to any thing."" Perhaps you didn't pray f or the right things." "Well, who's to know? If God's a crossword puzzle, or a secret code, it's hardly worth the bother, it seems to me." "[ only meant we should pray for strength," he says, "not for our own wishes.'" Oh well, I've prayed for that, too, in my time, but I never thought it made much difference. r never was much of a one for church. Mr. Troy, ['II tell you frankly. But I prayed like sixty when trouble came, as ~\'ery person does, whether they'll admit it or not, just in case. But nothing ever came of it" (P.119-120). Hagar, thus, shocks .md embarrasses the priest b~' her brutal frankness. Once Hagar goes to a deserted fish cannery at Shadow
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Point by the seaside. The house is dark. She sees a seagull enter the house and tries to beat it in order to drive it out. She knows that it is a bad omen of death. She feels chest pain and weakness. She falls from the box on which she is sitting. Then she sits on the floor. There comes a stranger called Murray Lee who tells her his family history, and lends her his coat to cover herself. Hagar sleeps in the dark house at night. In the morning Marvin and Doris come there in search of her. Doris expresses his sense of shock. Oh, dear, you threw awful scare into us. Why should you go and do such a thing, anyway, Mother? When I came back from the store, and found you weren't there, I nearly went out of my mind. It's been so worrying for us, and we felt so awful, having to go to the police. (P.251) Hagar seems to be confused about her strange behaviour. Doris and Marvin thank Mr. Lees for saving their mother. They help her to get into the car. Although she wants to go home, they take her to the hospital as the doctor has opined that it is compulsory for her to do so now. Initially she is kept in a General Ward. Hagar feels that the whole world has shrunk into a hospital now. Lord, how the world has shrunk. Now it is only one enormous room, full of high white iron cots, each narrow. And in each one a female bod y of some sort. (P.2t:;4) Initially she refuses to take the pills, but the nurse forces them down her throat. She repeatedly feels pain in the chest and is administered pills by the nurses. She does not like the atmosphere of the hospital. She complains to Marvin about the sloppy food, noise at night, sleeplessness and lack of privacy. Marvin says that just as H
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illness, Hagar never loses her zest for life. Marvin and Doris know in the heart of their hearts that Hagar may not live long. That is the reason why they treat her with sympathy and compassion. In the morning they bring flowers for her. Doris tells I lagar that her daughter Tina is getting married to a lawyer. Because of her filial love for the granddaughter, Hagar instinctively gives her ring to Doris to be presented to Tina. At night when Hagar is asleep, she is shifted from the General Ward to a semi-private room. Hagar befriends a young girl called Sandra there. In the morning Doris beings a priest, Mr. Troy who sings a prayer loudly and alone near Hagar. When Steven, a smart boy of thirty and grandson of Hagar sees her and tells her that Tina is getting married to August in the East and that Doris plans to fly there after sometime. Hagar is really surprised to know that Doris has not told her this detail perhaps because they are waiting for her death. She feels she is an incom'enience to them and perhaps has upset all there plans. Although the grandmother and the grandson remember the past, somehmv the former cannot communicate with the latter, as he bemg young cannot understand the problems and predicament of her life. The relationship between the mother and the son is characterized by ambivalent feelings. Hagar is surprised to overhear Marvin talking to the nurse and referring to her as a 'holy terror.' Hagar is slowly nearing her death. Memories and symbols of death begin to occupy her consciousness. She remembers her past, especially her visit to the cemetery and her seeing of the stone-angel along with Man'in. What was once a symbol of death is going to be a reality now. She also imagines herself within a cocoon, which will be her private chamber of death. She knows that she has lived for ninety years, but could not change her adamant and non-compromising nature. She feels a terrible pain in her chest and needs an injection. The nurse gives her an injection. She feels thirsty and takes the glass of water from the nurse, drinks it and dies. Thus ends the life of Hagar Shipley, a self-\villed woman who never compromised with anyone in her life-like her husband, sons (lnd daughter-in-law. Part oi her tragedy is ascrib,lble to her own conccaled pride, which bound her to chains. One (11,1\ see a bel,lted tr,lgic ,1\\'akening of kno\-vledge about hcrself \\'IWI1 she rcalt7cs,
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Pride was my wilderness and the demon that led me there was fear, I was alone, never anything else, and never free, for I carried my chains within me, and they spread out from me and shackled all I touched. (P.292) But again like a tragic figure, she has the courage to be reconciled to her lot. The blindness of her pride is symbolized by the blindness of the stone angel. She has the existential courage to face the problems of life without desecrating the institution of marriage and family. Margaret Lawrence has depicted the picture of Hagar Shipley from an inward knowledge of feminine psychology without any exaggeration or sentimentalism. She has shown how Hagar Shipley never loses her gusto for life in spite of all the varied problems and difficul ties of her life. Hagar Shi pley does not resort to philosophical resignation or religious disillusionment. On the contrary, she lives, enjoys and suffers every moment of life with intense feeling of attachment thereby proving to the world that life is beautiful and meaningful in spite of all hindrances and hardships that clutter it Reference
Lawrence, Margaret, The Stone Angel, Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Ltd. 1964. (All the page references are to this edition only.)
DOD
ROLE OF SOCIETY IN THE NOVELS OF NAYANTARA SAHGAL - Dr. Ram Sharma
The importance of men and their superiority has been a part of Indian social mores for generations. Women had always been the less important individuals. When a woman lives in a male dominated society obviously she undergoes many hardships. It is a wretched condition of women in our society when she has no husband in her life she is not worthy of respect. Society finds faults with anyone who does not adhere to its laws, in other words, they are the transgressors of society. In a male dominated society and under male chauvinism a woman's role is hence viewed through a magnifying glass, and she is always watched by others, especially if she does not follow the rules established by the males. As male chauvinism refuses to recognise woman as competitor in domains of society. In this situation, a woman is not born but made by the SOciety: One is not born, but rather becomes a woman. No biological, psychological or economic fate determine the figure that the human female presents in society; it is civilization as a whole that produces this creature, intermediate between male and eunuch, which is described as feminine)
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Thus patriarchal practices which reduce women's status to inferior social beings are further perpetuated by myths and traditions which unfortunately have been embedded in the fabric of society. Patriarchal society promoted tow images: woman as the sexual property of man, and woman as chaste mothers of their children. Even though man is a civilized being now, there is still the savageness of primitive man in him. With savage selfishness he treats woman as an object that provides physical enjoyment, social companionship and domestic comfort." This inequality between man and woman in our society is rightly observed by Sarah Grimke: II
Man has subjugated woman to his will, used her as means to promote his selfish gratification, to minister to his sensual pleasure, to be instrumental in promoting his comfort; but never has he desired to elevate her to that rank she was crealed to fill. He has done all he could do to debase and enslave hermind .... 2 Thus denied the freedom to act and choose on their own, women remained solely inside the field of vision, mere illusion to be dreamt and cherished. A woman is a woman, and a woman she must remain but not a 'man's shadow-self', 'an appendage', 'an auxiliary' and the 'unwanted and neglected other'. A woman is held to represent the' otherness' of man, his negative. Simone de Beauvoir finds man-woman nexus quite unsymmetrical and tmcomplementary for: Man represents both the positive and the neutral, as is indicated by the common use of man to designate human heings in general; whereas woman represents only the negative, defined criteria, without reciprocity.3 A woman is never regarded as an autonomous being since she has always been assigned a subordinate and relative position in our society. It is an appalling condition of women that they cannot
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live without men in our social set-up. As they are considered physically weak and to venture in the society they need protection from males. This is the root cause of females' apathy in our society. Man can think of himself without woman. She can not think of herself without man. And she is simply what man decress ...she appears essentially to the male as a sexual being. For him she is sex ...absolute sex, no less. She is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her; she is the incidental the inessential as opposed to the essentia1. 4 We find references to his aspect of social life, where husbands dominate their wives, and make them the worst sufferer in the novels. The Day in Shadow, Storn in Chandigarh, Rich Likes Us by Nayantara Sahgal. The fundamental humanistic values which bind. a man and woman into the bond of togetherness the fidelity and companionship are away from social world today. Men take pride in having relationship before and after marriage but this thing they do not expect from their women. We find this thing in the relation between Saroj and Inder in the novel Storm in Chandigarh. Saroj is also like Rashmi, unhappy and unable to find a reciprocal involvement in her marriage. Inder, her husband is not only from a different cultural background but is a different kind of person altogether. He is obsessed by this narrow possessive attitude towards Saroj. He treats very bmtally like a sex object not as a companion in marriage. While others use power or money or religion, Inder uses chastity as a weapon against Saroj. It is part of his capacity to torment others and also torment himself. When Saroj tells about her affairs before her marriage, Inder considers it to be a serious moral lapse which has sullied their whole relationship. He feels that her act has no place. Saroj, however is not guilty and dishonest. When she marries . Inder it is alreadJ' behind her - a relationship which has not
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involved her deeply enough. It is different that society which lives by a double standard brands her as guilty. For herself she is fully involved but Inder does not under stand her and tries to destroy her sense of innocence. He persists in taking up the past and withdraws into his own self, leaving her outside, isolated and unhappy. Inder often ill-treats Saroj chiefly for her having lost her virginity before marriage. Inder, a sadist, neither forgets this incident and nor he let Saroj foreget it. Saroj who has been brought up in the liberal atmoshpere of freedom expects equality within marriage. She is greatly surprised by her husband's violent reactions to a pre-marital affair she had in her college days. Inder is obsessed and could not forgive this act of Saroj and constantly exploits her sense of innocence. Again in this passage we see male's cruelty over female for defying the code of chastity before marriage that is man made for his convenience. It shows the cruel face of patriarchal social set-up where dual standards work out prominently. Inder often tortures his wife Saroj for having premarital affair, but ironical thing in this matter is that Inder himself has lost his virginity long before his marriage, the narrator reports:
There had been no such nightmare to contend with until his marriage. He (Inder) had been precocious and successful in sex, robustly collecting experience where he found it. Saroj had plundered that robustness, made a tortured image of the body's surrender, and nailed him to the inquisitor's chair.5 Since he had a lot of erotic experience before his marriage, there is no ethical justification behind his expecting his wife to have one. Saroj undergoes even a beating for this fault of hers, but Inder never punishes himself for this faults of identical nature. Inder's deep rooted notions about women render him incapable of genuine partnership with Saroj, such as she ardently desires. Gauri expresses in her talk with Vishal. "Inder belongs to the heman school,"6 and born and brought up in an atmosphere where
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male dominance is the most formidable for cults, there is no question of any freedom or self-expression for Saroj. Inder is man who, not really traditional but he derives his idea of male superiority from religious sources. Inder treats Saroj merely as a wife - a possession, not a person. There is no question of friendship between them. Inder loves Saroj, no doubt, but the loves her as if she were his slave, his possession or commodity. They have lived, loved, even produced and raised children, but there has been no real happiness between them. To such a callous, irescible and inhuman husband, she wants the emotion to overflow into everyday life but Inder is not able to correspond. Saroj is by nature pitiable and docile. She seeks to please him and to save her marriage. She clings to the moments of response and communication. She is willing to accept her role as a traditional wife and does not seek anything outside marriage. Actually Saroj leaves him only towards the end of the novel where as Inder had left her each time he quarrelled with her. It is with a sense of dismay that she had viewed their future together. Thus Inder-Saroj relationship exposes the cruel face of patriarchy where a woman lives in an appalling condition and faces sufferings because of strong social conventions, she cannot escape herself from society therefore, she accepts these things as the part of her destiny. The male superiority over female in marriage that works in Inder we find in Ram also, in the novel Rich Like Us. With tradition behind him the namesake epic hero Ram marries Mona, then falls in love with Rose and finally falls for Marcella. His marriage with and love for women are for him a part of the heritage he has inherited and considers polygamy a prerogative. There are no qualms of conscience in him and with Lord Krishna and Rama for authority he lives with two wives. He tells Rose that Lord Krishna had three hundred wives and King Dasaratha, Rama's father, had three wives. He claims rather audaciously that Hindus are more adventurous than Mohammedans who can only have four wives at a time. Claiming that Hindu marriage is a sacrament, not a contract, he rules out giving up his first wife, Mona.
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He has no guilt in his heart having his first wife on the one hand and marries second time with Rose. And after his second marriage he carries an affair wi th Marcella. When Rose asks an explanation on this matter he explains to Rose that he feels intellectual love for Marcella and feels pride by stating that before her. But his attitude turns violent towards Rose when she goes out with Freddie (with whom she wan engaged before she met Ram) to get some relief from the suffocating experience which she got after marrying Ram. He doesn't approve her meetings with Freddie and becomes annoyed at her. He scolds her very brutally. Rose, the English woman marrying Ram, is the Sita figure in the novel. There is an inexplicable fatalism about her - her yielding to Ram's persuasions and her decision to sail to India against warnings by her parents. Ironically in spite of all her experience of the male species, and even with the knowledge that Ram had been married, she fatalistically walks into his life. There was something romantic about her attitude to Ram. Surviving the shocks of the first weeks of adjustment, she learns to live in humiliation and neglect. She realizes: "Without a child of her own she would never be the m isb:ess of the house noteven herhalfof±.,,7
The cold war between Rose and Mona abetted by women visitors disgusts Rose until they are reconciled after Mona's attempt to commit suicide. But this was not the end of her troubles. These is the Marcella affair which leads to her separation from Ram for five years. In all her vicissitudes it is Sonali who remains a friend and who fights for her right to property. And finally she is murdered. But people are made to believe that she invited the death on herself. The story of Rose is the story of several Indian widows. In the name of Sati many women are murdered. How voluntary are voluntary deaths? One can see the parallel between the accounts of Sati found in Sonali's father's trunk and the Sati of Rose. In both cases the deaths are not voluntary but forced. But like a phoenix rose dies so that her son, rather fosters on, may live. He had forged her signature to withdraw, money from the bank and has now become a Cabinet Minister. Betrayed by her 10ver-lIsband Ram, by her fosterson Devikins, betrayed by law, she lives and dies
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pathetically much like the beggar whom she has always cared for. She fails to fight for her legitimate rights and how could she give hands for the beggar. The novel The Day in Shadow also exposes the cruel face of society. It also exposes the chauvinism intrinsic in the modem male who believes himself to be liberal- inded, educated but considers wife as a commodity as a possession not a person. The novel deals with the struggle of a young, beautiful and daring Indian woman trapped under the burden of a brutal divorce settlement and the agony and unhappiness she experiences in the hands of cruel and unjust male dominated society of India. Simrit, the heroine of the novel gets suffocating environment with her husband Som. Therefore, she seeks divorce from Som to be free but after getting divorce she realises that it's too appalling and cruel situation to move as a divorcee in society. Her husband Som also cruel face of male domination in our society. He tries to be modem in each and every manner and blindly imitates the western style of life. He speaks their language, learns their mannerisms and adopts their fashions. Simrit recalls: He had German phrases on the tip of his tongue and Vetter's mannerisms. He did most of his personal shopping in Eurpoe. In a royal blue jacket, a French silk tie and hand stitched Roman leather shoes he even looked foreigner. 8 Som is a materialistic person. He gives more importance to money and power than human feelings. For men like Som, money is the most important thing in life and this love for money becomes the root cause of his separation from his wife. Simrit feels: Money had been part of the texture of her relationship with Som, an emotional, forceful ingredient of it, intimately tied to his self-esteem. Money was, after all a form of pride, even of violence. 9 Therefore, Som wants Simrit to act as a traditional wife and to his ideal of subdued womanhood. It is tradition in Som that urges
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him to believe that woman has to live under the control of man. Simrit finds it a suffocating experience. She has no voice in the ordinary decisions of everyday life, not even in the choice of curtains or chair covers: Simrit's life with Som lacks continuity and warmth. She feels isolated. It is act with a beginning and an end with nothing in-between or even afterwards. Sex is a part of life not a separate relationship which can be isolated from the rest of life. Sex is no more just sex than food is just food. to Som's recapitulation of his cruelty to his wife proves that cruelty to a woman is an eternal manifestation in man's life and woman is still in the modern world a symbol of Victorian womanhood - an embodiment of service, slavery and sacrifice. Though the law has changed, attitudes hadn't and she feels uprooted in a husband-centred world. It is difficult to begin a new for the past lives on in the present, in the memories of the shared years and the lives of the children. But when divorce comes it is not difinitely easy for her. Smirit finds her life disrupted and herself in the midst of a peculiar financial problem. The heavy payments are an attempt to enslave her in every way. The divorce is a new beginning of confrontation with the age old traditional faith. She feels her position to that of an overloaded donkey whose burden attracts no notice and draws forth no pity. Her divorce does not imply that marriage has failed as a social institution of that it has outlived its utility. Marriage is neither a system of slavery nor an escape route. But is exposes the extremity of cruel faces in our society that work against women. We see this inhuman practice against Madhu in the novel A Situation in New Delhi. The society that Nayantara creates in A Situation in New Delhi is one which fails to protect women even on the University campus in the capital city of the country as here Madhu a student of Delhi Uni,'crsity is raped in the Registrar's oifice. The boys who rape Madhu obviously regard Madhu only as
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an object of lust to be used at their disposal and have no regard for her feelings, will and self-respect. Madhu becomes the symbol in the novel of women in India who have suffered under the oppression of the patriarchy Indeed, the explanations for the attack on Usman that Rishad offers his mothers', significant for the way, it demonstrates the collusion of the patriarchy. It is highly ironical situation that a society which produces such men and cannot punish them does not deserve to have women in it. In this matter the role of Madhu's parents is also very inhuman. They" don't want more publicity for what is already an intolerable disgrace."ll and see a hastily arranged marriage as the only solution to their problems. Despite her appeal, Devi can do nothing to prevent.
Sahgal's sensitive awareness of social evils is seen in her journalistic writings. The writer is not merely reacting to social situations, but is sharply conscious of the constant deviation from social customs to suit private ends. The writer's endeavour in her fiction has been a conscious attempt to deal with the 'brutalities perpetuated' by the privileged class. In the early novels, the prototype male chauvinist husband's arrogant indifference towards his wife has been given prime importance, be it Inder in Storm in Chandigarh or Somnath in The Day in Shadow. Other areas of social indifferences towards the cause of women appear in Situation in New Delhi, where Madhu's (a rape victim's) plight is helplessly watched and commented upon by Devi, the central woman character in the novel. Thus, we find that which society Sahgal has created in her novels is based on the fact that society and the law are both made and controlled by man. Therefore, should any woman want help and assistance, these will not be forthcoming from society. She must open her eyes to this reality. References 1.
Simone de Beauvoir, The Second S('x, trans. H.M. Parshley,New York: Vintage, 1952, p.301.
2.
Arundhati Banerjee, Illtroductioll, Fiut' Plays, Vijay Tendulkar, Bombay: OUP, 1992, p.xvii.
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3.
Sarah Grimke, Letters on the Equality of the Sexes, 1 Off.
4.
Simone de Beauvoir, St'lden, 1988, p.534.
5.
Ibid., p.534.
6.
Ibid., p.136.
7.
Ibid., p.l62.
8.
Ibid., p.76.
9.
Nayantara Sahgal, The Day in Shadow, Delhi: Vikas, 1971, p.9.
10. Ibid., p.60. 11. Ibid., p.23.
DOD
GITA HARIHARAN'S THE THOUSAND FACES OF THE NIGHT:
A
STUDY - Dinesh B. Chaudhary
The last decades saw the sudden emergence of Indian women novelists writing in English and witnessed an abundant growth of novels by women writers. Most of the upcoming writers belong to upper or upper-middle class Indian society, are convent edtrtated and write about women in Indian society. An ardent promoter of the new women's writing, Khushwant Singh writes: "Githa Hariharan's world of a South Indian extended family is to me more accurate than R.K. Narayan's.,,1 The theme of woman's existence, survival and identity figures prominently in the novels of Gita Hariharan alongwith Nayantara Sahgal, Anita Desai, Bharati Mukherjee and Shashi Deshpande. Nayantara Sahgal depicts man-woman relationship and the unequal status of women in the Indian social structure. Anita Desai reveals the psychological slate of lonely women. And Shashi Deshpande gives voice to the long suppressed silence of women. Gita Hariharan, no longer remaining s.1tisfied with woman's passive role as woman and wife, expresses her angry protest. Her vision encompasses the whole history of woman's role and edifies the emergence of a new woman who is true to her own self. The novelist traces the ba ltles of woman in her relationships with man and societv·
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Gita Hariharan was born in 1954 in Coimbatore, India. She grew up in Mumbai and Manila. She was educated in Mumbai, Manila and later in the United States. She worked as a staff writer in the public Broadcasting system in New York, and since 1979, She has worked in Mumbai, Chennai and New Delhi, first as an editor in publishing house, then as a freelancer. She is the writer of three novels, The Thousand Faces of the Ni:5ht (1992), The Ghosts of Vasll Master (1994) and When Dreams Travels (1999) and collection of stories titled The Art of Dying (1993). She has also edited A Southern Harvest, a volume of stories in English translations from four major South Indian Languages. She has also co-edited Sorry, Best Friend, a collection of stories for children. She lives in Delhi. Gita Hariharan observes: I have used myths to help examine contemporary women's lives-to suggest that they might help us to understand these lives, which on the surface seem rather placid and devoid of event. 2 Gita Hariharan's The Tho lisa lid FaLes of the N i:5ht (1992) won the 1993 Commonwealth Writers Prize for the best first novel. The novel exemplifies the existential experiences of three woman characters, Devi, Mayamma and Sita. The novel moves on to arrive at varying levels of intellectual self-realization which enable the characters to either attain liberation or reconciliation through self-knowledge. In the novel, the mythological stories are told by the grandmother of the protagonist-Devi when she was a child. In response to the curious child's queries about the conditions of the women around them, the grandmother usually narrated a story appropriate to the occasion instead of giving a direct reply. The story of Gandhari was narrated to Devi when she inquired about the Veena in her mOther's photograph. K. Damodar Rao rightly observes about Hindu bride's position and he quotes: In the extended Hindu family, a bride's position is primarily that of a daughter-in-law and not that of a wife. The in-laws and other family members view the newly-arrived bride with suspicion even as she
140
Gita Hariharan's The Thousand Faces of the Night ... grapples with the new situation and tries hard to come to terms with herself in the changed environment. 3
The text is structured around the sexual and marital experience of Devi, Sita and Mayamma. In the novel, the novelist presents the innate strength of the women who is able to bOlmce back to normalcy in spite of all her tragedies. The biographical structure of characters existence reflects symbolic transformations in their acceptance of life and love. Urmila Varma notes the expression of the novelist in the following words: Gita Hariharan is a hew voice which cannot remain stifled or silent any more. It has to resound in order to be heard. It is a prophetic voice announcing the emergence of a new identity. Her pen, which is mightier than sword, attempts to establish a new order. She has adopted satire as a mode of expression to give voice to her anger. It pierc~s quite deep, destroying age-old wisdom, dismantling old myths and heralding a new dawn. Compared to other modes adopted bywriters,satire has proved to be a more effective and powerful style of expression. 4
The Thousand Faces of the Night depicts the story of young girl Devi who goes to America for higher studies. Refusing an offer of marriage from her black American friend Dan because unable to adjust with the ambivalent American culture, she returns to Madras to live with her widowed mother, Sita. Not allowing Devi to brood over her experience with Dan, Sita tries to settle her down by an arranged marriage to Mahesh, a Regional Manager in a Multinational company. Inspite of being married to a reasonably good husband of her choice, Devi is unable to quite settle down in her role as a house wife. Her education and exposure abroad prove a hurdle rather than a benefit. The vast, empty, ancestral hose, surrounded by a large garden becomes a focal point of her existence. Mayamma, an old family retainer, tells her that the secret of
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successful married life is in the capacity of to bear pain. Somehow Devi is not convinced. Her husband always-on tours, remain a shadowy stranger, who views marriage as just another necessity. While Devi pines that her heart remains untouched and not even sought for. Mahesh feels thankful: "Indians are not obsessed with love." 5 Devi finds that her education did not prepare her to play the role of a woman and wife. She says: "My education has left me unprepared for the vast, yawning middle chapters of my womanhood. ,,6 Gita Hariharan critically examines the age old norms. Babathe grandfather of Mahesh always comes out with stereotyped ideas about the role of woman: The path a woman must walk to reach heaven is a clear, well-lit one. The woman has no independent sacrifice to perform, no vow, no fasting; by serving her husband, she is honoured in heaven.? Devi could hear Baba's magnetic voice: The house wife should always be joyous, adept at domestic work, neat in her domestic wares, and restrained in expenses. Controlled in mind, word, and body, she docs not transgress her lord, attains heaven even as her lord does. s Devi always gets indifference from Mahesh, when she wants to do something to get away from her loneliness. She cannot take a job or learn Sanskrit. Being a woman she cannot play cards with Mahesh's friends. Once Mahesh snaps at Devi: This is what comes of educating a woman. Your grandmother was barely literate. Wasn't she a happier woman than you are? What is it you want?9 Devi hascIear-cut answer, comes ou~ in monologues punctuated with interrogatives: Am r neurotic because I am a lazy woman who does not polish her floors everyday? An aimless
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Gita Hariharan's The Thousand Faces of the Night... fools because I swallowed my hard-earned education, bitter and indigestible, when he tied the thali round my neck? A teasing bitch because I refuse my body when his hand reaches out, and dream instead, in the spare room, of bodies tearing away their shadows and melting, like liquid wax burnt by moonlight? 10
Into such a situation appears when Gopal's (a classical singer and an occasional visitor to her neighborhood) music strikes an immediate chord in Devi. And she elopes with Gopal. Devi gets disillusioned with him and moves once again. This time she thinks she was certainly "no longer on the run".1l At last, Devi choosing to come back to her mother to begin her life afresh: "To start and fight, to make sense of it all. She would have to start from the very beginning."12 Thus, Gita Hariharan is one of the prominent writers among Indian English writers. The first novel by Gita Hariharan suggests immense possibilities for the world of modern Indian fiction. The Thollsand Faces of the Night itself remains as a testimonial for her literary persona. References 1.
India Today, November, 15, 1993.
2.
http://www.geocities.com/chinthacn/ a udhors/ Hariharan.h tm.
3.
Rao, K. Damodar, Penance as Multiple Response in Gita HarilUlrmz's The Thollsand Faces oftlze Night, Ed., R.K. Dhawan, bzdian WOnlt'll Novelists, New Delhi: Prestige Books, 1995, p. 16l.
4.
Varma, Urmila, Satire as a Mode of Expression in Gita Hariharan's The Thollsand Fact's of the Night, ed., R.S. Pathak, Indian Fiction of The Nineties, New Delhi: Creative Books, 1997, p. 104.
5.
Hariharan, Gita, The Thollsalld Faces of the Night, New Delhi: Penguin, 1992, p. 07.
6.
Ibid., p. 54.
Gita Hariharan's The Thousand Faces of the Night... 7.
Ibid., p. 55.
8.
Ibid., p. 70-71.
9.
Ibid., p.74.
143
10. Ibid., p. 74. 11. Ibid., p. 138. 12. Ibid., p. 139.
DOD
FEMINIST ELEMENT IN RUTH PRAWER JHABVALA'S GET READY FOR BATTLE - Dr. Rudra Prasad Mahto
Before discussing the feministic element in Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's Get Ready for Battle let us try to know first what do we mean by feminism? Feminism is a movement for recognition of the claims of woman for rights as legal, political etc. equal to those possessed by men by The Advanced Leamer's Dictionary of current English. But according to Macmillan English Dictionary For Advanced Learners feminism means the belief that women should have the same rights and opportunities as men. After knowing the literal meaning of feminism we may know now the brief history of feminism. Feminism is originally a French word which referred to the women's movement of the nineteenth century. This term was first used by the French dramatist Alexander Dumas in 1872 in a pamphlet 'L' Hommefemme to designate the then emerging women's movement for right. In the contemporary context feminism is commonly used to refer to all those who seek to end women's subordination. In fact it is difficult to find a unified version of feminism. Micheli and Okley regard feminism as a loose term for a variety of conceptions of the relations between men and women in society. According to The World Book, Feminism is a belief that
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women should have economic, political and social equality with men. Again in the same book we find that feminism is also referred to a political movement that works to gain such equality as economic, political and social etc. This movement is sometimes called women's movement or women's right movement. Feminism is thus a sociocultural movement to secure a complete equality of women with men in enjoyment of all rights - moral, religious, social, political, educational, legal, economic and so on. It originated in Europe and gradually emerged to be to be a worldwind cultural movement. It has got strengthened with the help of Marxism found echoes in the USA and other third world countries. Now a question arises here-when did women's movement originate? The origins of feminism cannot be traced to a single source but are located in a number of traditions. It is believed that it originated in the Enlightenment and French Revolution, in the drive for abolition of slavery, and in the American Civil Rights Movement. Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, which is known as the feminist classic, establishes the principles of modem feminism. Here the relationship between the sexes has been first cast in the paradigm of the self and the other. Her belief is that women's position is not natural, but social construct.
Kete Millet's sexual politics can be regarded as the first major book in the USA in which we find a combination of the detailed analysis of literary works and political arguments. She describes sexual politics as the method by which one seeks to maintain and extend its power over the other subordinate sex. In case of India history shows that women's place was strictly within the family. The suffrage of women in India was first taken up by the Women's India Association (WIA) established by Dorothy Jinarajadasa together with Annie Besant and Margaret Cousins. They were theosophists and Iris suffragettes. When the Secretary of State for India, Lord Edwin Montage came to India to discuss the political reforms the WIA organized a delegation of Indian women to meet montage Chelmsford Committee. Sarojini Naidu led the delegation which included women from different women's organiza tions.
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Feminist Element in Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's ...
During freedom movement women came out of their house on the call of Mahatma Gandhi. Women's participation in the freedom movement generated a sense of power among Indian women. When India got independences a new constitution was adopted and all women were enfranchised. The constitution gives women the same social and economic rights as men enjoy. The constitutional provisions can also be seen being translated into reality as our country has Ms. Pratibha Devi Patil as President and Ms. Sonia Gandhi as president of India National Congress and late Indira Gandhi as Prime Minister, Mayawati as Chief Minister, Jay Lalita as former Chief Minister and Ms. Madhuri Shah as the Chairperson of University Grants Commission, etc. Feminism has echoed, too, in the Indian English fiction. The existential struggle to establish ones identity to assert once individuality and fight to exist as a separate identity appears in the novels of Kamala Markandaya, Anita Desai, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Nayan Tara Sahgal, and Shashi Deshpande. We also find it in the novels of younger generation of women novelists namely Geeta Mehta, Shobha De, R.W. Desai, Geeta Hariharan and others. Kamala Markandaya is one of the prolific Indian women novelists. She was born in Tamil Nadu in 1924 and attended Madras University. In 1948 she married an Englishman and settled in England. She has ten novels to her prominent novels are - Nectar in a Sieve, Some Inner Fury, A Silence of Desire, A Handful of Rice, Possession, The Coffer Dams, The Nowhere Man, Golden Honeycomb and Pleasure Cry. Kamala Markandaya is a women novelist who belongs to older generation. She is well conscious of being a women novelist. She has dealt with problems being faced by women in Indian society. As a searching analyst of women's roles in Indian society, she underlines the traditional attitude to women in her novels. A renowned critic H.M. Williams rightly says that Kamala Markandaya has a particular interest in analyzing women characters and suggesting the unusual poignancy of their fate. In her early novels, Kamala Markandaya presents the SatiSavitri role of women in Indian society and attention on to secondary
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and insignificant role. Underlying this sacrificial role there lurks a new woman active with her emancipation crisis. Howt-'ver, in her later novels we find feminine protest. The eve incarnate has been discarded and she idealizes motherhood in her novel. Rukmani is the protagonist who seems to be a legendary archetype woman and an ideal house wife. But we also find that she also rises agamst the social forces which confront her. Her daughter also rehels against the social values and inhibitions which deny freedom to women. Nectar in a Sieve is a poignant illustration of the courage and fortitude of Rukmani, who is a simple woman. She follows the norms and values which society has laid down. Yet a t the end of the novel she recovers her identity. Another prominent woman novelist of India is certainly Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. She is almost contemporary to Kamala Markandaya. She has written a number of novels. In her novels she basically presents the life of middle class urban people of Delhi as she settled in Delhi after she married an Indian Parsi in 1951. Her famous novels are-To Whom She Will, The Householder, A Backward Place, Nature Of Passion, Esmond In India, Get Ready for Battle, Heat and Dust, A New Dominion and Three Continents etc. Women's problem finds an important place in Prawer's novels. She deals chiefly with the problems faced by the Indian women who have undergone the impact of western culture. These educated women try to assert their individuality and identity. They attempt to lead a liberal life. However, they succumb to their traditional parents. In her first novel to whom she will, Amrita flirts with Hari Sahani who is traditional in his attitude but finally marries a bachelor selected by her parents. Similarly in Nature ofPassion Nimmi has western attitude, but marries KuHu, a boy who belongs to her religion and community instead of marry Pheroze. Jhabvala no doubt presents a Sati-Savitri archetype image of Indian woman who is devoted to her husband. She has also described women who have guts to go against the will of their husbands by leading a separated life. Sarla Devi and Gulab are such women portrayed by Jhabvala. They desert their husbands as they are immoral and irresponsible towards their wives and family.
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Feminist Element in Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's ...
Jhabvala who Khustwant Singh calls the "adopted daughter of India" is the Indian or "Indo-Anglican approximation to Joseph Conrad". But she has a feminine contemporary urban sensibili ty in contrast to the masculine Victorian of the Sea and of lands beyond the sea. Jhabvala is a feminist. She deals with female problems and exhibits her concern for them. In her novels we find her concern for the woman folk and wishes betterment for this folk. in her novels Indian women are chiefly those who have undergone the impact of western culture. An educated woman is made aware of her individuality through her education. she has gained new ideas, tastes and manners, which she tries to bring into practice because she finds them attractive. But she becomes unsuccessful in her pursuit as she is obstmcted by the dictates of her parents or husbands who maintain that she must keep the Sati-Savitri image. Her parents expect that the prime duty of a woman is to obey her husband. But Jhabvala not only presents the Sati-Savitri image of Indian woman she also presents woman who wants to change - the age - old conventions. This is evident in her novel Get Ready for Battle. In this novel Sarla Devi is the wife of Gulzari Lal, a rich Punjabi businessman. she comes into direct conflict with her husband who wants to buy a piece of land at Bundi Busti for his economic prosperity. Gulzari Lal also leads an immoral life with his mistress, Kusum a widow of an army officer Major Mehra. Kusum has two daughters already married off and has grand children as well. Similarly Gulzari Lal has a son Bishnu and a grand daughter Pritti. Sarla Devi who is an idealist and Gandhian in temperament cannot abide by the immoral pursuits of her husband. She has been living a lone life for ten years in her brother's house devoting her time and energy in serving the poor. Her id not afraid of divorce if Gulzari Lal pursues this. Even Gulzari Lal contemplates to divorce her so that he can live with his mistress freely and legitimatize his relation with her. She tells Gulzari Lal frankly: ........ .if you like, I am ready to sign anything you want. Her avowed aim is people of Busti are my duty and responsibility and I have yet shirked my duty and responsibility.
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As a socia I worker Sarla Devi hrtS to bear a 101 of hardships. She lives a very simple life in her household works. Her only concern is the poor and the helpless. She walks miles on footpath all day long; passes her time among slum - d\'\ ellers trying to solve their good and bad days. She doesn't care the ~arcc'lstic comments and criticism accorded to her by the rich. Even her own people such as her brother Brij Mohan, Bishnu, her son and Mala. her daughter-in-law have no any favour for her. Often her brother becomes angry with her to see her devotion for the poor and destitute. Jhabvala expresses her displeasure a I the exploitation of woman in male dominated society. Brij Mohan, her brother also leads an indecent, lustful and immoral life. lIe even abuses his maidservant to satiate his lust. This is the reason why Sarla Devi redukes him. One morning Brij Mohan throws out Tarala, his young maidservant alleging she wants more and more presents and gifts. This act of her brother enrages Sarla Devi. She requests him to allow her to sta y again but her plea has no effect on him. She is very much angry with him to allow her to stay again but her plea has no effect on him. She very angry with him at his immoral habits and vices. She does not hesitate to remind her brother of his immoral act. The novelist presents her boldness and straightforwardness as well as Brij Mohan's indecent habits in the following words: But what do u want from her? She is ready for all your pleasures. She will sing for you. When you want her, she pours drinks for you, she serves you, she lies on her back for you ..... what more is there you want? Sarla Devi has deep sympathy with the poor girl like Tarala. At the end of the novel we find that Sarla Devi's efforts to stop the eviction of the Bundi Busti go in vain as the rich people like her husband sucessed in their scheme of eviction the same by bribing Ramchander, a leader of the Busti, Ramchander is a person who she has trusted more but he turns his side to the rich for money. All other dwellers of the Busti are persuaded to vacate the place. In spite of this failure her determination to champion the cause of the poor is least affected. On the contrc\ry she renews her spirits after
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every failure and with vengeance plunges into a fresh mission. To serve the people especially poor and downtrodden. Thus in our conclusion we may say that Ruth Prawer Jhabvala is a feminist and this element is found in her novel entitled Get Ready for Battle. References
1.
The World Book Encyclopaedia, Vol. 7, P. 49.
2., Ibid., P. 49.
3.
Sahane, V.A., Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Liverpool: Lucas Publications, 1988, P. 23.
4.
Iyengar, K.R. Srinivasa, Indian Writing in English, New Delhi: Sterling Publisher Private Limited, 2007, P. 450.
5. Jhabvala, Ruth Prawer, Get Readyfor Battle, New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1980, P. 38. 6.
Ibid., P.28.
7.
Ibid., P. 137.
DOD
ABHIYATRI: THE STORY OF A REBELLIOUS
WOMAN - Dr. Basavaraj Naikar
Nirupama Borgohain is a very important Asomiya short story writer, novelist and journalist. A prolific writer, she has published thirty-three novels and novellas, twelve short story collections, eight essay collections, five translations, a travelogue, a children's novel and an autobiography. She has received several prestigious awards like the Saswati Award from Bangalore, the Tirumalamba Award from Nanjangud, the Basanti Devi Award and the Hem Barua Award of the Asom Sahitya Sabha, the Prabina Saikia Award and the Central Sahitya Academy Award (for Abhiyatri in 1996) for her significant contribution to Assamese literature. Born in Guwahati in 1932, she was educated in Cotton College, Guwahati and Calcutta University, Calcutta. A double postgraduate in English and Assamese, she worked as a Lecturer in English at various colleges and as editor of Saptalzik Sanclzipat and Clzitrangada. Presently she is a column writer for several weekly and daily newspapers of Assam. Among her many novels, some like Allya Jiban (Another Life), [parer Ghar, Siparer Ghar (The HOllse Of This Side and of Tlwt) and Dill Proti Dill (Everyday) have received special attention from readers and critics. Nirupama Borgohain is it writer with vast experience of Asomiya life. She has seen both the sweet taste of success and the
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bitter taste of humiliation. As she declares: "Truth has been my credo. I have never flinched from speaking the truth" (The Telegraph, 16 March, 2002). But surprisingly the path of truth is full of obstacles. She has braved many obstacles in her personal life and career and lived a life of strong conviction. Being a woman, she has depicted various aspects of Asomiya life from a woman's perspective. She has depicted many women characters very authentically because only a woman can understand the heart of another woman. Most of her novels and short stories are based on real models of life. I have seen life from a close distance. And all my characters are drawn from real life. Sometimes' she' is my servant's mother and sometimes she is a person, who lived in my in-law's village. Moreover, I limit my writing to my experience. (The Telegraph, 16 March, 2002) Her honesty and conviction are evident in her words. In her themes, she is very realistic, but in her style she is poetic rather than dull and sentimental. Though a woman writer, she is happily free from inhibitions, but never bordering on the pornographic level unlike Shobha De. She has focused her attention on the victimization of Asomiya women by the patriarchal male dominated society because of her natural sympathy for the female gender. But she does not wish to be called a feminist writer. On the contrary, she wants to be considered as a humanist writer. I am a humanist. But sadly enough, most women in our society are battered and bruised at every step of their life. Being a woman myself I can't remain detached and it shows in my writings. (The Telegraph, 16 March, 2002) Nirupama Borgohain started her writing career as a schoolgirl. She has been known for her depiction of the harsh realities of rural life as well as those of the sophisticated or middle-class urban life, from a woman's perspective. His novel Anya Jiban (Another Life) ha·s received special attention from readers and critics for the way it delineates the plight of women living under the (literal as well as
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metaphorical) yoke of male tyranny. In another significant novel, Iparer Ghar, Sipnrer Ghar she portrays the dislocated life of a poor and beautiful woman, who is driven to prostitution by her harsh fate. She has thus enriched the Asomiya literature thereby contributing to the wealth of Indian Literature. Her contemporary consciousness, womanist perspective, realistic style and keen observation of life lend a special charm to her writings. She can easily be compared and contrasted with other women writers of India like Amrita Pritam, Kamala Das, Mahasweta Devi, Indira Goswami, Triveni and so on, for the realization of the principle of unity in diversity in Indian literature and culture.
Abhiyntri, honoured with the Central Sahitya Academy Award in 1996, happens to be a very significant novel containing all the aforementioned qualities of the writer. Nirupama Borgohain has justifiably chosen a woman character as the protagonisc of her novel to counter-balance the male protagonists of male writers of India. She has depicted the life of Chandraprabha Saikiani characterized by the struggle for women's rights around 1920s, long before the modern feminism made its way into India and became fashionable. The novel is biographical in theme, realistic in style and balanced in its overall approach. In the present article an attempt has been made to discuss Abhiyntri (1995), which won the Central Sahitya Academy Award in 1996. The novel is based upon the rebellious life of Chandraprabha Saikiani, who happened to be a spirited freedom fighter of Assam and who defied the norms of patriarchal society. There is a good deal of similarity between Nirupam Borgohain and her protagonist, Chandraprabha as far as their courage, rebellious and restless crea tiv ity is concerned. That is exactly why the novelist has succeeded in giving a very authentic picture of Chandraprabha Saikiani. In Abhiyatri, Nirupama Borgohain offers a picture of the evolution of Chandrapriya's personality from childhood to death. The narration is relatively brief and brisk, concenlrating on the main events of her life. One of six daughters of Ratiram Majumdar, the Headman of the village Daisingari, Chandrapriya has a strong
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desire to be educated. Her younger sister Rameswari also has the same desire - a desire not commonly cherished by girls in th~ Indian patriarchal society of the early twentieth century. Even as a small girl Chandrapriya has an intense awareness of the restrictions imposed upon her gender i.e., femininity by the patriarchal Asomiya society. But Chandrapriya and Rameswari take great pains to go to the school at Kathalmuri by wading through slush and by being bled by the leeches. They have to undergo a good deal of physical discomfort in order to acquire some education. For some time now the two of them had been giving a kind of revenue in blood to the leeches, who lined up on the muddy and watery path to the shrIne of learning. Sometimes Chandrapriya felt like tearing her hair and raking her face. Why did God have to give her the itch for learning? Look at the other girls of the vIllage: bovinely happy with the chores around the hearth not stirred by any urge to trudge through slush to become a lady pundit. By now her girl friends had pasted tile label of lady-pundit on her. She also walked around with other epithets clinging to her such as 'tree-climbing Tom' and 'bandit-queen'. (P.l) Both Chandrapriya and Rameswari want to be educated. Rameswari dreams of becoming a doctor. For girls to be educated in 1920s was neither desirable nor fashionable in the patriarchal society of Assam. It was in that context that Senipriya, sister of Gangapriya was educated and became a school teacher in the government middle school at Bhakigaon and even doled out a gift of education to Gangapriya's little children. Although Gangapriya is herself illiterate, she takes keen interest m the education of her daughters. But Ratiram Majumdar, who represents the patriarchal society, has his own difficulties with his daughters' education. The village school teacher draws the attention of Ratiram Mazumdar to the daily struggle of the girls to reach the school: But then he saw that the poor things had to practically swim to get along, all his pleasure was
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gone. The pundit is amazed that they do this every day to get to school. So he says, what's the point of navigating this flood to go to school? I've been wondering - how did we make a big slip here? Our kinsfolk and friends all tried to talk us out of it, but we wouldn't listen. Take you, you thought of making scholars out of them. Well who is going to marry them after they get all puffed up with scholarly pride? (P.5) The education of girls like Chandrapriya and Rameswari is problematized by the lack of facilities like proper roads or vehicles and by the lack of value for it in the marriage market. Chandrapriya and Rameswari become conscious of their gender with all its distinctiveness and limitations right from their school days. They acutely feel the gender difference imposed by the patriarchal society of India. Chandrapriya mutters like a small volcano to her sister: Boys and girls-the way folks go on about boys and girls boys and girls-I'll go nuts, really. It is dS if God used gold and the other precious metals to fashion boys out of, and cheap clay to mould us girls. (P.8) They wonder as to why even God crea ted this gender discrimination between boys and girls in the human society. They question even the difference in the dressing habits prescribed for m en and w om en. They fuelthat+heirmekhelas (petticoats) are very inconvenient for the free movement of their legs. They slip off everything and just wrap their mekhdns around their breasts, ,:live into water and enjoy the sport. Chandrapriya curses her dress and longs for a male dress,: Isn't it much better to wear a dhoti like the boys, something YOli can hitch up as high as you like, and something you don't trip over all the time? (P. 8)
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Chandrapriya and Rameswari interrogate the restrictions imposed upon the feminine gender by the patriarchal society right from their childhood. The relation between feminine gender and education in the patriarchal society is foregrounded in the novel. It is very ironical that girls who are keenly interested in education are positively discouraged from pursuing it whereas boys who may not be really interested in it are encouraged to pursue it. When Chandrapriya and Rameswari return home from school with their limbs and garments bespattered with mud, their father boils with fury: Hey, what a sight you make at this hour. People will get scared if they see you, thinking you are some kind of demons. Did you go to study or ~o frolic in mud and water? From today )tou don't study anymore, don't you ever think of going to school again. (P. 11) Ratiram Majumdar orders them to stop going to school and help their mother in the household work. But Dharma, the younger brother of Chandrapriya is not really interested in going to school or acquiring knowledge. But yet his special rights remain unchallenged. Chandrapriya is really puzzled by the double standards recommended by the patriarchal society in the case of boys and girls. Chandrapriya happens to be a very sensitive and imaginative girl. Sometimes she has terrrfying dreams and feels depressed afterwards. But on the whole, she is a girl bubbling with a lot of gusto for life. When she is busy with the household work of helping her mother, her luck seems to have turned. One day, Ratiram Majumdar cheers his daughters by his words: "Sick of your and the other one's sulking. I went to the headmaster of Daisingari School. He has agreed to take you in" (P. 27). Chandrapriya and Rameswari are simply overjoyed at the unexpected (urn of their luck and the prospects of continuing their education. Chandrapriya not only finishes her education at the Daisingari School, but also starts a school on her own in order to help the girls to be educated. She
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interrogates and disagrees with the patriarchal society, which discourages women to have the formal education for several reasons. Illiteracy thus happens to be a common disqualification of Indian rural women in general. But Chandrapriya resists the patriarchal injunctions by not only having her own education, but also by helping other girls in having their education under her tutelage. She has a missionary zeal and works in her school of bamboo poles without any salary. She believes in the view that education can liberate women from all restrictions imposed upon them by the patriarchal society. Not bothering about the salary, she wants to concentrate her attention on st~mulating the rural girls to be educated. "I'm simply focused on expanding the school and whetting the girls' appetite for learning" (P. 31). Even as a young girl she exhibits the qualities of a social reformer. She wants to open the window on the world. As she explains to Dandi:
J.
We must keep ourselves informed about important national and international events. Just let this school of mine become a viable concern-I'll create .1 o,malllibrary and will also keep newspapers. (P.
Her dream of beginning a small library of books and nnvspapers is, obviously, symptomatic of her concern for womankind. Chandrapriya improves her school gradually. The number of pupils also increases as days go by. Although she started her service without salary, she is now given a salary of six rupe~s per month by the local board. She has trained her pupils in such a beautiful way that she easily earns the appreciation from the School Inspector Nilakantha Barua. He exclaims: "Well, it is remarkable that despite being a girl of thirteen you show such an inclination for studies" (P.37). Chandrapriya expresses her feminist views about the equality of sexes: Sit, with respect, I think that there is only some biological difference between a boy and a girl, which need not prevent a girl from doing what a boy can do. (P. 37)
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She also tells him how she had earned a medal with a portrait of George V embossed on it for doing well in her school. The School Inspector, who recognizes the hidden spark in her, helps her to continue her education by recommending her to the Mission School at Nagaon. Chandrapriya feels simply ecstatic about the unexpected turn of her luck. Chandrapriya and Rameswari wish to begin a new life by having a new identity suggested by the change of their names to Chandraprabha and Rajaniprabha respectively. When she joins the schoo!, her rebellious nature asserts itself. She does not tolerate any kind of injustice anywhere. The Mission School in which she has been studying is run by the Christian misSIOnaries. The encounter betwee::l Hinduism and Christianity is one of the consequences of colonialism and has both the positive and the negative aspects attached to it. When Chandraprabha stays in the hostel and notices the high-handed behaviour of the warden Miss Long, she rebels against it. I can't take her prejudiced ways anymore. What a hypocrite this woman is. She forces us to read the Bible, whose spirit she misses by a mile. (PAO) Though Chandraprabha loves the Bible and likes to read it for her enlightenment she does not like to be forced by Miss Long to do so. Similarly, she dislikes the conversion of poor girls of villages into Christians with many enticements. Once after coming to know the plight of a Hindu girl housed in the S[Qreroom of the hostel, Chandraprabha organizes a strike by the wards of the hostel against the warden, Miss Long. Initially Miss Long exhibits her pride and prejudice. Chandraprabha threatens: We hear that you've put a girl inside the storeroom just because she wouldn't be converted to Christianity. If you don't retract your decision, we'll not do the Bible class today. (P. 43) As Miss Long lalks insultingly about the poverty of Indi,ms, Chandraprabha retorts: Madam, I can't believe that you're taunting us, lhe children of the very land whose air YOll are
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breathing, whose food and water has sustained you. If you don't withdraw your instilting remarks, we'll launch such a. movement that you'll have to scamper away to your native country instead of happily running a school here. (P. 44) She enthuses the pusillanimous Hindu girls till they bond together and wrench victory from the authorities. She beams with a sense of satisfaction. In 1920s there was some turbulence in the political life of Assam as also in the other part~ of India. The Civil Disobedience Committee met at Tejpur and was graced by the presence of leaders like Motilal Nehru and Ballabbhai Patel. Chandraprabha, who is a very sensitive lady, observes the sociopolitical life around her with great curiosity, because of her sodal concern. At this time, ~he gets involved m a love affair with a young man, gets a child outside of wedlock and suffers from homelessness and frustration. But she never indulges in self-pity. On the contrary, she wants to dedicate her life fo!" the social sen.'ice. She tries to channalize her frustration through reformative activities. As Chandraprabha remembers her past days spent at Tejpur, one may easily see her qualities of leadership and social concern. For example, when she leaves the primary school at Nagaon and joins the middle school at Tejpur; she gets the support and blessings of. Paramananda Agarwala and Amiya Oas. She is slowly initiated into public life by Jyoti Prasad Agarwala by being made the supervisor of the girls' wing of Volunteer Youth. She is pleasantly surprised by the tum of her luck. Jyoti Prasad Agarwala "said that he intuitively sensed Chandraprabha's leadership qualities" (P. 51). It is indeed a great honour fo!" a lady coming from rustic backgiOund to be accepted by the dignitaries of Tejpur. Sometime later, she is selected to giw the keynote address at a drug prevention meeting. The Headmistress of Tejpur Girls' Middle School, Chandraprabha overcomes her shyness and makes a very impressive speech. She describes opium as 'devil's dust' and castigates the drug-pushers and drug users. Chandraprabha ended her speech with something like a roar. There was another roar as the throng
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Kiranmoyi Agarwala is so happy that she rests her hand on Chandraprabha's forehead and admires: Saraswati, my dear, you lighted up everything today as if with a moonbeam. Yau were true to your name, Chandraprabha- the radiance of the moon. Here are my blessings: You'll be a great leader and bring a smile to the wan faces of the women of Assam. (P. 52) Chandraprabha's speech is followed by Acharya Prafulla Chandra Roy's. In his speech he highlights the achievement of prose writers in Assam as early as sixteenth century. Likewise, he echoes Mahatma Gandhi about female education. You must not neglect women's education. If the female race- half of the population- is enslaved by ignorance, national progress will be a stillborn child. (P. 53). Acharya Prafulla Chandra Roy's concern for female education acts as mirror to Chandraprabha's own concern and helps her concretize her refomlist philosophy of life. The nationalist movement inspires her to a great extent. She is simply thrilled to hear the speech of Mahatma Gandhi in Tejpur. She is deeply influenced by Gandhiji's ideas of swadesi, his disapproval of superstitious and obscurantist practices like child marriage and polygamy. After the speech Gandhiji sits down and writes an article called Lovely Assam in which he pays great tributes to Asomiya women: "The Assamese women weave dreams of angels in cloth, they are born weavers" (P.56). Deeply inspired by Mahatma Gandhi, Chandraprabha and her colleagues burn the foreign-made cloths and manage to buy the khadi cloths,ich are very very expensive. She joins Kiranmoyi Agarwala and others and starts a Mahila Samiti. She propagates Gandhiji's message in the v illages, encourages them to weave cloths
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and become part of the Non-Cooperatiion Movement. She eyen takes up the responsibility of helping the destitute women by providing the singer sewing machines to them. As days go by, Chandraprabha takes more and more interest in the socio-political activities. On Jyoti Prasad's suggestion, she trains about twenty women for the parade on horseback during the 1921 Ryot Conference at Chariduar. She imagines each of her students as Laxmibai, the Rani of Jhansi. "Chandraprabha's stars were ascending rapidly, so that for many she was a deity like Durga, inhabiting the heavens" (P.58). Her image is growing in the society rapidly. Chandraprabha, though rebellious by nature and intolerant of injustice whenever she confronts it, is a young lady with a deep passion and biological desires. When she is teaching in a Middle School at Tejpur, she happens to meet a young man called Dandinath Kalita, who appreciates her literary taste and talent. She falls in love with him in spite of the impossibility of marriage between them according to the traditional norms. She, being a lowborn, cannot marry her highborn lover. But still their passionate love gravitates them mutually: "So for two years they experienced hell and paradise, ecstasy and frustration, in alternation" (P.5S). The lovers experience the joy of love and frustration of castedifference. Finally, their love bears fruit. The premarital love plunges her into a metaphorical hell. As she grows aware of her pregnancy, she returns to her native village, Daisingari. "Chandraparabha left Tejpur before the shape of her body heralded a new birth. At Daisingari Atul was born" (P.59). The birth of a baby born outside wedlock is not appreciated or approved by the patriarchal society of Assam. She is subjected to slander, disparagement and isolation. Ironically, her niece, Rukmini also gives birth to a baby. But the difference between the two is the one between illegal and legal. She got the news that a boy was born to her niece Rukmini. Whereas the birth of her boy had darkened everyone's face with shame, this birth had become an event of rejoicing. (P.59)
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Rukmini's own mother was a child mother. "The irony of a child-marriage taking place in Chandraprabha's family at a time when she was publicly roiling against the practice skewered her innards." (P.60) While swinging between gloom and gladness in family matters, Chandraprabha keeps on observing the political life of the nation, which is not very' cheerfui at the moment. Because of the violence at Chaurichaura, Gandhiji has put a stop to agitationist programmes. She also observes the sharp ideological difference between Mahatma Gandhi and other political leaders like Subhas Chandra Bose, Jawaharlal Nehru and the elders like Motila} Nehru, C.R. Das, Lala Lajpat Rai and CN. Sharma. By this time, Chandraprabha's creative urge begins to assert itself. She plans to write her first novel. Chandraprabha does not allow her domestic responsibilities to suppress her creativity. With great perseverance, she completes her autobiographical novel A]Jarnjitn (Ll1wnnquished) running into 343 pages, which is autobiographical. Her mother does not understand and approve of her creative urge, as it is not materially usehll. Poverty happens to be a very depressing aspect of Chandraprabha's family. Her brother Dharma has turned out to be a wastrel and no help can be expected from him. Her younger sister Rajani skims a small amount of her scholarship to send to the family. It is exactly during this crisis that she is offered a teaching job at a girls' school in Kaljirapara. The offer turns out to be a godsend for Chandraprabha. Her love affair with Dandinath Kalita had added to her difficulties in life. In addition to poverty, she has to suffer the social stigma in the society at every phase of her life. Her illegitimate motherhood has created a great personal as well as social problem for her. She loves Dandinath passionately, but she cannot marry him for caste reasons. She pines for his company day in and day out. She does not enjoy the pleasures of having a proper family. She is so sensitive and understanding by nature that she even sympathizes with Dandinath for his helplessness in the matter. When she hears the news of his marriage with a girl called Kamal under the parental pressure, she exercises an extraordinary control
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over her emotions. Kamal also happens to be a sensible wife of Dandinath, who accepts Chandraprabha as her 'elder sister' and communicates with her regularly. Chandraprabha is considered as a 'fallen woman' by the patriarchal society of Daisingari village. liThe atmosphere of the village was conscious and hostile, home was dull and melancholy (P.64). The villagers are contemptuous of Chandraprabha as they do not like to be counselled by a fallen woman. Chandraprabha's unmarried motherhood becomes a subject of gossip in I 920s when the modern radical feminism was not yet fashionable in India. (Unmarried motherhood in 1980s has been hailed as an achievement by the modern feminists.) Chandraprabha has to be very bold to face the hostile patriarchal society. When she joins the school at Kaljrapara, people taunt her about her illegitimate child, Atul. Initially the women of the village, who are part of the patriarchal sociel y, plan lo insult her. By then Ule news of her appointment and joining had spread and the mothers had tutored their children to haul abuses at Chandraprabha. As she made her way she felt as if she was splashed with venom from bOlh the sides. The children hooted and jeered, and called her obscene names. The women mostly stayed in the background, but OIW of them came forward to shout: 'Wretched woman! Now she'll drag our girls down to the pits" (P. 66). But as days go by, peopll' Jrc reconciled to her condition and let her alone. Chandraprabha's 'scarlet' past becomes insignificant. A liberal gentleman c'llled Copinath Medhi offers shelter of his home to Chandraprabha thereby pre,-enting her from travelling the rugged path with her son Alul from Daisingari to Kalgirapara. Chandraprabha puts up with all this insult and inconvenience with an extraordinary courage, which is simply admirable. Chandraprabha's rebellious nature asserts itself whenever she sees some injustice done to somebody. Once she sees a low caste girl walking near a temple well silently. She asks the girl as to why she doesn't get the water. Greatly amused, the attendanl replies: She can't louch the water because she's a low casle. She is \\',liling for some one of a propl'f caste to conw and fill her pitcher. (P. 67)
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The attendant further dc1fifies that they cannot allow the low caste person to contaminate the water of the well, which is used by the high caste, people of the temple. Chandraprabha blasts the attendant to her heart's content. She, then, goes to the abbot of the kirtnll ghnr and secures the right for everyone to draw water from the well. To celebrate her victory she collects a few low-caste girls, marches them towards the well and arranges for a communal drawing of water. Then her face beaming with the broadest smile she says, "From today, this water is really pure" (P.68). The love affair between a high-caste man (Dandinath Kalita) and a lower-caste girl (Chandraprabha) is not approved by the patriarchal society. It becomes a subject of gossip. But sensitive people do not make any fuss about it. Gopi Nath Medhi had also spread the information: Chandraprabha was secretly married to Dandinath Kalita at Bhairab temple, Tejpur. But there were social obstacles to their living together. Dandinath was high caste, while Chandraprabha was of a lower caste. At the same time, there was a hope that Dandinath would one day be able to accept Chandraprabha as his wife and Atul as his son. (P.69)
He wants to stop the wagging tongues. But unfortunately it is not possible. For example, when Chandraprabha takes Atul to the convention of Sahitya Sabha, some women innocently ask her about the child's father, she explains the story of her life boldly and calmly: "With the utmost naturalness in the world, Chandraprabha unfolded her history of single motherhood. The gathering was stunned into silence." Afterwards, when Chandraprabha went to bathroom with Atul, the women started buzzing. When snide, biting remarks about Chandraprabha were freely bandied, a woman, a widow spoke up: It seems that we women are our worst enemies. Have you paused to consider that the other partner in this scandal is leading a happy married life,
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while ChandraprClbha is carrying the burden of shame? (P.72) Though rational men and women understand Chandraprabha's predicament, the orthodox ones continue to wag their tongues. It was amazing that Chandraprabha was not bowed down by grief, and went around proclaiming her illegitimate motherhood so defiantly. She herself was a child-widow. Now she was a beautiful woman, who was stranded in life, with no hope of fulfillment of any kind. And her presence was supposed to cast a shadow on holy rituals and social occasions, so that she was isolated and ostracized. (P. 73)
The same patriarchal society, which looks down upon a widow or a single woman, also looks at her temptingly. "Yet the widow was not safe either. Men's lascivious attention was frequently attracted by her full enticing figure" (P. 73). Only a widow can understand a widow. When they form a procession to go to the (:onvention, Chandraprabha sees a widow lagging behind. Chandraprabha grabs her by the hand and drags her to the front. At this tears well up in the widow's eyes. Chandraprabha wants to give a new confidence and dignity to the widow, who is suppressed by the patriarchal society. After her widowhood, she had almost come to terms with the annihilation of her social identity and was in the habit of shrinking in public. Now suddenly this stigmatized woman was threatening to open up new horizons for her" (P.73). Chandraprabha, thus, helps the widow to ha\Oe a new confidence in herself and not suffer from cast-off feeling. After Rajani Kanta Bordoloi's speech against opium and alcohol and for the emancipation of women, Chandraprabha is angry to notice the segregation of men
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My sisters, why are you crouching inside like captured women? If you have any pride at all, if you don't think it's your god-given right to stand on the same footing as men, then do stand up for the right, and break free from this cell, this cage!. (P.74)
Chandraprabha struggles hard to bring the shy and illiterate women out of the restrictions of the patriarchal society. Though Chandraprabha fell in love with Dandinath Kalita in a moment of passion, she could not marry him for commlmal reasons. She is thus compelled to remain an unmarried mother and a single woman. Although she is quite bold to face the cor:tingencies of her life, Dandinath Kalita docs not have the willingness and courage to defy the norms of the patriarchal society. Yielding to the parental pressure, he l1
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legally. He writes plaintive as well as passionate letters to Chandraprabha and wants to know if she would forget him. After fipishing the letter, Chandraprabha presses it to her breast with ciesperate ardour and thinks inwardly about the dilemma of love. My heart's monarch, is it so easy to forget you? If I could banish you from my memory, perhaps there would be some peace in this weary soul. But our love will cross the frontiers of forgetfulness itself and mortality and simmers on. It's a strange thing, this love that you and I are bonded to. It's madness, an intoxication-it is a compound of unendurable pain and absolute bliss, dearest. (P. 70) Again unlike a modern emancipated woman, Chandraprabha does not go to the extent of searching for another, richer or better lover for emotional or biological satisfaction. Unlike a modern feminist, she never says that she cannot control the itch between the thighs. On the contrary, she boldly accepts the sneers and jeers of the patriarchal society. Just as Chandraprabha defies the norms of patriarchal society in the matrimonial matter, she defies the norms in other aspects also. For example, cycles are generally ridden only by men and not by women in the Indian society. But Chandraprabha defies this norm and rides a bicycle for her frequent movements. The people of her area are surprised by the sight of a lady riding a bicycle. They express their sense of surprise as well as contempt for her: Oyee, just look al that! Look, look at thal fem,t1e riding a bicycle! 0 no, now I've seen everything. A female creature on a bike! Of course, this femal(' is abandoned-what else do you expect from her? (P. 75)
Nol heeding the wagging tongues, Chandri1prabha continues the bike riding, as it is necessi1ry and cOl1\'enient for her to cO\'er the long distances on the narrow i1nd looping roads of the villages where she tries to organize the womenfolk.
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Chandraprabha questions the norms of patriarchal society about the dressing habits of women. Even as a small girl, she finds her l11ekhela very inconvenient for easy movement of legs. Once she and her younger sister Rameswari swim in the pond and find their l11eklzdas very cumbersome. They, therefore, question as to why they should wear them compulsorily. "Getting up to go and making heavy weather of wearing her sodden, cumbersome mekhelas. Chandra cursed her dress and said: Isn't it much better to wear a dhoti like the boys, something you can hitch up as high as you like, and something you don't trip over all the time? (P. 8)
This simp Ie thought indicates Chandraprabha's interrogation of the sartorial segregation of male and female genders imposed by the patriarchal society. She defies the dress codes enjoined upon the female gender by the society. Although Chandraprabha could not marry Dandinath KaJita for practical reasons, she loves him deeply. She remembers him in her lonely moments and pines for him. Once when her memory becomes very intense, she writes a passionate love-letter to him: Dearest, (she wrote), Lay down your head on my lap, love, and lend me your ears for a moment. Didn't we devour the hours together, and didn't it seem that we would flow into one another with our endless talk? What happened to all that? What are you doing on the other side of silence? Here, at this moment, I am all-alone in the night. Didn't we come together again and again, on such nights, which \-vere strictly our own? Now every part of my body is aching for your touch. Why won't YOLI lay your light, loving fingers on my breast? Beloved, will YOLl appear before me for one blink of life? Can I see you once more? Why do things that seemed c\'erJasting-you, the warmth of your body, your loving chatler-now mock me with their absence?
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One day you came to me wearing the mantle of a beggar and you courted me, saying that you'll lie prostrate at my door. Now I am on my knees. I have no shame. I crave your caresses all over my body. But what about you? You have your incomparable Kamal, don't you? Then why do you have to care about this miserable spectre? Send me word. and I'll hack my own limbs off, one by one .. , .(Pp. 6465)
Dandinath Kalita has been sending some money to Chandraprabha as and when he can. But his gifts are accompanied by reprimands about her new attachments with male friends and her extravagance. "Darkness shrouded Chandraprabha as she thought about those accusatory paper missiles" (P.78). In spite of the fact that Dandinath has no legal control over her, Chandraprabha still loves and respects him and takes his advice seriously. After the death of Ratiram Majumdar, Chandraprabha's mother warns her when the latter wants to go to Bajali to participate in a political programme: Go if you must, despite the state you are in. But don't get too intimate with those young men, and don't spend nights with anybody and everybody. Tongues will wag. (Pp. 88-89). The mother articulates her fears about the scandal-mongering habit of people in the patriarchal society. But Chandraprabha does not bother about such gossip. Being young and lonely, she longs for male company. She thinks that nobody has a right over her body or mind. During calmer moments when she was all by herself, Chandraprabha had to admit that the company of young men made her tingle. Dandinath had accused her for a long time that she established quick intimacy with the males she met. But when she remembered Dandinath's charges, she erupted inside. Even if I lose my lwad
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Abhiyntri: The Story of a Rebellious Woman when I see men, what right have you to accuse me, she thought. There is no desire of yours that you have left tmfulfilled. But you don't spare a moment to think about me, for whom no gratification of any kind is possible. (P.89)
Chandraprabha, obviously, thinks of asserting her sexual and emotional identity. Chandraprabha remains devoted to her lover Dandinath although she could not marry him. Because of her passionate love for him, she keeps on writing letters to him now and then and enjoys receiving letters from him. She has preserved his old letters in a chest with great care and reads them nostalgically at her leisure. There was, however, a box crammed with Dandinath's old letters into which she could dip to quench her thirst. For her, this old rusty box was a chest of treasures. Here lay hidden the great Assamese writer's heart's offerings made at his most ardent moment. (P.95) She takes out a letter at random from the pile and reads it with deep love. The letter contains nectar and venom. The love chides her for her numerous moral shortcomings, but still sings: If from the straight narrow path/ You should ever stray / Then for you, to my lord / I'll pray/And your pure portrait/ I'll preserve in my hear .(P.95)
Chandraprabha plants a soft kiss on the letter and clutches it to her heart. The plight of an unmarried mother is very pitiable. Although she is bold enough to face the unsympathetic patriarchal society, she finds it difficult to take care of her child, A tu I because of her socio-political preoccupations. Atul feels the con~plcuoUS absence of his father beca use of the wagging tongues of his schoolfellows. It was becoming impossible for Atul to study al school in Daisingari. He was having to face barbs from his malicious litlle school-fellows, who heckled him aboul his invisible father. (P.96)
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Chandraprabha has to give psychological strength to Atul by preventing him from a sense of furIornness. Dandinath keeps on sending some money to Chandraprabha whenever she is in trouble and enquires after his beloved son. But Atul cannot understand why his father lives away from him. He has a crisis of identity and asks his mother for clarification. Sometime ago Atul had suddenly asked her: 'ma, don't I have a father? All my friends - Harish, Kali, Tarun -have fathers. Do you know, ma, when the boys quarrel with me, they call me bastard? What does that mean, mal You are not a widow, are you? No, you are not a widow like Khagan's mother. Her forehead is bare, but you wear silldhoor. Then my father is alive. But where is he? (P.1OS) Chand raprabha has to answer the disconcerting question. She grows angry at her peculiar condition. Chandraprabha felt like smashing her head against the wall. She became livid with rage thinking about Dand i. It was his timorousness, his inability to break the barrier of conformity that was responsible for launching Atul on the journey of life with such a severe social handicap. (P.109). She has to satisfy Atul with her camouflaged answer:
My precious darling, when your father doesn't stay with you, then people called you a bastard. Your father stays very far away. He is imprisoned there, and he has been unable to come to us by breaking his chains. (P. j 09) The innocent Atul is easily sa tisfied by the story and fantasizes about breaking the chains that bind his father. As days go by, Chandraprabha tries to forget her personal frustrations by channelizing her emotions in a creati\'e vvay. She dedicates herself more and more to social work and activates the
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women's organizational work. As a result of their constant fight, the Cotton College the premier institution of Assam starts admitting girl students. Because of the financial pinch, Chandraprabha has to work and even earn her livelihood. At present she has been serving as the Headmistress of Mahjerapara Balika Vidyalaya at Krishnanagar of Nadia district in the State of Bengal. But the authorities of the School Management "were demanding that she sign a declaration to the effect that shp would not take part in any agitational activities against the government. Although she nepded the job for money and the nearness of Atul that it ensured, Chandraprabha would not sign. And so the axe had fallen at last" (P. 113). Consequently, she is terminatpd from service. Jobless, she returns home for a brief while. But there also she is shocked to learn that their ancestral land had been mortgaged to Seniram by her younger brother Dharma. As days go by, she takes every bitter experience in her stride. The positive results of their activist movement give her a sense of satisfaction. When she visits Guwahati, she is received very warmly by her well-wishers like Swamalata Saikia and her daughter Pushpaiata, Dr. Bhubaneswar Barua and his family. They proudly inform her that a girls' hostel has been constructed at Cotton College. Another milestone was thus created after the right for girls to study at Cotton College was won. When Chandraprabha viewed the hostel, she felt her heart brimming over with contentment ... (P.114) Chandraprabha's ,"ista of socio-political activism goes on widening day by day. In 1936 she is summoned by the Congress Party to campaign for the party nominee for the Legislative Council election. She, therefore, goes to Barpeta, rides her bicycle and canvasses for the Congress candidatp enthusiastically. In spite of her private hell, Chandraprabha plunges into political action. When the smouldering independence movement catches fire again, she begins to work for the nationalistic caust'. She forms a committee called the Organization for the Succour of the Distressed and makes the members go from house to hOllse and collect donations. When she goes to Bajali, she argues boldh with a
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daroga, but is finally arrested by the British Government on 27 January 1943 when she has a meeting with other women in the Harimandir of Pathsala. The police start dragging her. She asks them not to drag her, as she is willing to go with them. But the policeman paid no heed to her words and kept on dragging her. Seeing this, the other women became infuriated and started to pull Chandraprabha in the other direction. A few women became so excited that they got hold of her mekhela and chadar and started pulling. As a result, Chandraprabha was suddenly almost stripped in public. Meanwhile, the women started scuffling with the police in earnest. Many women rained blows on the police and swiping off their topel's, trampled on them. The police also laid about them with their batons, injuring a few (P.129) She is made to walk to the Police Station. The Assistant Inspector was in a nasty mood over the incident in the temple, and seeing Chandraprabha, gave her a resounding slap and shoved her to the ground. Chandraprabha crashed down on the hard floor and hurt her hand. Despite seeing that Chandraprabha was hurt, the Assistant Inspector did not show any signs of remorse. In fact, "he chortled as he stood oVer her" (P. 129). Then they make her spend the night in the lockup. None can fail to admire the mettle of the strong willed Chandraprabha, who is not at all afraid of anyone and who is ready to undergo any suffering-mental or physical. When the police van that is taking Chandraprabha to Barpeta, stops near Pathsala Railway Station, there occurs a bomb blast very unexpectedly. The soldiers, who are present there and everywhere because of the World War II, try to arrest an innocent boy. But Chandraprabha, who is a fighter for justice, dissuades the soldier from arresting the boy. Then Chandraprabha is taken to the jail at Barpeta, which is like a hell-hole. But interestingly enough, she happens to meet her son Atul also there as he is also connected with the independence movement. At Gtnvahati jail also she fights with the authorities against the discrimination between higher class
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and lower class persons in treatment. Her humanitarian approach is wnmgly branded by people as 'socialism.' After serving her term in the Guwahati jail, she returns home to face the dreary domestic problems. By now Atul has grown into a young man and has passed his BA degree from Cotton College in 1946. Time has brought about inevitable changes in her looks. A rather sad looking middle-aged woman with graying hair and lined and furrowed cheeks stared back at her from the mirror. But she quickly reconciles herself to the ageing process in order to resume her reformative mission. Consequently, she reactivates the Mahila Samiti with the support of Induprabha and Dr. Barua. Then they hold the fifth conference of the Asom Mahila Samiti. at Kumar Bhaskar Natya Mandir, Uzanbazar, Guwahati. They decide to fight aginst untouchability, the greatest bane of India. Many proposals were, adopted at this conference. One tha t was very close to Chandraprabha's heart was .the resolve to extirpate untouchability. The resolution was immediately tested. Low-class women delegates served food to upper-caste women, who ate without demurring. Seeing the vision of Gandhi translated into reality right before her eyes a lump came into Chandraprabha's throat. This was the moment of fulfillments that left her contented at every pore of her being. (P. 135) She keeps on counselling the rural women to give them a new confidence about themselves. Chandraprabha starts a magazine entitled Ablziyatri (which means 'pioneer') to serve as a mouthpiece of the Mahila Samiti and to propagate the Gandhian principles. Her son, who is a chip of the old block discontinues his postgraduate studies, plunges into social action and becomes an assistant editor of a daily newspaper called Asomiya. Chandraprabha continues her social work eyen after Indiil achieves independence. She and her companions fight against untouchabilil ~ and illiteracy, rehabilitate the destitute and the fallen
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women and open child-welfare and childbirth training centers all over Assam. Because of her strong convictions and bold action Chandraprabha is popularly described as an 'iron maiden'. Once there is a big earthquake in 1950 in Assam. Chandraprabha busies herself in the relief work along with Usha Das and Miss P. Rasul. But on the way they have to cross two rivers i.e. Khablu and Subansiri. By the time they reach the bank of Subansiri, the last ferry is cancelled because of some mechanical trouble. Hence the three women have to spend the night in a reedy hut of the boatmen and partake of the ordinary meal of rice and dal. Chandraprabha advises Usha, "Usha, if you commit yourself to public life, you'll have to meet these inconveniences with a brave front" (P.145). The three wpmen face the situation and take physical inconveniences in their ~tride. Chandraprabha writes a detailed history of the Mahila Samiti for the benefit of posterity. After the independence of India, she joins the Socialist Party. She also becomes the President of All India Assam Peasants' Conference and targets two goals: 1) distributing land among the landless peasantry and 2) removing illiteracy from their midst. But after being dissatisfied with the faults and contradictions of the Socialist Party, she retums to the Congress Party and contests for Bajali constituency in the 1957 State elections. But unfortunately she, the first Assamese woman candidate, is defeated in the election. That is because politics requires tact and cunning. But Chandraprabha's candour has cost her about five hundred votes. Though temporarily disappointed by her defeat in the election, she soon forgets it and dedicates herself to the service of the Mahila Samiti. By this time much water has flown under the bridge. On hearing the news of the death of her unofficial husband, Dandinath Kalita, she removes the sindhoor tilak from her forehead. She thinks that she has become truly independent now. But time has its adverse effect upon her health. She has started suifering from gastric ulcer. Never bothering about her ill-health, she lends her support to the Orphan Welfare Care Centre concemed about destitute women of variolls types and rural women. As Girija describes:
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The woman has consecrated her entire life to the welfare of suffering women of all kinds! What has she not put her hand to? Eradication of untouchability, rehabilitation of 'fallen' and abandoned women of society, the establishment of welfare centers for mothers and children, the service of Harijans, prohibition of drinking and aIcohol- you name it. I shall remember how she ran to the spot to prevent the marriage of an old man with a minor girl. (P.158) Chandraprabha in her capacity as the President records all the ameliorative activities of the regional Mahila Samiti. The document runs into about a hundred pages. The cover page contains a photograph of Mahatma Gandhi flanked by the messages from the Mahatma and Binoba Bhave. The Mahatma's message reads, "The Samiti does not need any blessings; its own work is enough." (P.158). Binoba Bhave's message reads: The souls of men and women are on the same level. Therefore a woman has the same strength and ability that a man has. (P.158) The messages of these great men testify to Chandraprabha's greatness as a social activist and as a woman with a will, who defies the gender difference and discrimination perpetuated by the patriarchal society. Now Chandraprabha realizes that she has reached her seventeenth year. She has not been keeping well for the past few years. Her gastric trouble has worsened. She becomes more and more conscious of death. She wants to spend a little more time with her dear ones. Atul has bought a second-hand car and moved to a new house. Chandraprabha has a sense of fulfillment now. She is also happy to note that Atul is contesting the election as a Congress candidate from Guwahati. But she is admitted to the Chatribari Mission Hospital at Takaubari as she has reached the last stage of cancer. Atul becomes sad and helpless, but as the irony of life would ha\"e it, he wins the election and becomes a Member at U1e Legislati\ e
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Assembly of Assam. Chandrapabha in spite of her sagging"health feels happy about her son s political victory. But she advises him to follow the moral path and dedicate himself to social service: Son, your victory erases all the pain of my life, all of it. Now a great burden is on your shoulders. You must not betray the people who made this triumph possible. Have the people to your heart always; never think about your interest. And corruption! Avoid that demon, my son. And one more thing -never become a minister. The seat of a minister is slippery; it's so very easy to slide from it into corruption and depravity. Once in that den, you'll forget all about the people. (P. 164) Chandraprabha's advice to her son is a model to be followed by all the politicians of modern India . . Chandraprabha's secret desire for fame and glory is more than fulfilled when she hears the news that she has been awarded the Padmashree. In spite of her ill health, she wants to receive it from the President of India on 24th of March. She asks Atul to make arrangements to send her to Delhi. Atul assures her that all the arrangements have been made. 16th March happens to be Chandraprabha's birthday. Atul goes to her bed and finds her unconscious. Silently and alone he digested the irony of the supine creature's ardent desire to go all the way to far off Delhi to collect her re\vard. Another great irony was in store. On her birthday Chandraprabha died.{P. 165) Thus ends the life of a. dynamic woman who fought for justice and gender equality and against gender-discrimination, illiteracy, ignorance and exploitation all through her life. Chandraprabha, who fought for the emancipation of women all through her life, was finally liberated from the mortal world ilsdf. That she should die on her birthday itself seems to be a big irony of her life. But her de<1th is preceded by 'I sense of fulfillment. Her life has been quite
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meaningful simply because she has led a bold life of strong convictions. Chandraprabha has braved the patriarchal society by leading the life of an unmarried mother. The growing age has brought a great tolerance in her. She was not completely spared from sarcastic remarks, but an older and hardened Chandraprabha was now inured to such remarks, and they could not lacerate her any longer, the way they did when she was young and vulnerable. (P.134) She has the satisfaction of motherhood in spite of the inimical patriarchal society. She is happy to see that her son Atul has passed his BA degree from Cotton College in 1946. Despite Dandinath's urging, Chandraprabha had refused to destroy the seed in her womb. Now the seed had budded and flourished. Living in a hidebound and unforgiving society, she had thrown down a gauntlet-she was going to make a man of her boy. And now the dream had come as true as the light of the sun and the moon. (P. 135) There has been a change in Atul's psychology over the years. He is no longer an innocent boy trying to break the chains that bind his father. Having become an adult now, he understands the predicament of his parents. Although he loves and respects his mother, he does not appreciate his father for his lack of courage in matrimonial matters. Chandraprabha wishes that Atul should meet and talk with his father, who is eager to see him. But Atul flatly refuses to do so. "Chandraprabha felt that now Dandinath would yearn to see Atul. But Atul was implacable regarding his father. After Atul's matriculation Chandraprabha had timidly suggested to her son that he should meet his father. The quiet, normally obliging boy stiflened at the suggestion and said in a steely voice: Ii I have to go to Dandinath Kalita, why don't you
•
write me a certificate attesting that I am his son,
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mother? Otherwise how will he recognize me?' It was pointless to try and change Atul's attitude now. (P.136) Chandraprabha who has been fighting with the patriarchal society cannot fight with her own son who has internalized the patriarchal code in him. He seems to be very angry with his father for betraying his mother and for not meeting him earlier. Chandraprabha narrates it to Induprabha, "Indu, father and son met for the first time today, but there was no union, no reconciliation!. .. Indu, Atul's father suddenly arrived from somewhere while I was not at home. At first Atul did not even recognize him. Of course, he had never seen his father. When Atul asked this stranger about his identity, he said with a bent head: I am your father, son. I am Dandina th Kalita. Indu, do you know how Atul reacted to this revelation? He became agitated and said in a flinty voice: All your life you hid this identity and now you have come to me in secret, wearing this identity. You may leave, I'll never call you father. (P. 148) Chandraprabha feels sorry for both her lover and son simultaneously. She sympathizes with her son who has been suffering from a sense of forlornness and social stigma. At the same time she pities her lover also for being insulted so blatantly by his own son. Chandraprabha cries about her strange plight, but Induprabha exhorts her by highlighting her courage and perseverance. Actually, you are ~uryaprabha as much as you are Chandraprabha. Surya diffuses its life-giving warmth throughout the world and burns and banishes all foulness and diseases from the world. That's what you have been doing. Who knows that better than me? Under your sunny influence Atul Saikia is a worthy member of this society today. When his father saw what his son had become, his old heart had swollen with pride I'm sure of that. In a way, you defeated him by accomplishing what you promised to do, but he must have enjoyed this defeat. Any father would. So don't grieve so baidclI, take heart. (p. 149) •
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Induprabha not only consoles Chandraprabha about Atul's rash behaviour with his father, but also tries to highlight Chandraprabha's achievement. As days go by, Chandraprabha immerses herself in her social activities. Atul grows into a responsible young man, gets married and settles down in life. A few years before Atul gets a son, Dandinath dies. God had freed her from another shackle. A bizarre bondage this was, not sanctioned by society, yet unbreakable and seemingly perpetual. But it was ended. (P. 153) When Chandraprabha hears the news of Dandinath's death, she removes the sindoor tilak from her forehead and tells Induprabha, "lndu, my forehead is unmarked from today. I am truly independent now" (P. 154). She sheds tears and feels sad about not having been able to see him before his death. "lndu, as he lay on a hospital bed in Dibrugarh, he wanted to see me one last time. But I didn't know until it was too late" (P.154). But Atul does not show any response to the news of his father's death. Atul responded to the news of Dandinath's demise with a wry smile. His father was gone forever, but he did not feel bereaved. (P.154) Atul never feels any attachment for his father as the latter always remained as a phantom on the fringe of his consciousness. He is not mature enough to understand the dilemmas of his father and mother because he is still a hot-blooded youth. Atul is really surprised by his mother's behaviour. Although Chandraprabha defied the norms of the patriarchal society by falling in love with Dandinath Kalita and by leading the life of a single woman and unmarried mother: she never goes in search of another man for her biological satisfaction, emotional, social and economic security. On the contrary, she compromises with her situation and continues to believe that Dandinath is her husband, although not recognized by the society. That is the reason why Atlll is puzzled by his mother's tender beha\"iour.
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His mother's behaviour astounded him. She was a picture of pride, defiance and self-assertion. But she often showed herself to be such a spineless, submissive creature too. On the one hand, she was continually on the warpath for women's rights and she played a life-long role of the servile, devoted wife, even when the honour and recognition of wifehood was denied her. (P.154) It is true that Chandraprabha, in spite of being a rebellious lady in so many respects, lived like a devoted but unofficial wife of Dandinath, simply because she loved him too deeply to think of alternative lovers.
After the death of Dandinath, Atul shows some signs of maturity as he has crossed the age of thirty. He seems to have understood the mystery of life and the importance of human bondage. Although Atul's feelings were often incinerated by his mother's bizarre relationship with Dandinath, he himself established a bond with that person in an oblique way. However, that was after Dandinath's death. Atul showered a lot of affection on the daughter of Dandinath's widowed daughter Punya. When the girl was married at Tejpur, Atul went to the wedding with Bina to give his blessings. That was the first time Atul had entered the hOllse of his father. He was now above thirty. (P.154) Chandrapriya's father, Ratiram Majumdar happens to be a village chief. Ratiram and Gangapriya had eleven children of which eight were girls. But now only three girls are alive. Ratiram Majumdar, a believer in the patriarchal values, initially does not wish to educate his daughters beyond the high school level. But after being convinced about the daughters' persistence and ambition, he yields to their demand and sends them to school and college. He wants to educate his son, Dharma as he is a boy but ironically the boy does not show any inclination for learning. The gender-expectations of the patriarchal society are reversed.
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As Ratiram Majumdar grows old, he is worried about Dharma's truancy and irresponsibility as well as general financial problems of the family. Chandraprabha has to take up the responsibility of helping the family financially as much as she can. She, therefore, works in schools in different capacities. In spite of her own personal problem of facing the stigma of being an unmarried mother, she has to take care of her parents also. Being unmarried, she has no home of her own, but has to stay at her parental home forever. Though Dandinath could not marry her, he keeps on sending some money to her now and then. Chandraprabha tries to console her father by asking him not to worry about the family. But after a few years, Ratiram Majumdar dies. Consequently his family becomes forlorn. Chandraprabha tries to hold the family together. But Dharma, the prodigal brother disappears from home after secretly mortgaging all their land to Seniram, the moneylender, for three thousand rupees. This is shocking news to the entire family. Dharma has left them all in mid waters as it were. Chandraprabha writes to her sister Rajani that they must struggle hard to reclaim the land. She goes to Guwahati and files a case against Seniram, but the court dismisses the case. Chandraprabha and her mother are deeply frustrated by the defeat in the legal case. After a few months they hear the news that Dharma has married a girl in Shillong. But they are unhappy about his not sending them the money that he had escaped with. After some time Rajani and Chandraprabha pool together three hundred and sixty rupees to liberate their land, but all their efforts culminate in failure. The land is lost forever. Thus Chandraprabha and her mother and sister have to face the problem of financial insecurity, all because of the carelessness and irresponsibility of her younger brother, Dharma. ' Chandraprabha was happy about her younger sister who was admitted to the Medical College and who later became a doctor. Rajani married a man called Prafulla Dutta and led a happy life for some years. Chandraprabha was happy about her sister's happiness. But alas! It did not last long. There is a very unexpected turn in Rajani's life. Prafulla, who wants to help Chandraprabha and her mother by arranging for the sale of mustard seed, has now become a tantrik- a demon worshipper by a strange quirk of his fate.
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Not only that. But he has made his wife Rajani also his cohort and disciple. Consequently Rajani, having come under the influence of a tantrik guru cum-devotee, begins to dislike Chandraprabha and hate her husband. PrafuIIa Dutta, therefore, writes to Chandraprabha about Rajani's insanity. Now Chandraprabha has the double sorrow of seeing her sister's insanity and hearing the lamentations of her mother. Rajani labours under the illusion that she is an incarnation of the Goddess Kali. Chandraprabha brings Rajani home and tries to push her into medical practice in order to wean her away frorr the tantrik path. But the effort turns out to be rather futile. Rajani embarrasses a surgeon in the Barpeta Civil Hospital and boasts about it: "But he does not realize that he should prostrate at my feet constantly, licking my feet like-red-Iotus" (P.122). As Rajani curses the absent surgeon obscenely, Gangapriya starts wailing loudly by clasping Rajani to her breast. Chandraprabha stood stock-still and speechless observing the absurd tragicomedy where the mother's crying struck up a bizarre concert with lhe daughter's howling laughter. (1'. 123) That a talented young woman's career should have such a tragic climax is indeed pitiable. Chandraprabha has to bear the sorrow of her sister's madness and of PrafuIIa's helplessness. He started ranting that it was just his foul luck to marry a girl like Rajani. Not only was she a lunatic, but she was also an adulteress, a creature with no morality. PrafuIla's accusation was not baseless. Rajani goes around with an uncouth uneducrlted character from Daisingari. If anyone says anything, she charges him or her with obscenities and threatens violence. So PrafuIIa left us. Now I alone am responsible for Rajani, once again. But the trouble is, she can't stand me either. She accuses me, in her broken, madwoman's language that I have always been her worst enemy, and I ha\'e
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Ablziyatri: The Story of a Rebellious Woman been careless and extravagant with money and bled her white and finally destroyed her. Imagine the toll this is taking on our mother. (P.124)
After some time they learn that Rajani died in rather sordid circumstances. Rajani had become illegally pregnant and died after giving birth to a dead child. One day they learnt that after giving birth to a dead child in a peasant's hut on the bank of a small stream, Rajani had followed her child out of this world. When Chandraprabha reached the spot in one breathless dash, she saw that her precious darling kid sister Rajani, the first female gynaecologist of Assam, was lying all bloodied beside her stillborn baby, her face pressed to the damp earth. (P.13?) Rajani's strange life was an extraordinary blend of glory and shame. But no vestige of glory attended her exit from this world. Because of Rajani's shameful and pitiable end, Chandraprabha and the rest of her family lose all peace of mind and are on the verge of insanity. In addition to being a rebellious lady with a restless soul, Chandraprabha has an inner urge for creative writing also. In spite of all odds and inconveniences of domestic life, she cultivates her talent for creative '''Titing. Apart from weaving cloths at home, Chandraprabha also started spinning a narrative, a novel named Aparajita, i.e., The Unvanqllished. Before this she had sent a few articles here and there, but she was pouring everything into this novel. This was to be an autobiographical novel. She kept up an unflagging pace while writing this novel, recounting her agonies, tribulations and also her triumphs oyer these misfortunes. (P. 61) Her urge for creath'e writing serves two purposes: one, to articulate her inner feelings thereby achieving a sort of catharsis;
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and two, to attain literary immortality in the world. Creative writing may be pursued by male writers without much difficulty, but not by female writers so easily. The special burden of domestic life acts as a great hindrance to the practice of creative writing to a woman. Like Virginia Wolf, she needs not only a room of her own, but also a chunk of time or leisure for herself. Chandraprabha's creative pursuit is sometimes disturbed by the tearful clamour of her little son, Atul. But in spite of all these obstacles, she goes ahead with her writing, which is really very admirable. Sometimes she peeved and exasperated herself. Chandraprabha flung away her pen. It seemed that women's talents and aspirations were doomed to be throttled by the coils of domesticity. Yet, one day she made the stunning discovery that she had churned out 343 pages of the novel. (P.61) Chandraprabha continues her writing in spite of all the hindrances and inconveniences. Her writing is not appreciated even by her own mother, who asks her: How much longer will you keep on at this stuff, wasting all this ink and paper? ... Can you feed yourself or the little one by writing like this? (P. 61) But Chandraprabha persists in her creativity and completes the novel, but ironically there is neither a publisher nor a market for it. Her mammoth work Aparjita was complete, but there was no publisher. The market for writers was crushingly disheartening. Even an established writer like Dandinath was not getting any returns. (P.64) Chandraprabha's writing of her debut novel at a very young age is admirable. But unfortunately it is not published by any publisher. The publishing scene in India was very bleak at that time. She has started her second novel also, but does not have the necessary enthusiasm to complete it. Though unhappy about Atul's
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missing his father, she tries to bring him up properly. "In this lacerated and sorrow struck state of mind she had started another novel which she called The Last Haven. After writing Aparajita she had written Kanthapura. But she stayed tenaciously hopeful. Perhaps a breed of appreciative readers would begin to sprout in Assam, and among other things, they would enjoy the intimate, autobiographical aspects of her novels. Chandraprabha also got solace from the fact that one of her stories called The Sad Wayfarer had been published in the inaugural issue of a magazine called Abahom. (P. 96) Though not being able to finish The Last Haven, she begins to write another novel, which she entitles as The Ancestral Home. She continues to write her novels and stories to ease her restless spirit and satisfy her creative urge. When working as the Headmistress of Mahjerpara Balika Vidyalaya at Krishnanagar, Nadia district in the State of Bengal, she starts writing another novel called Callri-Shankar. Chandraprabha has contradictory experiences of joy and frustration. in her publishing ventures.
The Ancestral Home was published in the year 1937, her first extended piece of writing to be transcribed to the printed page. However, the sweetness of this success was shadowed by the memory of the failure of The Unvanqllished. She had wrung out the earlier work out of her bitterest grief and her most intense joy. But there had been no takers. The Ancestral Home she had dedicated to her rustic father, who had the vision and the gumption to do an unheard of thing like educating a girl-child. (P. 118) The novel evokes some praise in critical circles and brings some satisfaction to her. But she feels discouraged by the lack of publication opportunities in Assam. As Chandraprabha confesses to Padma Kumari Gohain:
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Lack of time never prevents anyone who has the will, you know. It is just that I don't have a publisher who can publish my writings. You know how difficult it is with writers in benighted Assam. (P.141) Though literature and social activity are complementary to each other, Chandraprabha has decided not to publish any more literary works. She tells Padma Kumari: Your words drip with logic and reason. But I am despaired of publishing any more books in my lifetime. I'll be content if I can keep Abhiyatri on its feet. (P.142) In 1947 Chandraprabha started a magazine called Abhiyatri (which means' a pioneer'), a mouthpiece of the Mahila Samiti. She writes the editorial for it regularly. She rurs it continuously for seven years until her gastric ulcer and financial problems compel her to stop it. "Her Ablziyatri got stopped after sailing for seven years. The subscribers did not pay up, and she accumulated debts in the press" (P.155). Chandraprabha's story as an editor of a magazine is representative of that of innumerable ed itors of small magazines even now in India. Chandraprabha makes up her mind and writes the history of the Mahila Samiti. As she completed the history of the Mahila Samiti, Chandraprabha's pen and mind flitted from place to place. Gobghat, Johrat, Haflong, Tejpur, Mangaldoi, Dibrugarh, North Lakhimpur, Tinisukia, Garo Hills, Nagaon, Hakema, Sibsagar, Barpeta-these places hurled their rich memories at her. These memories had to be sanctified, enshrined in print. (P.158) While writing the history of the social activities of the Mahila Samiti, she psychologically relives the past and nostalgically experiences both the sorrow (of her private hell) and satisfaction of
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having done some selfless public service. She has identified herself with the Mahila Samiti totally and does not expect any reward or recognition from it. But her desire to get her novels published remains unfulfilled. "She had actually applied to the- Congress government for a loan to publish her works, but the appeal fell on deaf ears." (P.164) Thus Ablziyatri succeeds in giving us a picture of one of the rebellious women of Assam and remains one of the classics of Indian literature. Reference
Borgohain, Nirupama, Abhiyatri, Tr. Pradipto Borgohain, (New Delhi, Sahitya Academi, 1999. All the page references are to this edition.)
DOD
KAMALA DAS'S THE LOOKING GLASS:
A WOMAN'S WRITING - Prof. Sankar Prasad Singha & Dr. ] oyjit Ghosh
One of the important issues of French Feminist criticism is the evolution of "feminine writing" (eaiture feminine) which, according to Helene Cixous, exists in that stage of the mother-child relation before the child acquires the male-centred verballanguag€. It acts against the closure of our phallo-centric language and encourages a joyous freeplay of meanings. According to Carolyn Burke, the focus of French feminist theory is the language system: Language is the place to begin: a prise de conscience [capture of consciousness] must be followed by a prise de la parole [capture of speech] .... In this view, the very forms of the dominant mode of discourse show the mark of the dominant masculine ideology. Hence, when a woman writes or speaks herself into existence, she is forced to speak in something like a foreign tongue, <1 language with which she may be uncomfortable. (Burke, P. 8.t4) Burke thus emphasizes the alienation and angst of a woman when she unfolds herself in a n:ale-dominated language system.
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Annie Leclerc moves a step further claiming that women must invent" a language that is not oppressive, a language that does not leave speechless, but that loosens the tongue"l (Trans. Courtivron). The opinion of Virginia Woolf, an English feminist of the first water, however, differs a bit from that of Leclerc in this regard. Woolf believed that the problem is not that language is insufficiant to express women's consciousness but that women have been forced into silence and euphemism. She compared herself with James Joyce and noted the differences between their verbal territories: Now men are shocked if a woman says what she feels (as Joyce does). Yet literature which is always pulling down blinds is not literature. All that we have ought to be expressed - mind and body - a process of incredible difficulty and danger. (Woolf, 164) Thus the feminists, whether French or English, always fight to open and extend women's linguistic range. They believe that a "woman's writing" will be haunted by the ghosts of repressed language until they exorcise those ghosts. Kamala Oas's The J1Joking Glass is a text which in its own ways fights against the ghosts of repressed language and tries to fit in the description of a "woman's writing". It evades the male monopoly and explores the diversity, fluidity, and multiple possibilities inherent in the structure and erotic functioning of the female sexual organs and in the distinctive nature of female sexual experiences. . The opening line of The Lookil1~Z Glass sounds fairly nonchalant: "Getting a man to love you is easy". But the poet is cautious: "Only be honest about your wants as/Woman." Thus, the emphasis faII5 heavily on the 'wants' of the 'Woman'. The poet, in other words, wishes to be loyal to her distinct feminine identity / consciousness. In the mode of a monologue, she encourages hersel f to ste1l1d stark naked with her man in front of the glass. The title The Looking Glas~ obviously carries a s"mbolic meaning, for the glass releases the consciousness of the poet from all sorts of constriction that ,1 maledominated culture imposes upon a fl'melle. But on a deeper le\'el oj
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interpretation, the glass also releases the consciousness from the bondage of a male-constructed language system. But the process of release from the prison-house of language is not an easy one. ThE;! expression of the poet initially falters: Stand nude before the glass with him So that he sees himself the stronger one And believes it so, and you so much more Softer, younger, lovelier ... Admit your Admiration. The gap between the two sentences (indicated by dots) signifies the holes in discourse where the female access to language does not fully penetrate. But the poet soon gains confidence and becomes vocal in her appreciation of the physique and functioning (blatantly sexual) of her lover: Notice the perfection Of his limbs, his eyes reddening under The shower, the shy walk across the bathroom floor, Dropping towels, and the jerky way he Urinates. She thus courageously spells out all the' fond details' tha t exci te her womanly wants and make that man her' only man'. Perhaps he is that man for whom she waited for long: "the bright one, the right one to live/In the blue".2The poet is then all surrender; she wants to devote herself to her man: Gift him all, Gift him what makes you woman, the scent of Long hair, the musk of sweat between the breasts, The warm shock of menstrual blood, dnd all your Endless female hungers. Chantal Chawaf, in an essay on "La chair linguistique" gives her view tha t women's language and a genuinel y feminine practice of writing will articulate the bod y: In order to reconnect the book with the body and with pleasure, we must disintellectualize writing ....
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Kamala Das's The Looking Glass: A Woman's Writing Feminine language must, by its very nature, work on life passionately, scientifically, poetically, polilically.in orderto make it .invaJuabJe.3 (Trans. Rochette - Ozzello)
Feminine language, therefore, aims not merely at loosening the tongue; it aims at making life passionate and whole. In fact, the study of biological imagery in women's writing is useful and important as long as we understand that factors other than anatomy are involved in it. It is to the credit of Kamala Das that she does not anatomize either male body or female body while articulating them. Her language works on life, 'poetically' as well as 'scientifically'. Virginia Woolf wrote, "All that we have ought to be expressedmind and body." Kamala Das is more or less true to this principle. Her probe into feminine consciousness takes both 'body' and 'mind' into serious consideration. We read in the poem: Oh yes, getting A man to love is easy, but Ii" ing Without him afterwards may have to be Faced. The loneliness of the woman is thus given a poignant utterance. But it is not only the question of loneliness but that of alienation too which haunts the poet: A living without life when you move/ Around, meeting strangers ... ". This theme recurs in a slightly different way at the end of My Grandmother's HOllse: /I
... you cannot believe, darling, Can you, that I lived in such a house and Was proud, and loved ... I who have lost My way and beg now at strangers' doors to Receive love ... ~ Bruce King rightly observes: Das's themes go beyond stereotyped longings and complaints. E\'en her feelings of lonelmess and disappointment are part of J IMger-than-life
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personality, obsessive in its awareness of its self, yet creating a drama of selfhood. (King, 147) At the end of The Lookillg Glass it is revealed that the poet still has responsive ears "that hear only /His last voice calling out your name" and she still retains the consciousness of a body "which once under his touch had gleamed/Like burnished brass, now drab and destitute." This is exactly where the poet touches the unity and resonance of her physicalily with the help of a language which is psychologically immediate and which carries a tremendous emotional force.
The Looking Glass is a revolutionary text, where the poet leads a crusade against all the ideological and cultural determinants of expression in which a male-dominated society believes. And to give a faithful expression to a woman's consciousness she here explores the full resources of language and style. If one looks for a "feminine style" one may locate it in the syntax which is sometimes a bit unusual but which carries the surrendering tone of a woman alright: "Gift him all,/ Gift him what makes you woman"; in the repetition of statements: "Getting a man to love you is easy" or "Oh yes, getting / A man to love is easy" ; and in the image patterns: "the scent of/Long hair, the musk of sweat between the breasts" etc. These stylistic devices tend to integrate the innate forms with the over determined results of literary choice. Kamala Das's The Looking Glass is a classic case of 'woman's writing'. The distinct feminine consciousness in the poem is indeed a matter of voice, tone, idiom and rhythm. The poet here quite consciously eschews a discourse which consigns women to a marginal status, and embraces one that pays respect to the articulation of all the exclusively private wants of a woman. [All references to the text The Looking Glass are from Tell Twmtietlz Celltllry Indian Poets, chosen and edited by R. Parthasarathy (Delhi: Oxford University Press, first published 1976; eleventh impression, 1998), p. 27]
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Notes 1.
It is quoted in Modem Criticism and Theory: A Reader, ed., David Lodge, revised and expanded by Nigel Wood, Delhi: Pearson Education, first Indian reprint, 2003 ; second Indian reprint, 2004, p. 316.
2.
Kamala Das, The Invitation, Ten Twentieth Century Indian Poets, p.26.
3.
It is quoted in Modem Criticism and Theo/" : A Reader, p. 316.
4.
Kamala Das, My Grandmother's HOllse, Ten Twentieth Century Indian Poets, p. 24. Works Cited
Burke, Carolyn G., Report from Paris: Women's Writing and the Women's Movement, Signs 3, Summer 1978. King, Bruce, Modem Indian Poetry in English, Oxford University Press, 1987; Delhi: Oxford India Paperbacks, 1992, Second impression, 1994. Woolf, Virgina, Speech, Manuscript Notes, The Pargiters: The Nove/Essay Portion of the Years 1882-1941, ed., Mitchell A, Leaska. New York: New York Public Library, 1977.
*****
NARRATIVE TECHNIQUE AND SYMBOL AND MYTH PATTERN IN
THE SHORTER FICTION OF SHASHI DESHPANDE - Dr. B.K. Sharma
The success of a work of art consists in the fine synthesis of art and idea. It is through the balance of art and idea that an artist can provide a concrete shape to thcm. [n the contemporary literature of social realism a writer is accepted to maintain fine dexterity to avoid pedantic and ambiguity that often spoils intensity of emotions. Shashi Dcshpande followed no definite convention of the art of shorter fiction and adopted it as a fine and spontaneous poetic expression. In order to capture consciousness of characters, she develops her own conventions of short story based on the ideals of simplicity, compactness and intensive impact. The present discussion is an attempt to expose and analyze the varioliS aspects of the technique of the shorter fiction of Shashi Deshpandc. in c,"cry genre, language as a mode of communication plays a significant role. It is not a de,ld stock of words but a lively mcchanism to com ey deep ielt emotions through the mediulll of \\ ords. The c1assic,ll convention of pedantic and ornamental langu.lge is not e\"er~· effectiH' to realize the purpose of realiqic socialliteratllrl' or the suggesti\"{' psychologic.ll writings. It i.., particularly remarkable in
Narrative Technique and Symbol and Myth Pattern in .. , .shorter fiction that the language must be intimate, amicabk and 196
entertaining mode. It must influence the consciousness of audience without the intervention of the technical and formal devices. C.H. Mair observes: The faculty for telling stories is the oldest aesthetic faculty in the world and the deepest implanted in the heart of man. Before the rudest cave pictures were scratched on the stone, the story - teller, it is unreasonable to suppose was plying this trade.! For such a purpose the language should be simple, direct and suggesti\'e. Besides it must be rich enough to interpret with the consciousness of the listener. What Wordsworth said about poetry, "Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings' can be applied to the shorter fiction too. A shorter fiction is an expression of the stronger imagination of writer. The shorter fiction of Shashi Deshpande is a witness to the fact that she successfully synthesizes Indian spirit and Indian ethos. She uses flexible, suggestive and direct expressions to convey the intense emotions of the characters. In her short stories, $hashi Deshpande uses language not as a foreign tongue but uses it with a perfect ease of nati\'e tongue. She herself admits: To those of us who write in English it is neither a foreign language, nor the language of the colonizer, but the language of creativity. Whether the writing is rootless, alienated or elitist, should be judged from the writing, not from the language. My waiting comes out of myself, the society I live in, it is shaped, as I al11,-by my family, my ancestry, the place I was born in, the place I live in, the culture I am steeped in. The act that the writing is in English changes none of these things.2 It justifies that in the use of language, she adheres tn her native tradition. She also uses cultural determinants to make it more suit"ble to COI1\'('\' socio-culture ethns In her short stmies,-in her use of language, there arc dl~til1cti\ c reflections of Kamat"]"',, ,111(\
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Mdlldrashtra customs and her upbringing in a middle class family. I h-'r language has been appreciated as 'simple', 'realistic' and 'transparent'. 3 Shashi Deshpande primarily concerns upon the middle class ethos and her language reflects this concern. She often uses the language as a middle class educated individual do. This middle class approach to language is not a blemish of her style but it is her skill to coordinate the external environment of the situations chosen by her with the internal working of mind in which characters move. The absence of self consciousness in the use of English with any ease of expression have a fair penetrating effect. It is also helpful to represent the situations of emotional excitement that is the essence of her stories. In the slory It Was Dark, the story begins with a direct expression without any formal pedantic description. The situation is simple in which the parent share the agony of the undesirable pregnancy of their young daughter. The Darkness And Silence is dost·ly related with the panting of emotions. Mother asks: "What are vou staring at?, What are you thinking of? Tell me. Talk say something." Daughter only replied, It Was Dark". (It Was Dark: 25) In sllch conversational expressions there is a greater intensity to communicate the emotional crisis of the characters. She often makes liSt' of figure of speeches but the figure of speeches are also a part of the real life experiences. In this respect Shashi Deshpande achieves a rare sublimity by establishing a co-ordination between the suggestiveness of a figure with the suggestiveness of emotions. In the story A Mall Alld A Womall she deals with the theme of man and woman relationship in which the protagonist defends the \ ehemence of passion with the following comparison: , II
The thought swamped me like a tidal wave. I tried to appear sleady ,md composed while inside me \vas a turbulence like the sea during the monsoon. (A
M(lI1
Awl A W01l1al/: 31)
Such comparison for simplicity and sllggestiveness directly dfecls t1wconsciollsl1ess of the reader. It is the power of the language of Shashi Deshp
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was forced to marry against her choices. The following statement is a powerful echo of the growing resentment in the heart of the girl. Each expression is equivalent to a powerful poetic expression conveying the irresistible force. To quote: I want ... I want ... I want ... what about me? My silence was such a loud cry of indignation, I was surprised he couldn't hear me. Nevertheless, I waited patiently. May be, he would still ask me. What would I tell him if he said. "What do you want?" My desires were so elemental compared to his that I was ashamed of them ['I want' : 40J5 Shashi Deshpande. in order to capture the emotional turmoil of the characters frequently makes use of broken sentence and incomplete expressions. It is a dramatic device but Shashi Deshpande uses it in narrative to enhance the intensity of expression and to seek the direct involvement of the characters in the text. Her language is the language of emotions to arouse those emotions that are integrated in the consciousness of the author herself. In the story Eternal ThemI' she represents the sensual anxiety of a couple. In a very short and suggestive expression, the narrator confesses the whole secret of their excitement: "Song sung in stone. And the. eternal theme' '" a man and a woman." (The Eternal Theme: 100) There are ample evidences scattered in her short stories that justify that language is not only a matter of words and phrases but it is also a matter of the grammar of emotions. The external layers of emotion get strength and power only through the appropriateness of the emotions and feelings hidden behind them and this aim has teen successfully realized by Shashi Deshpande. In the appreciation of the short story or even novel, the position of the narrator plays a significant role. In the traditional novels, the writer used to perform the duty of a super observer controlling, guiding and criticizing all the actions presented in the text. However with the emergence of psychoanalytical techniques writers became conscious to depict the inner world of human consciousness. It inspired the writers to use first person narrative instead of second and third person. Shashi Deshpande was preoccupied with the idea of female suffering hence she makes a freqllt:'nt lise of first person narrati\'e. The probable ad\'anlage of the technique of first J.wrson narrali",;> is that \vriter withdraws his/her personality and leaves ample opportunity to
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his characters to gi"e their own mind on a specific issue. Shashi Deshpande maintains a rare objectivity because she never defends her characters but let them to express their own opinions to justify their actions. In this [('spect in the first person narrative, there is a greater authenticity and emotional affinity. G.S. Amur subscribes this view: Shashi Deshpande's technical competence is quite adequate to her purpose. She shows a preference for the first person narration, but her stories are free from distorting confessional fury and achieves a remarkable degree of objectivity. She has an eye for detail whether this relates to physical sensation or working of minds and shows considerable skill in the choice of background and the creation of a tmosphere:~ The first person narrative is used to make the text of the story more realistic and more credible. fn first person narrative often the narrator neglects the other characters. However Shashi Deshpande conceives the situations in such a manner that the, other characters also articulate their voices through the voice of the chief narrator. She makes a use of first person and third person ndrrativc, simultaneously coupled with fl;.1sh back devices to lend force and realism to the no\·el. According to one of the redewer Rita Joshi: This method is reminiscent of Samuel Becket in plays such as Th,lt Time Where the character sits centre stage white three voices go over this pasl. 5 In the story A LIlll'mtl'd WOl1lal1 narreltor is ,1Il educated woman who is a doctor. She bears the apathy of her husbzmd who is unable t07 tolerate her success. [n this story llalTJtor, expresses her anguish to make ,1 confession of her failure of relationship. Each statement is an emolional cry of her deep felt wounds. She expresses her pain as well reflects 011 the weaknesses of male psyche. She admits: J can't cry, the bids Illay hear. [ can't fight back, either he's Loo strong for Ill('. (A Lii1,Tated WOII/all: 27)
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Shashi Deshpande in her short stories usually adopts self reflective mode of narration. In order to capture the intensity of emotions associated in the life of characters, she introduces the situation directly and allows her narrator to reveal their inner self. In her stories there is no formal introduction or the photographic and panoramic descriptions of the situations and events. She often develops her short stories with specific cinematographic technique. The narrator himself reveals his own mind. In the situations related with the mental state of the characters, the external descriptions are not of much significance. One of the principle functions of the characters is to encourage the readers sympathy so that he will experience the reality of the fictional world for himself. Sundell, the eminent critic of fiction admits, in the stories that focus on the psychology of characters, the protagonist and antagonistic forces may be aspects of' the same character, in which case the conflict is internal. Shashi Deshpande presents the internal conflicts of the characters but on certain occasions, she even goes for the descriptions or scenic presentation. In the stories Miracle, The Awakening, The Victory, Madhu, The Shadow, The Pawn, Inner Rooms, It And What Has Been Decided, Mirrors, Liberated Woman, Why a Robin, Antidote To Boredom, there is instant and abntpt beginning. It is a quite suggestive to decode the mental state of the characters. The story It Was Dark begins with a challenging interrogation, Are you awake, and a every short answer comes out, "Yes". It suggests that the story is to be developed on the b~sis of some invisible suspended emotions. In the story The Alien the narrator watches the nothing -and it every much echoes her mental state. The protagonist admits, "Even a fog would be better than this nothingness." In this respect there is a semblance in the outer and inner world. Similarly in the story The Shadow she takes the reader directly into the inner world of the protagonist. She refers: "She had lived in a silence and solitariness for so long that it seemed to be the only way of living." In the story, And What a SOI1 story begins with What a bulge. These are a few illustrations but they an,; sufficient to expose the writers ability to main tam the balance of the narrative at internal and external level. This technique helps to sustain the atmosphere of
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suspense and sentimentally and prompts a better participation of audience in them. In modern writings it has been a common practice with the writers to make use of symbols to project the abstract llnagcs. Shashi Deshpande in her stories maintains the principle of simplicity and appropriateness still in some of her stories, she makes lise of relativc symbols to increase the range of the "suggestions integrated in the text. On the basis of the present study, some prominent symbols can be traced - 'Wall', 'Nightingale', 'Stone Image', 'Darkness', 'Silence', 'Confined spaces' and 'Rain'. In the story A Wall is Safer', the wall is used as a symbol of confined but protective spaces. In Indian context it denotes the idea of Laxshman Rekha, Shashi Deshpande asserts Lhat for an Indian woman the limitation of household life is not a torture. The protagonist of the story dedicates herself to household management and finds herself protective and safe. She confesses:" A Wall is Safer With a wall, you can't even see what is going on the other s~de." (It Was Dark: 71) In the story Stolle WOI1l('I/, stone images are used to depict the non-living entity of women in the traditional patriarchal society. In this story the protagonist is a new married young lady who she visits a museum with her husband. It contains several stone statues of women. The husband and tourist guide were enjoying each and every detail of lhose slatues. Gradually the narrator starts idenlifying herself in those stone images. [n the company of her husband she realizes all \",·omen are created in male fantasy and they han~ no right to exhibit their choices. She finds that her identity is no better than those stone images. This identification with stone images imparts a richness to the whole e"pression. She confesses:
... my minds leaps back to those stone women in the temple. This is how they must looked, I Lhink the man who is sculpted the woman in stone, as they shaped them from their imagination. (T1Ie ~t<JIle W01ll11l1:
15)
ShdShl Deshp,mde lIses the art L1f fictioll in the irallll'work of tlw social conte"t to which she belong. In fndbn society, the position of \\'0111,111 to .) great l''\lent is guided by Indian \'
202
Narrative Technique and Symbol and Myth Pattern in ...
India the social and religious myths are deep rooted in human consciousness and they cannot go beyond the idea of those myths. Shashi Oeshpande reconstructs myths in her shorter fiction to reconstruct the significance of them in the present context. She borrows the story from The Ramayan, The Puranas, Local Legends and Folk Lore. She realizes that myths are very much a part of human psyche and a part of cultural history. She asserts that there is a need to explore the fresh interpretations of myths to redefine the female identity. She asserts: Myths are still important to us. We do not want to demolish them, we need them to live by; they have, shaped our ideas for a great many years, they embody our dreams. To destroy them would be to leave a large rent in the fabric of our culture. On the other hand, if we are not able to make them meaningful to our lives, they will cease to survive. In India, specialty myths have an extra-ordinary vitality, continuing to give some truths about themselves, about the human condition.? (Afterword: 94) She criticizes the woman stereotype and tries to give a voice presented and projected in myths which were damaging for Indian feminism. She criticizes: To be as pure as Sita, as loyal as Draupadi, as beautiful as Laxmi, as bountiful a prov:ider as Annapuma, as dogged in devotion as Savitri, as strong as Durga -these have become the ultimate role models for woman. s In the stories What Has Been Decided, The Last Enemy, Mirrors, The Day ofGolden Deer she interprets those myths and try to recollect the sensibility of those woman who were forced to tolerate the injustice of man. With this approach Shashi Oeshpande achieves a rare artistic excellence and to make a synthesis of past and present to recreate a comprehensive philosophy of feminine con.<;ciousness. She declares:
Narrative Technique and Symbol and Myth Pattern in '"
203
I knew tha.t words and ide(ls C,ln not mean the same to liS as they mean to men because the meanings oi words have been built round the interests of men. Women, we need to remember, have not participated in the process of world making. 9 This study makes it evident tha t in case of Shashi Deshpande, it is not only, a matter of single idea but also a matter of single moment of intense emotional crises that involves the complete psycho-philosophical self of the individual. The stmcture of her short stories has come close to the compactness recommended for the dramatic structure. She presents a situation seeks the involvement of the character in it and ultimately draws some universal conclusion out of the single event. Her pattern of shorter fiction has come close to the observation of Evelyn Albright, The story writing, like the dramatist is compelled by lack of space to present his situation effectively in a few strong strokes, and render his main characters prominent in their true relations to each other and to their whole environment without the aid of many groups of lesser characters and without the background of a long series of minor events which prepare for and emphasize the climax. The artificial isolation of limited number of people and events, the artistic heightening of dialogue, the concentration on a single issue, the \'i\'id picturing of a 12 scene that is (James W. Linn) -short story is a representation, in a brief, dramatic form, of a turning point in the life of a single character. lO
References 1.
Mair, G.B., Modem English Literatllre qlloted fJY Ka1l1al Mehta in tl1l' TWI'ntietlz Centllry Indiall Short Story ill English, New Delhi Creative Books, 2004, p. 12.
2.
Deshpande, Shashi, Ll1Ilglll1gl' No Bar, The SlIllday Times afll1dia, Ahmedabad, 23 April, 1995: 10.
3.
Inlen'iew with Viswanatha Vanamala a Woman's World All the \\' a \', Lift'ratlll"£' Ali,!!', 1:3, December 1987: 8-14.
20-l
Narrilthe Technique and Symhol and Myth Pattern in ."
4.
Ibid., p.J 2.
5.
Rita Joshi, Somethill felt, Rel'iew of fhat Long Sill'll(,c; Hinduslan Times, No.6, May 1990.
6.
Sundell N, Roger and Dietrich R.F. Til(' Art of Fiction, New York, Chicago, San Francisco Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc.
7.
Shashi, Deshpande, Afterwords Stolle WOllll'n, p. 94.
8.
Ibid., p. 95.
9.
Ibid., p. 92.
10. Albright Evelyn quoted in Kahani or KaJwl1ikar, Delhi: Atma Ram Publication, p.l3.
000
RECRITIQUING WOMENIS WRITING IN ENGLISH (VOL 2)
"This page is Intentionally Left Blank"
RECRITIQUING WOMENIS WRITING IN ENGLISH (VOL 2)
Editor
DR. M.F. PATEL PRINCIPAL, SMT. c.c. MAHILA ARTS & SHETH C.N. COMMERCE COLLEGE, VISNAGAR, GUJARA T.
SUNRISE PUBLISHERS & DISTRIBUTORS E-566, Vaishali Nagar. Jaipur - 302021 (Raj.)
Published by :
SUNRISE PUBLISHERS & DISTRIBUTORS E-566, Vaishali Nagar, Jaipur - 302021 (Raj.) Ph.: 9413156675,9772299149 Email:
[email protected]
First Published - 2009
©Reserved
ISBN: 978-81-906067-7-6
Ali rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any mean without permission in writing from the publisher.
Printed at : Jaipur
Dedicated to
MY DEAR -WIFE, LEELA
"This page is Intentionally Left Blank"
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I am extremely grateful to Dr. V.S. Patel, Principal, Shri. & Smt. P.K. Kotawala Arts College, Patan for -his encouragement, guidance and inspIration. His benevolent approach has always been a source of inspiration to me for editing this volume. I am also indebted to my esteemed friend, philosopher and guide Dr. Jaydipsinh Dodiya, Associate Professor, Department of English & Comparative Literary Studies, Saurashtra University, Rajkot for his generous help and advice. I have received great help and support in making of this book. So, it is my pleasure to record the obligations to all the contributors of India who contributed their tremendous co-operation for their scholarly papers. I am thankful to the President, Dr. Motibhai Chaudhari and Honourable Secretary Shri Yogeshbhai Maniar and Shri Niketubhai Maniar of Shri M~arshi Dayanand Saraswati Kelavani Mandai, Visnagar for their positive attitude for my work. I am also richly grateful to my better-half, Leela, without whose co-operation this book would not have been possible. I must not forget to express my thanks to my dear daughter Khyati and dear son Aryan who never disturbed me in my work inspite of being deprived of my love and affection. Finally, I must express my heartfelt sense of gratitude to Shri Jitendra Gupta, Sunrise Publishers & Distributors, Jc·:Vur, India for publishing this volume in very short time. Dr. M.F. Patel Principal
"This page is Intentionally Left Blank"
CONTRIBUTORS Dr. Miss. M. Rosary Royar, Lecturer (S.G) in English, Fatima College, Madurai-625018. Dr. Ram Sharma, Senior Lecturer in English, Janta Vedic College, Baraut, Baghpat, Uttar Pradesh. Dr. M_lllikarjun Patil, Reader, Department of English, Karnatak University, Dharwad- 580003. Dr. Basdvaraj Naikar, Professor & Chairman, Department of English Karnatak University, Dharwad- 580003, Karnataka. Manjari Jhunjhunwala, Lecture in English, Vasanta College for Women, Rajghat Fort, Varanasi. Dinesh Chaudhary, Visiting Lecturer, Department of English, Arts College, Dhanera, Gujarat. Dr. Sharada Iyer, Head, Department ol English, Vasanta College for Women, Rajghat, Varanasi. Dr. N.K. Neb, Department of English, D.A.V. College, Jalandnar. R.K. Mishra, Reader in English, D.A.V. College, Titilagarh, Orissa. Dr. B.K. Sharma, Assistant Professor, Department of English, M.L.B. College, Gwalior. Dr. Amar Nath Prasad, Post Graduate Department of English, Jai Prakash University, Chapra-841301, Bihar. B.s. Nilllc1\',lt, I lead, DepartmentofEnglish,Shri V.DK Arts & M.R.S. Comn1l'rc(' ('ollege, Savarkundla, Gujarat.
"This page is Intentionally Left Blank"
CONTENTS •
Acknowledgements
•
Contributors
1.
Surveillance and Open Panopticons in Barna's Sal/gati and Amwelli
iii
v
Dr. Miss. M. Rosary Royal'
2.
Writings From the Margins: A Study of Shashi Deshpande's The Dark Holds No Terrors Dr. Ram Sharma
3.
Kiran Desai Desai's The Inheritance of Loss as a PostModern Novel Dr. Malliknrjz!11 Patil
4.
41
Bharati Mukherjee as a Diasporic Writer Dinesh B. Challdhary
7.
~J
Mingling of The Themes of Fear, H unger, Despair and Hope in Kamala Markandaya's novel Nectar in a Si('1'(, Maniari lhllnjlzllnwala
6.
20
Crisis of Identity in Anita Desai's Bye-Bye, Black Bitt! Dr. Basavaraj Naikar
5.
14
49
Hunger and Degradation in The Novels of Kamala Markandaya Dr. Ram Sharma
56
8. Shantha Rama Rau's Novels: A Comparative Study 9.
Dr. Basavaraj Naiknr
70
Interpreter of Maladies: A Saga of Asian Immigrants Dr. Sharada lyer
80
10. Identity Crisis in The Novels of Nayantara Sahgal Dr. Ram Sharma
87
II. Anita Desai's Fasting Feastillg: A Submerged Iceherg Or.N.K. Nl!b
lO2
12. A Novel of Revolt Against Social Injustice and Oppression on Women: A Thematic Analysis of Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things R.K. Mi5hm
13. Delineation ofFilial Bonds in Kamala Markandaya'sA HalldfulofRice Or. B.K. Sharma
119
135
14. Modern Concept of Marriage in the Novels of Nayantara Sahgal Or. Ram Sharma
142
15. Arundhati Roy's Life, Mind and Art Or. Amar Nath Prasad
156
16. The Theme of Death and Suicide in the Poetry of Kamala Das: A Thematic Study of Her Verses R.K. Mishra
186
17. Existential Alienation in Bharati Mukherjee's Wife Oint'sh B. Chaudhary
194
18. The Theme of Breakdown of Communication in Marital Life in Jhumpa Lahiri's Story A Temporary Matter B.S. Nimavat
199
19. Manju Kapoor's Difficult Daughters: A Study Oill(,slz B. Clzalldlzaru
207
SURVEILLANCE AND OPEN PANOPTICONS IN BAMA'S SANGATI AND ANNACHI - Dr. Miss. M. Rosary Royar
My final prayer:
o my body, make me always a man Who questions! Frantz Fanon. Bama, a Tamil writer, recaptures incidents and lived experiences to catapult from them the oppressive forces that strangle the life of people. Tenaciously holding on to truth and uncompromising to sacrifice it, she dares to defy through her writing. Traversing on a road that stands in opposition to the mainstream literary tradition, she has constructed a denigrated culture and voiced the silenced sensibility. In her works laughter and cry jostle; smile and tears criss-cross; sham and scorn battle and a phoenix rises out of the ashes. Karukku (1992) (a serrated palmyra leaf) her first work which won a Cross-word Award got published in English in 2000. Sangati (1994) got tran.,la ted into French in 2002 and English in 2005. These two are semi-fictional for they draw on autobiographical elements.
2
Surveillance and Open Panopticons in Bama's ...
In Karukku the narrator/author and the community are caught within the tentacles of the Indian apartheid system. Sangati pitches women against the stranglehold of caste and patriarchy. It trumpets, in Barna's view: Their lively and rebellious culture; their eagerness not to let life crush or shatter them, but rather to swim vigorously against the tide; about the selfconfidence and self-respect that enables them to leap over their adversities by laughing at and ridiculing them; about their passion to live life with vitality, truth and enjoyment; about their hard labour. (IX)
Kisumbukkaran (1996) contains many short stories and Annachi from this collection has been translated into English in 1999. Reviewing Sangati, Subashree Krishnaswamy writes: "Barna's writing is raw, earthy and natural"!. She has cut a chord of her own. The style is peculiar and unique. Lakshmi Holmstrom notices that by using the dalit Tamil dialect, Barna has overturned the notion of decorum and propriety. "She breaks the rules of written grammar and spelling through out her work, elides words and joins them differently demanding a new and different pattern of reading in Tamil"(xix). If Karukku is in the speaking voice of the author, Sangati is in the voices of many women. Holmstrom is also keen to notice the closeness of their language to proverbs, folksongs and folklore. Another feature is that Barna has interspersed the text with songs and witty rhymes. Lakshmi Holmstrom has taken enormous effort in translating the work "without disturbing the essence and flow of the original" (viii). Barna wields the spoken language to heighten realistic effects. In the present study the court scenes from Sangati and Annachi are to be analysed. It is a common practice in the village to hold a meeting to inquire into criminal acts or to settle family feuds and to punish the evil doer. The community invests power on the leader / headman/ nattaamai who, at times in consultation with the elders,
Surveillance and Open Panopticons in Barna's ...
3
decides on the matter. Of course, he, vested with authority, acts as a judge and passes the verdict, which need not necessarily be an act of pure justice. It can be coloured by caste, prejudice, favouritism and personal idiosyncrasies for it is not constricted by written legal documents. Before making a critique of the two scenes from Sangati and Annachi it necessitates to perceive what Bill Ashcroft conceives of surveillance and panopticons in the colonised world for a parallel reading throws a different dimensional meaning on them. In The Imperial Passion for Perspective, Bill Ashcroft (2001,141144) analyses, the imperial control emerges. In a colonized context, surveillance is the coloniser's powerful strategy that reinforces his imperial dominance over the colonized. The implication requires a scrutiny. First it refers that the viewer is in a vantage point as he has the power to observe, to process and to understand the natives. Eventually this leads to the next step of interrelating the colonised subject and fixing his identity from the coloniser's view and also in relation to him. The surveyor and the surveyed continue to exist. Emphasizing the imperial gaze, Ashcroft postulates: It defines the identity of the subject, objectifies it within the identifying system of power relation and confirms its subalternity and powerlessness. (141)
Another dominant feature of colonisation, Ashcroft presents is the circular prison with its individual cells. Surveillance again enhances the power of the surveyor and the "effectiveness of incarceration" (141) for the assumption of the surveyed is that he is under constant surveillance. Therefore, he has to act as if he is under the overpowering gaze. The incarcerated cannot be what he is. It means he cannot act freely for a controlling power incises him. He has to fit into the representation given by the surveyor. "For the observer, sight confers power; for the observed, visibility is powerlessness" (141) Therefore panopticons are an unsurpassing device for surveillance though that exterior operation is disciplinary. Ashcroft further elaborates that panopticons are powerful as they are direct and within the physical proximity. At the same time there are other different ways to exert imperial power. He underscores that it can be" enforced by the threat of subtle kinds of
4
Surveillance and Open Panopticons in Barna's ...
. cultural and moral disapproval and exclusion" (142). As the colonized is in the site of oppression, he accepts the imperial view, code of behaviour, array of values and cultural differences and even the colonizer's assumption. What ensues acceptance is that the colonized marshals his behaviour accordingly. Ontologically speaking he becomes another, a mimic man. The perspecti~l gaze of the imperialist thus serves as a powerful metaphor. Caste ism is an oppressive force. In colonization the foreigners ruled over the natives and the binary attitude with all its hostility that was so pervasive but never expressed continued. In Indian context the ideology of Savarna domination shooting up from within continues to reign the oppressed. Domination is distinct from exploitation Domination denotes power and exploitation indicates using the 'other' for selfish purpose. Domination and exploitation are the two main weapons wielded against those in the lowest rung of the caste hierarchy. They are constantly under the gaze of those at the top level of this caste-structure. As the coloniser's surveillance has the power to construct the identity of the other, the highborn possess the privilege of defining the identity of the lowborn. The surveillance of those in the upper level constricts and restricts the behaviour of those at the lower level. T.M. Yesudasan confirms this view: Dominance and subordination takes place as an effect and within the more generalized matrix of savarna domination. He justifies the idea by referring to Terry Eagleton that these conditions constitute an asymmetrical totality, since the dominance of a particular mode will force other modes into position of subordination and partial exclusion. (81)
j ,."
.'r~':
In Sangati and Annachi the people by the curse of their very birth in a particular clan are ostracised and excluded. Exclusion does not bear the benefit of living freely in their own environment. On the contrary, they are under the steadfast vigilance of the superior people. Their presence is despicable but they ar~ the burden bearers for them. The 'superior' depend on the 'inferior' but as they cannot
Surveillance and Open Panopticons in Barna's .,.
5
acknowledge dependency they hate them for it. Frantz Fanon holds that his physical body builds up certain contours and the chief of them is that he is a Negro. He says "assailed at various points the corporeal schema crumbled, its place taken by a racial epidermal schema", and adds "the white man unmercifully imprisoned" (44) him and reduced him to an object. The parallel can be extended. The skin colour determines the identity of a Negro. In a circumscribed village caste and creed can be defining tools. Even names, jobs, habitating place serve as identification marks. They can conjure up historical, economical and social images in the mental set. Ammasi in Annachi goes to dear up the water channels in Jaishankar's fields. Ammasi, with his old spade, goes to the field. But he is "dressed up in sparkling white"(47). In the encounter between Jaishankar and Ammasi, Jaishankar expresses his startling contempt: Do you look like one out to do work? You stand here like you're heading for my office. You are a headstrong one, right? Why did he tell you, of all people, if he couldn't find a proper hand? (48) This act of volition comes out of the presumptuous yardsticks that have been held for long. Beyond that, it determines the person's outward and inner realities. Ammasi has to fit into tailor-made personage. As the imperialistic power assumes the necessity to civilise the barbarians, while concealing its desire for domination and empire extension, it decides the decorum for them. Similarly, Jaishankar interpellates Ammasi as a headstrong ·person. Interrogating has its own power of intimidation. The meeting thus strengthens imprisoning the low caste and elevating the upper caste. If a black man is enclosed in his skin the low caste are immured in caste structure that has pervaded the socio-politico economical and specially the cultural systems of society. In the preface to Sangati, Barna narrates that the DaHt women are oppressed and ruled by 'patriarchy, government, caste and religion' (vii). She celebrates their power to break the oppressing powers. They do not cause an upheaval at an organized level nor bring about a social transformation that attracts the media. They
6
Surveillance and Open Panopticons in Bama'~ ...
question and sort out their own techniques to keep alive their spirit of life. But as P.G. Jogdand analyses they are 'thrice alienated' by class, patriarchy and caste. They undergo severe exploitation at the work place. "They also suffer on caste ground and gang rape from upper castes. They get beaten up in their families too" (xii). They face all these strictures and live in the midst of these suffocating forces. The women in Sangati need to toil the day for a meagre meal and then go to the forest to pick up firewood. They face another threat to their life from the upper caste men. Gabriele Dietrich accounts that they face the collective threat of physical harm from upper caste forces all the time. Against such violence, the men of the community are unable to protect them. Eventually, it manifests itself as a "collective weakness and vulnerability" (74). The women and children are forced to be silent of these atrocities on two grounds. Their reputation is at stake. Their father Ihusband cannot take an arm against the upper caste for it will engender brutal attack on the helpless men and women. Mariamma, a motherless girl, shoulders the responsibility of rearing the younger ones and providing sustenance for the family for "her father is a drunkard and goes off to his kept woman" (16) and cares the least for the children. She joins those who dig wells as it fetches a good wage. Unfortunately, she falls headlong into the well. Every bone in her body seems to be crushed. They roll her in palmyra mat and take her in a bullock cart to the government hospital, where she remains for eight months. Soon after her return she resumes work for that is her destiny. She, with her younger sister, goes to gather firewood so that they can sell and earn enough for their daily kanji. On one such routine, she goes near the irrigation pump-set to drink water. Depending on a warning given to the nattaamai, the very same evening the court is held. Kumarasami A yya, claiming to have witnessed the' dirty way' Mariamma and Manikkam behave, complains about them and conceals his benevolent deed by reporting, "i1nyone else would have strung them, up hand and foot to the banyan tree" (20). The senior and the junior Ilattaamai are made to feel indebted to him.
Surveillance and Open Panopticons in Barna's ...
7
The men, the youth and even the little boys are seated and the other gender stands around. As soon as the senior nattaamai, Seeniappan begins to speak, three is total silence. He opens the session with a broad spectrum: "our entire community's reputation is at risk" (21) especially in a village wherein many castecommunities inhabit and declares that they are "treated with contempt". He summons the accused two to come up in front of everyone. He passes on the proceedings to the junior nattaamai, Chellakkannu. In the meanwhile "Mariamma and Manikkam [cornel to the centre of the circle,[greetl the elders by falling down and prostrating themselves at full length and [go1to stand to each to one side, arms folded"(21). It is an open panopticon for the site has imprisoned them. The circle limits them from escape and the community treats Ulem as criminals. The surveyed stands and the surveyors impose their power on them in front of the community hall. As some women are unaware of the cause of the meeting, they discuss and there is a ripple of murmurs. A couple of young men come toward the women charging them of lack of common sense for they mutter when "men are talking seriously" (21) and demand that they go home. The women pretend to go but they return after a while. Demarcating women and preventing them from invading the territory of men especially the counsel, manifests the prerogative of the patriarchy. It cohibits the women and sets the boundary for them. The junior nattaamai specifies the details of the case namely the victims' parentage, and in which street they dwell. He dwells at length on their act of commission - "Behaving indecently"(22). When the nattaamais, vested with authority stop after presenting the case, Karuppaya asks them to questioL the youngsters first to know the matter. Malayaandi who relies on the verity of the mudalaali's complaint stresses on the irrelevancy of asking them to speak up and wants to decide on the punishment. But four or five men shout together as they suspect the reported matter. The senior nattaamai in an accusing tone' asks Manikkam to speak for himself. Manikkam speaks 'humbly' that he has uttered few words in fun in I
8
Surveillance and Open Panopticons in Bama's ...
the presence of people and nothing happened as the mudalaali has reported. Mariamma, "her head drooping" affirms Manikkam's confession. The senior naattaamai warns them to "admit the truth and beg pardon."(23) Surprisingly, kaliamma butts in to support and adds that Mariamma has left early which means that there is no chance for both of them to have misbehaved and seals the truth "this is really unjust". Bilt four or five men shout "will you she-donkeys get out of here or do we stamp on you" (23). The narrator sequences the repression" once again the women were silenced" (23). The junior naattaamai intervenes and tells Samudrakani to tell his daughter 'to fall down and beg forgiveness' Samudrakani reprimands severely and calls her 'bitch'. Mariamma manages to spurt out the truth which the court dic;avows. In fact, it does not pay heed though Anandamma as an eyewitness reports what took place. Above all, her father hits her hard and when he rushes at her, she is terrified. It is apt to recall to what Claramllla Jose says: In a culture where passivity, self-effacement is the norm for female sexual behaviour, male aggression and violence is justified and even normalized. (35) A woman speaks aloud of the disparity in the treatment for none beats Manikkam and no one dares to find the truth. It they try to trace the matter, another woman foresees a riot between the two castes. The culprits are asked to pay fine, Mariamma Rs. 200 alld Manikkam Rs. 100. Mariamma prostrates and asks for forgiveness. At home she weeps all night. Annamna, her little sister, comforts her 'Don't cry akka' and their younger sister Seyakkodi begins to whimper. Patriarchy's power plays mercilessly on the powerlessness to which the men assign them quite lawfully. The naattaamais have a closed mind and succeed in burying the truth alive. They act on preconceiveJ notions. The victims especially the woman/women are further imprisoned and physical violence is the key factor with which they are threatened. Luce Irigaray argues that society has to avoid the ethical mistake, Hegel pointed out, which is
Surveillance and Open Panopticons in Barna's ...
9
"subordinating women to destiny without allowing them any access to mind or consciousness of self and for self, offering them only death and violence as their part" (227). She asserts that they must be allowed to speak and they must be listened to. The women in the scene dare to speak, but they are not heeded in the least. The open court has damaged the psyche of Mariamma, and forced her to behave according to their dictated norm and besides categorising her as a culprit has excluded her. Can her healing occur in her weeping? Jean-Francois Lyotard, in his discourse, counts that human language helps the locutor to communicate with others. A willed silence is not a crime but it is a crime to impose that silence on another person. He continues: A greater wrong is added to this injustice, since one who is banished, being prohibited from speaking has no means to appeal/her banishment. (185)
Mariamma's report is overpow~red with the prejudice of men and she is deprived of an appeal, eventually denied of justice too. Manikkam has at least been listened to and has the privilege of paying less amount of fine. He is neither abused nor hit in front of the crowd. He does not fall down and beg forgiveness as Mariamma does. Further wrongs are perpetrated on her and she remains a condemned slut. As her father accuses her of "standing like a boundary stone", the court has walled her in. She personifies the boundary stone that men have set up for her. Identity of a person depends also on the sense of belonging. Fernando Franco and others view: Identity formation is also the process of setting up boundaries of demarcating who is within the fold and who is outside it. (13) Who is the 'other' for Mariamma? Her own father is neither a nurturing parent nor a supporting well-wisher. Kaliamma and Anandamma speak up but when she weeps they are nC!t there. The
10
Surveillance and Open Panopticons in Barna's ...
whole army of people who turned their ears off to her truth is valiant supporters of the Mudaalali. Naturally, they campaign in the enemy camp. Her own community has stigmatised her with a scandal that is false and baseless. With which group is she to identify? The next court scene occurs in Annachi. Ammasi invites machaan to attend the court and gives a brief information: "They are going to hold court and inquire into a murder and hang that fellow" (47). The meeting duly takes place. The headman, in this case, is from the upper caste and the court begins reinforcing the caste structure. The accused is charged of having no sense as he from the low caste has addressed the master who is from the upper caste as annachi. The term is a variation of anna meaning elder brother. It is also an informal and intimate mode of addressing an elder but it is used within one's caste. Ammasi, without any hesitancy, answers them in a straightforward manner. He implicates the absurdity of meeting. The headman inquires again: "why did you call a highborn your Annachi?"(49}. He replies that as he is elder to him, he addressed him so. Otherwise, he would have called him thambi. The headman unobtrusively refers to his caste and confirms that he has broken rules. But Ammasi states that all men are equal and sets towards home. Gathering the assembly and making the criminal stand in the centre of them stifles the interior self and the gaze, which is full of contempt and derision, smothers the body. It has the power to humiliate him and make his being shrink in front of them. Authority has an invisible hold over the subordinates and demands servility and respect. When singled out, that too for a crime, and in the midst of a group that has maintained exclusion and segregation of the other, it sickens the whole being. Ammasi manages to confront them and pass on a message to them that questions the age-old domination. Who will ever be able to accept the truth that discrimination is a culture framed and practised by men? Gail Omvedt notes: "a revolutionary message, a will to act against exploitation, a rise from oppression, from death to life, from darkness to light" (11) has spread from the oppressed. However, it has been only sporadic. Ammasi, who walks away from the scene,
Surveillance and Open Panopticons in Barna's .,.
11
emblematizes the will to violate the oppressive code. It also signifies the doubt that the truth has not been accepted. Mutual contempt pervades the meeting but the powerfully stationed people can remain blind to it as their mind is preoccupied with Ammasi's defiant attitude and pinning him down to the lowest level possible. The pollution-purity principle is a strong protective fort for the oppressor that he will go out of the way to protect it. The two scenes serve as a site of oppression. In both they manage to execute what is fixed in the mind. Though the sessions are held to bring out the truth of the ma~ter, it invariably silences it and perpetuates injustice. Either of the cases conceals the relevant and required fact, which can maintain justjustice. In Amwchi Jaishankar does not have to answer the queries, which means that he has not committed a mistake. On the contrary, he is represented as a victim. If he is a victim what damage has been done unto him? The court never asks for a true representation. Jaishankar has accused Ammasi unfairly and heaped unwarranted words on him. Silence rules over his words of mockery and accusations. The instigating act has been cance'lled. A partial representation of the case narrows down the matter and they conduct the court to carry out the prefixed structure. As a victim, Mariamma pleads that the mudnlnnli has tried to misbehave with her. Fearing the loss of reputation, he has skewed the matter and has contrived to protect his honour at the cost of an innocent woman's damage of character. Her truth is not only ignored but also negated. The crowd experiences not shock at the mudalanli's wickedness and angelic vileness but charges her of boldness to twist the matter and blame the master. The roles are reversed consciously. The criminal becomes the victim and the real victim is the perpetrator of crime. Wrongs upon wrongs are done unto Mariamma. Injustice mocks at the defeat of truth, which cries in silence. The ignoble is noble. She runs out of the elutches of the man to save her honour but the court releases her as a wretched woman. Kaliamma and Anandamma as eyewitnesses testify in the court. They are unable to defend the case. They cannot be attested. JeanFrancois Lyotard notifies that a victim is one who has incurred damage but has no mean to prove it. He argues:
12
Surveillance and Open Panopticons in Bama's ... Reciprocally, the "perfect crime" does not consist in killing the victim or the witnesses ... but rather in obtaining the silence of the witnesses, the deafness of the judges and the inconsistency (insanity) of the testimony. (209)
Imposing silence over the witnesses the nattaamais tum deaf and Mariamma's presentation appears irrational. Truth is mutated into a lie, and crime never gets exposed. Who is the criminal? Who is the foe against social order? Works Cited Ashcroft, Bill, Postcolonial Transformation, London: Routledge, 2001. Bama, Annachi, Trans. M. Vijayalakshmi, Indian Literature: Sahitya Academy's Bi-Monthly Journal, vol. 43.5, September, 99-October99, Pp.45-49. Bama, Sangati (Events), Trans. Lakshmi Holmstrom, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005. Dietrich, Gabriele, Reflections on the Women's Movement in India: Religion Ecology Development, New Delhi: Horizon India Book, 1992. Fanon, Frantz qtd, in Jean khalfa, My Body, This Skin, This Fire; Fanon on Flesh, Wasafiri, 44, Spring, 2005, Pp. 42-50. Franco, Fernando, Jyotsna Macwan, and Suguna Ramanathan, Journeys to Freedom: Dalit Narratives, Kolkata: Samya, 2004. Holmstrom, Lakshmi, Introduction, Bama, Sangati (Events) Trans. Lakshmi Holmstrom, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005. Irigaray, Luce, An Ethics of Sexual Difference, TIle Postmodernism Reader: Foundational Texts, ed., Michael Drolet, London: Routledge,2004. Jogdand P.G., Ed., Dalit Women: ISSlles and Perspectives, New Delhi: Gyan Publishing House, 1995. Jose, Claramma, Feminisms: An Introduction, Chennai: An Aresseril Home Publication. 2005.
Surveillance and Open Panopticons in Barna's ...
13
Krishnaswarny, Subashree, Dalit Literatllrl': A Call for Action, Literary Review, The Hindu, Sunday, Feb 6, 2005. Lyotard, Jean-Francois, The Intimacy of Terror in Post-modern Fables, The Postmodernism Reader: Foundational texts, ed., Michael Drolet, London: Routledge, 2004, Pp. 181-188. Lyotard, Jean-Francois, from The Differend, Phrases in Dispute, The Postmodernism Reader: Foundational Texts, ed., Michael Drolet. London: Routledge, 2004, Pp. 207-221. Omvedt, Gail, Dalitsand the Democratic Revollltion: Dr. Ambedkarand The Dalit Movement in Colonial India, New Delhi: Sage Publication, 1999. Yasudasan, T.M., Caste, Gender and Knowledge: Towards a Dalit Feminist Perspective, Haritharn, 8, 1996, Pp. 77-90.
DOD
WRITINGS FROM THE MARGINS:
A
STUDY OF SHASHI DESHPANDE'S THE DARK HOLDS
No TERRORS - Dr. Ram Sharma
In the way the bulk of post-colonial New English Literature has been generally preoccupied for the last few decades with the marginalised and the under dog. In india the focus nahtrallY falls on women and backward classes. Edward Said suggests that the canons of the center should be read contrapuntally with the work coming from the margin. Deshpande's novels reveal the inability of the women to speak and the positive movement is always the movement towards speech. The Dark Holds No Terrors is a very powerful novel written by Shashi Deshpande that depicts the life of Sarita, a lad y doctor who happens to escape to herfather's house in the begining being tortured by the sexual extremes of her husband Manohar but this parental home equally brings back for her the horrible memories of the cruel attitude of her mother who is no more now. Deshpande explores the myth of man's unquestionable superiority. Deshpande focuses on the world of Indian women in the context of modern indian society. The father is indifferent and not supportive enough 'like an unwilling host entertaining an unwelcome guest.
Writings From the Margins: A Study of Shashi Deshpande's ... 15
The Dark Holds No Terrors reacts against the traditional concept that everything in girl's life "is shaped to that single purpose of pleasing male." P. Ramamoorthi writes: Women, in order to achieve her freedom, seeks marriage as an alternative to the bondage created by the bondage created by the parental family.sam resents the role of a daughter and looks forward to the role of a daughter and looks forward to the role of wife, the hope that her new role will help in winning their freedom. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak writes in her article: Can, the subaltern speak? Between partiarchy and imperealism subject constitution and object formation the figure of woman disappears, not into a pristive nothingness, but into a violent shuttling which is the displaced figuration of the "ThirdWorld Woman" caught between tradition and modernization. Moreover, his subconscious self also names it treachery to the dead in case he dares welcome his daughter warmly. Also like a traditional Indian father he is not concerned with the troubles of family-members, enjoying the privilege of being the master and head of the family as we know from Sarita. "He had always been so much a man, the master of the house, not to be bothered by any of the trival$ of daily routine." (p. 20) Of course, the Indian woman has also been used to this kind of behaviour. The father frowns and knits his brows in case the married daughter dares return to her parental house having quarrelled or divorced her husband. A married woman is thus supposed to stay in the house of her husband till death. Simone de Beauvoir expresses his own views on man-woman nexus in his famous book The Second Sex: Man represents both the positive and the neutral, as is indicated by the common use of man to
16 Writings From the Margins: A Study of Shashi Deshpande's ... designate human beings in 'general, where as woman represents only the negative, defined by limiting criteria without reciprocity...Man can think of himself without woman. She can not think of herself without man. And she is simply what man decrees ...She appears essectially to the male as a sexual being. For him she is sex ...absolute sex, no less. She is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to man and he with reference to her, she is the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential. (The Second Sex, P.534) The novel focusses on woman's awareness of her predicament, her wanting to be recognised as a person than as a woman and her wanting to have an independent social image. The first half of The Dark Holds No Terrors deals with the vicious, prejudiced and cruel attitude of a mother, a strong product of patrianchal society who considers her daughter responsible for the her son's death. Why didn't you die? Why are you alive and he dead. (P.14) Saru breaks the umbiblical chord and leaves home. This is her first public defiance of the patrical power system. Saru's defiance is further expressed, when she becomes economically independent and marries of her own choice. Saru is disappointed with her married life. The institution of home, which is supposed to foster the growth of a child, robs the women of her right and respectability She always kept two different measuring yards, one for the son and other for the daughter. Here is one example to lay emphasis on the point: Don't go out in the sum. You'll get even darker. Who cares? We have to care if you don't. We have to get you married. I don't want to get married. Will you live with us all your life? Why not?
Writings From the Margins: '\ Study 01 Shashi Dl·shpandc's ... 17 YOll
can't
And Dhruva? He's different. He's a boy.
(The Dark Holds No Terrors, p.45) In this way a traditional Hindu woman she considers it her
duty to remind her daughter that she is grown up and she should behave accordingly. The first ~xperience of menstntation is horrible for Sarita and the mother is there to frighten her with the fact that she would bleed for years and years. The mother does not let her enter the kitchen and Puja-room. She is forced to sleep on Strawmat. A separate plate is provided to her to make her exclusion complete. Still in remote villages and even among educated people a woman is considered unholy during the menstruation period. Sarita thinks about it: Things fell, with a miraculours exactexactness, into place. I was a female. I was born that way, that was the way my body had to be, those were the things that had to happen to me. And that was that. (P .63) The fact is that the poor daughter Sarita always beared the oppostion of her mother, be it the question of choosing a husband or a profession. Sarita's married life with Manu does not run smoothly for a long time and it makes her think that even pleasure is unreal and like an illusion wheras grief seems more real having weight and substance. The fact is that there is difference of status. Saru being a lady doctor is always given more importance. People come to her, surround her, ask for her and respect her and it is something which her husband can not digest. And this is whilt changes the attitude of a loving husband into a sadist. Chapter VIII of the novel informs us about Saru's sexual tortures by Manu. She can not free herself from him and when the fit is over, he is the Silt11e smiling Manu again. This confounds her bitterly. The hurting hands, the savage teeth, the monstrous assault of a horrible familiar body. And above me a face I could not recognise. (P.112)
18 Writings From the Margins: A Study of Shashi Deshpande's ... Saru tells her father about her husband who loves cruelty in sex but it is something beyond the understanding of poor. Father who always maintained distance and reserve with his wife. The root of this problem also seems to lie in the social attitude. The problem is psychological as well as the does is not aware of the dead. "God, Saru! Have you hurt yourself. Look at that."(P. 203) In this way whole novel is full of incidents showing disparity towards a woman. Sarita's mother shows inveterate harted and enmity towards her daughter after the death of her son when she remarks: " ...... Daughter? I don't have any daughter. I had a son and he died. Now I am childless." (P.196) The disappearance of Madhav's brother and his father's punishing the mother by not eating food cooked by her reminds Sarita a Sanskrit story from her school-text where a woman did not disturb her husband's sleep even to save her child from fire. Then Agni had to come to save the child. It makes Sarita extremely angry and she thinks: Who wrote that story? A man, of course. Telling all women for all time your duty to me comes first. And women poor fools, believed him. So that even today Madhav's mother considers at a punishment to be deprived of a chance to serve her husbands.(P .207) Towards the end of the novel we see that Abhi's letter informing Saru about Manu's arrival first of all disturbs her as she is totally upset about her relationship and does not want to face him but after a bit of pondering over the issue she is able to find out her way. The moment she realizes the importance of life, she determines to live with full gusto. She has also been aware of the fact that her coming to parental house was an exercise in futility. She feels: " ... because there's no one else, we have to go on trying. If we can't believe in ourselves, we're sunk." (P.220) Now Saru feels it strongly that she is responsible for her own miserable, puppet like existance. Too much dependence on institutions like marriage is also sheer foolishness. Rather one
Writings From the Margins: A Study of Shashi Deshpande's ... 19 should be ready to face all the challanges and troubles of life. Saru's decision to go with Manu shows her confidence and COUf
Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex translated and edited by H.M.Parshily, Placadon Classics edition published 198H, Cavage Place London: Pan Books Ltd.
2.
Deshpande, Shashi, The Dark Holds No Terrors, Vikas Publishing House Pvt. Ltd., 1980.
3.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, Can the subattern speak frum Colonial Discourse and Post Colonial Theory, Harvest wheats hea f, 1994.
DOD
KIRAN DESAI'S
THE INHERITANCE OF
Loss AS A POST-MoDERN NOVEL - Dr. Mallikarjun Patil
Kiran Desai is almost an expatriate Indian writer of the Indian origin in the United States of America. She is one of the remarkable women writers of the post-modernist literature. The writer of a posterior vision and dehumanizing trend of negative capability, she, has made the case of untraditional experience dominating issue over a detached kind of living in the future. Often, the sensibilities apprehended in the writings of the novelist from India are nostalgic and encompass the meek issues like world peace, fraternity and integration towards the world "being one family." But the heights portray her sense of life are not the sensibilities, incorporating the elements of the disassociating and alienated self. Notwithstanding the tenderness and a slow pace in her expression of very bold themes, she has presented a picturesque and visional view of human fate in the chaotic atmosphere of modernity. Broadly speaking, 'post-modernist' literature is a one, written after World War II and 1960's. In point of time, this literature has sprung up after 1960's, initially in America and Europe. According to A. Sebastian Dravyam Pillai: Post-Modernist is in the term used in literary parlance to refer to a corpus of literature that has
Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss as a Post-Modern Novel
21
been written in the mid-fifties, sixties and after, largely in America, and to a lesser extent in Latin America, Europe and Britain. Post-Modernism is, in fact, an internationill, modern phenomenon, not only in the field of literature but also in the fields of painting, dancing and music. This new approach to life and literature arose as a reaction to the then existing artist's sense of dissatisfaction with the dominant art form of his time. Another reason being the inaccessibility of the art form to the common man. The post-modernist approaches consist of the so called "popular culture," and much of modern man's rebarbarization, or revulgarization. The practitioners of post-modernism have used a variety of means to break the modern tradition of liberalism and humanism. Evidently T.S. Eliot sought to counter the chaos of modern experience by becoming impersonal, while Leslie Fiedler adopted an attitude to life and art which sought to redeem the self in a literary phenomenon pointing to the collapse of Western "liberal humanism", and also the literature and culture sustained by it. Jean Dubuffet says of Post-modernist situation: I have an impression that a complete liquidation of all the ways of thinking, whose sum constituted what has been called humanism and has been fundamental for our culture since the Renaissance, is not taking place .... 1 To Fiedler, Post-modernism is primarily but a de-eliotisation movement in art. The serious novel has become a pop and the distinction and distance, between the critic and audience, is done away with. Usually, fictions, primarily exploiting the elements of popular culture, like science-fiction and pornographic element constitute a sizeable section of Post-Modernist literature. This literature, unfortunately, registers the dissolution of the traditional literary values. It is said ours is indeed a world of altered human relationships, of epistemological scepticism, of high technology and strange and disoriented sense of human purpose. Many a contemporary artist, therefore, feels that there is no point in creating fiction that gives an illusion of life when life itself seems so illusory.
22
Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss as a Post-Modern Novel
This is what happens in post-modernistic fiction today. Postmodernist novel is divided into non-fiction writing, problematic novel, fabulations or pop fiction. This kind of fiction is something utterly a surrougate religion, a Dionysian art, and at the same time, a most reactionary movement. The post-war people faced a distorted and decadent traditional humanism. Like Restoration literature, Post-modernist literature is characterized by licentiousness, downgradation of art, libertingage in any matter and destruction of the boundary line between art and non-art. That is why, modern critic Kermode has warned us not to indulge in decadent practices. He has cautioned us to avoid our ignoring of the past, i.e, liberalism and humanism. Post-modernistic literature, owing to the duty done by mass media, has become global. Eminent writers like Jorge Luis Borges (Labyrinths), Nabokov (Lolita, 19.58), Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Salughterhollse-Fi-i'e, 1969), Thomas Phynchon (The Crying of Lot, 49,1966), Muriel Spark (The Driver's Seat), Malcolm Bradbury (The History Man, 1970), G.V. Desani (All About H. Hatterr, 1948), K.M. Trishanku (Onion Peel, 1973), Saros Cowasjee (Wife, 1975), and others have written their fiction in the stream of post-modernistic thought. Very significantly, Post-modern fiction is described as apocalyptic, that is, a literature that registers the dissolution of narrative, self and represented world. There will be too much interpolation of verse in the form of songs, iriter-textuality, preference for the colloquial to the formal language and inclusion of a large body of scientific information. People are neither liberal nor human they are in fact, discouraged from being characters. Regarding postmodem fiction it may be said there is not any particular relationship between all the messages, except that the author has chosen them carefully so that when seen all at once, they produce an image of life that is beautiful and surprising and deep. There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. This is what we see in Kiran Desai's novel The Inheritance of Loss. This exactly is like the situation when one reads an Indian novelist like Bharati Mukherjee, Arundhati Roy, Gita Hariharan, Shobha De, Kiran Desai. All the post-modernistic characteristics
Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss <1S a Post-Modern N()\'t'l
21
explicit in the theories presented briefly above are reflected in the works of each of these novelists. The movement of post-modernism has influence many Indian writers right from the beginning. In this regard, the classic example is G.V. Desani's only novel All Abollt Ii. Hatterr written as long back as 1948. Among the recen t w ri ters, one can find Post-modernism in the fiction of younger generation writers, especially those who are deeply influenced by the British, or American Neo or Post-modernists. Kiran Desai's new novel, the second one, The Inheritance of loss, which got the 2006 Booker Prize for literature is a post-modern novel. This is about the east-west encounter. This is a woman's work with feminine sensibility. Herself the daughter of a famous Indian Woman Writer Anita Desai, Kiran Desai has written the novel excellently. She has written with concern for art and multiculture. The novel The Inheritance of Loss is divided into fifty-two chapters for breathing space. It is a big work depicting several crnsscultural phenomenon, human faiths and failings. Chapter one begins with the judge, Sai, the cook and their dog Mutt,located in the foot hill of the Himalaya, Kanchenjunga in the backdrop of the Himalaya. Sai is in love with Gyan, the tutor. Could fulfilment ever be felt as deeply as loss? Romantically she decided that love must surely reside in the gap between desire and fulfilment, in the lack, not the contentment. Love was the ache, the anticipation, the retreat, everything around it but the emotion itself. (Pp. 2-3) The group faces a Gorka terrorist group which, in fact, upsets them. Kiran desai writes: It was February of 1986. Sai was seventeen, and her romance with Gyan the mathematics tutor was not even a year old .. .In Kalimpong, high in the northeastern Himalayas where they lived - the retired judge and his cook, Sai, and Mutt - there
24
Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss as a Post-Modern Novel was a report of new dissatisfaction in the hills, gathering insurgency, men and guns. It was the India Nepalese this time, fed up with being treated like the minority in a place where they were the majority. (Pp.8-9)
This is the historical context. This reminds us William Faulkner's Intruder in the Dust. In Chapter Two depicts police enquiry as to who the robbers were in the previous day's attack at the judge's house. More information about the cook whose son Biju works in a hotel in New York is offered in the succeeding chapters. He is 19. Nandu of his UP village works there too. The police enquiry lingers. The people in the village of Cho Oyu and Kalimpong lead a difficult life apart from local thief Gobbe, Gorka terrorist is a threat. The author gives a graphic history of Sai, the daughter of the late Mr. and Mrs. Mistry. The later died in an accident in Russia where he was working for space programme. The mother's father just called judge had his education in Cambridge. Desai writes of him: The judge picked up a book and tried to read, but he couldn't. He realized, to his surprise, that he was thinking of his journeys, of his own arrivals and departures, from places far in his past. He had first left home at the age of 20, with a black trunk just like the one Sai had arrived with, on which white letters read "Mr. J.P. Patel, SS Strathnaver." The year was 1939. The town he had left was his ancestral home of Piphit. From there he had journey to the Bombay dock and then sailed to Liverpool, and from Liverpool he had gone to Cambridge. (P.35) He provided tution to Sai with noni and then with Gyan. The novel, as a post-modern work of fiction, is fragmentary rather. Here we find so many pictures of people, their cultures and modes of thought. The novel is about many people and many cultures, both of the East and West. It is about India and the US. The novel is about
Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss as a Post-Modem Novel
2S
Sai and her history and her romantic life with a Nepalese, Gyan. The novel is about her grandfather Jemubhai Popatlal Patel, the retired judge. The novel is about the judge's cook and his son Biju in the USA. The three narrations are intertwined with one another. At the sam~ time, they appear to be both interlinked and not interlinked. The difference is perceptible very much. We cannot say who are more important and who are less. The novel is post-modern, of popular cultural mode where all the people are equally important. Biju started his second year work in a Pinocchio's Italian hotel in the USA. Saeed Saeed, a Tanzanian befriends him. There is much contrast between the two. The Tanzanian whose grandmother was a Hindu, however, is a stronger figure. He knows much abou t Ind ian culture and likes it. What Patel did in the past is narrated graphically. He had a fellowship from Cambridge and left for it. Desai writes of the present life thus: Sai's life had continued in Kalimpong - Lola and Noni, Uncle Potty and Father Booty, the judge and cook .... until she met Gyan. She met Gyan because one day, when Sai was sixteen, Noni found she could no longer teach her physics ... (P.65) There are slices of multi-cultural life. For example, the cook said: Everyone known, Coastal people eat fish and see how much cleverer they are, Bengalis, Malayalis, Tamils. Inland they eat too much grain, and it slows the digestion - especially millet - forms a big heavy ball. The blood goes to the stomach and not to the head. Nepalese make good soldiers, coolies, but they are not so bright at their studies. Not their fault, poor things. (P.73) Biju in America feels that he cannot like Pakistani people. The same feeling I had when I was in England doing a course at Oxford. Of course, this is a common feeling for Indians towards their Pakistani neighbours. Biju says:
26
Kiran Desai's The Initeritance of Loss as a Post-Modern Novel Saeed was kind and he was not Paki. Therefore he was OK? The cow was not an Indian cow; therefore it was not holy? Therefore he liked Muslims and hated only Pakis? Therefore he liked Saeed, but hated the general lot of Muslims? (p. 76)
Saeed, however, worked in a mosque in the USA. The cook was happy because his son was working in America. He was happy because people liked him more on that account. Some of them requested him for a job for their sons in America. In fact, once the cook wrote his son: Very bright boy, family very poor, please look after him, he already has a visa, will be arriving ... Please find a job for Poresh. In fact, even his brother is ready to go. Help them. Sanjeeb Thorn Karama Ponchu, and remember Budhoo, watchman at Mon Ami, his son ... (F.9S) Yet Biju did not like the idea of helping such people. This explains Indian poverty. This is true even today. Mrs. Sen whose son was also in America feels a similar kind of pride. When Sai became interested in love, she became interested in other people's love affairs and she pestered the cook about the judge and his wife. Kiran Desai tells us the story of the judge Patel's wife. When the Patels were dreaming of sending their son to England for study, they had financial difficulties. So they thought of finding a matrimonial alliance for Jemu so that a rich man could come forward to give his daughter to him in marriage and pay a rich dowry. The Patels of Piphit of UP approached Mr. Bomanbhai, the richest man in the region. The marriage was a farce, because Mrs. Patel was an ugly and illiterate woman. The Gorka terrorist activities increased, in fact. Sai thought the country was coming apart at the seams. The judge Mr. Patel appeared for a test for his Civil Service in London. The examiner asked him only the question:
Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss as a Post-Modern Novel
27
Could he tell them how a stream train worked? But the candidate did not answer. Still the British wanted to Indianise the Civil Service and helped Patel as the last birth. Mr. Patel was very happy. So he sent a telegram to his people at home. He had written "Result unequivocal." (P.118) The fun and irony is that no Indian could understand the meaning of the expressIon. Only a British officer explained it as positive. Biju's life in the USA is one of the absurd or ultra modern. See a conversation related to him: "Biju! Hey man." It was Saeed Saeed oddly wearing a white kurta pajama with sunglasses, gold chain, and platform shoes, his dreadlocks tied in a ponytail. He had left the banana Republic. "My boss, I swear he keep grabbing my ass. Anyway," he continued, "1 got married." "You're married?" "That's it, man." "Who did you marry???" "Toys." "Toys?" "Toys." (P.121) Sai and Gyan loved each other without understanding their destiny. So they played the game of courtship, reaching, retreating, teasing and fleeing. "Kiss me!" he pleaded. "No," she said, delighted and terrified. Just a week or two later, they were shameless as beggars, pleading for mor~. "Nose?" he kissed it. Eyes?" Eyes. (P.125) Post-modern novel depicts dislocation as one of the major themes. The following may be sited: Gyan was 20 and Sai 16, and at the beginning they had not paid very much attention to the events on the hillside, the new posters in the market referring to old discontents, the slogans scratched and painted on the side of Govt office and shops. They read. "We are stateless." "It is better to die than live as slaves," "We are constitutionally tortured. Return our land from Bengal." (P.126) Later Biju works with an Indian owner at Brigittie Hotel. Here we find multicultural life. See the following: "Marilyn. Blown up photograph of Marilyn Monroe on the wall, Indian owper
28
Kiran Desai's The Inheritnnceofloss as a Post-Modern Novel
at the desk! The owner was on the speakerphone. "Rajnibhai, Kern chho!" "What?" "l~njnibhni?" "Who aez these?" Very Indian-tryingto-be-American accent. "Kern chho? Saaru chho? Teme samjo Chho?" "WHAT?" "Don't speak Gujarati, sir?" "No.""You are Gujarati, no?" "No." "But your name is Gujarati?" "Who are you?!!" "You are not Gujarati?" "Who are you?!!" "AT & T, sir, offering special rates to India." "Don't know anyone in India." "Don't know anyone??? You must have some relative?" "Yeah," American accent growing more pronounced, "but I don't taaalt to my relative ... " Shocked silence. "Don't taIt to your relative?" Then, "We are offering forty-seven cents per minute." "Vhaat deeference does that make? I have aalready taald you?" he spoke s low as if to an idiot, "no taleephone caals to Eeendya." "Veea Kampala, Uganda, Teepton, England, and Roanoke state of Vaergeenia! One time I went to Eeendya and, laet me tell you, you canaat pay me to go to that caantreey again." (P.138) Gyan and Sai's love and romance continued. But the political turmoil continued too. The colonial thoughts of the old flare up often in the novel. For example, how Hilary had an edge upon Tensing for "me first idea in climbing the Mt. Everest" is shown on page no 155. The Nepalese problem surfaces increasingly. For example, they say: In 1947, brothers and sisters, the British left granting India her freedom, granting the Muslims Pakistan, granting special provisions for the SC and ST, leaving everything taken care of, brothers and sisters .... (P.158) In another context: "Here we are eighty percent of the population, ninety tea gardens in the district but is even one Nepali-owned?" asked the man. "No." "Can our children learn out language in school?" "No." "Can we compete for jobs when they have already been promised to others?" "No." (P.159) Nimi, the wife of Patel suffers like anything. It is said both degraded each other. "She had fallen out of life altogether."(P.I72). It is g,1id of liie's liltIL> irony, "Sai ,1t Cho Oyu also sat contemplating
Kiran Desai's The Inheritance a/Loss as a Post-Modern Novel
29
desire, fury and stupidity." On the other hand, "Why should he not betray Sai?" thought Gyan. This was when their life together was not yet in the track. Biju's life was not so happy in America. In fact, in a context he had decided to go back to India. Now he had a small accident in the hotel of Harish-Harry. The latter, however, does not pay any attention. Later he wishes to go back home. But he receives a letter from his father to the effect that: "Stay there. Make money: Don't come backhere."(P.191) Kiran Desai explains how Indians' life in the hill area goes on. One day the judge met his friend Bose and had a merry dinner. Gorka terrorists took control of all the public institutions in some of the north eastern hill states. Mr. Iype, an acquaintance of Biju speaks of Gorka terrorism in India. Now Biju decides to go back. This is depicted very beautifully in chapter Thirty-Six. In the hill states people have no transport and communication. In a way, Gyan rejects Sai, because he was a Nepali. The incidents of horror as that an Indian had to abide by Nepali feelings flare up. If he does not abide it his life is worse. If he abides it he faces another kind of problem. Still Biju makes his point to return to India. His father, the established cook, gets a bloody situation. The Judge beats him. The readers feel that the cook might not survive as the judge beats and due to cook's own feelings of frustration, for he has already felt that his son is no more. The trouble was mainly for the reason that the cook did jot care for the dog Mutt which was missing. The irony is that Biju lands at Dum, Dum Airport, Calcutta. He hires a vehicle with great risk. When the cook is desperate his son appears there. Sai who herself missed her lover Gyan witnesses the father and son's embrace in the golden light of the Kanchenjunga of the Himalayas. The novel reads well. The Judge-Sai relationship reminds me Eustacia Vye's relation whith her grandpa at Mistover Nap in Egdon Heath. The characters the cook and his son remind us Sudhamoy and his son Suranjan in Taslima Nasrin's novel Lnjjn (Shame). The whole setting or locale still like Hardy's Egdon Heath appears to be a character in the backdrop of the Himalaya and Gorka terrorism.
30
Kiran Desai's The Inheritance ofLo~s as a Post-Modern Novel
Kiran Desai's language is like thaI of stream of consciousness language - full of fragments, ellipses, slashes, words as sentences, pidgin and the like. The use of Hindi words is there. For example: Kiki De ('osta's recipe column: marvels with potatoes. Tasty treat with meat. Noodles with doodles and doodles of sauce and codless and oodles of cheese. (P.114) Or the expression: "You GO, gurlll! (p.149). So Kiran Desai's Thl' inheritance of Loss reads like a post-modern novel. References
1.
Pilla: A Sebastian Dravyam, Post-Modernism: An Introduction, Tiruchirapalli: Theresea Publications, 1991, p.l2.
2.
All the textual references are from Kiran Desai's novel The Illlzeritance of Loss, New Delhi: Penguin, 2005.
DOD
CRISIS OF IDENTITY IN ANITA DESAI'S BYE-BYE, BLACK BIRD - Dr. Basavaraj Naikar
Anita Desai is one of the very perceptive women writers of India. In almost all of her novels she has tried to depict the existentialist dilemma of the modern man with a microscopic concentration and lyrical attitude. Bye-Bye, Black Bird (1971) delilleates the predicament of Indian immigrants in England as reflected by their agonizing contention with the problems of acclimatization or adjustment brought about by displacement. It images the movements in the consciousness of each of its major characters - Dev, Adit and Sarah - as each of them confronts a crisis of identity caused by their existential exposure to situations which develop in spite of themselves. The novel, significantly, has been described by the author in an interview with Atma Ram that of all her novels it is "most rooted in experience and the least literary inderivation,"i which explains its being charged with a certain intensity of feeling that may be ascribed to her not having distanced herself from what is projected. The novel opens with the arrival of Dev, a Bengali youth seeking admission into the London School of Economics, for higher studies in England. To support himself he tries to get a job and after repeated failures, which are extremely frustrating, he manages to get the job
32
Crisi<, oJ Identity in Anita Desai's Bye-Bye, Black Bird
of a salesman in a bookshop. Dev's humiliating experiences in London turn him into an Anglophone -experiences like a pedlar's refusal even to tell him the price of a Russian icon stating" oh very much. I wouldn't evell name the price to you," 2 ostensibly under the under the impres~lon that he is too poor an Indian to be able to afford it. Further, he finds it intolerable to be insulted and called openly 'wags' and Macaulay's bastards' and to be discriminated against as reflected in the signboards of the lavatories at the London Docks, viz., "Ladies," "Gents" and "Asiatics" (P.19). Dev experiences a kind of culture shock and tells Adit, "1 wouldn't live in a country where I WdS insulted and unwanted"(P.18). He is depressed by the climate of England and declares: "You must be masochists to live in this climate" (P.61). He has a traumatic experience when he travels by the 'tube', finding himself virtually suffocated inside the Clapham underground railway station: He descends, deeper and deeper into the whitetiled bowels of Clapham tube station ... The menacing slither of escalades strike panic into a speechless Dev as he is swept down with an awful sensation of being taken where he does not want to go. Down, down and further down -like Alice falling, falling down the rabbit hole, like a Kafka stranger wandering through the dark labyrinth of a prison ... Dev is swamped inkily, with a great dread of being caught, stuck in the underground by some accident, some collapse, and being slowly suffocated to a worm's death, never to emerge into freshness and light. (Pp.63-64) Furthermore, he is unnerved by the silence and seeming emptiness of the houses and streets of London as he cannot understand "the English habit of keeping all doors and windows tightly shut... of guarding their privacy as they guarded their tongues from speaking and their throats from catching cold ... " (P.70). Resenting the snobbery of the English, Dev denounces the obsequious attitude of the Indian immigrants, who bear all the insu Its and affronts to their self-respect just to stay on in England.
Crisis of Identity in Anita Desai's Bye-Bye, Black Bird
33
He calls his friend, Adit, a "Boot-licking toady, spineless imperialistlover," (P.21) ignoring Adit's protestations of his being happy in England: I love it here, I'm so happy here I hardl y notice the few drawbacks ... I like going into the local for a pint on my way to Sarah ... I like the Covent Garden Opera House - it has a chandelier like a hive of fireflies; when I stand under it, I feel like a millionaire ... I like the freedom a man has here, economic freedom; social freedom; I like reading the posters in the tube .... (P.19-20) Significantly, as Dev starts wandering in London like a tourist, he begins to shed his prejudices and inhibitions when he learns to appreciate the brighter aspects of the English scene and life: And so he walks the streets and parks of the city, grateful for its daffodil patches of sunshine, loathing its sooty, sudden dampness ... He is intoxicated to think that of all the long programmes of music, theatre, cinema and art exhibitions, he can choose any to go to any day at all ... It is a strange' summer in which he is the bewildered alien, the charmed observer, the outraged outsider, and thrilled sight-seer all at once and in succession. (Pp.94-96) The change that occurs in Dev, however gradual, confronts him with what is essentially an existential choice. He has to decide whether he should stay on in England or return to his native country, which will not be easy, since he is affected with schizophrenia to which all Indians abroad are prone, according to him: To Adit he explains glibly, that the street" of London are an education so rich that he can't possibly cut it short by entering the stuffy halls of some ancient college. It is partly the reason. The other part is something he cannot explain, e\'en to himself, for
14
Crisis of Identity in Anita Desai's Bye-Bye, Black Bird it is only a tumult inside him, a growing bewilderment, a kind of schizophrenia that wakes him in the middle of the night and shadows him by day, driving him along on endless tramps in all weathers while he wonders he should stay or go back. In this growing uncertainty he feels the divisions within himself divided further, and then re-divided once more ... He is too excited, or agitated, a condition to hold the weighing scales with a steady hand and see whether his pleasures outweigh his disappointment or vice versa. There are days in which the life of an alien appears enthrallingly rich and beautiful to him, and that of a homebody too dull, too stale to return to ever. Then he hears al word in the tube or notices an expression on an English face that overturns his latest decision and, drawing himself together, he feels he can never bear to be the unwanted immigrant but must return to his own land, however abject and dull, where he has at least, a place in the sun, security, status and freedom. (Pp.96-97)
It is the yearning for 'a place in the sun' that stems from the feeling of being rootless, which Dev like any other immigrant would feel. Dev overcomes it by regarding himself as an ambassador out to show "these damn imperialists with their lost colonies complex that we are free people now, with our own personalities that this veneer of an English education has not obscured, and not afraid to match ours with theirs." (P.139-140). "I am here, ... "he says, "to 1I1terpret my coming to them, to conquer England as they once conquered India, to show them, to show them," (P.140) which though smacking of braggadocio, suggests his having made up his Inind not to return to India. He even indulges in a kind of wishful thinking:
Let history turn the tables now. Let the Indian traders come to England -- the Sikhs and Sindhis
Crisis of Identity in Anita Desai's Bye-Bye, Black Bird with their brass elephants and boxes of spice and tea. Let them take over the city, to begin with -let them move into Cheapside and Leadenhall and Comhill. Let them move into Threadheedle Street and take over the Bank, the Royal Exchange and Guildhall, then let them spread over the country ... let them build their forts along the coast, in Brighton and Bristol and Bath ... Let our army come across ... Let us abolish the British Railway! Let us abolish the British Public schools. Down with Eton, Harrow and all that bunkum: Let us replace Latin and Greek with the study of Sanskrit classics and Punjabi swear words ... Let all British women take to the graceful sari and all British men to the noble dhoti... .(P.140) Dov's wild, wishful thinking is suggestive of his desperate need to rationalize his decision not to leave England despite his bemg treated as an unwanted man, which may in part be attributed to the hedonistic streak in him as is endorsed by his own admission: All I want is well, yes, a good time. Not to return to India, not to marry and breed, go to office again but-to know a little freedom to indulge in a little adventure, to know, to know. (P.140) In contrast to Dev, Adit, who has been an ardent Anglophile and who has married an English girl, begins to feel nostalgic for his homeland occasioned by the visit of his in-laws, the Roscommon Jameses, which was "marred by tactlessness, by inane misunderstandings, by loud underlining of the basic disharmony of the situation" (P.l90). Fttrther, the outbreak of Indo-Pak war seems to have kindled his innate sense of patriotism making him want to fight for his country in its hour of peril. He even longs for the Indian landscapes, in comparison with which the English ones appear to him anaemic: The long, lingering twilight of the English summer trembling over the garden had seemed to him like
36
Crisis of Identity in Anita Desai's Bye-Bye, Black Bird an invalid stricken with anaemia, had aroused in him a sudden clamour, like a child's tantrum, to see again an Indian sunset, its wild conflagration, rose and orange, flamingo pink and lemon, scattering into a million sparks in the night sky" (P.199).
Moreover: When he had leaned over the bridge and gazed down at the river Test and laughed at the downy cygnets following their regal parent under the silver leaved willows, the insane spectacles on his eyes had actually shown him the rivers of India the shameful little Jumna, so unworthy of its mythical glory, the mud and slush of the Ganges with its temples and yogis, its jackals and alligators lining the banks; the murderous Mahanandi, each year going berserk like an elephant, trampling those, who sought to pacify it, in riverside temples, with marigolds and oil lamps; the uncivilized, mosquito-ridden Brahmaputra swirling through the jungles, the five silver fingers of Punjab's rivers raking the scorched earth .. , He saw them shrivelled, each summer, despairing gutters of mud stranded in vast beds of sand about which women with empty pots and cattle with lolling tongues stood in accusing silence. He saw them as they were after the monsoon each year, breaking their banks, frenziedly swamping fields in which crops had stood hopefully, villages in which men and .cattle quietly drowned together. (P.202) Adit soon finds his nostalgia becoming" an illness and ache" with the result that he starts feeling stifled. He unburdens himself to his friend Samar, telling him: Sometimes it stifles me -- this business of always hangin~ together with people like ourselves, all
Crisis of Identity in Anita Desai's Bye Bye, Black Bird
37
wearing the label Indian Immigrant, never daring to try and make contact outside this circle. This burrowing about these grisly side streets, looking for Indian- shops and Indian restaurants ... It's so stifling - all the time, all the damned time being aware of who one is and where one is. God, I am fed up!. (P.202) What Adit experiences is of the nature of an epiphanic revelation of his true condition, which makes him disenchanted with his adopted country. He moves about London restlessly like a lost soul in a kind of morbid search" for something that would dissol ve his feeling of being "a stranger, a non-believer." He simply could not recognize this workaday, weary London as his once golden Mecca. He took to tramping it after office hours in a kind of morbid search ... He visited all his favourite places and could recognize none of them. Then he went into all the pubs he had ever known, one by one, and in each was hunted out by the black sensation of not belonging. It was as though in the one summer that night that he had been away, London had been blitzed and he returned to find the grey ash of an unclear war fallen from the skies already frosted with winter's breath, and the whole city shrouded with it ... Voices, laughter ringing ou t in the glittering white caves of the tube stations had a sinister ring to them, profane and conspiratorial, like the laughter and voices of enemies and schemers. (P.218) It is not surprising that he shouts at his English wife Sarah, accusing her of xenophobia, when she, to please him, dons a sari and a gold necklace on the occasion of their wedding anniversary, jokingly comparing herself to "a Christmas tree":
You look like a Christmas tree: I suppose all Indian women look like Christmas trees to you - or
38
Crisis of Identity in Anita Desai's Bye-Bye, Black Bird perhaps like clowns, because they wear saris and jewellery. You - You - English people and your xenophobia: You'll never accept anything but your own drab, dingy standard and your dull, boring ways. Anything else looks clownish to you, laughable .... (P.219)
Adit's growing disgust with the English ways assumes such proportions as to make him decide to return to India with Sarah, who is expecting her first child. Adit's decision is symptomatic of existential despair, which had he stayed on in England would have plunged him into darkness. Though Sarah does not experience any slIch existential despair as Adit does, she is confronted with an identity crisis as is brought out by her musings: Who was she-Mrs. Sen, who had long been married in a red and gold Benares brocade sari one morning, bronzed day in September, or Mrs Sen. the Head's secretary, who sent out the bills and took in the cheques, kept order in the school and was known for her efficiency? Both these creatures are frauds, each had a large, shadowed element of charade about it. When she briskly dealt with letters and bills in her room under the stairs, she felt an imposter, but, equally, she was playing a part when she tapped her fingers or grolmd spices for a curry she did not care to eat. She had so little command over these two charades she played each day, one in the morning at the school and one in the evening at home, that she could not even tell how sincerely she played one role or other. They wore roles -- when she was not playing them, she was nobody - her face was only a mask, her body only a costume, she wondered if Sarah had any existence at all and then she wondered with great sadness, if she would ever be allowed to step off the stage, leave the thea tre and enter the real worldwhether English or Indian, she did not care, she wanted only its sincerity, its truth. (P.214)
Crisis of Identity in Anita Desai's Bye-Bye, Black Bird
39
Significantly, Sara's awareness of her ambiguity or role playing making her engagement with life does not seem to have brought about any emotional crises in her, since she seeks truth, not any certitude, for coming to terms with life. It is ironic that Adit, who has "found himself a pleasant groove to fit into, with his English wife and the education that had, he so repeatedly told them, brought him up to love and understand England"(P.214) should leave England for good, while Dev who has found everything English obnoxious should decide to stay on. As Dev, who has come to see off Adit and Sarah, watches the train carrying them leaves Waterloo Station, he wonders "what had made them exchange the garments of visitor and exile" (P.220), since "if plans and prophesies had any strength in them at all, it would have been steaming out on the train to catch the boat back to India.(P.38)
The cases of Adit and Dev exemplify the different responses that at country evokes in its immigrants, which are essentially psychological in that they are related to their attempts at acclimatization involving the play .of the autochthon in their lives, as the author poetically suggests: ... somewhere, at some point that summer, England's green and gold fingers had let go of Adit and clutched at Dev instead. England had let Adit drop and fall away as if she had done with her and caught and enmeshed his friend Dev .... (P.261) Though the 'action' in the novel mainly concerns Dev, Adit and Sarah, it features a few other characters - Indian and English who, though largely undeveloped, help reinforce its significance through their interaction with the main characters as well as with one another. They are Samar, Bella, Mala, Jasbir, Swami and Krishnamurthy among Indians and Emma Moffitt, RoscommonJames, Christine Longford and the Millers among the English, whose roles are skillfully intertwined with those of Adit, Dev and Sarah, so as to present a fascinating scenario marked by a crisscrossing of emotional responses to the developing action invol"ing them.
40
Crisis of Identity in Anita Desai's Bye-Bye, Black Bird
[n juxtaposing Adit's decision to leave England with that of Dev to stay on, the novel brings out the extraordinary configurations of psychic and social forces, which save them from a gnomic plunge into darkness. References
Desai, Anita, The Novelist who writes for Herself, The Journal of Indian Writing in English, July 1977, p. 40. 2. Desai, Anita, Bye-Bye, Blackbird, Delhi: Hind Pocket Books, 1971, 1.
p.80. (All the subsequent page references are to this edition.)
DOD
MINGLING OF THE THEMES OF FEAR, HUNGER, DESPAIR AND HOPE IN KAMALA MARKANDAYA'S NOVEL NECTAR IN A SIEVE - Manjari /hunjhunwala
In the land, however, where all depends on and rice, life can become relentlessly hard: fate has not yet finished with Rukmini and her children. But the family's loyalty and spirit is never broken, and still finds its own rewards. Nectar in a Sieve (1954) by Kamala Markandaya has been described as genuine novel of rural India, delineating the miserable plights of the landless farmers along with their trials and tribulations. The novel has also been described as an 'epic' of rural India. Besides, there is a perfect balance between rural reality and the disciplined urbanity in the art of Kamala Markandaya. This first novel of her, has been compared with Pearl Buck's The Good Earth. The novelist takes the reader to the heart of South India-or Tamilnadu - a village where life has apparently not changed for a thousand years. Now modem industries intrude in shape of tannery and consequences are horrible especially for Rukmini and Nathan and their children. K.R.S. Iyengflr in his book Indian Writing in English diverts our attention to.the mingling of themes of fear, hunger, death and hope in following manner:
42 Mingling of the Themes of Fear, Hunger, Despair and Hope ...
Markandaya writes that fear, hunger and despair are the constant companions of the peasant-" fear of the dark future; fear of the sharpness of hunger; fear of the blackness of death." What 'nectar' was to be churned out of the muddied ocean of poverty and misery? Where was the cure for the advancing disease of overpopulation or the hopeless wailing of the helpless? Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve, And hope without an object cannot live. But the heart that is tempered in the flames of love and faith, of suffering and sacrifice, will not easily accept defeat.
Nectar in a Sieve is thus "a passionate cry of protest against social injustice,,2 and is "a portrayal of patience in the face of suffering, of labour even when there is no hope.,,3 The novel is a tale of perpetual exploitation and picturization of typical Indian trait of resignation amidst all distresses. The novelist has forcefully depicted the conflict arising out of economic disparities and she also laments 'lack of protest', on the part of sufferers: Rukmini, Nathan and entire village folk. They all just surrender themselves to the surrounding situations due to fear merely. Ironically the first lesson of the protest is delivered by Dr. Kenny who tells Rukmini: I've told you before ... you must cry if you want help. It is no use whatsoever in to suffer in silence. Who will succour the drowning man if he does not clamour for his life? .(113) Kenny's main function in the novel is thus to argue and question whether one should 'bend like the grass'; he feels Rukmini ought to combat rather than passively accept. The novel appears to have been written with a clear idea and with certain concerned intentions in mind which can be divided in primary and secondary. The primary concern is to highlight the prevailing htmger in the village which also is one of the main themes of the novel. Rukmini and Nathan are seen as Adam and Eve who are pitted against the forces of hunger, starvation and death.
Mingling of the Themes of Fear, Hunger, Despair and Hope ... 43 Rukmini is fourth daughter of a village headman who has already become a bankrupt in marrying her three elder daughters. The Novelist depicts her as "a girl without beauty and without dowry". (2) It was a big task to find a match for such a girl. "Perhaps that is why they could not find me a rich husband, and married me to a tenant farmer who was poor in everything ... and also a match below her."(2) Somehow she is married to Nathan at the age of twelve. Nathan has been depicted as "poor in everything except love and care for his wi~."(2) Nathan has no land of his own but Rukmini was still satisfied. The first part of her happy married life brings a bit of prosperity; Nathan even hopes to own some day the land he tillp.d. His wife also reconciles to her lot and lives devotedly with her husband in the small hut built by her husband. "My heart sang and my feet were light as I went about my work, getting up at sunrise and going to sleep content. Peace and quiet were ours ... There was food in plenty for two people and we ate well." (7) She bears him children First one is daughter followed by many children. Initially they were never dissatisfied. Whatever Nathan earned Rukmini saves a small part of it for the marriage of Ira, their eldest daughter. Finally they marry her with great pomp and show. After three years they are suddenly visited by their son-in-law and daughter. The former informs them that their daughter is unable to bear a child so he has to abandon her and leaves. Rukmini again agrees with her son-in-law and without any utter protest she keeps Ira with her. Nathan appears to agree with Ira's husband and says: "I do not blame them ... He is justified, for a man needs children. He has been patient." (50) Hereafter problems crop up very fast. Rukmini and Nathan cannot live as prosperously as before. One by one they relinquish every comfort they have. They were to feed six children and could no longer afford to eat what they grew. As it was, we were going short of many things. We no longer had milk in the house, except for the younger child; curds and butter were beyond our means except bn rare occasions." (24) Moreover, natural disasters and coming of factories in the village bring chaos in their lives. The flood and famine completely shatter Rukmini's household. The family is without food for number of days. Their children are compelled to pick food from here and there. Hunger, U
44 Mingling of the Themes of Fear, Hunger, Despair and Hope ... thus, is one of the main themes of Nectar in a Sieve which brings in human degradation. Events of Stealing and blackmailing become common. Rukmini becomes victim of Kunti when latter cunningly threats former to unveil the secret affair between her and Dr. Kenny if she denies giving her a handful of rice. One of the sons of Rukmini and Nathan becomes thief due to his inability to endure the pangs of hunger. Pathetic enough, Ira out of her helplessness sells her body to feed her younger brother. A.V. Krishna Rao comments truly in the context: "Immoral trafficking, moral debasement and vices creep in on account of hunger. It is a classic novel of hunger." On the other hand landlords, too, at the same time raise their heads to devour poor people. During the famine and flood they force the villagers to pay their dues back. They dismiss those tenants who fail to clear the dues. Rukmini and Nathan sell their utensils to pay the rent. Rukmini even sells her bridal sari to meet the debts. The landlord has decided to sell off the lands to tannery. The tannery has been described" as a change that now came into my life, into all our lives, blasting its way into our village, seemed wrought in the twinkling of an eye." (25) What will happen to the villagers! Even the hut of Rukmini and Nathan is to be taken away by the tannery people where they have lived so far and cherished their dreams. Rukmini tells about her fear which actually turns out to be true: Somehow I had always felt that tannery would eventually be our undoing. I had known it since the day the cart had come with their loads of bricks and noisy dusty men, staining the clear soft greens that had once coloured our village and cleaving its cool silences with clamour. Since then it had spread like weeds in an untended garden, strangling whatever life grew in its way. It had changed the face of our village beyond recognition and altered the lives of its inhabitants in a myriad ways. (P.134) Yet, Rukmini refuses to agree with those villagers who saw immediate economic gain in the influx of the tannery workers. She says:
Mingling of the Themes of Fear, Hunger, Despair and Hope ... 45 They may live in our midst but 1 can never accept them for they lay their hands upon us and we are all turned from tilling to barter, and, hoard our silver since w e cannot spend it, and see our children go without food that their children gorge ... . (P.28)
Though her friends, Kali and Janaki 'threw their past away with both hands' (P .29) she tries to protect her treasure of past. Yet circumstances beyond Rukmini's control force her to sway with the crowd. In her family there grows a permanent rift between the sons and the parents who do not understand their demand of higher wages. Raja dies fighting with hunger and despair and tannery is also responsible for Kunthi's degradation. Nevertheless, Rukmini says: "there is no option but to accept the change." This is again telling of their resignation to the situation and destiny. Rukmini helplessly speaks: Tannery or not, the land might have been taken from us. It had never belonged to us. We've never prospered to the extent where we could buy and Nathan himself, the son of a landless man, had inherited noting. (P.134) Huts around the fields are demolished for the building of a tanning factory. The well paid tannery workers eve'1tually pose serious economic problems for the whole village. The tannery corrodes both the material and moral prosperity of the people. There follows exodus when they are forced to leave the village in search of their son. Rukmini was throughout hopeful but for the first time pessimism creeps into her. "While there was land there was hope. Nothing now, nothing whatever."(P.135) The novelist has made a distinction between an ordinary man as a victim of nature and as a victim of man-made situations. As a victim of nature peasants have some chance of retaining their identity as Rukmini spells it out in thus: "while there was land, there was hope."(P.135) But ordinary man as a \·ictim of ordinary modern society is confronted by forces more intimidating because they are unfamiliar and outside his
46 Mingling of the Themes of Fear, Hunger, Despair and Hope ... comprehension. Therefore, the setting up of a tannery in Rukmini's village has disturbed: The sleeping sou them village' and it gradually has lost it charm ... even the birds have forgotten to say or else their calls are lost to us ... now birds come no more except crows and kites. (P. 69) The tannery is indeed the root cause of destruction of Rukmini's family as well as her village. They are detached from the land they had been attached to for generations. A.V. Krishna Raocomments: "Nathan and Rukmini are representatives of thousands of uprooted peasants under an industrial economy." The advent of the tannery brings in sordidness, loss of traditional values, social degradation and urbanization. Throughout Rukmini's narrative the pervasive mood of peasants' fatalism expressed in statements as "blame the wind and the rain and the sun and the earth ... they are the culprits."(120) The novel has truly presented the dilemma of the peasants who deprived of their way of life are defenseless and without identity against the calling of industrialization. Markandeya writes: So they were reconciled and threw the past away with both hands that they might be the readier to grasp the present, while"I stood in pain, envying such easy reconciliation and.clutching in my own two hands the memory of the past, and accounting it a treasure. (29) However the peasant-couple who embody Indian Philosophical concept and retain their unquestioned faith in God and Kanna simply conveys a message to move forward, to go on relentlessly in one's pursuit Irrespective of what the truits of the labour are. Nathan is a Karma .\fOgl who having belit'ved in karma does his duty without caring for the rewards and without any protest and it is this faith that sustains them even when blows after blows of misfortune fall on them. As he thinks that" ... we ,He taught to bear our sorrows in silence, clnd all this is so that llll' sllulmay be cleansed."( 114) Thus ,1n altermg pattern of hope and lear h,1s been wo\ ell into the plot 01
Mingling of the Theme'> of Fear, Hunger, Despair and Hope ... -1-7 the novel and in fact the life consists of both. Thus the disappointment only is followed by hope and protest is altogether lacking. K.R.S. Iyengar has beautifully commented on this aspect of Indian rural life: Calm after storm, spring after winter-such is the unending cycle. One must hope, and one must persevere even if one is engaged only in trying to discover Nectar in a Sieve"! Their spirits remain alive in spite of the ill-treatment in the temple in the city, the loss of money and bundles and other initial disappointments, also in not finding their son and daughter's house. They do not fail to realize that life in city is much more terrible than they have ever imagined. The struggle for existence there is even more harrowing in the city than what they had faced in their village. 'Each night (in the city) was a struggle, fiercer now that we were daily engaged in it.'(166) Their hard-earned money was also stolen. They did not know where to go without a single anna in their pocket. "Where can he go? Wide, wide world, but as narrow as the coins in your hand. Like a tethered goat, so far and no farther. Only money can make the rope stretch, only money."(167) Unable to bear both hunger and the burden of hard labour in the quarry, Nathan dies. The loss is unbearable to Rukmini as she is now without land, home and her husband. Rukmini is aware of her bleak destiny, but the oppressiveness of the situation does not deaden her at all. In the face of all her trials, however, Rukmini does not lose her courage. Economically among the downtrodden, and physically weak, she could still say: Want is our companion from birth to death, familiar as the seasons of the earth ... What profit to bewail that has always been and cannot change? (113) Her endurance, however, becomes her forte, and hope, her most important value. Altogether, the present novel is a portrayal of patience in the face of suffering, of labour even when there is no hope. She brings back the leper child Puli, who had helped them in the city. The only course left to Rukmini is to return to her village.
48 Mingling ofthe Themes of Fear, Hunger, Dpspair and Hope .. Rukmini's son Selvam, who assures her that things will be 'managed', starts working for the English doctor Kenny and she lives with her daughter Ira and they all begin to rebuild their fortunes on the ruins of the old. A.V. Krishna Rao opines: Kamala Markandaya lets her character grow into their society, participate at depth in its changes and transformation and after the initial recoil and withdrawal from the society, make them rehlrn and rehabilitate themselves within its more permanent and enduring values and solaces. Thus, all the protagonists in the novel represent actual rural Indian people whose lives are continually exposed to scorching heat of hunger, despair, fear, deprivation yet they are in search of a drop of nectar in a sieve. Books Cited Markandaya Kamala, Nectar in a Sieve, Mumbai: Jaico Publishing House, 1956. (All the quotations from the novel refer to this edition.) Iyengar, K.R.S., Indian Writing In English, New Delhi: Sterling Publishers Pvt. Ltd., 1985. Rao & Raghavann, The Indo-Anglian Novel and the Changing Tradition, Maysore, 1972. Chatterjee, Chandra, The World Within: A Study of Novels in English by Indian Women, 1950-1980, New Delhi: Radha Publications, 1996.
000
BHARATI MUKHERJEE AS A DIASPORIC WRITER - Dinesh B. Chaudhary
Bharati Mukherjee is one of the major novelists of Indian Diaspora who have achieved fortunate positions within a comparatively short creative period. She contributes of her to the field of fiction writing with a special emphasis on diasporic experience her work. She was born on July 27,1940, to an uppermiddle class Hindu Brahmin family in Calcutta, India. In 1947, her father was given a job in England and he brought his family to live there until 1951, which gave Mukherjee an opportunity to develop and perfect her English language skills. Mukherjee earned a B.A. with honours from the University of Calcutta in 1959. She and her family then moved to Baroda, India, where she studied for her Master's Degree in English and Ancient Indian Culture, which she acquired in 1961. Having planned to be a writer since childhood, Mukherjee went to the University of Iowa in 1961 to attend the prestigious Writer's Workshop. She planned to study there to earn her Master's of Fine Arts, then return to India to marry a bridegroom of her father's choosing in her class and caste. Howe\,er, il.lunch break on September 19, 1963, changed that plan, transferring Mukherjee into a split world, a transient with loyalties to two cultures. She impulsively married Clark Blaise, a Canadian writer, in a lawyer's office above a coffee shop after only
50
Bharati Mukherjee as a Diasporic Writer
two weeks of courtship. She received her M.F.A. that same year, then went on to earn her Ph.D. in English and comparative literature from the University of Iowa in 1969. In 1968, Mukherjee immigrated to Canada with her husband and became a naturalized citizen in 1972. Her 14 years in Canada were some of the hardest of her life, as she found herself discriminated against and treated, as she says, as a member of the "visible minority." She has spoken in many interviews of her difficult life in Canada, a country that she sees as hostile to its immigrants and one that opposes the concept of cultural assimilation. Although those years were challenging, Mukherjee was able to write her first two novels, The Tiger's Daughter (1971) and Wife (1975), while working up to professorial status at McGill University in Montreal. Ouring those years she also collected many of the sentiments found in her first collection of short stories, Darkness (1985), a collection that in many sections reflects her mood of cultural separation while living in Canada.
Finally fed up with Canada, Mukherjee and her family moved to the United States in 1980, where she was sworn in as a permanent U.s. resident. Continuing to write, in 1986 she was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts grant. After holding "everal posts at various colleges and universities, she ultimately settled in 1989 at the University of California-Berkeley. Because of the distinctly different experiences she has had throughout life, she has been described as a writer who has lived through several phases of life. First, as a colonial, then National subject in India. She then led a life of exile as a post-colonial Indian in Canada. Finally, she shifted into a celebratory mode as an immigrant, then citizen, in the United States. She now fuses her several lives and backgrounds together with the intention of creating a "Oiasporic" literature. Bharati Mukherjee explains in her lucid and frank introduction that until Atlanta, she had thought of herself, in spite of a white husband and two assimilated sons, as an expatriate. In her Canadian experiences as well as fiction, she remarks: Expatriates, on the other hand, knew all too well who and what they were; and what foul fate had
Bharati Mukherjee as a Diasporic Writer
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befallen them. Like V.5. Naipaul, in whom I imagined a model, I tried to explore state-of-the-art expatriation. Like .Naipaul, I used a mordant and self-protective irony in describing my character's pain. Irony promised both detachment from, and superiority over, those well-bred post-Colonials much like myself, adrift in the new world, wondering if they would ever belong. If you have to wonder, if you keep looking for signs, if you wait- surrendering little bits of self every year, clutching the souvenirs of an ever-retreating past you'll never belong, anywhere.! Her main theme throughout her writing discusses the condition of Asian immigrants in North America, with particular attention to the changes taking place in South Asian women in a new world. While the characters in all her works are aware of the brutalities and violence that surround them and are often victimized by various forms of social oppression, she generally draws them as survivors. Mukherjee has been praised for her understated prose style and her ironic plot developments and witty observations. The Tiger's Daughter (1971) is a fictionalized story drawing from Mukherjee's own first years of marriage and her return home for a visit to a world unlike the one that lives in her memory. The protagonist, Tara Banerjee, returns to India after marrying an American and faces a different India than the one she remembers leaving. This first novel addresses Mukherjee'S personal difficulties of being caught between two worlds, homes and cultures and is an examination of whom she is and where she belongs. Similarly, Days and Nights in Calcutta, co-authored with her husband, is a shared account of the first trip the couple took to India together after being married. Each offers a different India through their separate journals, and ultimately, the two tell the tale of a relationship that faces the daily difficulties of cultural barriers that have been drawn and separate pasts that linger.
Mukherjee's second novel, Wife (1975), is a more distant story that sees Dimple, a young, naive Indian woman, trying to reconcile
52
Bharati Mukherjee as a Diasporic Writer
the Bengali ideal of the perfect, passive wife with the demands of her new American life. As a young woman who was raised to be passive, Dimple lacks the inner strength and resources it takes to cope in New York City as the young wife in an arranged marriage. Again in this novel, Mukherjee deals with the complications that come from being thrown between two worlds and the strength and courage it takes to survive and, ultimately, live. Wife was often dismissed because its heroine fails to make the transition from one world to another, and was often judged to be "weak." Although both of Mukherjee's first books weave complex tales, they lack the strength of storytelling that her later works are more successful at capturing.
Darkness (1985), her first collection of short stories, focuses on natives of South Asia who crave success and stability, but are burdened by their histories and face the difficulties of prejudice and misunderstanding. This collection was a transitional work for Mukherjee, who was reflecting back on her difficult years in Canada and cherishing the opportunity to establish herself in the United States. In 1988, Mukherjee had a major public breakthrough that lifted her into the top ranks of all writers. She was awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction for The Middleman and Other Stories (1988). In this collection, Mukherjee becomes a valuable middleman linking disparate worlds. She tells her tale~ from many perspectives, with a keen eye for the concept of sell within a larger society. She wrote this collection in a lighter, man celebratory tone, with characters that are adventurers and explorers rather than refugees and outcasts, and are a part of a new, changin~ America. Jasmine (1989), Mukherjee's most popularly read novel, wa~ generally received enthusiastically, but there was some criticisrr that it was too short and its plot too contrived to be a really successftL work of fiction. It is a novel that stems from an earlier short story from The Middleman and Other Stories and was expanded to a story of a young widow who uproots hersel.f from her life in India and reroots herself in search of a new life and the image of America. It is a story of dislocation and relocation as the title character continually sheds lives to move into other roles, moving further westward while
Bharati Mukherjee as a Diasporic Writer
53
constantly fleeing pieces of her past. In it, Mukherjee rejoices in the idea of assimilation and makes it clear that Jasmine needs to travel to America to make something significant of her life, because in the third world she faced only despair and loss. What Mukherjee hoped that people would read in the story is not only Jasmine's story and change, but also the story of a changing America. Mukherjee is currently a distinguished Professor of English at the University of California-Berkeley. Her husband, with whom she shares a "literary marriage," teaches at the University of Iowa and they have two sons together, Bart Anand and Bernard Sudhir. Mukherjee has established herself as a powerful member of the American literary scene, one whose most memorable works reflect her pride in her Indian heritage, but also her celebration of embracing America. As she said in an interview in the Massachusetts Review: The immigrants in my stories go through extreme transformations in America and at the same time they alter the country's appearance and psychological make-up. And so we are given a writer whose voice tells the tales of her own experiences to demonstrate the changing shape of Am er:ican rodety 1Bharati Mukherjee's novels and short stories express the wandering impulse of Indians, who, in their deliberate search for materially better life, migrate to the West and consequently face tension of adaptation and assimilation. Mukherjee is at her best in the depiction of cross-cultural conflicts and how her heroines take control over their destinies. Mukherjee does not impose readymade solution to the problems facing immigrant Asian women. She prefers showing them acquiring the power in order to control their fates. At times, they offer role model for several immigrant women. Fakrul Alam writes: Once literature begins to serve as a forum illuminating female experience, it can assist in humanizing and equilibrating the culture, value
54
Bharati Mukherjee as a Diasporic Writer system, which has served predominantly male interests. A literary work is capable of providing role models, instill a positive sense of feminine identity by portraying women who are self actualizing, whose identities are not dependant onmen.3
The Holder of the World can be read on several levels of interpretation. If on the one hand it is a diasporic novel, a feminist novel on the other, it is historical one, which negotiates a gap between the seventeenth century and the mid twentieth century. Having a cross cultural backdrop, it brings together a panoramic view of socio-cultural experiences of characters in India and America. It IS also a novel about the quest of the character in search of stability. The Holder of the World is story of Hannah Easton, an immigrant form America who come to India in seventeenth century and imbibed herself in its culture. Bharati Mukherjee'S narrations of The Middleman and Other Stories are weaved around Asian diaspora and even Mukherjee feels: Immigration from the Third World to this country is a metaphor for the process of a uprooting and rerooting. Or what my husband Clark Blaise in his book Resident Alien calls "unhousement" and "rehousement". 4 The point to be made is that "the immigrant is by choice, hospitable to the experience of the unknown, not frightened by it."s The experiences loneliness and friendlessness, which are well exploited as themes in The Wife's story and The Tenant. These stories reveal 'Diasporic experience' of women who are self actualizing. Quest for the definition of self and search for identity are the main features of these Indian women who are seen caught in the flux of tradition and modernity. Neither can the completely detach themselves from their post and nor do they have any certitude in the future. If on one hand these stories reflect the writers sense of isolation and emotional weakness, on the other there is sudden awakening definite decision. Their revolt against male domination
Bharati Mukherjee as a Diasporic Writer
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is both, "educative and creative."6Their identity is 'fluid identity', despite their best efforts to adapt to the new environment. A Wife's Story, The Tenant and The Management of Grief have protagonists who escape dangers of depersonalization and self-destruction. They have tremendous potential to discover hidden reserves of energy in them. The other stories of The Middleman are such as Loose Ends, Orbiting, Fighting for Rebound, Fathering, Danny Girls, and Buried
Lives. Bharati Mukherjee has paid indeed a special attention to the condition of Indian wdmen diaspora in North America. Her women characters lead lives of quite desperation but few of her heroines triumph over the threats they confront. Reviewing the works of Bharati Mukherjee, it may be suggested that diasporic experience provide thematic coherence in them.
References 1.
Mukherjee, Bharati, Darkness, New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1990, p.2.
2.
Carb, Alison B., An Interview with Bharati Mukherjee, Massachusetts Review 29, no. 4, 1988.p. 645.
3.
Alam, Fakrul, Bharati Mukherjee, New York: Twayne Publishers, 1996, p.45.
4.
Carb, Alison B., An Interview with Bharati Mukherjee, Massachusetts Review . 29, no. 4,1988,0.649.
5.
Lal, Malashiri, The Law of The Threshold Shirnla: Indian Institute of Advance Studies, 1993, p.153.
6.
Alam, Fakrul, Bltarati Mukherjee, New York: Twayne Publishers, 1996, p.48.
.
DOD
HUNGER AND DEGRADATION IN THE NOVELS OF KAMALA MARKANDAYA - Dr. Ram Sharma
Kamala Markandaya was genuinely concerned with the problems of rural India before independence. Among many ailments, hunger and degradation were the most torturing and disgusting. They were the greatest social concerns of India before freedom. In her various novels, she had dealt with several problems concerning various aspects of India like social, political, national and international in the form of the East-West Confrontation. References to human degradation could be found in almost all her novels. Her tragic vision found its best expression in her novels which she fiiled with her social concerns. She did it for the sake of human amelioration and betterment. "Kamala Markandaya's novels are generated by the tragic vision that finds in contemporary life a fruitful seed-bed for conflict."1 Kamala's first novel Nectar in a Sieve was fervent cry of protest against social injustice, hunger and degradation which were the common factors of countless villages in India before independence. The novel was a powerful presentation of patience in the face of suffering. It was also a glaring example of labour when there was no hope. The narrator Rukmani was married to Nathan at the age of twelve, he was a tenant farmer rich in nothing except in love.
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They sold their utensils, sarees, and other domestic things and suffered pa tiently. The problem of starvation sprang up when their children grew and there was not enough land to accommodate all. An English man established tannery in the village which ruined the peaceful atmosphere of the village on the name of progress and advancement. "Destructive in its side effects it indicates a new way of life.,,2 The tannery was growing up as a token of industrialisation and mechanisation, but for the vilagers it was a symbol of disaster and destruction Rukmani visualised. Another English man Dr. Kennington was introduced as a symbol of Western civilization. He was building a hospital for the sake of villagers. The tannery work was creating handicaps in the path of hospital building. Simple rural values were replaced by those of shoddy industrialisation. Nathan and Rukrnani felt one problem after another. Finally, they had to leave their land which they had formed for thirty years. They were on the verge of hunger and starvation. However, their faith in better times was firm and unbroken. Dr. Kenny was annoyed by Rukmani's stoic resignation to fate and times, he cried out. Their paddy was destroyed, they expected no rice till the next harvest and lived on salted fish, roots and leaves, the fruit of the prickly pear and small fish. Then there was drought, the paddy became as dryas a bone and Rukmani had to face bitter hunger. Kamala gave passionate pictures of hunger through Rukrnani. Kamala Markandaya gave a very impressive and accurate description of hunger. She had emphasized the three stages of itfirstly when its pain was increasingly sharp and gnawing, secondly, perpetually dull and sickening one, finally, when the vast emptiness pervaded and the pain ceased to be painful Markandaya must have felt on keeping a fast. Kamala Markandaya's description of hunger and pain were very poignant and impressive. Its effect on old people and children was the worst. The portrayal of hungry Kuti was simply superb. Kamala Markandaya must have observed hungry people in order to give such impressive descriptions. They were also journalistic and generalized. As she had st!lyed in England, she
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Hunger and Degradation in The Novels of Kamala ...
had not seen the harrowing scenes of hunger which affected Bhattacharya immensely. Hunger had its degrading effect on people; it drove Ira to prostitution and made Nathan 'as thin and dry as a hollow bamboo stick.'3 It took away poor Kuti's life and remained insatiated even after Nathan and Rukmani left the village. They went to the city and sought Murugan in vail and worked pathetically in the stone quarry. Markandaya painted from her backyard a guava tree which was reduced to a stump because of nature's ravages and human vandalism. Kamala's assets were that she was very realistic and authentic in the presenta tion of hunger and degradation. They were created not only by Nature but also by over-Iordism. Nathan and Rukmani faced cruelty caused by an unavoidable fate; Rukmanihad her stoic resignation. These poor peasants had to fight against an unjust social order. These problems of hunger and degradation were because of 'the inequalities in the whole structure of society. '4 Kamala Markandaya did not give ready-made solutions, but she was sure of better times to come. Kamala Markandaya presented the theme with all its facets and aspects. "Far more terrible than physical hunger is the negation of self-respect, that denies the basic right of dignity to a human being."s Farmers suffered from hunger but they suffered from a great degradation when they were turned oat of their own lands. They could eat roots or leaves or the fruit of the prickly pear in times of drought or flood, but when they were deprived of their rented lands, they suffered from the greatest degradation. They had hope, so long as they had land, Nathan and Rukmani felt highly degraded when they were turned out of their land. Kamala Markandaya presented the heart-felt degradation of Rukmani in the following words: This home my husband had built for me with his own hands in the time he was waiting for me; brought me to it, with a pride which I, used to better living, had so very nearly crushed. In it, we had
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lain together and our children had been born. This hut with all its memories was to be taken from us, for it stood on land that belonged to another. And the land itself by which we lived. It is a cruel thing. I thought, They do not know what they do to us. 6 Rukmani symbolised the feelings of a number of peasants who fell victims to hunger and degradation. She always felt that the establishment of tannery was responsible for their ultimate hunger and degradation. Rukmani and Nathan were compelled in the city to be stonebreakers in order to earn their bread. They suffered from a great degradation and disgrace when their daughter Ira was rejected by her husband because she was barren. They tolerated every kind of disgrace and degradation patiently and calmly. Old Granny died of starvation. Nature played a very important role for the hunger and degradation of poor peasants. She had her innate uncertainties and tricks of weather. Rukmani was constantly aware of the uncertainty of weather. Rukmani's fears came true when her son Kuti died of starvation and Nathan also died of over-work, exhaustion and starvation. Nalini had attacked them in the form of rains first resulting in floods. After some time, they had no rice to eat. They were forced to live on roots and leaves, the fruits of the prickly pear and plantains. Drought was the second from of nature's attack. Rukmani expressed her heart-felt sorrow in these words when human beings wandered here and there like wild animals in search of food and ate whatever rubbish they could get. Kamala Markandaya justified the title by making her readers realize the true meaning of hunger and starvation. Unlike other Indian - English novelists, she presented things authentically on the basis of her experiences. Actually, hunger and starvation led people to degradation. If immorality was due to poverty and hunger what would we caU it? According to Markandaya, it was not immorality, it was the question
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Hunger and Degradation in The Novels of Kamala ...
of the survival. Kunthi was forced to join prostitution because of poverty, she even blackmailed Rukmani and Nathan; Ira wanted to Protect her dying child by hook or crook, therefore, she became a prostitute. Our social system was responsible for all this humiliation and degradation. Rukmani's daughter Ira was rejected by her husband because she was barren and in the village, the whole blame fell on the wife. Ira's reh,un to her father's house was a great cause of degradation for the entire family. It was most humiliating when her father refused to eat the food she brought. "Yet the fault is not his, but nature's that wrecked a good harvest.,,7 Thus, negation of selfrespect or degradation was more horrible than physical hunger. In Nectar in a Sieve, Markandaya had firmly said that poverty, hunger and starvation could lead to the disintegration of family with a number of misfortune and problems. Floods had destroyed all crops, Rukmani had some rice which would last until times were better. Kenny was angry, he cried out; Times are better, times are better; Times will never be better for many moths. Meanwhile you will suffer and die, you meek suffering fools.s
The younger generation, the sons of Nathan and Rukmani, getting fed up with hunger and degradation wanted to revolt against them. But when their parents showed a passive acceptance of their lot, their children left home thinking that their attitude would never change. They were impatient at injustice, they wanted to improve their fortunes. Thus, there was disintegration of family, achlally, it was brought about by hunger and degradation. Selvam became angry when his father was evicted. He angrily asked: "You have made no protests." The managers of the tannery managed to break the strike. Arjun was angry: Rukmani did not understand what it was to learn. She went to Kenny who satisfied her: I have told you before -- you must cry out, if you want help. It is no use to suffer in silence. Who will succour the drowning man if he does not clamour for his life.9
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But Rukmani felt that it was a sign of weakness if one cried out one must rise above one's misfortunes. Kenny further asked Rukmani if spiritual powers ~ome to solve their problems of hunger and degradation? At this she replied: "Yet our priests fast, and inflict on themselves severe punishments and we are taught to bear our sorrows in silence and all this is so thatthe roulm ay be cJeansed :,10 According to the Eastern concept of life people had to suffer from hunger and degradation and other problems like social injustice calmly. Rukmani told Kenny: "Do not concern yourself - we are in God's hand."ll This was the basic cause of peasant's hunger and degradation.
These people had a traditional resignation to Fate, God and even the vagaries of climate and nature. They had developed the mentality of passive acceptance. Kamala presented a problem of hunger and degradation in villages, she also gave a solution that by following the Western methods, we could improve our standards. Even tannery w~s good because it was a reflection of modern mechanical revolution, Dr. Kenny's establishment of the hospital was also a unique thing for the poor and the sick. Kamala exhorted people to change their mentality with a view to getting rid of such nasty problems of hunger and degradation. Herein lay Kamala's positive attitude 0 life. The leper boy Puli was healed of his leprosy in the hospital and Selvam had found a congenial job in the tannery. For the solution of the problems of hunger and degradation, we could not harp on the same strings, we had to look ahead with Dr. Kenny's eyes or a Western attitude. In another novel A Handful of Rice Kamala presented the other facets of poverty and starvation. It was hunger which compelled people to commit crimes. Ravi, the hero entered Jayamma's house forcefully as a thief because he was over-powered by hunger. The conversation which took place was reflective of the whole situation: What do you want? Food, I told you, he said impatiently. And be quick.12
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Hunger and Degradation in The Novels of Kamala ...
In Nectar in a Sieve, she presented hunger and degradation in a village, in this novel, A Handful of Rice, she depicted these social problems in the city. "Rukmani in the village and Ravi in the town complement each to the design representing social injustice."13 Ravi did not face only economic insecurity but also moral degradation. He was in a constant predicament that honesty and prosperity would not go together. Leaving the penury and apathy of the village, he came to the city - Madras to make a better living. But he could not get anything else than unemployment, frustration and encounter with the police. His meagre education had made him useless to work by his hands and other jobs he could not get. Damodar, another young man told him about the profits of the tmderworld. Ravi having known the city, learnt the ropes and hopes for something better to come up. One night Ravi was heavily drunk in prohibition time to get rid of his hunger and frustration. A police man ran after him, he forced his way into the house of a tailor Apu in order to get food as well as to escap~ from the police man. Kamala depicted the condition of Ravi's starving: Ravi was choosey in his choice of food, he told Damodar: "All I want is a meal- a nice, hot, home-cooked meal not bazaar muck.,,14 The next morning, the house-wife gave him a thorough beating, the husband scolded and advised him to behave decently as a decent boy like him ought to do. Ravi was transformed into a decent boy, he went back to replace the bars he had broken. He married Nalini and joined Apu as his apprentlice. However, he wanted to improve himself, he wished to offer more to his wife. He was dissatisfied with the resigned acceptance of the old man Apu. He again went to Damodar to improve his sources of prosperity. Damodar promised him work, but it put Ravi in a tension between Damodar's values and Nalini's. The novel was based on this conflict of conscience. Being tortured by the dilemma of conscience. Ravi started behaving with his wife Nalini in a very cruel manner. That afternoon Ravi joined a mob in looting a granary. Kannan advised him against such an action as 'the rice is for all, this way is
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wrong, this way the innocent suffer.'1s But he went and was beaten by the police. Ravi was young man ~ymbolising thousands of unemployed young men who intended to pass a respectable and honourable life. Ravi visualised a happy life. Hunger always forced people to leave their lands, Rukmani and Nathan left their land in Nectar in a Sieve. Ravi left village in A Handful ofRice for the city. He thought of himself. Poverty and hunger brought all suffering to him including the disintegration of his family. Ravi was so much degraded by poverty, hunger and starvation that he used to beat his wife badly and even had sexual intercourse with his mother-in-law. Ravi's son Raju became a victim of poverty when Nalini requested him to call a doctor, Ravi burst out. It did not mean that Ravi did not love his son, but he was helpless by his poverty. He was broken by his son's death, and went to Damodar and cried out. But Damodar refused him. At last, he joined a group of young people to loot grains, but again he lost all courage as he was thoroughly broken by his son's death. Against all poverty, hunger and degradation, Nectar in a Sieve had optimistic notes. Uma Parameswaran observed:
Nectar in Sieve is the story of the faceless peasant who stands silhouetted in the unending twilight of Indian agrarian bankruptcy, the horizon showing ll-trough the silent trees now with crimson gashes, now with soul-exalting splendour, always holding out the promise that the setting sun will rise again after night, the night ever approaching yet never encompassing. 16 Thus, Kamala had given very authentic and realistic descriptions of hunger, starvation and degradation in Nectar in a Sieve and in A Handful of Rio.'. In ~ome Inner Fury, Kamala gave pictures of an upper class family which had plenty of food left over after every meal. The hungry children jumped on it. In Possession a father sold his son
64
Hunger and Degradation in The Novels of Kamala ...
Valmiki to Caroline for five thousand rupees under the pressure of extreme poverty. His mother observed: He has already decided. Did you not hear him? It was the money - it was too much for him. But it is always so, men are ever free and easy with that for which they have neither suffered nor laboured .17 In Two Virgins, Markandaya had presented another aspect of degradation -- that was moral degradation. It was not the result of hunger and starvation, it was a part of modern society which claimed to be advanced. Mr. Gupta, the film director symbolised a corrupt modern man of society who easily exploited innocent girls for their sexual purposes. Lalithan under the impact of the Western Civilization fell a victim to the temptations of Gupta and ultimately became pregnant. The entire family fell into the gretest degradation. Miss Mendoza and Mr. Gupta were intended to symbolise the corrupting influence of the Western culture on India. Both were instmmental in taking Lalitha away from her family. They tempted LaIitha to fall into her ultimate degaradation. She was charmed by the glamour shown by Mr. Gupta. Amma condemned him perfectly: " ... Western punkcurse the day he and his ways crossed our threshold." We could not condemn the Western civilization only, Lalitha also had her weakness for glamour and show. Appa and Amma decided that Lalitha's child must be aborted and 'this is the only indication of a judgment that seems social rather than moral. d8 Lalitha had fallen into both kinds of degradation - social and moral. Lalitha disappeared from her family twice being over-powered by her shame. Chingleput was another morally degraded character who intended to exploit Saroja for her sweetness and innocence. When she went to him, he tried to seduce her. Thus, she lost all her faith in him as her guide. The question of human degradation could be found in other novels of Kamala Markandaya also. Although Some Inner Fury had an emotional and political theme, human degradation was also found there in the form of political degradation. Indians were suffering from a great political downfall under the rule of the
Hunger and Degradation in The N()\e1~ of Kalllaia ...
65
Britishers. The whole country WdS united for the sake of Independence. Some Indians with Englishness like KitsZlmy and even Mira suffered from a great politicdi stress and humiliation. Kitsamy was too much Western and English to cope up with an Indian girl like Premala. She suffered from a great personal degradation in love, therefore, she deserted her husband and lived in a village looting after a school which was managed by an English missionary Hickey. Govind, her lover was a revolutionary who burnt the school and unfortunately Premala was also burnt within. Kit and Govind were highly tortured, they accused each other. In the dark and stormy night Kit was killed and no body knew by whom. Mira and Richard had enjoyed honeymoon before marriage, but they suffered from racial differences. They started crying 'my country and your country' this created a degradation for both of them. She was degraded for loving an English man and her for loving an Indian lady. He felt unsafe even her company. This was all a degrading and confusing state of affairs. The element of degradation could be discovered in Kamala's novel Possession. The very theme was based on the British lust for possessing things - which was, of course, a degrading experience. Lady Caroline Bell, a rich aristocratic woman purchased a young illiterate boy Valmiki from his parents who had the talents for painting. The whole situation was degrading, he was brought up in London and she made him in the purely Western sense, accelerated painter. But while he became the artist she intended him to be, Valmiki but lost his soul he was undergoing through a degrading experience which was shown by his pet monkey. He had his involvements with the Jewish refugee girl Ellie and later with Annabel which brought all his humiliation and he had to sever his ties with Caroline in order to come back to India and find his true self. In the end, when Valmiki went back to India, Caroline was sure that he would come back. Her position was degrading, but she was still sure of her victory. The conflict between the East and the West had been repeatedly stressed. The English always wanted to put conditions into their degrading situations. "The English take it for granted that they should live on the fate of the land, and the
66
Hunger and Degradation in The Novels of Kamala ...
'hypnotised natives' pile it on to their plates."19 The English were happily conscious that they were treating 'Val' as an equal. Caroline was ruled to Anasuya, she exploited racial prejudices making a trouble between Valmiki and Annabel saying that Val was emotional, unstable - Foreigners are - Dear Annabel you must realise they aren't like us, you would never be able to rely on one of them."20 Caroline instead of ridiculing Indians, created a degrading position for herself. At the end of her battle for Valmiki, Caroline asked Anasuya. In order to get rid of the degrading position, Caroline gave it the shape of a game. Kamala Markandaya depicted every thing realistically with a touch of social satire and irony. "Caroline and Swamy symbplised the evil and the good respectively. Valmiki became a ridiculous figure under the hands of Caroline, but thanks to his mentor the Swamy, he was recovered from his degradation and regained his paradise in India. Val, the village idiot, turned sophisticate and then contemplative, is men in his journey from innocence to know ledge of good and evil and the choice of good."21 Caroline was feeling much degraded but not accepting it, when Valmiki joined his Swamy in India. Caroline came of a breed that never admitted defeat. In The Nowhere Man, Kamala Markandaya had given a documentary on racial prejudices and their origin in colonialism. Kamala had dealt with the problem of degradation in this novel also. Both Abdul and Srinivas had memories of their countries Africa and India, respectively. Srinivas and his wife were compelled to leave India because' their families are suspected of underground activities against British rule in India.'22 Srinivas and Vasantha felt the degradation of rootlessness, but they could never get rid of it. Their son Laxman married an English girl, he became and English man; Their second son Seshu was killed by a German shell. Vasantha constantly suffered from humiliation and degradation and she wanted to go back to India but it was not possibler. Ultimately, she died of tuberculosis. After the death of this wife, Srinivas felt dis-oriented and extremely degraded. Abdul tried to motivate him to become richer
Hunger and Degradation in The Novels of Kamala ...
67
and richer by unfair means, but he was moulded by his wife into an honest Indian. At last Mrs. Pickering, an English divorcee came into his life who helped to rehabilitate him. Thus, they shared the misfortunes of each other by adjusting to each other. But the agony and a sense of degradation always haunted him. He realised that he belonged neither to India nor to England. Recial prejudice were spreading, a neighbour Fred Fletcher tried to assault Srinivas, he was saved by his mother. Srinivas felt highly tortured and degraded that he was considered as an alien and an outcaste in England, although he had passed fifty years ~ England. This realisation was breaking, he developed leprosy and he even tried to commit suicide. Mrs. Pickering prevented him from doing so. Fred prepared a bonfire but became a victim of his own guilt, Srinivas was saved but he died of shock. Rootlessness created degrading situations for Srinivas and Vasantha and Kamala had visualised their suffering and painted it wonderfully exhorting people to be sincere to their roots. In The Nowhere Man, Kamala had shown a reaction of society in modem Britain to the inflow of coloured immigrants. They found themselves in an awkward and degradating position, Srinivas and Vasantha were placed in similar circumstances. Srinivas became a victim of leprosy, his son became very angry. He further suffered from emotional degradation, when he was rebuked by a police man for offering the ashes of his wife into the river Thames. The police man chided that it was rubbish, Srinivas emotionally answered: "It was not rubbish - it was my wife.,,23 In The Golden Honeycomb also we could find the instances of human degradation under the domination of the British rule. It was the time not only of political subjugation but also of social degradation. It was further aggravated by native princes who became perfect slaves of the Britishers. The Raja of Devapur was a different prince, he was not upto the expectations of the Britishers. Therefore, he was ousted, a remote relation having the same name Bawajiraj was installed to the throne with his wife Manjula. This was the greatest degrading position which was the result of slavery. Baw;jjiraj III had a son by his mistress Mohini - Rabindranath who bt'C,lJ1W a great patriot and naturalist. He fought for the
6R
Hunger and Degradation in The Novels of Kamala ..
eradIcation of people's degradation and moral downlnll. As he grew up, he made friendship with Sophie, the daughter of the Resident, Sir Arthur Copeland. Everywhere, there was a sense of degradation and social chaos. Bawajiraj was very happy to know that the viceroy had approved the appointment of I~abi as an heir to the throne of Devapur. But Rabi was not at all happy, because he was now a young man and he realised that this was all a degrading situation, a ridiculous affair and 'a fragile golden honey comb.' He joined a group of striking workers on Chowpathy beach, he was wounded by the police. He was healed up by Jaya who told him about love
Joseph, Margaret P., Knmala Markmzdaya, p. 211.
2.
Ibid., p. 14.
3.
Ibid., p. 104.
4.
Ibid., p. 15.
J.
[[lid., p. 16.
6.
Markandaya, Kamala, Nectar ill {/ Sieue, p. 137.
7.
JO'ieph, Margaret, P., Kamala Markandaya, p. 16.
S.
1IIid., p. -17.
9.
III/d., p. 115.
Hunger and Degradation in The Novels of Kamala ...
69
W. Ibid., p. 116.
11. Ibid., p. 133.
12. Markandaya, Kamala, A Handful of Rice, New Delhi: Orient Paperbacks, 1985. 13. Joseph, Margaret P., Kamala Markandaya, p. 57. 14. Markandaya, Kamala, A Handful of Rice, p. 14. 15. Ibid., p. 235.
16. Parameswaran, Uma, A Study of Representative Indo-English Novelists, New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1976, p. 92. 17. Markandaya, Kamala, Possession, p. 24. 18. Joseph, Margaret, P., Kamala Markandaya, p. 85. 19. Ibid., p.5l.
20. Markandaya, Kamala, Possession, p.206. 21. Ibid., p.206.
22. Ibid., p.206. 23. Ibid., p.39.
DOD
SHANTHA RAMA RAU'S NOVELS:
A
COMPARATIVE STUDY - Dr. Basavaraj Naikar
Shantha Rama Rau has been a practitioner of a variety of literary forms like autobiography, travelogue, fiction and drama and has attracted a sufficiently large number of readers in India and abroad on account of her portrayal of life against the wide international backdrop. Her capacity for immaculate narration and mastery over the English language are quite commendable. So far, she has written only two novels, which are to b: discussed in the following paragraphs.
Remember the HOlise is her first novel published in 1956. It delineates the theme of a girl's search for identity when caught in the confusion of almost contradictory cultures. The protagonist of the novel, Miss Indira (or Baba) Goray has all the makings of a snobbish Indian girl educated in England. She has had all her schooling in Engla.nd, but when she wnw" back to Bombay, she gets tired of her snobbbh life in the circle of Westerni7.ed fdmilies. At the beginning of the nO\'el, wlwn the influence is still thick on her, it is but natur,ll for her to be bored with tht' '>uperficial and snobbish life in BOll1ba~'. She belongs to the circle of We~tl'rnized Indi,lIls like Jay, Prince (If Kalipur, Pfld Shull ,1Ild her fiance Karan Dl'sai ,1\1d H.ui lo~hi - 1110<;t of whom Me IWI frit'nds fro III
Shantha Rama Rau's Novels: A Comparative Study
71
childhood and have their own share of Indian-ness in spite of their superficial Westernization. Indira belongs to another set of friends also who are an American couple, Alix and Nichols and who are fascinated by indian culture, in spite of occasional repulsions that they feel towards the same. The two sets of friends provide a contrastive atmosphere for Baby Goray and create a problem of 'choice' for her. She has been leading an amphibian life so far and is conversant with the Western as well as the Eastern lifestyles. Baba is westernized in the sense that she can speak good English and has other westernized friends, who have the western vices like gambling, horse-racing etc. and attends the Christmas and the New Year's Eve parties. But at the same time, she has not disowned her Indian-ness. She remembers the exciting childhood that she spent in her grandmother's place in Jalnabad. Whereas her ~ather is an ardent nationalist, her mother has abandoned her family life to stay near her Guru in Kerala. Baba Goray has thus led half-western and half-eastern life because of the exigencies of her life. So far she has led a rather carefree life, without having any significant dilemma. But now, with the awakening of her practical wisdom, she begins to search for her true identity, dissipate her confusion and clarify her motives in her life. She has to undergo all the inconveniences and embarrassments that an individual experiences when passing from the stage of observation to that of actual participation. For example, the extent of her Indian-ness and Westernization is tested when she is unexpectedly but publicly kissed by Nichols after swimming in the water. Although she is westernized, she does not like to be kissed by any man publicly. Her essential Indian-ness asserts itself in her shyness and embarrassment. All that day I carried a certain atmospilere with me hard to describe but quickly communicated to people I was with ... All this, I thought, for a kiss, the power that one has or can generate.! This experience gives her a jolt and clarifies her mind to herself. She does not like to be kissed publicly because of her essential Indianness.
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Shantha Rama Ra.u's Novels: A Comparative Study
Similarly Baba Goray is not very clear in her idea of marriage. She does not know the type of husband she should have. It is only the actual situations, which awaken that sense in her. For example, when Hari Joshi, her childhood friend proposes to her, she still seems to be groping in confusion: . Why should we get married? ... Surely there should be something else? ... I think there should be more to life than just settling down. I wish I knew how to explain. 2 It is only when she goes to Chennur - the place where her mother lives - that her motives become clear and assume an explicit Indianness. It is at ChelIDur that Baba happens to meet a schoolteacher Krishnan and falls in love with him as she is attracted by his talkativeness, delight in complex theorization, intellectual curiosity and interrogating spirit. Baba probably thinks that she falls in love with her idea of an Indian husband. But again her evaluation turns out be wrong when she learns from him that he is leaving for Madras for getting married. Her illusion is shattered by this news and she asks him "you never told me." But he replies: "Because I haven't thought much allout it. It's all arranged for such a long ti!Ile."3 Naturally she is qisappointed by Krishnan's non-response to her implicit appeal. Uater she loses her father and feels sorry for not having been ablel to understand him. As days go by, she at least decides to 'live' ~er life. She says: "1 think I know the terms in which my life mu~t be lived ... and that is something."4 Her interest in 'living' her owri life is awakened by her observation of h€_' friends like Pria, who halVe been 'living' their lives. Pria, for example, is now big with chil4i. That probably sets an example for Baba to settle down in life, although she does not have a very romantic view about marriage. $he takes the initiative and proposes to her friend, "Hari, do you still want to marry me, because if you do want to too" and is frank enough to confess: "I' am not in love with you, if that's what you mean-though I'm not sure what that means."5 At last Hari quietly accepts her as his wife.
Remember the!Holise is a psychological novel, which depicts the subtle growth of!a girl from childhood into adolescence. Dr. K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar rightly points out the main concern of the novel:
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Remember the House rings true, because she writes of things well within the range of her experience. Childhood and girlhood at Jalnabad are recapitulated with sensitiveness. One outgrows one's childhood and inevitably life makes its demands on the narrator -heroine, Baba.6 It also shows how an Indian girl suffers in the process of undergoing deculturation (forgetting the Indian values at least partially because of her stay and schooling in England), acculturation (being attracted towards the Western life-style) and reculturation (trying to relearn the Indian values) and overcomes those difficulties stage by stage and accepts the challenges of life. The theme of the novel is quite interesting within the limits but Shantha Ram Rau does not probe deep into the psyche of her protagonist and others. The characters like Pria, Jay, Krishnan, Alex, Nichols and Baba's mother are flat and provide superficial parallels and contrasts to the protagonist. On the whole, Remember the House is a good novel, which attempts to acquaint us with at least a partial picture of feminine psychology.
The second novel The Adventuress, is described by the Orient Paperback Publishers as 'a story of a woman's search for fulfillment.' This statement can be applied to almost all the novels of the world because everybody's life is directly or indirectly marked h a search for fulfillment. But when we come to read The Adventures, we are compelled to ask the question as to what kind of woman depicted in search of self-fulfillment? An answer to this question could be found in the following analysis of the protagonist's personality. The protagonist of the novel is Kay who is a young lady of twenty-two or so, and hails from the Philippines. She is on her way to the States for pursuing higher studies in art. But she is trapped in Japan because of the Pearl Harbour incident. A lady of her nature and ambition is naturally compelled to escape from the exigencies and get back her pre-planned way of life. She has been thus a victim of the political incidents, especially the Pearl Harbour one. She becomes a puppet in the hands of political forces. She has been
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Shantha Rama Rau's Novels: A Comparative Study
declared as a war criminal, but she does not want to accept that charge. There is thus a tricky encounter between the individual and the circumstances. Far from resolving the dilemma, Kay enters into a higher dilemma in order to escape from the lover one. And the rest of the story of insecurity is largely her own making. She could have surrendered herself to the Government as a war criminal or killed herself thereby ending the problem. But she does neither of them. On the contrary she decides to cheat the Government by having herself declared as dead by bribing a neighbour: Tokyo subways are so shallow that we could hear the noise of 1 he rains outside. Afterward, we walked home by circuitous routes, followed by the sound of the fires crackling through the houses. Once we had grasped the extent of the bombings, the recurring confusions and fires, the lost homes and the dead, we -- the mother and I that is decided to kill me, too. It was surprisingly easy, there were so many burned, unrecognizable bodies. We charred my papers and passport - quite elated at the thought of doing something. After that we had only to bribe the fishmonger's wife to tum them in to the police, to say she had found them in a pile of rubble, the debris of a burned house. I was dead? Now Kay has to live in a world, which has taken her to be dead. But this so-called 'death' is of her own making. She has to face a number of difficulties of entangling herself with various men and again of disentangling herself from them. She has to depend upon a number of men for a variety of exigencies. The most important motive behind her adventures is perhaps her elan vital or will to live. She wants to have the' experience of living.' Another important ambition of her life is to have a good artistic career i.e. of painting. "I wanted to be an artist. Most especially I wanted to study and learn sumi-e"8 i.e. a special technique of Japanese painting. Because of her pursuit of an artistic career, she is free from the Norman desires of a woman for marriage and motherhood. But, paradoxically enough, she suffers from other problems, of how to survive in a world of crumbling values.
Shantha Rama Rau's Novels: A Comparative Study
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But she is not totally free to live her life, as she owes it to Nobuo, who has saved her from the Internment camp. She wants to buy her freedom from Nobuo by offering him money. Thus her first adventure consists in her attempt to disentangle herself from Nobuo into whose debt she has entered exegetically. The second man with whom she entangles herself is Charles Beaver, who, being a grass widower, wants to have Kay as his girlfriend. Even when Beaver declares his love for her, she rejects him by telling him a lie: Let's just go on for - for however long it is, and forget about the rest. Nobuo won't divorce me, He is very Japanese. Like the rest, he's greedy for impossible contexts, the kind no one can win. He knows I want to leave him. That is enough reason for him. And he knows about you-well not that it's you, but that there's someone. It's not hard to check. I tell him that I'm working. He can't argue because he couldn't afford to help his mother, and he's glad that I don't ask him for money. Mostly we live in a terrible silence. I think the silence will only be broken when he wants to marry someone else. 9 She disentangles herself from Beaver's friendship and then with the help of Colonel Peterson, escapes to Manila, where she is circumstantially compelled to come in contact with the third man Le. Jeremy Wilson, an Air-force Officer flying for the Civil Air Transport. His job is to carry medical supplies to the front. She moves out with him quite frequently. When the friendship between the two becomes mature, Kay takes the liberty of asking him to marry her for practical reasons of escaping from Manila to Shanghai 'I'm trying to, get up the courage to ask you a favour,' she replied, 'Yes,' he said with immense gravity, 'I can see that requires any amount of courage. There is simply no knowing, how I might react to being asked a favour. 'It's rather a serious favour.' 'I'm braced.' 'Will you marry me?' There
76
Shantha Rama Rau's Novels: A Comparative Study was a long pause while Jeremy Wilson sipped his Fundador, attempted to collect his wits, and finally said: 'Did I hear you correctly? Did you propose to me?' 'I made a proposal to you, which is different.' 'How is it different?' 'I mean: Just marry me. Nothing more.' 'Nothing more than what?' 'Than the papers signed, the legal formalities completed.' "In name alone?" you must be joking.' 'It would be a poor joke. I told you I was being serious.' 10
Although Jeremy is initially nonplussed by Kay's proposal, he finally agrees to it. They get married after a few days and even celebrate their honeymoon. Kay has taken a pseudo name, Caterina Gomez and flies to Shanghai under the guise of Mrs. Wilson. Her mock marriage has served her purpose of entering into Japan safely. Her practical sense enables her to think of helping Jeremy Wilson to make some money in return for his love for her and to realize his dream of having a farm in Somerset. She, therefore, wants to get him in touch with David Marius, a leading smuggler and have him as David's accomplice. But Jeremy, a man of conscience ashe is, does not agree to smuggle penicillin to the enemies. Kay, then, decides to have her divorce from Jeremy, because she wants to liberate herself from him and him from her so that he can go back to Somerset and settle down with Margaret, the English girl, who is a reminder of pre-war days for him. But Jeremy has involved himself with Kay so much that he does not want to divorce her. He even thinks of forgetting Margaret. But Kay wants to disentangle herself from him by telling him a lie. She tells him that she has been unfaithful to him by committing adultery with David Marius. Jeremy refuses to believe in that as he thinks it to b~ a cookeuup story. Then she tells him, I went to bed with him. Her tone was ruthlessly candid. Because I wanted to. I spent last night at his house. We waited together for the news from Peking. We had champagne with lunch to celebrate. ll
~hantha
Rama Rau's Novels: A Comparative Study
77
After hearing these words, Wilson could not help signing the divorce papers. Then Kay moves with her luggage to David Marius' apartment knowing that he is disconcerted to have her there. But she is accepted by David Marius at last and is happy to be taken to America, the land of her final dream. All these important events of her life testify to tn~_kind of personality she is. She is quite a bold girl, who like an international gypsy can fly from Japan to the Philippines, to Shanghai, to America. Her extraordinary courage, of course, helps her to visit these countries, hoodwink the Government officials by destroying or changing the records, befriend the influential officers and have temporary affairs with them until her purpose is served. Her adventurous spirit helps her to have the 'experience of living' and achieve something in the field of painting. She can do all these things only by sacrificing the traditional feminine ideals like sexual purity, sacred marriage and motherhood. Most of her success with various men is ascribable to her power of sex and other allied qualities like companionableness, tolerance, mendacity and diplomacy etc. Like a heroine of Romances or romantic comedies, she goes on disguising herself and assuming different names in different countries. A stark realist both in painting and in her personal life, she does not believe in idealistic morality. She is an open-hearted opporttmist, who does not mind speaking sweet lies. Although she marries Jeremy for convenience and has her honeymoon with him, she does not grow to love him. She is too practical to love him or anyone else. She does not believe in morality or have any scruples. She tells lies to Beaver, Jeremy, Wilson and Dona Luisa etc. to have her ends. She does not mind asking Jeremy to take up the business of smuggling the penicillin medicine to the enemies. While we admire her courage and silly and clever tricks, we are not able to approve of her actions because her aims and ambitions are too simple and clear-cut to bring out the complexity of her inner life. In spite of all her adventures, she appears to be still girlish and does not seem to mature mentally. All her life seems to be lived on a snobbish and superficial level and she does not show any elemental quality.in her relationship with the men she comes in contact with. One wishes the authoress had given a greater depth
78
Shantha Rama Rau's Novels: A Comparative Study
to the motivation of Kay's behaviour. Although Shantha Rama Rau describes Kay's extroversive behaviour like chatting with men, . observing l'Iatural scenery, having drinks and food with friends and acquaintances etc., she does not probe into the depth of Kay's mind. Many times we do not know why she does not show any deep emotional attachment with people. For example, when she refuses Beaver's proposal to marry her, the reader does not understand why exactly she does so. The elaborate description of her relationship with Dona Luisa family seems to be uncalled for, as it contributes nothing much to the growth of the novel or of her personality. Although all her tricks seem to be justified in the waraffected context, they somehow, do not seem to elevate or stimulate the reader, who is compelled to.ask the question: 'Is that all?' One is tempted to find fault with Shantha Rama Rau, who has not been able to probe into the feminine hea~t satisfactorily. We cannot help but agree with S.K. Desai who says: Her achievement would have been more significant if her imagination had grappled with problems related to the area of culture, which she knows from inside. In The Adventuress it appears that she had to spend a lot of her creative energy in giving' a local habitation and a name' to the exotic background of the Far East,12 References 1.
Rau, Shahtha Rama, Remember the House, London: Victor Gollancz, 1956, p.ll7 .
2.
Ibid., pp.127-28.
3.
Ibid., p. 207.
4.
Ibid., p. 226.
5.
Ibid., p. 228.
6.
Iyengar, Srinivasa, Indian Wr~ting in English, Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1973, pp. 47f-472.
.
Shantha Rama Rau's Novels: A Comparative Study
79
7.
Rau, Shanta, The Adventuress, Delhi: Hind POt:ket Books, 1973, p.36.
8.
Ibid., p.35.
9.
Ibid., p.56.
10.
Ibid~,
p.286.
11. Ibid., p. 186.
12. Desai, S.K., Shantha Rama Rau, Delhi: Arnold Heinemann, 1976, p.76.
DOD
INTERPRETER OF MALADIES: A SAGA OF
ASIAN IMMIGRANTS - Dr. Sharada Iyer
Jhumpa Lahiri's, collection of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies, swept through the United States winning several admirers and awards. Finally arriving at the shores of the prestigious 2000 Pulitzer Award - the first South Asian to be honoured so. Composed of nine stories they detail the experience of both first and second generation Indian immigrants in U.s. Maladies both accurately diagnosed and misinterpreted, matters both temporary and life changing, sudden calamities, and the powers of survival- these are among the themes of Lahiri's extraordinary Pulitzer Prize \\Tinning debut collection of stories. Born in London in 1967, raised in Rhodes Island and educated at Boston, she herself was an immigrant. Travelling from India to New England and back again, Lahiri charts the emotiollal voyages of characters seeking love beyond the barriers of na tions, cultures, religions and generations. Imbued with the fine details of both Indian and American cultures, they also speak with universal eloquence and compassion to everyone who is an immigrant. The themes range from emotional stntggle of love to immigrants battling new worlds. Using a variety of characters Lahiri gives life in these stories to the feeling of alienation, isolation, loneliness, longing,
Interpreter of Maladies: A Saga of Asian Immigrants
si
loss and hope which so often mark the immigrants experience. Its part of what her parents and their friends and she herself experienced in an interview with Elizabeth Farnsworth: I always say that I feel that I've inherited a sense of that loss from my parents because it was palpable all the time I was growing up, the sense of what my parents had sacrificed in moving to the U.5. and in so many ways. Her stories weave into the lives of second generation Indians and their struggle with relationships inter-personal communication and the challenges experienced by immigrants living in a world away from the familiar warmth and constant company of family, friends and neighbours in the home they left behind. Her stories are emotional chess games focussing largely on the subtleties of the characters internal processing. With their fragile emotional states, hesitant gestures, and tight rope walking on the brink of psychological raptures, characters are coaxed into exploring assorted facets of morality alienation and dysfunction. The central focus of much modem writing in its presentation of society as too remote from or even hostile to the individual for the latter to feel any sense of belonging. In such a situation where the individual is seen as culturally or sometimes linguistically estranged the whole question of a s~cial, cultural, and individual identity become unattainable ideals. The strength of the modem literary imagination lies in the evocation of individual predicament in terms of alienation, exile or quests for identity. One of the most poignant statement on the crisis of identity facing the commonwealth man, which is true of the immigrants as well, was made by an emancipated negro, Froad, in the West Indian novel Other Leopards by Dean Williams: Between the white and black this mula to (colour) devide. You cannot cross it, where you are you remain the same. You change, you become, in a way, yourself mulato ......... looking both ways. (Pp.20S-209)
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Lahiri addresses the issue of identity and displacement which many struggle with due to their multi cultural upbringing and environment. She stated in one of her interviews: "The question of identity especially for those who 'are ,culfurally displaced is a difficult one." She belonged to that vast unruly and fascinating metropolis - Calcutta, she visits it frequently but to quote her: "I don't experience the country as a tourist, I don't experience as a native either, it is a mic'dle position." The question of identity is always a difficult one, especially for those who are culturally displaced, as immigrants are, or those who grow up in two worlds simultaneously as is the case of their. children. For Immigrants the loneliness, the constant sense' of a lineation, the knowledge of and a longing for a lost world are more explicit and distressing than for their children. On the other hand the problem for the children of immigrants those strong ties to their country of origin is that they feel neither one thing nor the other. The feeling that there was no single place to which I fully belonged bothered me growing up. The older I get the more am I aware that I have somehow inherited a sense of exile from my parents Home is not simply where one lives. It is one's identity national, cultural and spiritual. Home is security, exile the loss of home. It is uprooting. The immigrant faces the dilemma of being unable to return home and yet not finding a home in the adopted land, they musters the hope that they will be able to merge into the culture of the new land. They change clothes, names even partners. No wonder Jasmine says "I have been reborn" a total change from the girl of Punjab. Acculturalism or adoption of change in external behaviour begins early enough but assimilation or the ability to react instinctively and emotionally to a culture is a far slower process. The individual's predicament in the form of rootlessness and crisis of identity mainly lying behind the desperate affirmation of traditional culture has been gratefully explored. While Kamala Markandaya, Anita Desai, Ruth Praver Jhabwala, Yasmin Gooneratne have projected the cultural confusion and confrontation
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of a m~lti-racial society, Bharati Mukherjee gives a new challenging perspective enabling the immigrants to emerge out of their cocoons of defense into the openness of assertion to say that they do belong. In Jasmine she celebrates the undaunted spirit of a village girl who blossoms out of a bruised past into a challenging immigrant. To Bharati Mukharajee American expenence is one of 'fusion' and immigration a two way process in which both the immigrant and the hosts grow up by interchange and experience. In Sanjay Nigam latest novel Transplanted Man India has been so neatly transplanted in that part of the city - that never sleeps, that the homeland is no where but here -. created,by tlle no longer confused desis. Sonny Seth, a young staff in the hi-tech hospital, tells the Transplanted Man - a leading Indian politician with seven transplanted organs - that India is too Indian for him in India Lite.
Interpreter of Maladies is largely about Indians settled abroad negotiating between two cultures, with varying degrees of success, their attitudes, their concern and their life style. Most of them come to the U.5. in search of freedom and opportunities. In the story Mr. Pirzada comes to Dine the narrator captures this sentiment she says that her mother new" she was assured a safe life, and easy life, a fine education and every opportunity in the states. But what awaits then and what they experience - at every step in life is the other Side of midnight we arrive so eager to learn to adjust to participate only to find the monuments :.ue tila~tic agreements are annulled nothing is for ever nothing is so terrible or so wonderful, that it won't disintegrate, which Jane Jasmine experiences in Bharati Mukherjee novel. The American experience shocked her and disgusted her many a "Times this country has so many ways of humiliating of disappointing there are no harmless compassionate ways to make oneself we murder who we were so we can rebirth us" - this feeling is shared by Farhana Sheik in the Red Box which is a rare focus on I.P. She views it as all pervading. He who crosses the ocean may change the skies above him but not the colour of the soul Edward writes in his diary in Australia. The immigrant faces ar.other difficult situation when
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they decide to visit home we would not behave like expatriates, expatriates make scenes, expatriates complain about the food, toilets; filth and make a fool of themselves by loosing their temper. Inter-related to the theme of quest for identity, is the problem of alienation in its many forms - emotional, sexual, spiritual and physical. There is a constant conflict between the traditional upbringing where freedom of right and choice have been taken for granted about work and relationship. Lahiri's narratives are about things we are all familiar with and can relate to. In an interview to Newsweek International she states: The characters I am drawn all face some barrier of communication. I like to write about people who think in a way they fully cannot express. This idea form the basis of the story Interpreter of Maladies which is the title of the book as well- The story of a tourism guide for an Indian American family. Apart form being a tourist guide, his main occupation is acting as an interpreter for patient who need to communicate with their doctors. It has more often than not suggested that Lahiri's with her moving tales is in fact herself an interpreter of maladies, and since most of the stories are about Indian American, she has also been called as Interpreter of Indian Americans. Stories Like The Blessed House, Sexy and A Temporary Matter exemplify universal lesson in love and tqe individual struggle to overcome change and insecurities with relationships. Her stories primarily dwell on relationships and relationships, she maintains preclude no morality. Lahiri shows an astute understanding of human relationships. Reviewers were entranced not only by her characters but also by the setting and locates of her stories. Many of her stories have a heady Calcutta flavour. Her parents never consciously sat down and told things about India: They sort of correctly did so, assured that I would learn things just by the virtue of being their child. I think it has always been important to them to
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maintain strong social ties with Indians, Living abroa~ and visiting India. In an interview to Newsweek International she stated: Its easy to set a story anywhere if you get a good book and get some basic street names and some descriptions, but for me, yes, I am indebted to my travels to India for several of the stories. India is the place where my parents are from a people I visited frequently for extended time and formed relationships with people and with my relatives and felt a tie over time even though it was a sort of paranthesis in my life. He. stories though set in America are scattered with details of traditional Indian name, food, cooking and wardrope giving character and flavour to her stories. One is transfixed by her talent for depicting people and landscape as illustrated in The Third Continent or The Treatment of Bibi Haldar. At her insistence we showed her our photo album embossed with designs of butterflies she poured over the snapshots that chronicled the ceremony, butter poured in fire, garlands exchanged, vermillion painted fish, trays of shell and silver coins. By incorporating Indian tradition into her work Lahiri created tales of cultural differences. Most of the characters live a simultaneous existence in two cultures. They are Indians living in America, or India, or their lover, neighbours or landlords. With informed cultural chiselling she shapes them into sharply sculpted personalities. The stories though set abroad are ensured of exquisite attention to exotic details which never appear overbearing or exaggerated but inherent. While the stories draw upon Indian culture and heritage the theme of communication relationships and culture prove to be universal. Though of different ages, nationalities and religion the characters demonstrate the universality of experiences. The Third Continent a descriptive and emotional piece that relays the isolation of immigrants travelling to a foreign country. Though the eyes of an young Indian the mentor experience the
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cultural difference between the youngman and his aging landlady one comes to learn that despite difference, all people have the same basic need for communication, compassion and understanding. Lahiri's win is a sign that multi culturalism has truly arrived in the U.S. The tales set in India and American mostly concerns characters of India heritage yet the situation that Lahiri's people face from unhappy marriages to civil war transcend ethnicity. As the narrator of the last story. The Third and Final Continent comments: They are times when I am bewildered by each mile I have travelled each meal I have eaten, each person I have known each room in which I have slept. In those few lines Lahiri sums up universal experience one that applies to all who have grown up, left home fallen in or out of love, and above all experienced what it means to be an immigrant.
One is impressed by the breath of her scope with studies that vacillates between the motherland and America, between the present and not so distant past. Her unique socio-cultural positioning as a second generation North American female with sufficient South Asian cultural experience has helped her in capturing a global audience. It is all the interesting because it is not common for a young South Asian female living in the United States to write about the conflicts of culture, modem relationship and memories of a home left behind. The stories were particularly appreciated by south Asians, who understood what the stories were about.
000
IDENTITY CRISIS IN THE NOVELS OF NAYANTARASAHGAL - Dr. Ram Sha11na
"Unless mothers are liberated the, Next generation cannot be" "The new woman is assertive and self-willed searching to discover true self."l Identity is a state of mind that is granted by our interaction with the fellow beings in the society and also by our acceptance in the society. But accepting but not accepted; that is the crisis of identity in one's life, the one thread that run through it all. And a woman's identity crisis is that where she struggles to achieve as a human being in its full sense against those forces of society who bind her in chains and reject her as a being in comparison to man. Earlier, woman sought her identity in the relations of as a wife, mother and daughter. She accepted this identity willingly. But now time has changed and a woman rejects this relational identity. Now she is able to understand the duplicity of this identity that is imposed on her by society so that she may restrain herself as~ a being. But now woman wants to stand on her feet as a full ~uman being, equal to man in society. She doesn't like to know herself as someone's daughter, wife or mother, rather than she seeks separation
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from these relations and wants to make her own identity that shows her individuality. She also does not like the support of man in making her own identity. And it is a quest for identity in a woman that she revolts against the traditional image of Indian woman in words and deeds. She is conscious of herself as a being, not as an object. She realises that she is not an appendage of man. A woman is not the "other". She is not an addition to man. She is an autonomous being, capable of through trial and error; finding her own way to salvation. Therefore, a new modem girl is reluctant to play the conventional role of a sex object and a yoked wife. In a sense, she is the symbol of the emancipated woman, the forerunner of the emerging Indian woman with her liberated womanhood. Thus through self-identity they are independent like man. They have established themselves as autonomous beings, free from the restrictions imposed by society, cultur~, nature and also free from their own fears and guilt; thus women have reached a stage of understanding the fundamental truth; you have to find it for yourself. Therefore, for gaining her identity, her independence, new women reject the help of men by rejecting them as: Are you the Lord God that you should rule every widow and every woman? Hands off, they will solve their own problems. 2 Sahgal has presented in her novels modem Indian women's search for definitions about the self and society, and the relationships that are central to women. She portrays in her novels that her 'new woman is trying to search for her identity and create for herself a new place in the society. She is conscious of her existence as an individual who has her own rights and wishes. She firmly asserts that these women are the ones who have the guts to raise their voice against it, hence creating awareness for the rest. In fact, these characters are a reflection of their own emotional perplexities and disturbances which they want to come out of and find new horizons of self-esteem and liberation. Lakshmi Sinha rightly believes that 'Sahgal has taken up the two images-Abla and Shakti,3 of
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conventional Indian women and forms the images of SabIa in the character of Skinny Jaipal, and Sonali. Nayantara Sahgal, too remarks in the same vein in letter to Jasbir Jain: I try to create the virtuous women - the modem Sita, if you like my women are strivers and aspirers, towards freedom, towards goodness, toward a compassionate world. There virtue is a quality of heart and mind and spirit, a kind of untouched innocence and integrity, I think there is this quality in the Indian women. 4 So as a writer with feminist concerns, Nay.mtara Sahgal is a progeny of the tradition wherein power itself is deified as goddess "Shakti" a female symb"l. Saghal's approach towards the issue is holistic and focuses mainly.on the question of identity crisis for women. She believes: Through the rewriting women do, new Sitas and Savitris will arise, stripped of false sanctity and crowned with the human virtue of courage. Then at last we will know why they did what they did, and how their lone, remote struggles can help our search for identity and emancipation. 5 In her essay Women Persons or Possessions Nayantara Sahgal condemns such attitudes which value women as "property" and d~scourage individuality in them: When I heard someone remark we never allow our daughter to go out or I cannot do that, my husband would not like it, it sounded a very peculiar, alien jargon. As if I thought, women were property, not persons.6 Her statement shows that she is deeply concerned of individuality in women. Therefore, her virtuous fulfil her dream women in her novels. There is something distinct in the women characters of Nayantara Sahgal-something in their social and emotional make up that express itself in their attitude to persons
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and events. In these woi:nen characters, there is a deep longing for self-fulfilment through self-expression. The women characters of her novels are concerned with the fundamental question - the lot of women. They analyze this through the metaphors that deal with the themes of suffering, dominance, urge for companionship. Her novels from A Tiir!e to be Happy to Mistaken Identity show her deep concern with the various states of women in the patriarchal society. {fer women from her prototype Maya to the mother figure Renee in Mistaken Identity rise against the stultifying culture which impedes women's progress and rebel against all years marks the third and the most mature phase of Sahgal's career. The women belonging to this phase are strongwilled, emotionally independent women. They refuse to bow down before the strangle hold of men, right from the beginning. They are mistresses of indomitable spirit. And credit goes to Anna Hansen, Sonali, Rose, The Rani of Vijaygarh, Simrit and Sylla for holding the flag of new woman. The thirst for identity is not a problem facing the Indian women only. But EurC!pean women also face this problem. As we see this thing in case of Anna Hansen, in the novel Plans for Departure. N ayantara Sahgal's Plans for Departure is the story of Anna Hansen, a Danish girl. Anna is one of the three major female characters in the novel. She is also the protagonist, a person who wants to taste the essence of life in its magnificent as well as mundane aspects. It is her desire for self-realization that she postpones her marriage to an English diplomat, Nicholas. She wants to understand life and asserts her right to be authentic self. For this purpose, she embarks on travel for one year, visiting Copenhagen, London, Madras, Calcutta and finally landing in Himapur, a fictive village in the Himalayan ranges. She faces no difficulty in getting the job of a secretary-cum-companion to Sir Nitin Basu, a renowned botanist who has come to Himapur during the summer to carry-on his work.
Anna's involvement with the suffragettes makes her aware of both the courage and dedication needed to bring about political change, and the brutal steps those who enforce patriarchal laws are prepared to employ to prevent protest. It is this awareness which
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initially prompts her to learn more about Indian demands for independence. Her indomitable independence and her sense of freedom provide a striking contrast to the British imperialism and the suffocating political situation of the 1914. She knows her India very well: "Whatever else it (India) needed, it did not need one more religion."7 Moreover, she has come to India for self-realization - the age-old Indian concept of the ideal of life. First, however, Anna must challenge the social conventions of her own society - where "women are not trained for anything except chastity and self-denial."8 in order to acquire the independence that is so readily granted to her brothers. Her resultant behavior, which is unconventional in India where she is employed as an assistant for sir Nitin Basu by his sister Didi. He had naturally been expecting a man, a babu accustomed to clerical work, with a proper if unintelligible command of English. If by some freak mischance his assistant was to be a woman (except that the thought had never crossed his mind) then Didi should have had the sense to engage a Christian widow. 9 Sir, Nitin's sisler Didi, who had originally hired Anna Hansen for her brother, explains in a letter why she will be 'ideal' for the job: I can hardly believe my good fortune in finding her. So ideal, And Europeans are so much more efficient than us. She will be a godsend to you. But apart from: .... She is the best type of European. I . am told she has studied our history and culture at Adyar and is very interested in Hindu doctrines.lO Where as Stella had been a woman of exquisite 'ballerina-like beau ty, Brewster refers to Anna regularly as 'Valkyrie', and Sir Nitin cannot even guess at her age, even her posture is 'unfeminine': Everything about Anna's physical presence seems to indicate to Sir Nitin that her upbringing has not been constrained by convention. Her Self-
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There is a suggestion implicit in his concern that Anna's free behaviour, which goes against the norms of b,?th Indi,an and European, femininity, would not only endanger her, but reflect on him. Counter to this, Anna's self-determination is mirrored in her decision to postpone her wedding to Nicholas. Whatever Anna may have achieved through her personal journey towards emancipation, a sympathetic male character appears to be a necessary adjunct to any equal relationship. As beloved, mother, and an equal sharer of social rights and responsibilities, the woman is neither a commodity nor a brainless beauty rather than being judged in terms of male norms: "women need to look at themselves ... as the norm itself." Aptly remarks Jasbir Jain 12 in her attempt to encapsulate the philosophy of feminism. The choice is between woman as a homemaker and woman as a professional. "Only exceptionally talented girls," rightly says Helen Deutsch:'~can carry a surplus of intellect without injuring their affective lives"13. This is true in case of Sonali in the novel Rich Like Us. Sonali symbolizes Sahgal's philosophy of active intervention in life. By creating a character like Sonali who is very critical towards established views concerning high caste (Kashmiri, Brahmin) Indian femininity, Sahgal is suggesting new patterns of feminine identity, more attuned to citizenship, professionalism and social responsibility. Sonali is quite different from the stereo type of women found in Indo-English fiction. Her problem is not marital disharmony or male domination. Her problem is how to cope with the hypocrisy, red-tape and corruption that have crept into the Indian Administrative Service? She is intelligent and intellectual independent yet committed to communal good, uncompromisingly conscientious and idealistic. In the wake of Emergency, as she
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refuses to interpret rules to the advantage of her political bosses, she is transferred without warning, demoted and punished. A revolt against the authoritarianism of the ruling government which has already been smoldering itself into a rage inside her, now becomes an uncontrollable fury and she decides that she can no longer be a party to the widespread conspiracy of silence that is Civil Service. Her mode of Satyagraha is to opt out of the oppressive corrupt resign. So in this in this way Sonali is a different woman from the stereo type image of a subdued and docile Hindu 'woman'. Therefore she is driven to "frantic competition, to stardom in my studies, to deliverance from suitable "boys" and marriage abroad."14 Therefore she could avoid the trauma of arranged marriages which in an Indian household is a crucial phenomenon involving social relationship whereas her sister Kiran wa~ happily settled in marriage with a rich businessman to fulfill the aspirations of her parents. Sonali is a conscientious LA.S. officer working as Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Industry in New Delhi. And since she is the narrator of the major portion of the novel with a backdrop of emergency declared on 26 June, 1975, she articulates the social and moral upheavals that influenced the course of history. With the unmistakable apparatus of modern authoritarianism all about us, if we could be certain of one fact, it was that everything was not all right. IS The old bureaucratic tradition to keep its identity intact, never muddling with politics is sadly missing. Sonali's inheritance was the life philosophy of her father Keshav Ranade, an I.C.S. officer and thus she cannot reconcile with her colleagues who wearing vague smiles and vacant nods on the stairs tum indifferent to the blasts tearing as under the fibers of the institutionalized faiths. Sonali's uncompromising idealism gets a rude shock when she rejects the license of a dubious multi-national American company project to produce in collaboration in India "a fizzy soft drink product called Happyola", which was virtually a shady arrangement to import more or less an entire factory in spite of the fact that the government policy did not sanction foreign
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collaboration in industry in the wake of the economic drive. Mr. Neuman, the visiting representative of the company was assured by the Minister that the proposal would be cleared. That's why he is taken aback to see the file rejected: he comes to Sonali to clarify if some mistake is made becduse the minister gave him, "to understand the project would be considered."16 Neuman tries to impress upon Sonali the need of a good harmless product in a developing country like India in the wake of the expansion of their business in Asia but she, in return, explains to him the government's policies designed to promote opportunities of self-sufficiency by discouraging "infancy goods, but ours". Sonali perhaps fails to see through the charges wrought by the march of emergency in the country. The novelist observes: The emergency had given all kinds of new twists and turns to policy and the world's largest democracy was looking like nothing so much as one of the two-bit dictatorships we had loftily looked down upon.l7 What wrong went with her and how man-made bungling tIDpleasant circumstances flash on her mind with a lucidity of vision that no willful fate conspired to strike her down or dethrone her, rather it was simply the logic of emergency which "had simply caught up with me. During this phase of feverish imagination Sonali feels frighteningly tom within/in a universe where things either "must have meaning or nothing". The gruesome and grisly images of the victims of emergency including the poor bride burnt to death by her in-laws for want of a suitable dowry rise in her mind, she feels horror stricken to note that she was one of, "three hundred such women burnt during one year in this our capital city."lS However, Sonali sustains moral courage and strength to face up the situation, grown so blight and ugly, by recollecting a philosopher's statement that it is not the biological deterministic forces which make man coward, rather"a coward is defined by the deed he has done."19 She cannot run to any other person to seek advice in these hard times, her father is not alive - the rigidity of idealistic teaching that
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'we are moderate, tolerant people steeped in civilized way strikes hollow. After her resignation, the thirty eight years older Sonali becomes a central force to articulate and share the novelist's humanistic vision a.s a woman she can. We look through the unimaginable miseries and terror, let loose on her class by the manifest and unman fest firsts through her propinquity with Rose. She feels concerned with Rose's predicament in a so unpleasant situation with her husband lying in coma and the stepson Dev denying her allowance of subsistence to render life a miserable experience. After Sonali, Rose in this novel is portrayed a self-assertive, strong women by Sahgal. Both Sonali and Rose are typical Sahgal women. They are independent, assertive self-respecting conscientious and compassionate. Rose, a cockney shop-girl turned an Indian businessman's foreign bibi who tries her best to make a passage to India and eventually meets her death in the hands of a "youth camp tough" employed by her step son, Dev, one of the small tyrants the Emergency has created. Thus, we have great sympathy with Rose, as she tries best to adjust with her life still she is failed, but she never yields before any thing in her living life. As we see her, that she adjusts to the life of second wife without losing her very sturdy sense of values. She cannot accept living in the same house as Mona, Ram's first wife, but accepts the Hindu social system for what it is, with resignation. This acceptance comes probably from her realization that she is bound to Ram by an invisible cord which she cannot severe. "The Christian ceremony she'd never had put it in a nutshell. For better or for worse.,,20 It is perhaps Rose's background, which believed in making an honest living, however meager, that makes it impossible for her to understand or digest the subterfuge around her. Dev forging his father's signature with impunity, his shady deals with the "Power that be." It is not easy for there to understand why Ram, like a typical Indian, whishes to entertain important guests at five-star hotels.
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On many occasions she feels out of place, perhaps because she comes from a humble background where one does not hesitate to call a spade a spade. When Ram asks her to lose weight she is indignant: "I'm not joining any Figurate. In two years time I'll fifty years 0Id.,,21
The fact that Rose saves Mona's life even when her death would have benefited her is certainly to her credit. Though she may have often wished Mona dead, she could never have callously watched it happen. It was Rose's working class morals that gave her the strength not only to uproot herself initially from suburban London, but also to make a life for herself with dignity in Lahore and later in Delhi through all those trying years when Ram got fascinated with Marcella and later with any lady who took his fancy.
Thus we can say that like Sonali, Rose is also the most powerfully etched character in the book. She is the life of the story. She is unforgettable. She believes in the ideal of love. The allusion to Cytherea aptly captures the spirit of Rose eternal (woman) seeker of love. Like Sonali, Rose, Simrit is also a strong new woman in the sense that she dares to come out from the periphery of marriage. This is her awareness that she doesn't yield before male domination. She is conscious for her identity and to achieve it she leaves her husband even after seventeen years of her marriage. Therefore, Simrit's walk out is a denunciation of male pretence and a plea to recorchestrating and reinvigorating the entire infrastructure of the society. It is Simrit's hesitant journey towards identity which is the product of that sensitivity of her which has made her a writer. Yet this sensitivity keeps her aloof from people: her spiritual nourishment comes not from "her fellow man" but from "untouched unspoiled non-human things.,,22 This shrinking from everyday life makes her so non-assertive that she complies in Som's taking over her life, she feels herself, a manifestation of the mand-wife archetype characteristic of this patriarchal enclosure. And it is Simrit's rebelliousness, her willingness to change helps her in releasing her
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from the hold of the past; the old world where she had watched injustice prevail on the basis of gender and class makes way for a new one, where the possibilities of equality and opportunities are promised to all, irrespective of class, caste or gender. Therefore, she accepts divorce to make free from her wealthy business husband and walks out on her husband to carve out her own destiny. How long could she compromise her self-respect? And why? Whereas the other women are destroyed because they fail in their quest; but Raj's entry into her life change Simrit's course, turning it towards self-realization instead. His belief that living is "acquaintance with things in the raw ... and with human beings at alllevels" 23 gradually penetrates into her and propels her towards taking action before it is too late. She leaves Som and moves else where with her children, learning to cope with things on her own. Her divorce, then is her first step towards self-discovery, for she has managed to break out of the enclosure; her next step is her learning to cope with things on her own through reaching out to Raj and fulfilling her own sexuality. Ra thus becomes an exemplar of what Pratt calls the archetypal"green world lover,,24 and The Day in Shadow a 'double marriage plot' like Middle March25 notably, he is a Christian and thus free of traditional stereotyping. Thus, we can say that Simrit like an aware woman is able to break free of the patriarchal enclosure and come to terms with herself. Her decision to remarry is a sign not of continuing subjugation but of social and sexual emancipation that leads to autonomy and selfhood. Her days could be entirely hers", and promise unending adventure. 26 II
In the same novel there is a character named Pixie who is exploited by this materialistic world. But when awakening takes place in her heart she breaks the lustful exploitation of male chauvinism which is an act of boldness and moral courage and gives way to her self realization and individuality. Both educated and tmeducated women have been presented as rebels with all their limitations, depending upon their position, placing and situation. This is true in case of the Rani of Vijaygarh
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in Mistaken Identity who lives a neglected and humiliated life of the unwarranted wife of the king till she finds an ardent lover in Yusuf, a communist. Standing straight she faces her son Bhusan to tell him that she cares more for her personal interest than the stereotyped role of the royal wife. Though, she is married at an early age and her "knowledge depended on the slit between her carriage curtains'-27. She takes nine long years to give birth to Bhushan. She completely withdraws from her husband's life when he marries for the third time. Ultimately, she leaves her husband's house and marries her communist Muslim lover Yusuf but before doing that she reduces the power of her husband and son to nothingness. All this is done by the uneducated Rani who was one of the twins who "were both married to father and as twin brides had refused to be separated. Then one of them had died. Which one, when, of what, the chronicle did not say. whoever wrote it skipped the details. Whatdoilies die of? A swat, most likely. And they don't have names"28 this explains the kind of anonymous she has undergone - without a name and without any power. But in due course of time she change the whole pattern. Betrothed at five and married at thirteen, she had been confined within the walls of her house. No body cared to know whether she wanted to marry or not, because like other women of her time she was "all tongue and no script,,29. She goes on different pilgrimages to be blessed with a son. Bhushan's statement that Mother "knows marriage from the Chamber of horrors it is" further confirm the horrifying situation she is in, but her laughing" throwing caution and control to the winds her head flung back, that mass of hair unwinding in coils"30 and "raving for more life to live"31 shows her vitality and courage. The same desire to break the restricting social structure is seen in t!'le young Muslim girl Razia who catches Bhushan's attention. Razia, aware of Bhushan's interests, instigates passionate but dangerous meetings between classes at her school. Their illicit liasions spark off murderous riots when they are discovered together, and prompts the shameful departure of Razia's family from Vijaygarh. Bhushan spends years in anguish searching for his lost
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love only to have illusions shattered when he meets with the emancipated Razia years later in a Bombay hotel. In the same novel Sylla is also presented also as a young Parsi woman with an independent and Westernised outlook. She is flamboyant and fiercely independent. Her appearance, her very English ways, set her apart from the common Indian women. 'She wears a frock, swims in a bathing costume and has bobbed hair' .32 She is a typical inhabitant of upper class Bombay. This world of Sylla's was the kind of life Sahgal admits to have experience when she lived in Bombay after marriage. Sylla and her world have eVidently grown out of this personal experience. Educated in England and Switzerland, Sylla was brought up by her grandmother who has herself been educated in France. This lady has single-handedly raised. When she decides to marry she opts for the lawyer Nausar, and not Bhushan perhaps because Nausar could give her what her grandmother had hopped for her. Ironically enough, the whole purpose of Sylla's education abroad, the reason why she had been encouraged to be free was be<:ause her grandmother wanted her to have a happy and successful marriage. During Bhushan's three years in jail, when Sylla had kindly provided him with a lawyer, she had also the time and the perspective to see why she could not commit herself forever to Bhushan. Though she found his life endearing, she admits that every woman is looking for a man with an ambition in life. A man obsessed with his past and with no dreams of a fu ture was not for her. And this act of her shows her that she is a strong woman, who is conscious of her identity in marriage or in relations. Besides these women, in This Time of Morning, Nita and Rashmi who are also in process of making their own identity in a male dominated society by rejecting traditional taboos. As Rashmi finds emancipation from her shattered matrimonial bond with Dalip by drifting towards Neil.
Nita is also conscious for her identity. As the new -found emancipation that has come Nita's way changes her whole mental out look and turns her against the traditional idea of arranged marriages. Because she wants to stand on her own feet and enjoys her individuality, self-expression and self-dependence.
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Nita also has a thirst to do something and does not want to be bound by nuptial knots as yet. Later, her parents do allow her to take up a job but for very different reasons. Kalyan, a Minister had offered the job, and they simply" did not have the heart to refuse,,33 a Minister's after. But Nita looks for something more than merely a job, strives for independence and individual identity. It is Nita's longing for freedom and individuality that urges to make extra pre-marital affair with Kalyan and a sense of freeness from taking part in marriage. She tells him: "You gave me the freedom to be myself. I had never had that before. I'd never have known it but for you," and she finally admits before him': "I have been so happy with you.,,34
Thus in the chapter Identity Crisis Sahgal's women reaffirm her positive message that women can take steps to transform their own lives, and that with courage and determination they can challenge the patriarchal codes which constrict them. References 1.
2. 3.
4. 5. 6.
Lakshmi, Seshadri Vijaya, The New Women in Indian English women Writers since the 1970s, New Delhi: B.R. Publishing Corporation, p.12. Vivekananda, My Indian the India Eternal Kolkata, The R.K. Mission I11;stituteojCulture, 1998, p. 76. Sinha, Lakshmi, Nayantara Sahgal's Novels: A Critical Study, Patna: Janaki Prakashan, 1999. Quoted by Jasbir Jain in Nayantara Sahgal, New Delhi: Arnold Heinemann, 1978. Arora, Neena, Nayantara Sahgal and Ooris Lessing, New Delhi: Prestige Books, 1991. Sahgal, Nayantara, Women: Persons or Possessions, The Hindustan Times - Sunday Magazine, p.68.
7. 8.
Ibid., p.51. Ibid., p.60.
9.
Ibid., p.13.
10. Ibid., p.18.
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11. Ibid., p.107. 12. Jain, Jasbir, The Feminist Perspective: The Indian Situation and its Literary Manifestations, in Other English Essays on Commonwealth Writing. 13. Deutsch, Helen, The Psychology of Women: A Psychoanalytic Interpretation, Volume-I, Girlhood 1944; reprint. New York: Bantam, 1973, p.124. 14. Ibid., p.58. 15. Ibid., p.21. 16. Ibid., p.25. 17. Ibid., p.26.
18. Ibid.,p.26. 19. Ibid, p.31. 20. Sahgal, Nayantara, Rich Like Us, Harper Collins Publishers India, 1999, p.65. 21. Ibid., p.209. 22. Sahgal, Nayantara, The Day in Shadow, Delhi: Vikas, 1971, p.34. 23. Ibid., p.34. 24. Pratt, Annis, Achetypal Patterns in Women's Fiction, Bloomington: Indian Univ. Press, 1981. p.22. 25. Sahgal, Nayantara, The Day in Shadow, Delhi: Vikas, 1971, p.44. 26. Ibid, p.131. 27. Sahgal, Nayantara, Mistaken Identity, London: Heinemann, 1988, p.30. 28. Ibid., p.75. 29. Ibid., p.l56. 30. Ibid., p.38. 31. Ibid., p.158. 32. Ibid., p.75. 33. Ibid., p.146. 34. Ibid., pp.219-220.
DOD
ANITA DESAI'S FASTING, FEASTING: A SUBMERGED ICEBERG - Dr. N.K. Neb
Anita Desai's latest novel, Fasting, Feasting (1999), presents the varied experiences of a middle class traditional Indian family. The emphasis here, as in her earlier novels, shifts from the external to the internal world of experience. The nature of the novelistic discourse, corresponding with her earlier fiction, makes it un transparent and unpredictable. The novelist's awareness about the complexity informing her fiction can be easily ascertained from her own words: Writing is to me a process of discovering the truththe truth that is the nine-tenth of the iceberg that lies submerged beneath the one-tenth visible portion we call reality. All my writing is an effort to discover, to underline and convey the true significance of things. (Desai, 1989: 154) It engages her, in her fictional works, in the exploration of different aspects of typical human situations. Her fiction depicts simple looking situations that mark the underlying complexity of life. Fasting Feasting also registers a movement from the real experiential aspect of life to the inner reality of the mind. A study of
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this novel reveals certain typical features making Desai's fiction an exploration and presentation of the nature of human relationships. The examination of the hidden forces, active in the background, shapes the thematic structure of her fiction. The depiction of different conflicts and tensions in social life is directed to the study and analysis of psycho-emotional forces that tend to control and direct human behaviour. Instead of the outward, visible social behaviour the real inner factors that influence human behaviour in typical social situations take the centre stage. It differentiates Anita Desai from other Indian-English fiction writers whose central concern is social satire.
In Fasting, Feasting the depiction and development of different characters, their behaviour, interpersonal relationships and their typical individual traits find relevance in the thematic nuances related to the inner reality of the mind. How the different social circumstances, sihlations, incidents and ideas influence the innerself of a person has been artistically laid bare through the apparently normal and whimsical behavioural patterns of the characters inhabiting the fictional world. Mama Papa's ideal and smooth relationship in the novel demands a careful scrutiny to unravel the working of the hidden forces that remain active in the background. Mama's real self, in fact, remains hidden behind the ou tward facade of her complete merger into Papa's identity. It finds occasional expression in the forms of her behaviour considered to be deviant by Papa. Therefore, she comes out to be an altogether different person whenever she is away from Papa. The novelist has cleverly and artistically inserted certain details about Mama's inner feelings that highlight the split informing her outward behaviour and the social compulsions that suppress her inner being. This difference in Mama's acquired self and her real leanings is so striking that even Vma, her daughter, notices it: At times Vma was astonished, even embarrassed by such a glimpse-for instance, of Mama playing a game of rummy with her friends which she did surreptitiously becau:"e Papa had a high-minded disapproval of all forms of gambling and, by the
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These details reveal the presence of tumultuous elements and forces always active behind the facade of the behaviour described as normal or natural. These details point out the real psychoemotional structure of Mama's behaviour. The artistic achievement of the novelist here lies in her successful and effective depiction of the discord between Mama's real self and her projected self. Similarly, Uma's character becomes a case not only for the study and analysis of the social institutions of family and marriage but also, and more importantly, of the impact of different situations and relationships on her inner self. Her attraction towards Christianity and the sensuous way of life represented by Ramu come into a direct conflict with the traditional Indian ethos that is imposed upon her. Instead of developing a balance between her inner leanings and the expectations of her family, as has been done by her mother, Uma fails to face the reality. The extreme suppression she is subjected to and the incomprehensibility of life in clear terms make her a mental wreck. She starts suffering hysterical fits. Uma's abnormal behaviour in the form of hysterical fits reveals the tmbearable nature of the inner turmoil. The different points at which Uma suffers these fits are the result not as much of suppression as of extreme confusion and a sense of incomprehensibility of the nature and purpose of life. Another significant aspect of Uma's behaviour that hints at the possible explanation of her occasional abnormal fits and their ultimate disappearance is related to her experience in the river. Uma stops suffering from these fits altogether after her dangerous experience in the river. She is saved at two different occasions from being drowned into the river. Her experience seems to bring a realization about the ultimate reality of life-death; that frees her from the fear not only of death but also of the unknowable and unknown fears that haunt her mind. In this context, the imbibing of a sense of complete abandon seems to be the only way out. The social and cultural circumstances, depicted in the novel, have been used to highlight Uma's development into an alienated self. In the
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socio -cultural context she experiences emotional isolation instead of spiritual and intellectual. Vma's experience ultimately turns out to be a perpetual quest for meaning and value of life, an attempt to grasp the incomprehensible and the external existential struggle of the individual who refuses to float along the current. In Fasting Feasting this existential struggle finds extension in women's struggle to exist as a person. As the novel is primarily concerned with the dilemmas of the woman's world, the presence of the feminist perspective becomes almost an imperative. Desai's feminist perspective is not related to the expression of some sort of women's protest against their subjugation nor does she concentrate on developing an alternative model that provides emancipation from male hegemony. Her central concern is the presentation of subtle ways in which patriarchal system works to establish and maintain male superiority. The novel exhibits a feminist understanding of different experiences right from its beginning. Th(' use of the expression Mama Papa seems to indicate the equality enjoyed by Mama to Papa and express their joint, single identity. But the different details woven into the novelistic discourse assert the superior position of Papa in the family hierarchy. Mama's equal position, in fact, marks a false promise of inclusion into Papa's identity that keeps her voice suppressed. Ma"ma enjoys only that much of freedom and independence as is ordained to a wife in patriarchal system. Her role is to appropriate the dominating patriarchal ideology to the lives of the members of her family, especially girls. The patriarchal male supremacist position of Papa is revealed in these words: He is the only one in the family who is given a napkin and a finger bowl; they are the emblems of his status. (P. 25) A simple incident like eating fruit has been described in such a way that it brings out the subtle ways that mark man's superior position in the family. Apparently it seems to be a simple and smooth situation but the ideas and thoughts working in its background make it suggestive and symbolic. The way Papa is being offered an orange gains added significance:
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Anita Desai's Fasting, Feasting: A Submerged Iceberg Each segment is then peeled and freed of pips and threads till only the perfect globules of juice are left, and then passed, one by one, to the edge of Papa's plate. One by one, he lifts them with the tips of his fingers and places them in his mouth. Everyone waits while he repeats the gesture, over and over. (Pp. 23-24)
The presentation of this incident not only shows the invisible ways patriarchy works but also exhibits Desai's skill in making simple situations complex and significant. It not only shows Papa's superior status but also exhibits Mama's subordinate and marginalised position. As Mama has only secondary position there is, "only pith and peel and pips", that lie in her plate whereas Papa's plate has nothing except, "the merest smear of juice" (P .24). Mama's reaction - "her dark eyes flash with the brightness of her achievement and pride" (P .24) - reveals the mind-set of traditional Indian women guided and impressed by certain ideas constantly hammered down their psyche by the male-dominated society. These ideas make women believe that their ultimate aim in life is to please man. Similarly, Papa Mama's thoughts on the birth of a male child mark the influence of the prevalent patriarchal ideology that makes Papa feel: "He had not only made her his wife, he had made her the mother of his son. What honour. What status" (P.31). Mama also experiences a sense of achievement in providing greater joy to her husband: "She might have been wearing a medal" (P.31). The oppressive and overbearing presence of the ideas related to male dominance does not allow Mama to think about her separate identity and different concerns. Unaware of her subjugated and marginalized existence she finds joy in pleasing her husband only. As these women like Mama, Anamika and Uma remain relegated to a marginalised existence their individual efforts and achievements fail to bring relief from a marked absurdity informing their life. The lives of these women have no meaning as independent, autonomous human beings. In such a scheme of things Anamika's winning an Oxford scholarship is not an achievement for her as a person. Its real value IS considered only in terms of enriching her
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matrimonial prospects. She is not sent to Oxford for, "Only the privileged sons could ever hope to go" (p. 68). The letter about her scholarship is only preserved to be shown to her would-be in-laws. The absurdity regarding Anamika's life becomes more pointed and forceful when we see her undergoing extreme physical and mental pain in spite of her being an intelligent scholar. The uselessness of worldly achievements for women gets highlighted in Uma's words uttered at the time of Anamika's cremation: "The letter - the letter from Oxford - where is it? Did you - did you burn it ?" (p.152). The underlying absurdity makes the life of these women completely incomprehensible. Uma's failure to understand the real significance of the institution of marriage brings out the irony in the situation described in these words: She (Anamika) had been married for twenty-five years, the twenty-five years that Uma had not. Now she is dead, a jar of grey ashes. Uma, clasping her knees, can feel that she is still flesh, not ashes. (P.152) Uma suffers a broken engagement and desertion in marriage even before its consummation. But Anamika, who is 'successfully married' is driven to commit suicide. Urn a, who is considered to be an outcast in the world of marriage, seems to be better placed as compared to Anamika. Uma's own situation, after her unsuccessful marriage, indicates the absurdity informing her experience: It was assumed she would not understand, and
was never quite certain if she had never actually married or if she was now divorced. (P .95) The idea of an absurd existence presented in the novel is not limited to women's experience only. It gains further thematic relevance in its extension in human life in general. The words about the reversal of fortune in Anamika's case have greater significance when seen in total humanistic perspective: Then why, at that moment, when triumph should have reached its apogee, did everything change?
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Anita Desai's Fasting, Feasting: A Submerged Iceberg And all good fortune veer around and plunge shockingly downwards. (P. 69)
However, Desai's concern here is related more to women's life marked with a sense of absurdity than to the expression of absurd human existence. The major force that makes these women's existence absurd and keeps them at the secondary position is the subtle working of the power relations in the prevalent system of male hegemony. The dominating ideology applies certain strategies that hamper these women's understanding about their real position in society. The lack of a clear understanding makes these women imbibe the views put forth by patriarchy in transcendental and absolute terms. Instead of developing the presence of sisterhood motif Anita Desai here expresses how these women's ideas and their indoctrinated mind tend to facilitate their own subjugation. It is their silent acceptance of patriarchal system as natural that does not provoke them to show any sense of discredulity towards this meta-narrative. The behaviour of Vma's mother and her expectations from her daughters on patriarchal lines can be explained in these terms. Mama wants Vma to learn household chores and acquire the qualities of a traditional Indian woman to become a good wife. She goads Vma in such a way that her existence and place in marriage is just like an item of utility. She makes every possible effort to make Vma presentable before her would be in-laws so that she is accepted in marriage: "She (Mama) scrubbed at Vma's face as if it were a piece of hide to be offered for examination" (P.75). The centralization and the absolutization of patriarchal system helps man's supremacist, boastful and self-absorbing attitude go unchallenged. The impertinence informing a sense of superiority in Anamika's husband before their marriage finds not only acceptance but also justification in the structure of power relations that govern social life: The children saw that too-that she was marrying the one person who was totally imprevious to Anamika's beauty and grace and distinction. He was too occupied with maintaining his superiority. (Pp.69-70)
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This unchallenged and unquestioned superiority in the maledominated system is enjoyed not only by the bridegroom but also his family as well. The duties and responsibilities of these people are considered to be over the day their son is married. After marriage it is only the woman's duty to please her husband and his family. The following words show how a woman is treated as a trophy for her husband: Anamika was simply an interloper, someone brought in because it was the custom and because she would by marrying him, enhance his superiority to other men. (P.70) She is treated as an object and after suffering a miscarriage, that turns her incapable of bearing children, she is simply "damaged goods" (P.71) for her in-laws. So far as Anamika's parents are concerned they too, meekly accept the fate of their daughter. Their concern for their daughter seems limited to getting her married only. Thpy consider their duty and responsibility towards their daughter over as they hardly make any efforts to ensure a happy married life for their daughter. The immediate worry of the parents, as shown in the novel, is to get their daughters married. The hurry and the frantic efforts made by Vma's parents to find her a suitable match bring out the fear of the slur of being the parents of an unmarried girl. As the primary duty of the parents of a girl, especially father, is to find her a suitable match the girl is treated to be a big responsibility. And the ultimate goal of a woman's life is considered to be marriage and coping with marriage. It is the secondary position of woman and her meaningless existence that gets highlighted when we find no ripples caused even when an intelligent and beautiful woman like Anamika is driven to commit suicide. The hidden truth that Anita Desai seems to unearth and expose is that the real cause of women's troubles is not man and his attitude towards women but the system that shapes man's ideas and thoughts. But this should not make us think that the novelist's ideas are compatible with the radical feminist's view that propagates the demolition of all patriarchal institutions.
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The novelist's achievement here lies in the fact that she does not propagate any specific feminist view to be absolute and final. Her central concern rather seems to sensitise the reader to have a sympathetic understanding of women's problems. In order to give a broad view of women's marginalized existence, the novelist has presented different women characters in different situations. It makes the novel a fictional endeavour to probe multivalent nature of reality and the complex dimensions of women's existence. The varied experiences related to the life of Mama, Mira Masi, Vma, Anamika and Aruna help examine the range and complexity of human relationships and women's position in different possible situations. The variety of women depicted in this novel ranges from extremely submissive and oppressed like Mama and Anamika to the modem assertive women like Aruna and the independent women like Mrs. Patton and Melanie in America. Mama's life presents those women's experience who are falsely made to think to be equal partners in life. Uma and Anamika are the concrete examples of the women who are treated to be non-beings and have to suffer extreme mental and physical pain due to the typical patriarchal attitude of the society. Aruna represents the women who try to make their relevance noticed in the prevalent system. It is in the second part of the novel that we come across women who are not treated to be subordinates or secondary beings in marriage as compared to the women in the first part. As mentioned earlier, the novelist's concern here is not to propagate any specific feminist point of view as an ultimate solution to women's problems. The presentation of Aruna as an assertive woman becomes compatible with the novelist's effort to develop plurality of experiences related to women's existence. In fact, Anma's assertive attitude is not a sign of her independent existence as a person rather it reveals the extra-care she provides to her family. I t is only a small effort on her part to avoid total oblivion and a way to show that her existence also has some relevance. Moreover, the matters she expresses her concern with show her behaviour and thoughts limited to the feminine world. It is almost amusing to notice:
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Arona vexed to the point of tears because the cook's pudding had sunk and spread instead of remaining upright and soild, or because Arvind had come to dinner in his bedroom slippers, or Papa was wearing a t-shirt with a hole under one arm. (P.109) The indication of a concealed sense of discontentment in Arona's apparent authoritative behaviour reveals the doubts in the novelist's mind to treat such women as really emancipated. It gets revealed through these words: Certainly it brought her no pleasure: there was always a crease of discontent between eyebrows and an agitation that made her eyelids flutter, disturbing Uma who noticed it. (P.109) The novelist's presentation of the presence of divergent voices, through multiplicity of women's experience, tends to make it polyphonic. Another significant thematic variation that finds concentrated expression in the second part of the novel is the development of cross cultural contexts. The description of different places and the surroundings in the second part of the novel mark a shift in the setting from the Indian cultural background to the American. The shift in the locale gives the impression of this part of the novel being a separate unit. But the references in the ear lier part and the central incident that marks the spatial movement of the plot make it an integral part of the novel. 50 far as the creation of cross cultural conflict is concerned there are occasional references to the coming into contact of the two different cultures in the first part of the novel also. The life and behaviour of the nuns at 5t. Mary school, and Uma's attraction towards their lifestyle and beliefs develops a different cultural context. The two diff~rent cultures here come in a close contact. But a particular difference is noticed not only in Mama Papa's revulsion but also in the enclosure that keeps the Christian nuns at a distance. Uma, in spite of her liking for the life represented by the nuns, remains an outsider:
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Anita Desai's Fasting, Feasting: A Submerged Iceberg The nuns at St. Mary had allowed her as far as its portals-the assembly room, the hymn singing-but she had never been admitted into their chapel, and that was where she had wanted to go, sensing this was the heart of their celebration. (P.43)
Similarly, Arun's stay at Patton's house does not make him a part of their culture. It indicates only the coming close of two different cultures instead of marking a complete merger. Arun's failure to come to terms with the American culture can be easily ascertained from the following words of the narrator about Arun's attitude towards the weekend celebration of American students: There were like voices shouting out of another world, another civilization...Their volume created a fence, a barrier, separating him from them. They were the bricks of wall that held him out. (P.170) The inherent cultural difference makes Arun's "attempt to involve Melanie in speech" (p.170) unsuccessful. The possible cause of these two cultures marking a gap that remains tl.'1abridged can be ascertained from the following words expressing Vma's understanding of the western culture: She would have confessed how the order pleased her, the rationality of the whole system, each element having its own function and existing for a reason. (P.21) It brings out the difference in the two world views; the one based on rationality and the other emotional and based on faith. Mr. Patton's views about cows further point out this difference:
Yeah, how they let them (cows) out on the streets because they can't kill, em and don't know what to do with, em. I could show, em. A cow is a cow, and good red meat as far as I am concerned. (P.166) Apart from the difference in perception, another factor that hampers the coming close of these two cultures is a sense of
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superiority in the American people like Mr. Patton. These people do not seem to accept the presence of different perspectives and try to centralize understanding about life and human behaviour. Arun being a vegetarian is 'unnatural' to Mr. Patton. His attitude towards Arun, in calling him Red, reveals his overbearing nature and a sense of being superior. The presentation of the inner turmoils of women's existence that forms the central thrust of the novel in the first part finds extension in its second part as well. It exhibits the novelist's understanding of women's existence in two different cultures and adumbrates the process that makes women alienated and isolated. The first part of the novel depicts the alienated and suppressed existence of the Indian women. Their subjugated and marginalised existence causes different psycho-emotional problems and prevents their growth into autonomous, independent selves. These women's aspirations and quest for happiness in marriage and family keeps them fasting. A comparison between these women's life and the life of the women who seem to enjoy complete freedom and an independent position also reveals the significance of the title. The independence and freedom enjoyed by the American women like Mrs. Patton and Melanie indicates a sense of feasting they experience in their life. These women undergo the experience of fasting due to their self-dependence! Here a woman may not suffer due to the oppressive attitude of society, family and her husband. The freedom allowed to women in this culture can be gauged from the reference to a woman being a 'single parent'. Feasting on this kind of freedom does not grant peace and joy to them. It is not the outward hunger that blocks their way to satisfaction rather it points out the void within that develops due to a sense of alienation. The isolation that develops as a result of the lack of a sense of belonging turns these women neurotic. People like Arun, who fail to have a deeper understanding of this phenomenon, do not understand the cause of these women's psycho-emotional hunger, "What she is crying for, he cannot tell ..... But what hunger does a person so sated feel ?" (p. 224). An interesting and related aspect of the novelistic discourse shows ironical functioning of the pattern of fasting feasting indicated in the title of the novel. A shifting of stress on either of the
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words reveals deeper significance of the title. The stress on the first word indicates the people who seem to be fasting but in reality they are feasting and vice versa. This pattern of fasting and feasting has been emphatically hinted at in these words about Melanie's strange behaviour: Then Arun does see a resemblance to something he knows: a resemblance to the contorted face of an enraged sister who, failing to express her outrage against neglect, against misunderstanding, against inattention to her unique and singular being and its hungers, merely spits and froths in ineffectual protest. How strange to encounter it here, Arun thinks, where so much is given, where there is both licence and plenty. (P.214) Now, who then is to be considered undergoing fasting or feasting becomes very difficult to explain. Here again, the following words are highly suggestive and meaningful: "But what is plenty? What is not? Can one tell the difference." (P.214) The thematic concerns of the novel and the author's interest with the complexity of inner human nature require and exhibit a corresponding fictional structure. The novelist's deliberate effort to make her fictional work an endeavour to probe the multilayered nature of reality makes it slippery, and deceptive. The narrative strategies employed by the novelist correspond with her effort to unearth the three-fourth of the truth that remains submerged beneath the apparent reality. The use of different narrative techniques compatible with the nature of the fictional discourse not only make it complex but also add to its technical richness that makes it more artistic and effective. First of all, the use of the third person omniscient narrative method is extremely relevant and meets the artistic demands of the narrative. Frequent temporal and spatial shifts that operate in the novelistic discourse have been made natural, smooth and logical through the use of the third person narrator. As the main concern of the novelist is to explore, express and examine the tmderlying reality
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that remains hidden behind the visible working of different human relationships, the role of the narrator becomes more significant. The examination and analysis of the multilpicity of perspectives regarding the reality of life make the narrative shifts suitable to give expression to the different dimensions of life. The incidents and happenings narrated in the novel do not occur in chronological order. This device of introducing different digressions and diversions, that seem to have an independent and separate existence, provides extension and expansion to the novelistic, discourse. It enables the novelist to dive deep into the mind of her different characters. Instead of furthering the plot with the help of a causal progress what we find in Fasting Feasting is the narration of the experiences of different people as envisioned by the narrator. The presentation of the multivalent nature of reality, expressed through the life and experiences of different characters, finds effective expression through the third person narrator. The central incident is related to Mama Papa's preparation to send the packet of tea and shawl to their son in America. The spatial movement marks only a small change that takes place in the second part of the novel where Arun receives these things and hands them over to the Patton family as a gift. Instead of narrating the incidents interlinked with one another the narrator concentrates on the narration of different experiences and situations. The structure of the plot develops into a circular movement unlike the traditional linear narrative. The structural framework echoes the Indian tradition of narrativization. The circular movement of the plot makes it end where it started. It points out another feature of the novelistic framework related to the traditional Indian way of story telling. In this novel the narration of the central incident remains suspended and other stories are interwoven in the texture of the novel and a pattern of story within the story develops. The development of the circular narrative structure that forms the overall design of the novel: "ls like the snake swallowing its own tail" (Mongin, 1997: 213). The creation of such kind of a narrative form is highly compatible with the thematic concerns of the novel. It is important to note that it is not the novelist's fondness for experimentation with the narrative technique but the development of a typical fictional world concerning the inner world of the psyche and the complications of
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human existence that requires such kind of a narrative form. The absence of a major unifying incident or a single dominating central figure, that usually helps develop a unifying impact, does not seem to adversely affect the novel. The unity of impact and the interest in the novel is maintained through the variety of experiences of different characters delineated in the novel. The experiences of the different characters may not be an extension or a natural outcome of the life and problems of Mama-Papa's family, it provides useful explanations, contrasts, juxtapositions and parallels for a better understanding of life. Although the immediacy of experience, that is the hallmark of the first person narration, is missing in the third person omniscient narrator yet the novelist has made an appropriate choice of narrator in Fasting Feasting. Apart from using a circular narrative structure and the third person omniscient narrative device the insertion of interesting and minute but significant details in the texture of the novel is a very useful narrative device in this novel. These details acquire real significance in voicing thematic nuances and developing a particularly conducive atmosphere for the incidents to take place. In Fasting Feasting these details provide the novel, particularly the first part of the novel, specific Indian setting and document the novel with Indian cultural backgrolmd. The details about Anamika and Vma's marriage ceremonies and rituals related to child birth and death bring out the various cultural aspects of Indian way of life. These details sometimes function as important narrative elements developing a specific air of expectation. The theme of expectations and reality and their irreconciliability finds expression through a careful and performative use of these details. The extended description of marriage brings out the ironical working of the system. The pattern of the reversal of expectations does not remain limited to the women living in traditional Indian families only. It has beeen forcefully expounded in the second part of the novel mainly concerned with women's lot in the American way of life. Sometimes the novelist drops useful hints, about the possible future of certain characters in the form of isolated sentences. The comments about Vma tum out to be the portents of her impending failure in marriage and life. "There was not a thing Uma put her hand to that did not turn Lo failure" and the words, "Her record book ,·vas marked red
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for failure ... Uma was always unsteady on her feet" (p.36), gain significance only at a later stage. An interesting thing about these comments is that they seem to have been made before the taking place of the real incident. The narrator does not share the whole truth or information at one stage. The reader is left guessing about the final outcome. Similarly, there are certain incidents and aspects related to women's behaviour in particular that demand a close study and a careful explanation. For example, the real cause of Uma's fits and why she stops facing these problems remains unexplained in concrete terms. In the same way, Melanie's neurotic experience and her indulgence in strange activities remain elusive. One may explain it in terms of the novelist's deliberate effort to make her fiction hide the reality rather than reveal and explain. But the reader remains unsatisfied. The depiction and creation of a typical fictional world and the choice and selection of characters marks Anita Desai's sharp sense of craftsmanship. All the characters in the first part of the novel belong to middle-class households in India. It informs her concern with the personal, internal and family life of different individuals, particularly women. The social, religious, economic and political conflicts do not find any specific attention. The women characters do not face any problems from economic point of view. All these women, like many of other women characters in her earlier novels, belong to affluent section of society. Their problems, therefore, are internal and related to the mind. So far as the movement of these women characters is concerned, it remains limited to their own houses or the houses of their relatives or religious places. A noticeable point about the women characters is their peculiar individual traits in spite of the fact that they share a common family background. The experiences of Mama, Mira Masi, Anamika, Uma and Aruna bring out the peculiarities of their different inner self. Uma's fits, Mama's urge to play rummy and Mira Masi's visits to different religious places exhibit the nuances of their inner psychoemotional structures. These women, no doubt, look and behave like other normal human beings. But their specific psychological make up differentia tes them from commonplace, ordinary women. The following comments about the women characters in Desai's fictional world are extremely relevant:
118
Anita Desai's Fasting, Feasting: A Submerged Iceberg Her characters are not drawn from the main stream of life and as such cannot be representative of the common lot of women. The introvert women are mostly from affluent families and have no cause to worry' about the basic physical needs of life. (Bai 1996: 22)
The fictional world created by Desai is inhabited by such women for whom the conflicts that torture their mind and the pains resulting from interpersonal relationships have greater significance than economic or physical needs. The ideas of pursuing a career, leaving home, living alone are, therefore, like, "seeds dropped on stony, arid land that Vma inhabited" (p.131). The central concern of Desai's novel, no doubt, is the dilemmas of the woman's world and their presentation in fictiona 1terms. The fictionalization of the different aspects of woman's existence points out certain significant features, like the tips of the iceberg, that hide larger contexts of reality informing human behaviour. It makes Fasting Feasting a typical Desai product with all its technical richness, thematic complexity and its concern with the incomprehensible and invisible factors of human behaviour and reality of life. Notes and References
.
Bai, K. Meera, Women's Voices: The Novels afIndian Women Writers, Delhi: Prestige Books, 1996. Desai, Anita, Fasting, Feasting, London: Chato and Windus, 1999. (All subsequent references to this novel are from this edition and have been incorporated within the text. The page numbers are given in parentheses.) Desai, Anita, Anita Desai's Technique, quoted in Syed Amanuddin's, The Fiction of Anita Desai, ed., R.K. Dhawan, New Delhi: Bahri Publications, 1989. Mongia, Sunanda, Recent Indian Fiction in English: An Overview, Spcctnml Histpry of Indian Literatllre in Ellglish, ed., Ram Sewak Singh and Cham Sheel Singh, Delhi: Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, 1997.
DOD
A NOVEL OF REVOLT AGAINST SOCIAL INJUSTICE AND OPPRESSION ON WOMEN: A THEMATIC ANALYSIS OF ARUNDHATI ROY'S
THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS - R.K. Mishra
Arundhati Roy is indisputably acclaimed and acknowledged as a revolutionary and an iconoclast in her approach to the novel The God of Small Things. Her revolutionary spirit and iconoclastic objectives are surfaced in this novel because of her exploitation of the theme of social injustice and oppression on women. The God of Small Things is reckoned as a social novel against these features as pointed out above. Arundhati Roy has deliberately written this novel with a feministic design in order to revolutionize the age-old Indian society of patriarchal dominance and supremacy. Her underlying intention seems to dismantle the old fabric of the tradition-bound society and to rebuild it in favour of the oppressed and exploited matriarchal section of society. With this end in view Roy portrays the tragic plight of Indian women with a view to awakening public awareness in support of these oppressed and humiliated women. She focuses particularly and specifically on the predicament of social injustice and torture meted out to women in their domestic and familial situations. She assails in the novel the cruelty and unkindness shown to women irrespective of any consideration of
120 A Novel of Revolt Against Social Injustice and Oppression ... their physical weakness, mental timidity and imbecility. Roy skilfully delineates the various scenes and incidents of physical and emotional torture inflicted upon the helpless and homeless women in their state of adversities and crises. Through out this novel The God of Small Things Roy champions the oppressed women and espouses their rebellious sentiments and outrageous reaction against the social injustice and oppression on them by the male members of the society. The first incident of social injustice as focused on by the novelist is Ammu's deprivation of higher education. Ammu the only daughter of Pappachi and Mammachi is unjustly debarred from prosecuting higher studies by her parents on the assumption that higher education depraves a woman. This traditional misconception governed the mind of Ammu's parents who deliberately deprived her of college education. But they on the contrary facilitated their son Chacko to prosecute his hlrther studies at Oxford, although his academic performances were disappointingly poor and hopeless. Chacko avails himself of the scope for higher education because of his being a male but his sister is denied the same scope for being a woman. Arundhati Roy denounces this kind of gender discrimination as gross injustice. She inveighs this condemnable tendency of parents who sustain the conservative outlook of debarring their daughters from having higher education. This tendency of the parents still persists even in the 2pt Century. Ammu is to be compared and contrasted with the other heroines of Roy's contemporary novelists from the view point of her incapability to have higher education. She could not sustain her struggle for higher studies as Ratnabai the heroine of Shevanti Bai N ikambe could achieve. Ra tnabai met wi th strong opposition when her father intended to educate her but she succeeded in having education in the face of social objection and impediments. As the girl is educated, her husband is pleased with her when he returns from abroad. Like Ammu, Uma the heroine in Anita Desai's novel Fastillg I t'astillg was also debarred from continuing her studies due to
A Novel of Revolt Against Social Injustice and Oppression ... 121 parental objection. Uma could not persist in her attempt to have further education. She is deprived of higher education like Ammu. Just as Ammu's brother Chacko was sent to Oxford for higher studies likewise Arun the baby brother of Uma was sent to America to prosecute higher studies but on the contrary his sister is prevented from even studying up to matriculation. Another women character of the same novel Fasting Feasting is Anamika who becomes victim to gender discrimination in the matter of higher education. She performed so brilliantly in her final examination that she was awarded scholarship for studies at Oxford. But like Ammu, Anamika was also forbidden by her parents to go to Oxford to study there. Sarita the protagonist of Shashi Deshpande's novel The Dark Holds No Terrors struggles and succeeds in being educated much against her mother's will. She prosecutes studies of medical science and becomes a successful doctor. Similarly Virmati the protagonist in Manju Kapoor's novel Difficult Daughters' grapples wi th the dicision of her mother who was never in favour of her higher studies. Her mother contended like Ammu's father that her education was over and no more education was requiren. for her but Virmati seeks to educate herself like Ratnabai and Sarita in the teeth of social opposition. Ammu the protagonist of Tile God of Small Things failed to struggle against her parents to have her studies up to matriculation. She becomes a victim to social injustice of gender discrimination like Uma and Anamika. Another example of social injustice as recounted in the novel is women's deprivation of parental property. Chacko the brother of Ammu overbearingly exercises and asserts his full right as the inheritor of the property of his parents, but his sister Ammu cannot claim any property of her parents. Chacko arrogantly reiterates before his sister every now and then "what is yours is mine, and what is mine is also mine"(l). This haughty claim of his property hurts the sentiment of his sister but Chacko does not mind in hurting her emotionally. Another example of Chacko's claim of property is cited of his partnership with Ammu in his running the pickle factory named Paradis Pickle. Although Ammu worked in the factory as much as Chacko did, the latter always claimed the factory as his
122 A Novel of Revolt Against Social Injustice and Oppression ... own "my factory my pineapples, my pickle" (2). His frequent assertion of his claim of property is suggestive of social injustice meted out to Ammu. Arundhati Roy castigates this kind of discrimination not only as an act of injustice but also a kind of social oppression. With regard to oppression on Roy's women characters of her novel The God of Small Things, many incidents of torture can be cited. The women like Ammu Rahel, Mammachi and Margaret Kochamma become victims to the torture of the male members, who assert their superiority and supremacy over female in the maledominated Indian society, that treats the women as inferior and subordinate to men. The bright example of oppression on women in the novel is Ammu's predicament. She is beaten frequently by her father. He once tore a shoe bought by her from the market. She is also beaten by her addicted husband in his inebriated mood. She has to tolerate his outrageous treatment till he coerces her to appease the sexual hunger of his Boss Mr. Hollick. When she declines to yield to his Boss's desire, he beats her violently in an exasperated mind. This time, his violence against his wife goes beyond her endurance. Consequently she repulses his violence by force and runs away to Ayemenem House with her children Estha and Rahel for shelter. Ammu now leads her life as a divorced wife in the house of her parents. But to her misfortune, she is tortured physically and emotionally by her parents and brother Chacko without remorse. Ammu feels afflicted by the cold indifference of Pappachi and Mammachi Chacko treats her and her children as unwanted botheration and an encumbrance on his parents. Ammu suffers inextricably and irredeemably like Shakespeare's Cordelia in his tragedy King Lear. Ammu is persecuted for being a divorced women estranged from her husband. It is an irony that a divorced daughter is oppressed upon by her own parents, who welcome and bestow their love and affection on their estranged son. It is a matter of social injustice and an oppression that the estranged son Chacko is cordially treated by his parents but on the other hand the same parents turn prejudiced against their daughter on account of her helplessness and homelessness. In this context Baby Kochama's jealous comment
A Novel of Revolt Against Social Injustice and Oppression ... 123 directed towards Ammu is worth quoting. Baby Kochamma tauntingly commented on Ammu: "A married daughter has no position in her parents home. As for a divorced daughter she has no position any where at all" (3). This is how she is tortured mentally and emotionally by Baby Kochamma. In the novel The God of Small Things, Ammu's suffering is similar to that of Jhabwala's Shakllntala, who is devoid of help and assistance of her parents, her brother and lover. Shakuntala too suffers like Ammu and learns to redeem her bruised heart and her shattered life. Just as Jhabwala shows her sympathy and compassion towards her suffering heroines, Roy too portrays the miseries and pitiable life of Ammu, Mammachi, Rahel and Baby Kochamma in such a manner so as to show her kindness towards them. Unlike Arundhati Roy, Uma Vasudeva, another women novelist explores the inner struggles of her women and seeks to externalize their mental tension in her novels Songs ofAnllsuya and Shreya of Sonagarh. Her Shreya is a traditional wife and daughter in law. When love in the case of Ammu Jeopardizes her life, the same love transforms Shreya and liberates her from many of her inhibitions but unlike Ammu, she makes a compromise between her family and love affairs. In contrast to Ammu and her daughter Rahel, "Namita Gokhle's women character Paro in her novel Para: Dreams of Passion refuses to be consumed by the monstrous schematization of the male dominated society"(4) Ammu's life does not run like that of Bharati Mukherjee's Jasmine, who never suffers like her. Jasmine merely experiences a change in her temperament and in her capacity of adjustment. Uma the heroine of Anita Desai's Fasting Feasting is considered as a liability on her parents as Ammu is treated as an encumbrance by her brother Chacko. Uma's condition in the family is no better than that of a domestic servant. Her marriage turns out to be a failure like those of Ammu and Rahel. She is tortured by her dowry hungry family. She is allowed neither to continue her studies nor to do any job. She is engrossed in the domestic life of the family. In Shashi Deshpande's novel The Dark Holds No Terrors, Sarita the heroine is always ignored and neglected in favour of her brother
124 A Novel of Revolt Against Social Injustice and Oppression ... Arun. Like Ammu, she is also deprived of parental love. Even her birth day is also not celebrated with due pomp and ceremony but on the contrary her brother's birthday is observed gorgeously and pompously. When her brother is drowned, Sarita is blamed for his death. Her mother always scolds her accusing her of her guilt in killing her son although she is innocent of the charge. Sarita resents this ineqliality and partial treatment between her and her brother. The mother loves Arun more endearingly than Sarita because of his being a male where as Sarita is looked down upon in the family for being a female. This apparently discriminating treatment provokes Sarita's resentment and compels her to revolt against her parents and leave home. Where as Ammu's and Rahel's marriages prove a failure. Sarita's marriage becomes happy and a blessing because her lover Manu bestowes his love on her and ensures her security. He is regarded as an Ideal hero who comes to rescue his wife from a dull, loveless and insecure existence. Ammu was such a tragic character that she was devoid of any sympathy and compassion in her days of tragedy. Her kith and kin who came to see her on the pretext of showing their sympathy, shed crocod ile tears of her miseries. Ammu gradually learnt to study their hypocrisy and despise them. Another incident of gross partiality and gender discrimination is Chacko's right to flirt with the women workers of his factory. When he flirts amorously with them, he is encouraged by Pappachi and Baby Kochamma on the ground of " Man's Needs" but Ammu's illicit relation with Velutha is condemned as sinful and heinous. In consequence of her love for Velutha she is unjustly locked in a room and chastised severely. When Chacko falls in love with Margaret Kochamma, his parents exult over this affair, where as they terribly resent Ammu's love affair with Velutha,. This kind of discriminating treatment meted out to Ammu is illustrative of social injustice and an oppression on the women characters of the novel. "The novelist wants to expose the hypocrisy and male chauvinism in a particular conservative family"(5) Ammu also becomes a victim to the oppression of Indian police in the cllstody Ammu's sincere love for Velutha is derided as
A Novel of Revolt Against Social Injustice and Oppression ... 125 perverted love. She is abused as a prostitute by police. This humiliation of a lady by police is condemned by the novelist as an oppression on women. She draws the picture of how Ammu is tortured and outraged by police who are impervious to any noble sense of fair judgement. In her portrayal of the vandalism and atrocity of police, she has sought to expose the lapses existing in the police Department. She draws the attention of the readers towards atrocious and harsh treatment meted out to Ammu and Velutha unscrupulously and aggressively by police. This incident is an example of oppression on women. Thus, we find how Ammu is subjected to persecution and humiliation by Pappachi, Mammachi, Chacko, Baby Kochamma and by Police. Her life can be contrasted with the women protagonists of other women novelists such as Anita Desai, Shashi Deshpande, Shobha De, Bharati Mukherjee and Manju Kapoor. Ammu is much different from Anita Desai's heroines Maya, Monisha, Sita and Nanda Kaul. Where as Ammu is tortured physically and emotionally, Maya and Monisha undergo psychic affliction, develop insanity and commit suicide. Ammu on the other hand bears the brunt of family oppression but does not suffer from a complex of alienation or claustrophobia as experienced by Anita Desai's protagonists. The suffering of Maya, Monisha, Sita and Nanda Kaul can not be attributed to the patriarchal dominance and tyranny to which Roy's women characters are subjected. Anita Desai portrays the neurotic mind of her women characters who struggle against adversities and grapple with hazards in their marital life in order to restore peace and joy to their lives but they feel ultimately discomfited and undergo traumatic and neurotic experiences. We cannot blame the society in their cases that they have been unjustly treated or oppressed upon by any member of their families. In contrast to Anita Desai's women, Roy's protagonist Ammu does not undergo traumatic experiences. She is persecuted by her father, mother and brother because of their hostile and inclement attitude to her. Unlike Ammu, Sita in Anita Desai's novel Where Shall We Go This Summer? is never ill treated by any of the characters
126 A Novel of Revolt Against Social Injustice and Oppression ... although her marital life shatters like that of Ammu because of the wild behaviour of her husband. While Uma in Fasting, Feasting is a meek, docile and passive sufferer. Ammu in The God ofSrtUlll Things remonstrates against the age-old rules of ethics "who should be loved and how. And how much." (6) Like Ammu, Uma too tolerates insults and abuses flung by her parents. Fasting, Feasting is the only novel that approximates to The God of Small Things in respect of portrayal of plight of Indian women. Just as Ammu represents the attitude of Arundhati Roy, Uma in the novel in Fasting, Feasting is projected as the replica of Anita Desai. She demonstrates how Uma endures abuses and humiliations of her parents like Ammu. Anita in this novel points out the discriminating attitude of the parents to their daughter Uma. Uma's parents are highly conservative, traditional and orthodox in their attitude and outlook. Her mother recalls to her mind her passed days of her childhood, when her parents discriminately distributed sweets only to the boys. She speaks: In my days girls in the family were not given sweets, nuts good things to eat. If some thing special had
been bought in the market like sweets or nuts, it was given to the boys in the family. (7) Likewise Vma's mother inherited this despicable quality of her parents and followed their footprints in treating her daughter Uma and Aruna with partiality and discrimination. Uma is forbidden to go to school and compelled to stay at home to look after her brother Arun. Uma's marital life degenerates in to a chaotic-life because of her failure in marriage. Her marital life is reminiscent of Ammu's frustrated conjugal life. She becomes unhappy in her marriage with an already married man. She is also devoid of parental love and affection as Ammu is deprived of. Just as Anamika another woman character of the same novel Fasting, Feasting suffers from the tragedy of her worst marital life. Ammu too becomes victim to the frustration of her marital life. After her marriage, Ammu feels disillusioned in her marital life. She is regularly beaten by her husband in the same manner as Anamika is beaten by her mother in law to the silent and passive witness of her husband. Anamika is treated worse than
A Novel of Revolt Against Social Injustice and Oppression ... 127 animals. She remains engaged through out the day in the domestic work. She longs for freedom which is denied to her. Anita Desai as a champion of women aptly shows in her novel Fasting, Feasting the constant urge of women for freedom. Anita Desai's treatment of women character is much different from tha t of Roy'S. Where as Roy's characters Ammu and Rahel are rebellious sufferers Desai's characters are passive sufferers. They learn to live by suffering. But Ammu is a tragic character who suffers terribly till her end of life. After the death of Velutha in the police custody, she leaves Ayemenem House and comes to Alleppy where she meets her tragic death in a hotel named BharatLodge. Her tragedy is ascribable solely to the ill-treatment and persecution inflicted on her by the male members of the community. Arundhati Roy has depicted vividly the predicament of Ammu with a view to condemning the patriarchal dominance of the male section of the society. Chacko is a product of patriarchy and a member of wonderful chauvinistic society. In this context Gerda Lerner aptly says "Patriarchy means the manifestation and institutionalization of male-dominance over women in society in general." (8) By her portrayal of Ammu as protagonist, Roy seems to be revolting against the supremacy and high handedness of patriarchy over matriarchy The next character, who becomes victim to the male dominance, is Ammu's daughter Rahel who is always treated as an outsider and a liability to the family by her grandfather and uncle. She is neglected at home for being a girl. The torture inflicted upon her mother by Pappachi and Chacko outrages her sentiments. She develops a rebellious nature like her mother who rebels against injustice and oppression on her. Rahellives in the Ayemenem House being devoid of love and affection of her grand father and uncle Chacko who always treat her and her brother Estha as unwanted burden on the family. Her mother Ammu also neglects her due to her engagement in the domestic work of the family and due to indifference particularly of the male members of the family. Rahel's suffering stems from her mother's premature death at the age of thirty one. She was only eleven years old when her mother died. The constant ill-treatent meted out to her and her mother made her
128 A Novel of Revolt Against Social Injustice and Oppression ... temperamentally sadistic. She becomes rebellious and abnormal in her attitude. She is therefore blacklisted in Nazareth convent school on account of her mischief. She was also expelled from the school on the basis of the complaints of the senior girl stuclents. Despite her apparent politeness, she could not be befriended by anyone. She always preferred loneliness to a bustling life. During her college education she had to put up at a hostel from which she never returned to Ayemenem House because of the unkind and haughty treatment of her grandfather Pappachi and her overbearing uncle Chacko. Her marital life also became as much pitiable as was her mother's. She fell in love with Larry Mc Caslin, a youth who was busy in his doctoral research in Delhi. She like her mother Ammu married Mc Caslin whimsically and impulsively without much circumspection as a result of which her marital life became shortlived and resulted in her divorce. Her marital life is totally eclipsed by her divorce. After her estrangement from her husband Rahel returns to Ayemenem House like her mother but she lives there as an isolated creature and becomes unsociable and disagreeable by nature. Rahel is more or less like Bim and Tara of Anita Desai's novel Clear Light of Day. Bim and Tara are brought up in hostile situation with their indifferent and disinterested parents. Both the sisters are left neglected by their parents who are bound to be indifferent because of their disease and incapability to do anything. These girls had to struggle against calamities of death,--disease, poverty and social apathy but did not suffer from ill treatment as it happened to Rahel. When Tara the younger girl gets married to Bakul and goes abroad with him, Bim has to live alone to look after the house and her retarded brother who is dependent on her. Bim is afflicted by her misfortune but does not suffer from social oppression. Unlike Rahel, Bim eschews love, marriage and domestic comfort and hence she does not get victim to marital discord as Rahel suffers due to her divorce. Similarly Lila a thirteen year old girl of Anita Desai's latest novel The Village by the Sea has to encounter various hazards in running her house with her sick mother and unemployed dipsomaniac father. But Lila is not tortured physically and emotionally as Rahel suffers in the hands of Pappachi Mammachi and Chacko.
A Novel of Revolt Against Social Injustice and Oppression ... 129 Anita's characters suffer due to existential problems where as Arundhati Roy's Rahel had to suffer both physically and mentally due to deliberate indifference of their parents and grand parents. This wilful negligence and apathy towards their daughter and grand daughter is tantamount to their oppression on her. Such cases of indifference of parents and grandparents are frequently flashed in the news papers. Another women character of The God of Small Things, who becomes an epitome of torture of the male is Mammachi. Her conjugal life is invariably turbulent and restless. Her life is full of turmoil. She lives passively like a puppet in the hands of her husband Pappachi who used to beat her aggressively with an iron flower vase only to appease his male ego and assert his highhandedness in the family. She gradually develops a neurotic nature in her later life because of regular torture inflicted upon her by her husband. Mammachi is an unhappy wife, and mother. She has been all along persecuted by her husband since her marriage. Her husband deals with her as a sadist who takes delight in beating his wife but Mammachi has to endure all ill-treatment of her husband in order to satisfy his male ego. She stands before us as a symbol of ideal womanhood. Arundhati Roy portrays Mammachi's plight of oppression on her by her husband with a view to assailing the dominance of the male section of the society In contrast to Mammachi, Nanda Kaul in Anita Desai's novel The Fire on the Mountain does not undergo any physical torture of her Vice-Chancellor husband who has illicit relation with a lady. Nanda Kaul remains absorbed in the domestic life of her family. After all, her marital life was free from trouble. The only fact that rendered her restless was her lack of freedom. She therefore renounces social and familial comfort and joy after the death of her husband in order to lead a secluded life and enjoy freedom. She flees to a lonely bungalow at Carignano in Kasauli, where she derives mental peace and enjoys freedom but she is never physically tortured by any male member of her family. Her past life with her husband was happy and prosperous. Similarly Sita the other women protagonist of Anita Desai's novel Where Shall We Co This Slimmer? can not cope with her husband as a result of which
130 A Novel of Revolt Against Social Injustice and Oppression ... she feels alienated from him. Sita's marital life becomes dreary, cheerless and monotonous but she is never beaten by her husband or any male member of her family. However, she rebels against the society and harbours optimistic view of her life without despondency, Sita however resembles Sarah the heroine of Desai's novel Bye-Bye, Black Bird in respect of her spirit of compromise and adjustment. Margaret Kochamma is another woman sufferer in Roy's novel
The God of Small Things. She is the wife of Chacko and mother of Sophie Mol. She suffers like other women characters of the novel and fails to achieve the dreams she cherishes in this male-dominated India. Her life becomes miserable and insecure after her marriage with Chacko. She undergoes a long period of suffering because of the onslaught of misfortune. Chacko proves to be an unworthy husband who ruins her life Margaret Kochamma is forced to divorce Chacko and marry Joe who does not survive for long years. Joe dies very shortly and so does her only daughter Sophie Mol who meets her death by drowning. Her tragedy of life can be attributed to her disaster and mishaps and not to any oppression by any male members of the society. Her suffering corresponds closely with that of Thomas Hardy's Elizabeth Jane who occurs in his novel The Mayor of Casterbridge" Thus we find Margaret Kochamma as a tragic character who suffers in her life without alleviation but none of the male members of the society comes to her rescue. The male section of the society merely remains passive spectators to all her sufferings. She would have felt relieved and her suffering would have mitigated if the male members of the society had come to her succour. Roy's women characters in her novel The God of Small Things, undergo phYSical and mental suffering caused by the male members. Ammu the central character is persecuted physically and mentally by her father and husband, misbehaved by her brother and humiliated by police. Her cumulative suffering culminates in her tragic death. She is cremated with out the presence of her parents and relatives except by her brother and daughter) Roy in this novel condemns the hypocrisy and the pretentious moral code of conduct imposed discriminately on men and women. She highlights the
A Novel of Revolt Against Social Injustice and Oppression ... 131 ... marital life as the background of all sorrows and suffering of all women characters in their lives. Unlike Roy, Anita Desai in her novels deals with the problems of alienation and claustrophobia experienced by her women protagonists, who betray their schizophrenia, neurosis hypersensitivity, introversion and self-rumination. Her women characters do not suffer from physical and mental torture by male members. Their unhappiness springs from their claustrophobia and solitude and not from oppression by male members of the society. Anita Desai's women characters experience loneliness desolation and alienation from society because of their inadaptability and incompatibility. She is ploeoccupied in her novels more ~ith the exploration of the psychic mind and problems of her women protagonists than about the prevalence of social injustice and oppression on her women. Sashi Deshpande in her novel Small Remedies makes a sensitive portrayal of women's quest for identity in a patriarchal world. She draws the picture of a lonely daughter Madhu who is sensitive and capable as a mother and wife but vulnerable in her position in the society. She has to struggle against her shattered family life as Ammu in The God of Small Things struggles for shelter and security but fails miserably to achieve it in the male-dominated society. In the context of male dominance Shashi says: "To exploit women by loving them or by force is the patriarchal virtue of men." (9) Mannu Bhandari is another woman novelist who focuses on the dilemma of Indian women who prefer to ostracize themselves being denied the right and freedom to live equally with men. She depicts the helplessness and confusion of women in their attempts to overcome these crises. Their education and economic independence help them to rid themselves of humiliation resulting from dependent relationship with others. Her novel BUllty portrays the sense of helplessness and confusion arising in women due to discriminatory patriarchal attitude towards men despite their high levels of education and economic independence. These women novelists of the post Independence India depict the life and plight of Indian women in all its depth and complexity.
132 A Novel of Revolt Against Social Injustice and Oppression ... "Patriarchy has compelled the Indian women to be totally subservient to the male in social as well as economic spheres"{lO). In the earlier fiction written by the male novelists, women were represented more as symbols of virginity, devoted wife, dutiful daughter and all sacrificing mother. They portrayed an ideal picture of women and treated them as an epitome of virtue, beauty and chastity. But women's obvious passivity and timidity doomed them to a secondary position Shashi Oeshpande admits: She is able to empathize better with women and hence her protagonists are women: As writing is born out of personal experience, the fact that I am a woman is bound to surface. (II) She hopes to metamorphose the sterotypled image of women that the male writers have been presenting to the world. Shashi Deshpande's primary focus of attention is on the struggle of women in the context of modem Indian society. Unable to defy traditional patriarchal norms of society these women characters attempt to assert their identity not only as women but also as human beings. She does not accept the fact that women are inferior beings who must remain passive, docile and submissive. (12) In the British and American novels pictures of miseries of women are rarely portrayed in as much their social situations do not espouse the promotion of patriarchal dominance, which contributes to the suffering of Indian women. Women in those countries enjoy equal status and right with men and hence they do not feel subordinated or marginalized as it happens in a male dominated country like India. The position of women is circumscribed in India because of their dependence on its culture and tradition. India is traditionally and culturally different from those countries, where women are completely emancipated but in India its culture and tradition impose restriction on women's roles and activities.
A Novel of Revolt Against Social Injustice and Oppression ... 133 Arundhati Roy is projecting her feministic perspective in her portrayal of the women characters in her novel The God of Small Things. She has deliberately depicted the pitiable predicament of the characters of Ammu, Rahel, Mammachi and Margaret Kochamma in her novel with an obviously feministic objective with a view to censuring the patriarchal dominance that is indisputably attributable to the cause of suffering of these women. She has highlighted in the novels the cruelty, inhumanity and indifference of the male members of the society towards women who are treated with discrimination and partiality. Arundhati Roy's portrayal of characters is obviously purported to evoke the reader's sympathy and compassion towards her women characters and to criticize severely the upper hand and highhandedness of the patriarchy over matriarchy. At the conclusion it is evident that Roy has consistently attempted in her novel to depict the various incidents of torture and injustice meted out to her women characters with the objective of demonstrating and impressing upon the readers the malevolence of patriarchy on matriarchy. She professes her intention to affect a reform in Indian society so as to emancipate and extricate the women section of the country from the tradition and culture that subordinate and marginalize them. Her women characters act as her mouth organs, represent her personality and project her feministic spirit in favour of them. Her depiction of women characters and various scenes of torture bears the imprint of her feminism which sparks in her ironical remarks. Her irony and satire in the novel contribute to strengthening of her feminism. The God of Small Things can be conclusively established as a novel of revolt against the social injustice and oppression on women Roy typifies herself in the novel as a crusader against these social features that have built their nests in Indian society. The novel is designed to inculcate a revolutionary idea in the mind of readers and to exert reformative impact on Indian society so as to ameliorate the predicament of women in their domestic and social lives. Thus we find that in the hands of Arundhati Roy, her novel The God of Small Things becomes an instrument of social reform and regeneration. The objective of social reform and reconstruction underlying thIS novel augments its significance and value in the r('alm of literary venture.
134 A Novel of Revolt Against Social Injustice and Oppression ... Notes & References
1.
Roy, Arundhati, The God of Small Things, New Delhi: India Ink Publishing Co. Pvt. Ltd., 1997, P. 57
2.
Ibid., P.57.
3.
Ibid., Pp. 45-46.
4.
Singh, Veena, Women Novelist of the Post-Colonial India, ed., M.K. Roy, Indian Writing in English, New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers 2003, P.171
5.
Lerner, Gerda, The Creation of Patriarchy, New York: OUP 1986, P.239
6.
Roy, Arundhati, The God of Small Things, New Delhi: India Ink Publishing Co. Pvt. Ltd., 1997, P. 33
7.
Desai, Anita, Fasting Feasting, London: Chatto and Windus, 1999, P.l.
S.
Lerner, Garda, The Creation of Patriarchy, New York: OUP 1986, P.239
9.
Goijan, M.B., Environmental Changes and Social Values in Bharati Mukharjee's Jasmine, ed.,A.N. Prasad, New Lights on Indian Women Novelists in English, New Delhi: Sarup and Sons, 2004, P. 243.
10. Nityanandam, Indira, Three Great Indian Women Novelists, New Delhi: Creative Books, 2000, P.ll. 11. Dr. Milhotra, Sashi Deshpande's Small Remedies: A Woman's Quest for Refuge: A Reappraisal, ed., A.N. Prasad, New Lights on Indian Women Novelists ill English, New Delhi: Sarup and Sons 2004, P.80.
DOD
DELINEATION 00 FILIAL BONDS IN KAMALA MARKANDAYA'S
A HANDFUL OF RICE - Dr. B.K. Sharma
Kamala Markandaya is undisputedly one of the most distinguished women novelists in the entire range of Indo-Anglian fiction. An interesting aspect of the modern Indian Renaissance has been the creative release of the feminine sensibility. Her novels in comparison with those of contemporary women writers seem to be more fully reflective of the awakened feminine sensibility in modern India as she attempts to project the image of the changing traditional society. The variety and complexity of the achieved content of her novels represents a major trend in the history of IndoEnglish novel.ln her novels, Markandaya not only displays a flow for virtuosity which orders and patterns her feelings and ideas resulting in a truly enjoyable work of art, but also rejects the image of national consciousness on many levels of aesthetic awareness. The variety and the quality of the felt life' in her fiction renders it label proof in that it indicates the direction to a plausible resolution of, rather than other definite solutions to human problem.1 I
In the fictional world of Kamala Markandaya a filial relationship is of paramount importance. The basis of exchange between parents and children-changes throughout the life cycle,
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depending on each side's circumstances, but its importance remains. External fac,tors such as economic hardship and changing values and attitudes, very often, adversely affect these fundamental ties. Nevertheless, these bonds are sacred, powerful and enduring. Even when the solidarity is affected, these ties, in her novels, do not become I a noose around one's neck. Kamala Markandaya favours greater freedom, tmst and understanding between the parents and children. The filial ties, therefore, are no insufferable bondage for her characters. Their advancement towards liberty is consistent, smooth and inevitable. A Handful of Rice is realistic representation of the delicate ties
between a tenant farmer and his sons who cannot accept utter penury as an unavoidable fact of human existence. With no hopes of ever being able to lead a decent life, they fail to resist the temptation of having a first hand encounter with the legends of boundless riches in the city. Here Kamala Markandaya reiterates her faith in the social value of the blood bond between parent and child. This relationship is important as it infuse one with a sense of identity, status and respectability. Even when the maintenance of regular contact with the parents. As Graham A. Allan maintains: The strains are apt to be endured at a much greater intensity or for a much longer time than in the case of other relationships before a breach occurs.2 As a parents-child relationship is one of the basic facts of human existence, to renounce it is neither easy nor advisable. Ravi disgusted with the extreme poverty of his parents, mns to the city to secure employment. The city, however, proves to be a mirage. There he degenerates into a petty thief, pick pocket and bootlegger. His involvement in the shady activities of urban life wipes away from his mind the memory of his village and his parents. Then by a queer turn of destiny he forces hid entry into Apu's household and is bewitched by the charm and grace of Apu's daughter, Nalini .He wants to marry her. For that, however, he has to prove his identity, stc1lus and respectability. Now the foolishness of breaking avvay
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from his parents dawns on him. As a rootless person, he cannot court Nalini. He realises the importance of familial ties in his life. He took painful stock of himself. He had no family, and without them who would arrange it? He had left his family, a long time ago ... as his brother had done ... because their village had nothing to offer them. The cities had nothing either, although they did not discover this until they arrived; but held out before them like an incandescent carrot the hope that one day some day, there would be something.3 (A Handflll of Rice, P.22) In A Handful of Rice Ravi and his brothers leave their parents because the meager resource of their rack-rent tenant farmer father are not sufficient to fulfil their basic needs Their parents are aware of their limitations and therefore understand and accept the disintegrations of family ties. The going away of the children is particularly painful for Ravi's mother as she hardly knows anything about the cities, and is: Unwilling to substitu te visions and legends for it. One after another they had been forced out, and had gone: three sons, her daughter, her son-in-law, and, in turn had boarded the train that bore them away to the city. (A Handflll of Rice, p.22 ) Certain needs and expectations can be fulfilled only through one's kins. Damodar, the king of the underworld, helps Ravi in fighting away hunger, loneliness and the deadly fear of a bleak uncertain future. He hands him over a passport to a world shot with glitter and excitement. However, Damodar cannot help him in his relations with Nalini. He knows that any connection with people like Damodar can affect his affair with Nalini. He muses: Would Damodar be able to help him?..Would any of his friends? .. Produce any of that set ... and he might as well write finish to this to this chapter of his dreams. (A Handflll of Rice, p. 24)
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All relationships are beset with conflicts. When children mature, the differences of opinion on certain issues strike discordant notes. Ravi's parents resort to resignation in the face of misery and squalor. This attitude sickens Ravi who, like any other Youngman, believes, that life could be sweet ,that it was meant to be sweet, that that if it was not it should be made so" (A Handful of Rice, p.4S) . The wholesale acceptance of life fills him with rage. Consequently, when he leaves his village he hopes to be done with the old life for ever. Nevertheless, Ravi is not explicit on this issue. He does not burn his hour of need he can, he decides to write to his father to come over and help him: There was nothing irrevocable about this, no boats had been burnt: unlike some others, he had left with a prudent minimum of denunciation and declamation. (A Handful of Rice, Pp. 45-46) The parents, however, often overlook the ~iscordant note or undesirable acts and decisions which threatens the continuation -.f emotional ties in the family. They consider it their sacred duty, a moral obligation to help their children in their hour of need. Ravi's father instantly writers back to him that as "requested, he would gladly see about negotiating the marriage and that he would be arriving in due time". (A Handfitl of Rice, p.46) As a parent he is always on his children's side. For Graham A. Allan, the quality of relationship depends upon the frequency of contact between the individuals. Unduly long intervals rob the emotional bonds of the quality of ease, familiarity and confidence. 4 when Ravi meets him after a long spell of silence he feels as if his father were a stranger. The meeting between the two leads to stress. Ravi finds it difficult to converse with his father: Ravi becomes acutely conscious of the embarrassment that stress and urgency had suppressed. Here, opposite him, sprung: and instead of closeness, it was even worse than sitting next to a total stranger, with whom at least he sitting next to a total stranger, with whom at least he would
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have had no a total stranger, with whom at least he would have had no difficulty in exchanging a few idle words. (A Handful of Rice, Pp. 46-47) Ravi's discomfiture in his father's presence makes him feel guilty of neglect of a filial duty .He feels himself to be selfish and burns with the shame of being negatively evaluated: On a lesser levels, what about all those promises to keep in touch he had dutifully made and never kept-until now when he needed help? What must his father think of him? (A Handflll of Rice, p. 47) His Father, however, has no such irritants to make him feel awkward. He, being kindly disposed narrates the important events and happenings at his end. He even appreciates his son's wisdom: Ram spoke of the village, his land his ills, his loneliness, and his son's sense in deciding to marry and settle down. (A Handful of Rice, p. 47) The nature of ties changes with the passage of time, Often their emotional quality vanishes and a utilitarian attitude develops. The great emotional bond degenerates into a mere sense of duty. As a child everybody craves the physical proximity of one's parents. The fondling, the caressing provides a sense of security. But in adulthood Ravi finds the touch with his father unappealing. He just listens to the old man's out of a sheer sense of duty: They sat opposite each other on sacking in the narrow coved jutka, their legs drawn up their knees colliding every time the carriage lurched, and although Ravi sharnk at each touch he kept hIS head and managed to conceal these unnatural feeling, and even listened dutifully while Ram spoke of village. (A Hand of Ricc, p. 47) Although children wish to idolize their parents, the lim ita tions QUheir personality stand in the way. Ravi's father is a simpleton, confined to the village all his life. Ravi feels disappointed, on this account; his temper "swelling inside him. He felt he could not sustain his courteous front much longer." He, somehow, restraints
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himself because he needs his father's help at the movement devoid of any emotional attachment for the old man he employs him as a mechanical device absolutely necessary for the attainment of his goal. He therefore, ignores the old man's problems. Ram is also aware of his sad predicament: a lonely man in his fight against the odds of life. He has fathered three sons yet, he has nobody to help him. He is, therefore, in a hurry to see Ravi's wedding through and return to his village. He is uneasy because he has mortgaged a behalf. He is more than a little anxious to return to it, "being in much the same predicament as Apu in having no sons". (A Handful of Rice, p. 49) Financial status of the parents play an important part in maintaining the solidarity of the filial bonds. Ravi exploits his relationship with his father to his own advantage: yet, he does not mind when the old man is neglected at the time of the marriage ceremony. As his father is not able to help financially, he does not value his contribution to his marriage. On the other hand he is proud of Apu and Jayamma as they bear the entire expenditure of the marriage ceremony. In the wedding crowd the foremost place is occupied by Apu and Varma whereas his father is unceremoniously relegated to the back ground: Foremost among the men were Apu and Varma, as befitted the members of the more prominent family. His father stood several paces behind because, though Ravi, he had contributed little to this affair: a poor man relegated to the fingers not from any exercised intentional unkindness but from a natural fall into the appropriate slot. (A Handful of Rice, p. 56) A Ha Ildfll/ of Rice rejects the hypothesis that parents love their children under all circumstances. It suggests that poverty and deprivation make a monster of us all. It is not the children only who desert their parents, even parents ignore them. The inability to provide for them is killing for the father also. Ravi whiles away his time, sitting on the road side, when Nalini is in labour. To get rid of the boredom and tension of the movement, he starts talking to take
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stranger sitting near by. The man informs him that having children to take care of he has really become sick of them all: I tell you brother, I want to put my hands round
their necks and squeeze until I Know I'll never again have to think about feeding them; no, never again hear them whimper: yes, you wait till you wait till you get like that. Just wait that's all. (A Handflll of Rice, p.122) Indeed, A Handful o.fRice is a powerful and realistic commentary on the importance of filial bonds. The financial factors shake the foundation of these ties. However, the breaking away in relationship leads one into a desolation where no civilized law prevails and no price is attached to respectability. Breaking away from these leads one to rootlessness. Ravi honesty admits to Damodar that without his father's identity he could not have been able to marry Nalini Mother is a guiding and protective force. However, many of the expectations involved in emotional attachment. With out such emotional affiliation one is left, like Ravi, with empty gestures and a quick decent into the bottomless perdition of despair. References
1
Cuddon, J.A., A Dictionary of Literary Terms, Andre Ltd., 1977, p.316.
2
Graham, A. Allan, Sociology of Friendships and Kinship, London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1979, p.64.
3
Markandaya, Kamala, A Handful of Rice, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1966, p. 64.
4
Graham, A. Allan, Sociology of Friendships and Kinship, London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1979, p.97.
Deutsch
DOD
MODERN CONCEPT OF MARRIAGE IN THE NOVELS OF NAYANTARA SAHGAL - Dr. Ram Sharma
The concept of marriage has formed a very long time. It can be said that the institution of marriage has exist forever and has always been the same. One can also say that the institution of marriage is a central pillar which our society is based. However, this does not necessarily mean that it should be that way. Modern society is changing. People have made certain changes in marriage according to their desires and that is against traditional marriage. Universal globalization has led to the mixing of cultures and changing national and racial composition to the population of the western world countries. Sahgal's idea of modern marriage in her novels presents a contrast to the traditional marriage. As in traditional marriage a woman is a passive, submissive sex object to a man and confirms the stereotyped role of woman in Indian society. But in modern concept of marriage the young women don't conform the role of stereotyped woman they reject this role of woman, who makes them a slave to the husband not an equal partner to him, These young woman make a bid to liberate themselves from male oppression and thus cherish the ideals of self reliance and self-sufficiency. The woman of today relieves herself from ancient grooves and bonds
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and that long time suppression. So this is the notion of modern marriage that girls don't say yes and a man to everything he proposes. They are aware of their position in marriage. They think if they blindly follow their husbands in marriage they will finish up by not being allowed to breathe unless they give them permission. They see marriage is a matter of the heart and intellectualizing and analyzing and rationalise their unhappiness. It is well known about Indian society that it is the marriage orientated, one implication of which is that a woman should seek fulfillment within the parameters of marriage. Woman as such is not as much important in our society as the woman as a mother who surrenders her individuality to an inimical system for the husband and the children.
In the novels of Nayantara Sahgal we find that women characters mostly with good education background in conflict with a patriarchal society and depict their struggle to pop out of their shells. It is because of much of imbroglio and chaos in a patriarchal society issues from the misconstructed implications of man-woman relationship in marriage which as a socio-cultural phenomenon is emptied of its sacramental value if it is exploited by man as a power dividing device in a bid to justify his male hegemony. The marital discord comes from the dualism of the moral code which man has evolved in course of history to seek self-gratification and impose upon his womenfolk the compulsion of surrender and effacement of their individuality as human beings. Sahgal herself states: The new woman does the opposite. No more sati, she is determined to live, and to live in self-respect. Her virtue is courage, which is a willingness to risk the unknown and to face the consequences) In Sahgal's novels modern marriage is not a sacrament, it is beyond caste, creed and race. It is based on love, mutual understanding and defies the traditional concept of marriage that is arranged by parents in the same caste. So carriage in the modern society is fixed by woman of her choice' man and not by God as it was thought in the traditional Indian society.
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This modern marriage works in the marriage of Simrit and Som in the novel The Day in Shadow. Simrit doesn't believe in arranged marriage by her parents and she marries with Som, a businessman, against the will of her Brahmin parents. Although, Simrit is a Brahmin girl and Som is Punjabi, the caste of both is not same but still she gets married to him for she loves him deeply. Thus she defies the traditional marriage in Indian society that takes place in the same caste. Because she sees her complete happiness with Som. That's why she marries with him and gets satisfaction in her marriage that is arranged by her. But after sometime, when she gets disillusionment with Som she remains unhappy with him and ultimately takes divorce from her husband even after seventeen years of her married life. After from divorce she plans to marry Raj, who is a converted Christian. Her decision to marry with Raj for the second time shows her rejection of caste and religion factor completely that works in a traditional marriage and confirms the modern out look of marriage that depends on love and proper harmony between partners. So in this way she defies all the norms, conventions and customs of a traditional marriage. Same this concept of marriage is further carried by Rose in the novel Rich Like Us. Her marriage with Ram also presents the instance of modern marriage. She rejects a Christian marriage with Freddie and becomes and Indian wife of Ram. When Ram first meets Rose, she is a twenty-year old lover class, cockney English girl, with very little formal education to her credit. She is the daughter of a factory worker, and is all set to marry Freddie (who is also similarly employed) Ram sweeps her off her feet. Her parent has spent all their lives saving for the proverbial rainy day, when in fact every day seemed like one. Rose's "fateful" encounters with Ram caught her in a whirl that world not set her free. Her life before Ram had not prepared her for a life-time of commitment to someone like Ram, far less to his life-style. That's why she marries with Ram despite his first marriage and having a son. She ignores all views of a traditional Christian marriage and avoids her mother's warning: It is her great love for Ram that she marries with him and leaves Freddie, a good lover of her for
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Ram and couldn't get Ram's dubious nature in courtship. She believes what he says to her. Therefore, Ram doesn't tell her in the beginning of lov~ that he is already married and having a son. He announces his marriage before her when he sees that she is deeply in love with him, so that she may not leave him easily. It is her modernity in marriage that after kn,owing Ram's reality she had to reject him, but on the contrary she accepts him for what he is and is ready to marry him knowing well that he will not take divorce from his first wife, as she cannot think her life without Ram. In this way she defies the traditional concept of marriage and establishes modern concept of marriage which is free from the barriers of caste, creed and race. Rose sees her marriage to Ram as a lifelong commitment she tells Freddie (the man she nearly married in England before she met Ram), when she meets him at Lahore years after her marriage, that she had romanticized about a whirlwind courtship ending with a Church wedding. Ram had courted her the way she had imagined it would be. So attached had she become to Ram that it never took place. Likewise, Rose, Lulu also does modern marriage in the novel Plans for Departure by Marlowe as her husband for herself and later her decision to leave Marlowe in her disillusionment. She is attracted by Marlowe's missionary work and decides to marry with him at once despite her father's disapproval of Marlowe. It is her intense desire of happiness and self fulfillment that she seeks Marlowe as a husband. Lulu, born and bred as an indigo landowner's daughter is a woman of extremes. She falls in love with an American preacher, Croft, the only man around her father plantation who questioned his right to terrorize his workers. Intrigued by his display of courage, LuJu attended his last sermon in a country church. She tells her father about Croft's moving sermon that had put her in a trance. Mr. Firth, Lulu's father, gets Croft a two month's jail term for daring to meddle with his local administration. When she decides
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to marry Marlowe, an American missionary, after his release from jail, she goes against the wishes of her authoritarian, landlord father. Having plunged into matrimony with a man who is, above all else, a zealous missionary, she finds the going rough. Her upbringing as an Anglo-Indian zamindar's only daughter, coupled with her disillusionment with Marlowe, results in her being enemies with everyone she met. He had his church and his mission. She is later disillusioned with Marlowe and, therefore, with her marriage. She has nowhere to go and no one to turn for help. Though she is caught in a trap of her own making, we feel sorry for the one-time landlord's only daughter who waits indefinitely for the right time to tell Marlowe about her decision to leave him. But unfortunately she meets death in an accidental way without telling her departure to Marlowe. Lulu's decision to leave Marlowe results from her acceptance that they were two very dissimilar people who had come together in marriage for all the wrong reasons. Stella also states Marlowe's bad behaviour towards Lulu to Anna in the novel. Self-fulfilment, happiness and love is the main principle of a modern marriage. To be loved by man is the most wanted desire of a woman in marriage in modern age. This thing is seen in case of Stella in the novel Plans for Departure. Henry, her husband loves her too much and is devoted to her, but she remains dissatisfied with him as her temperamental differences work with Henry. She thinks herself superior to Henry and cheats him by not showing her indifference to him openly. At last she leaves Henry and goes with Robert Pryor. In her departure with Robert for her second marriage the notion of the happiness and self-fulfillment work out prominently. Henry, her husband tells Anna frankly: Happiness was important to Stella, and I did all I could to make her happy.2 After her departure with Robert Pryor Henry realizes: "She didn't even know what I meant by love, and we certainly did not have it in common.,,3 Over as experienced by Stella, involves more the head rather than the heart she is so much a product of the Raj
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that she wants to share her life only with a man whose ideologies coincide with her. Therefore, Stella is quite content married to Robert Pryor. He upholds the traditions of the Raj that she so ardently believes in. She is so blinded by her faith in the system that she is unable to appreciate Henry's genuine devotion to her the fact that he understands her well enough to accept that she could not help being influenced by her background. With Robert Stella shares a common faith. It, therefore, seems to the reader that she goes to bed with an ideology, not a lover. She can proudly state that the country, during those war ridden times, needed men of experience like Robert, suggesting that she sees no difference between the man and the faith. Of course, the fact that Robert dotes on Jennie makes matters simpler. But the detail is just incidental, hardly central to what Stella is looking for in her man. In Robert she finds a kindred spirit, who has this to say about Henry: "A capable man, one of our best ..... but he never understood the ideology of rule."4 When Stella later hears of Henry's death on the Somme, during the war, she merely comments (to Pryor): "Poor Henry's dead too. His death made up for everything, didn't it, darling?"s She does not feel guilty for having treated Henry so shabbily without sparing a thought for him. This only reaffirms the fact that in modem marriage if husband and wife don't share things in common, women don't stay with husbands they seek an alter to satisfy themselves and thus break the sanctity of marriage. Sahgal has shown through these women characters in her novels that if some accept the traditional stereotyped ungrudgingly adhering to the ideals of Pativarta dharam and bear all shades of experiences silently as a portrait of art in an art gallery, there are others who are aware of their individuality and refuse to submit to such conditioning factors of victimization and do not hesitate to seek self-expression outside the bond of marital fidelity. These women present themselves as models of fearless, articulate, selfassertive, self-respecting women who accepted that feminine role with equal-measure of understanding and pride. They believe in the equality of women in marriage.
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Marital relationships are established with the explicit purpose of providing companionship to each other. However, the element of companionship is sadly missing in the relationship between Rashmi and Dalip in the novel This Time ofMorning. She is a victim of wrong marriage but unlike Maya and Kusum she does not confine herself to the cult of domesticity assigned to a virtuous woman rather she seeks separation from her husband to fully realise her identity as a human being. She was married to Dalip, six years age, the novelist tells, but the marriage turned to be a misalliance and since then she has been living with her parents in Delhi to avoid clashes. Though Dalip's physical existence in the novel is peripheral, the novelist keeps the circumstances in the background under which they were married and the factors responsible for converting the marriage into failure. The marital ties are not dissolved, the formal divorce is not effected but Rashmi shows moral courage and takes a quick decision to go to her parents to evade the existing situation of suffering loneliness and incompatibility. Delhi is a place to provide her: "respite from the clashes that had become her relationship with Dalip".6 The impact of the failure of marriage on her sensibility causes an emotional vacuum, life becomes a mechanical affair having no warmth of love. She has nourished no ill will against Dalip, perhaps she is well aware of her weakness as a woman, but the quarrels between them have landed her into an unpleasant situation where in the possibility of the resurrection of their togetherness is remote: I do not hate him, she had told herself wearily during the blank intervals between quarrels, I don't wish him harm, but he and I -- she could not even think "we" any longer cannot go on together? During her moments of brooding over her predicament Rashmi is roused in to consciousness how wrong marriages rob a woman of her natural looks and beauty. "How like prolonged starvation wrong marriage could be robbing luster defeating courage and will."s But there rises a spark deep within her heart to encomage
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her that all is not lost and there is nothing wrong to rise on her knees to reharmonise her vision to live a life of significance: Away from it she was beginning to understand that a part of life, though destroyed, could be rebuilt and then go on, incredibly, as before, at least in bare outline. 9 She is shut in within the layers of labyrinth of her self never sharing her agony with the parents. During these crucial moments of self-scrutiny the thought of seeking divorce comes to her mind which she rejects on the ground: There was no such thing as a clean break. A break had jagged edges and did violence to some part of one's being"lO. The sufferings which Rashmi experience during this unhappy phase of marriage have taught her the value of endurance and preservation of life at any cost. She is so changed by marriage that her friend Rakesh also finds her that she looks a great sufferer. Rakesh at once apprehends, "something was missing", however, concludes that it is the marriage tha t sealed her fate. For Rashmi it is a satisfying experience to meet Rakesh there at the Ball because he: "had been closer than a brother, more than a friend."ll She is suffused with new hopes and gains confidence which she had lost in marriage ending in disaster ..... "She was thinking: I am lost. Something will workout. It's not the end of evehing."12 Rashmi is slowly grouping her way back to a life of emotional stability and normalcy and thus she finds comfort first in the company of Rakesh, her childhood friend and playmate and then she turns to Neil Berensen, the chief architect of Gandhi Peace Institute to have a short affair to give free expression to her individuality . But what sustains her courage and defeat and humiliation is the realisation that a part of her ownself which remains undamage and unhurt, can still make her live a life free from the compulsion and oppr~ssive dictates of male chauvinism:
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Modem Concept of Marriage in The Novels of Nayantara .. But there was a self that had stood free from all this, the unsurrendered core of her, the waiting, watching, guardian spirit that belonged to no
man. 13 Perhaps Rashmi, like her creator, is a victim of early marriage there is no hint of bearing even a child. Looking back at her own matrimonial alliance, Sahgal regrets. Rashmi - Neil Berensen episode constitutes an important part in the novel in regard to a modem woman, seeking a self-fulfillment outside marriage. Rashmi's frequent quarrels with her husband results in separation and since then she is living with her parents in Delhi. Rashmi never opened her heart to tell her parents what propelled her to initiate such a drastic step of severing relationship with her husband. Perhaps a little sharing of it would have saved the sordid situation, but the reality is shrouded. Though, Neil is a foreigner but Rashmi finds easier opportunities to talk to him at the level of equality, some kind of communication is restored which is the prognostication and prelude of a new life. There is a free play of emotions which were hither to suppressed in cold frigid relationship. During one of Rashmi's visit to the site of the Peace Institute the intimacy between.the two develops to the extent of emotional involvement. Neil is to ge~ the maximum out of his relationship with Rashmi and that is why he puts a personal question pertaining to her marital affairs which it now no more obscure to him. "Does your husband come to Delhi often? "Fairly often on business. We are separated.,,14 Rashmi feels aghast at her inadvertently making announcement of her marital affairs to a stranger but by doing so she feels relieved of the pain and the mysterious burden of the strained relationship on her psyche. Neil's observation about the concept of happiness and marriage being two separate things is characteristically a bourgeois outlook on man-woman relationship, suggesting that one should not let one's happiness be over-shadowed by marital discord. Rashmi's relationship with Neil restores her faith in the healing power of love and friendship. She broods over the existing pred icament the universe looks to be emptied of sensation. She is
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scarcely aware of her identity and therefore she resolves to start her life a new finally dissolving her marital ties. "In morning full of courage, she told her mother that her marriage had ended. "15 Rashmi's observation underlines the need of marriage provided it has the rig1,.t ingredients. That is man-woman relations in marriage can be made happy if the two sustain faith in each-other's integrity and uphold the value of love and harmony. Rashmi said: I don't want to drink to that since marriage can be so unhappy. I suppose it can be happy, too, with the right ingredients. 16 Her dreams of marriage and collected marriage values disintegrate when she finds her husband is not sharing thing with her and thinks only as sex object. Indifference by her husband is attack on her marital status and therefore, she prefers to leave him not to stay with him any longer like traditional wife. As this thing we see in Saroj's case. She leaves her husband Inder when she gets that there is no harmony with Inder. Saroj who has been brought up in the liberal atmosphere of freedom expects equality within marriage. She is greatly suppressed by her husband's violent reactions to a pre-marital affair she had in her college days. Inder is obsessed and could not forgive this act of Saroj and constantly exploits her sense of innocence. It is ironical that Inder considers it to be a serious moral lapse while he himself carries an extra marital affair with his children's teacher Mara. Saroj becomes a victim of the male tyranny. Saroj however, is not really guilty. She thinks it is a part of her growing up. For Saroj is warmly involved in her marriage. Inder fails to maintain a genuine partnership with Saroj. She learns the value of freedom from Dubey during their lonely walks. Saroj grew in her personality through debates and discussion with Dubey. She is amused to hear him say. if chastity is so important and so well worth preserving, it would be easier to safe guard, it by keeping men in seclusion not women, for he believes: The biological urge is supposed to be much stronger in men, so it is they who should be kept under
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Modem Concept of Marriage in The Novels of Nayantara ... restraint and not allowed to roam free to indulge their appeties)7
Going out for a walk with Vishal, Saroj feels much relieved and freshened from the suffocation of the four walls of her house. She counts it to be a blessing of hel life. When Inder forbids her to meet Vishal, she refuses to listen to him. It is at this stage that she rebels, and under stands the truth of failure of her marriage, she feels that there could be no hope of communication with Inder. Ultimately it is Vishal who takes the final decision for her. By leaving Inder she shows that she shall not remained doll or a puppet but she will take decisions for herself and affirm her being. Vishal sets her free from the burden of guilt and helps her reaffirm her faith in Dubey. Marriage has completely destroyed her spirit. Even Gauri, when she visits Chandigarh tells Vishal, there is no question of any freedom of self-expression for Saroj. It is natural outcome of a person life Inder who belonged to the he-man school. In contrast to Saroj-Inder-Mara-Jit are better paired in many regards. Mara is portrayed as aggressive and her problem is more psychological than physical. It is the gentleness of his which makes her disqualified in her wed lock. Mara breaks her affair with Inder which upsets her great deal but saves her marriage. Jit believes in reason and differs from Inder in his role as a husband. Like 5aroj, he has passive acceptance in his nature but that gives him strength to understand Mara at the end. This is Sahgal's modem out look in marriage, that not only female, but male also suffers in marriage, due to lack of harmony, but Jit presents Sahgal's view that proper understanding of human values save marriage from failure. For Sahgal the testof a value lies in the freedom and growth that indicated a sense of fulfillment for the individual. In Mistaken Identity (1989) the Rani of Vijaygarh also presents modem concept of marriage as she breaks all botmdaries and makes her own rules. She is out and out a rebel. She belongs to an age when women were expected to stay behind veil. She remains completely detached and isolated in her family mansion. She meets and faces a ve~y subtle and inhuman form of exploitation. Exhibiting exemplary strength of character the women behind the
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veil breaks all ties with her husband, when he marries for the third time. She, like other female protagonists, is expected to conform to the ideals of subdued woman hood but her life lacks continuity and warmth. She feels isolated within her skin. She is a woman, who is living in 1920-30s is uneducated, rather illiterate, has an apathetic husband, from her life, when she discovers the man has no respect for her kind. Therefore, she leaves her husband and meets Yusuf, it is as if she chooses to live again for the first time. In this relationship based on mutual love, mother feels needed, loved and cherished. It matters little that love came her way late in life, it is well worth the wait. Yusuf is sensitive to her every need and to her longing, to be free with the elements. So he takes her to Leningrad in winter: "W}-,ere she'll see falling snow."18 When Bhushan's mother decides to leave Vijaygarh, does not care fore social recriminations. What use has she for a husband like father who had been a husband only in name? She has no reason to care about society's reaction when it had coerced, controlled and dominated every aspect of her life. More significantly, she has no use for a society that had condoned and even cheered every callous, chauvinistic act of Father's. In fact, her free spirit, her strong will, submitted to the demands of neither her husband nor the world. Jasbir Jain portrays her aptly in these words:
She has always been a rebel. Her character has been one of restless questioning. She is a stronger person than her husband and refuses to accept his continued pursuit of pleasure and new ranees. 19 Sahgal believes in marriage a "new humanism" and a "new morality", according to which woman is not to taken as a: "sex object and glamour girl, fed on fake dreams of perpetual youth, lulled into passive role that requires no individual identity, but as man's equal and honoured partner.20 In this context Ram Krishan seems to us the mouthpiece of the novelist as he expresses her human outlook in his marriage. His
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relation with his wife is based on the principle of equality. For he treat his friend or companion not a slave to him. Again, Sahgal's idea of martial harmony on the principle of equality is presented by Anna and Nicholas in the novel Plans for Departure. As both have a mutal understanding with each other and makes marriage a success. Nicholas respects Anna's views her desires, and her search for individuality. He asks her: On the other hand, Anna, also feels that things other than love, e.g. companionship and mutual respect, are important for any marriage to succeed. Anna stays married to Nicholas even though she believes that in spirit she is closer to Henry. This is because Anna's marriage to Nicholas is the coming together of friends who understand each other and get married due to some combination of events. While Nicholas loves Anna, she, one feels, is merely in search of a world that could help her forget a man she had admired but grown disillusioned with because the wrongly believed he had killed his wife. She admits to herself: She had fallen in love, with a vision, not merely a man. No such indivisible magic would ever come her way again.21 In spite of this realization her marriage does not break because Nick and Anna share a special kinship and have complete honesty and mutual respect that helps Anna's and Nick's marriage to succeed. So, in modem concept of marriage, Sahgal pleads for the new marital morality against traditional stereotyped marriage. Her new marital morality is based on mutual trust, proper harmony, consideration, generosity, and absence of pretence, selfishness and self-centredness. Her artistic vision is intensely moral with profound respect for the affirmative values of life. References
1.
Passion for India, Indian Literature, 129, 1989, p.84.
2.
Ibid., p. 19.5.
3.
Ibid., p. 178.
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4.
Ibid., p. 206.
5.
Ibid., p. 206.
6.
Sahgal, Nayantara, This Time of Morning, Delhi: Hind Pocket Books Pvt. Ltd., 1965, p.13.
7.
Ibid.
8.
Ibid.
9.
Ibid.
10. Ibid. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid., p. 35. 13. Ibid., p: 123. 14. Sahgal, Nayantara, This Time of Morning, Delhi:Hind Pocket Books Pvt. Ltd., Delhi, 1965, p. 140.
15. Ibid., p. 146. 16. Ibid., p. 141. 17. Ibid., p.141. 18. Sahgal, Nayantara, Mistaken Identity, London: Heinemann, 1988, p. 194. 19. Jain, Jasbir, Good Bye to Realism, The Ending ofMistaken Identity, The New Indian Novel in English-A Study of the 1980s, ed., Vinay Kirpal, Delhi: Allied, 1990, p. 263. 20. Sahgal, Nayantara, Women: Persons or Possessions, The Hindllstall Times - Sunday, July 19, 1970.
21. Ibid., p.191.
DOD
ARUNDHATI
Roy's LIFE, MIND AND ART - Dr. Amar Nath Prasad
Arundhati Roy came into the realm of literature in the year 1997 when her debut novel The God of Small Things bagged the coveted Booker Prize for literahlre. Though she was born in Shilong, where her father was employed as a tea-planter, her early childhood was spent at a village, Ayemenem (Aymanam), a few kilometres from Kottayam town in central Kerala. The theme of the novel revolves round this village. Just after a few years of her birth, her father, the tea-planter divorced his wife. Therefore, the little child Arundhati had to come back to A yemenem with her beloved mother. Her mother Mary Roy broke the tradition by marrying a Bengali and then divorcing him. She also made history by fighting the provisions of the Christian Succession Act and in this connection, she even went to the Supreme Court. The favourable nlling allowed Christian women an equal share with their male siblings, in their father's property. Roy was thus the product of a broken home. She had to face several cares and anxieties, fret and fever during her childhood. The Ayemenem house was dominated by the traditional patriarchal clutches. The men in and around the house were conservative in their outlook. This phenomenon can be beautifully seen in the novel where Ammnu who ""?presents her mother Mary Roy, has to undergo so many ups and downs:
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Arundhati Roy spent most of her time in her grandmother's pickle factory. She became a formidable curry powder packer and pickle label sticker. But in spite of all these odds and hazards, she was essentially an extra-ordinary genius who used to devote the studies heart and soul. According to Mary Roy: Arundhati is a born talker and a born writer. While she was studying in our school it was a problem to find a teacher who could cope with her voracious appetite for reading and writing. Most of the time she educated herself. I cam remember our VicePrincipal Sneha Zakaria resorting to Shakespeare's Tempest as a text for this little fourth grader.! Lalit Kumar Christopher Roy, the brother or Arundhati Roy who has been portrayed as Estha in the novel, is also of the opinion that Arundhati was a very goof student, an athlete and an orator. At the age of eighteen, she left for New Delhi for higher education. She joined the Delhi School of Architecture. But, there too, she had to spend her life in utter penury. In the second year, she was requested by her family (for perfectly understandable reasons) not to return home to Kerala. This exerts a great shock into her young, gentle mind. She took a room, which was tin-shaded at Feroz Sah Kotla. She had to make a living by flogging empty beer bottles. In an interview, she gave a flash back to her past life: I used to live in Candolim on the beach. My boy friend was Goan, he's a very well known architect now, Gerard. We both went to Goa, and we hired a little house on the beach. We used to bake cake and sell them. I did that for six to seven months, and then I got sick to the gills of tourists and these kinds of hippies who pretended they were all stoned flower children and were actually completely Knnjoos and money minded. After that I remember, a friend of mine had given me a gold ring some years ago and I went and sold it to a fruit juice
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wallali and got enough money to come back. So I felt Gerard and came back to Delhi. It was just about enough for the whole month-from the last week of the month I'd borrowed 100/- rupees from a friend and as soon as I got my pay I paid him back. 2 The other period of her life that is very important is when she was still in the Delhi School of Architecture. She was never given a hostel. Next to the school of Architecture, there was a refugee colony, where the mess manager of the canteen had a shack, which he rented to Roy and her boy friend. In course of time, she topped the class in her thesis and took her degree, but she didn't practice. In other words, from the age of about 17 to 25, she had absolutely no anchor. She had been even asked to leave home by her family. She recalls: So we were living in this sort of bubble of cOIilplete anarchy. There was nobody to tell me what to do and what not to do. At that age what gives you courage is complete shortsightedness. You don't think about the next day. I think I must have been a bit insane, at least temporarily. Now if I think about another kid of my age doing that I would just be completely paranoid. I would think there was something very wrong with them because I had a very difficult time. 3 After getting the degree of Architecture, Arundhati worked as a Research Assistant at the National Institute of Urban Affairs. She devoted herself to it in such a manner that she won a scholarship to Florence to study the Restoration of Monuments and Historical Urban Centres. She returned from Italy grimly determined to restore neither Monuments nor Historical Urban Centres. Her life took a 'U' turn when Pradeep Krishen, a film director, spotted her riding a bicycle down the wrong side of the road. He offered her a small role in the film Massey Saab screened at the Venice Film Festival and she played the role of the 'tribal bimbo'- which she accepted after initial reservations, more out of curiosity than
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anything else. It is to be noted that during her short stay at Italy, she realized she was a writer. She used to write to Pradeep and she kept copies of all the letters. The reason behind keeping all the letters is only to make him say-'you should be a writer.' the letter correspondence between Arundhati Roy and Pradeep Krishen, latter on, develops into an auspicious marriage. Well, at the end of her scholarship in Italy, she took a flight back to Delhi. She remembered: The stewardess on the flight got talking to me. And when she found that I had no money, no place to go to when I landed, she offered that I could come and share the crew's hotel room.4 The seed of the book, The God of Small Things was planted in the mind of Roy some six years back she got the prize. Actually she wanted to do something that was more private or autobiographical. She observes: The real reason was also that I had just got a Computer and I liked the idea of writing on it. So I just started putting down what was going on in my head. It was a very private thing. I wouldn't show what I had written to anybody. It would just stay in the computer. It was all just coming out of me like smoke I suppose and kept putting it down. 5 It was this period that she had a chance to escort a group of five rhinos by road from Delhi to Dudhwa (Uttar Pradesh) where they were being re-introduced in the hope of starting a new gene pool. Her first professional writing assignment was associated with the life of Rhinoceros. She wrote the Commentary for Ashish Chandola's documentary film How the Rhinoceros Returned.
Arundhati Roy is also a great screenplay writer. She writes the screenplay for The Bunyan Tree, a television serial. The serial consists of 26 episodes and very beautifully deals with a story set in Uttar Pradesh in the years between 1921 and 1952. It shows the last tumultuous decades of the British Raj. But this famous T.V. Serial was abandoned half way through the shoot as the production company ran into financial trouble. Subsequently their store rooms
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were broken into, and all the, costumes and property stolen and sold. Actually speaking, the breaking of the serial in the middle was a very traumatic and painful thing for Roy. It is during this critical juncture, the book The God of Small Things that was enveloped in the Computer begins to gain momentum among many odds and hazards. She recalls these days: I didn't know what was going to happen whether I was going to finish it to my satisfaction or whether I would just go on and on. There were bad moments - when you are running out of money; you don't know what's going to happen in terms of your career ... writing is not something that you naturally associate with earning a living. 6 The ray of hope, then, appeared in the shape of Bhaskar Ghose, the then Director General of Doordarshan. He was very eager to commission something different from the national channel. He met Roy who told him that she wanted to write but that she didn't think anyone would finance her kind of screenplays. But to her great amazement. Bhaskar Ghose replied in positive and commissioned her to write a screenplay. Roy wrote a script based on her experiences of university in Delhi. She wrote in a sharp, satirical and critical manner. Moreover, it incorporated the fractured English of the student's community. The title was In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones. Ghose appreciated the screenplay and even commissioned a film by Krishen, and Roshan Seth agreed to star in it. Though the budget of this screenplay was minuscule, it gave Krishen and Roy a chance to put their vision on the screen. But unfortunately'Annie' got a warm critical response. Moreover, Ghose was transferred and the new regime at Doordarshan was horrified by the movie. Electric Moon, then followed and though the movie has its fans, it was generally deemed an honourable artistic failure. Roy observes: The movie I had in my head was different from the one we shot. I wanted it to have a more anarchic quality, but I did not know enough about cinema to make that come through on "screen?
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The book that raised her on a high pedestal was her debut novel The God of Small Things. When this book came into existence Roy was never confident of its wide popularity. According to her opinion, it was' a very fragile personal book.' She considered going to an Indian publisher but they tend to give advances of Rs. 5000/ - only. However, she wasn't sure aboLlt finding a foreign publisher. She thought, why would anyone abrc ld be interested in the book or an author like her who had never visited any foreign country and had no friends abroad. It was around this time that she met Pankaj Mishra, who was then an editor with Harper Collin in India. She turned to Mishra for an opinion about her book. He read the book and was immensely excited. He called Roy and said that he wanted to publish the book and so he was going to send it to a few publishers abroad. Mishra sent the copies of the manuscript to three British Publishers -- Harper Collins, John Sadler and David Godwin. Within three days of receiving copies of the manuscript, sadler were ready to make offers for the British rights. Roy was surprised to see their enthusiasm and she was even more startled when they asked for a fax number so that they could send her details. While she was thinking which publisher to select, David Godwin took her by surprise. He caught a plane to India - a country he had never visited before - to get the signature of Roy. Godwin told her that American rights can't be got because publishers in that country were sceptical about the market prospects of books set in India. British rights would be easy to sell. However, he wanted to auction them because he believed that this was a novel that everybody would want to publish. In other words, Godwin was right about England, wrong about America. Eight British Publishers did unheard of amounts for hardback rights for a first book. Flashed with the success of the British auction, Roy flew off to Vienna to spend a week with her friend, filmmaker Aradhana Seth. When she was here, various British publishers flew to America for the Chicago Book fair. Moreover, among them, The God ofSmal! Things was the main matter of discussion. Roy recalls three moments: I had got over the excitement of the book being so much in demand. I decided that this time I would
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Arundhati Roy's Life, Mind and Art not go with the highest bidder. I would go with the publisher I felt best about. I am very proud of the fact that I went with Random House because I respected them even though another large publishing house offered me $1,50,000 more than the Random House bid.8
The editor of the book Arundhati Roy: The Novelist Extraordinary holds the view: The fastest selling Booker prize winner so far was Roddy Doyle's Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha which won the award in 1993. It sold 27000 copies of hardback within half an hour of bookshops opening day after the announcement. Amazingly, The God of Small Things shattered all past records. It registered tremendous sales the world over. The novel has been translated into some forty languages. In the first few months, Roy visited nearly 80 cities across the world to promote the book.9 II
After the successful achievement of The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy wrote a short but revolutionary book, The End of Imagination, which shows the author's strong revolt against nuclearization in India and abroad; her mils satire on the arrogance and dominance of politics and, above all, the drawbacks of nuclear arms and ammunition which are gaining ground allover the globe. In tone and temper, the book reminds of a recently published book, Countdown by Amitav Ghosh, which deals with the author's conversation with so many people of India particularly the people living in and around the nuclear explosion site at Pokharan. The book opens with the apocalyptic vision of the nuclear explosion tested at the Pokharan site on 11 May 1998. It seems to satirize the great outpourings of joy on the part of the BJP members and sympathizers who organized festivities and handed out celebratory sweetmeats on the streets after the successful nuclear tests. But on the other hand the people living around the nuclear
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test site were not jolly and jocund, rather they were sad and gloom. The author observes: If there is a nuclear war, our foes will not be China or America or even each other. Our foe will be the earth herself. The very elements - the sky, the air, the land, the wind and water will all turn against us. The wrath will be terrible. Our cities and forests, our fields and villages will burn for days. Rivers will turn to poison. The wind will spread the flames. When everything there is to burn has burned and the fires dead, smoke will rise and shut out the sun. The earth will be enveloped in darkness. There will be no day. Only interminable night. Temperatures will drop to far below freezing and nuclear winter will set in. Water will turn into toxic ice. Radioactive fallout will seep through the earth and contaminate groundwater. Most living things, animal and vegetable, fish and fowl, will die. Only rats and cockroaches will breed and multiply and compete with foraging, relict humans for what little there in.1°
The thought-provoking ()bservation of Arundhati Roy clearly shows that she is not in favour of war and killing. She seems to be a great follower of Mahatma Gandhi who believed in the theory of truth and non-violence. Truly speaking, the atomic war will prove to be the most immoral, savage and barbaric, the very idea of atomic warfare fills one with indescribable horror and disgust, death, death and devastation. Nobody welcomes a repetition of the tragedy of two Japanese cities. The irony is that so far no effective defensive measure against this cruel bomb has been discovered. The effects of this bomb are manifold and far-reaching. Apart from demolishing all subjects animate or inanimate within a radius of hundreds of miles where the bomb falls, it produces a wave of radio-activity, which spreads almost one continef'.t to another and brings in its train all manner of hitherto unknown diseases and ailments. Thus, according to Arundhati Roy, man has become today quite insensitive to the beauty of nature. The modern commercial man,
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who lacks the qualm of conscience a great deal, seldom, pays any heed to the clarion call of nature's medicinal and eternal significance. Why? Because the heart of modem man is caged in the web of mind. And the mind of the man is so much fractured by the cares and anxieties, by the fret and fever of life that he gets a very little time to "stand and stare" the beauty of nature. Therefore, nothing is more suicidal and fallacious than to believe that the atom bomb will terrorise the world into peace. Truly, speaking the production of atomic weapons is a colossal waste of human energy and national wealth. It is the greatest obstacle in the way of international harmony and peace. It keeps the bellicose instinct alive; people continue to think in terms of war and increase military strength of every kind. It is the symbol of aggrandizement and savagery; it whips up people into war hysteria. So, the monster of war can't be killed by indulging in warfare but through love harmony and peace. Here Arundhati Roy's attitude is very near to A. Gopal Krishanan who, in his scholarly article in the Frontline, rightly observes: There was a realization that the country's real security didn't lie in possessing few crude nuclear weapons, but it being able to feed, clothe and shelter its large population and provide the people with basic amenities such as drinking and basic health care. Those governments also gave some weightage to the face that having attained independence through a prolonged, non-violent struggle based on the principle of ahinsa, India shouldn't stray into the race for developing and deploying weapons of mass destruction with a clearly expounded abhorrence to weapons of mass destruction and abiding conviction in total nuclear disarmament and elimination of nuclear weapons everywhere India had champion this cause among the international community in spite of Pokharan Test)l The book shows that Arundhati Roy is a great champion for the cause of peace and prosperity, harmony and integration. Her message in this book is:
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All I can say to every man woman and sentient child here in India and over there, just a little way away in Pakistan, is: Take it personally. Whoever you are - Hindu, Muslim, Urban, Agrarian - it does not matter. The only good thing about nuclear war is that it is the single most egalitarian idea that man has ever had. On the day of reckoning, you will not be asked to present your credentials. The devastation will be indiscriminate. The bomb is not in your backyard. It is in your body. And mine. Nobody, no nation, no government, no man, no God, has the right to put it there. We are radioactive already, and the war has not even begun. So, stand up and say something. Never mind if it's been and said before. Speak up on your own behalf. Take it very personally.12 Thus, this havoc wrought by the nuclear armaments has been unprecedented in the annals of humanity. In the last World War, even the civilian population of every belligerent country suffered as much as if not more than the fighting soldiers did. Destruction of building, property, means of communication took place on an immeasurable scale. The entire structure of economic, industrial and social life was shattered. Here Arundhati Roy is very near to Pearl S. Buck: War and killing achieve nothing but loss, and that a noble end is assured only if the means to attain it are of a place with it and also noble)3 In short, the book deals with the author's realistic portrayal of the problems arising out of nuclearization of India and abroad. The author's attitude seems to be dead against the nuclear race of armaments. She is of the opinion that nuclear matter is a grave matter for any country. So, it should be well thought upon before taking it in force. But unfortunately the nuclear test on 11 May 1998 was a hasty step and was conducted without consulting the army experts without the army experts without even a debate in the parliament. Lt. Gen. (Retd.) Eric A. Vas said:
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Arundhati Roy's Life, Mind and Art This momentous decision was taken solidly on the advice of clever scientists and bureaucrats, who lacked constitutional responsibility or accountability. The military chief had not been consulted about a matter, which had far reaching security consequences.1 4
The book The End of Imagination also shows the author's unswerving boldness as a free and frank writer. She is of the opinion that writers must be the voice of the nation. They should not hesitate to expose the corruptions and aberrations of the society in which they live. How daringly she is when she has to protest against nuclearization: If. protesting against having a nuclear bomb
implanted in my brain is anti-Hindu and antinational, then I secede. I hereby declare myself an independent, mobile republic. I am female, but have nothing against eunuchs. My policies are simple. I am willing to sign any nuclear nonproliferation treaty or nuclear test ban treaty that is going. Immigrants are welcome. You can help me design our flag. 15 In fact, an author must be bold in his attitude. Why? Because it is he who makes us aware of our shortcomings. It is he who can herald an upheaval in the realm of our superstitious thinking. If he stops unfurling the corruptions and aberrations of a nation, who will do this job? Business person? Politicians? Doctors? Lawyers? Oh! No! This duty goes only to the thinkers and authors, poets and philosophers. Here the boldness of Arundhati Roy reminds us Taslima Nasrin who in the preface of the books, Lazza expresses her opinion: The disease of religious fundamentalism is not restricted to Bangladesh alone and it must be fought at every tum. For myself, I am not afraid of any challenge or threat to my life. I will continue to write and challenge or threat to my life. I will
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continue to write and protest persecution and discrimination. I am convinced that the only way the fundamentalist forces can be stopped is if all of us who are secular and humanistic join and fight their malignant influence. I, for one, will not be silenced. 16 Arundhati Roy is of the opinion that war is not the permanent solution of a problem. One war leads to another. Therefore, the prime Minister's statement after the nuclear tests was due to a "deterioration security environment" has little significance in this regard. Some to Arundhati Roy, only pointing nuclear missiles at Pakistan is not enough to face so many problems like unemployment, poverty, population, casteism and, above all, fundamentalism. She observes: Even Pakistan can't be solved by pointing nuclear missiles at Pakistan. Through we are separate countries, we share skies, we share winds, and we share water. Where radioactive fall out will land on any given day depends on the direction of the direction of the wind and rain. Lahore and Amritsar are thirty miles apart. If we bomb Lahore, Punjab, will bum. If we bomb Karachi-then Gujarat Rajasthan, perhaps even Bombay, will burn. Any nuclear war with· Pakistan will be a war against ourselvesP This statement shows her universal brotherhood. In deed, a writer is but confined to the nation he belongs but he is the author of all over the world. Modem wars are mostly ari:ificial in nature. Soldiers of any country do not want to fight only for the sake of fight. In the phraseology of G.B. Shaw, they preferred chocolates to bullets. After all they also made of blood and flesh, intellect and emotion. It is only the whims of politicians and so called national honour or prestige that leads an acrimonious atmosphere between India and Pakistan. Besides ther~ are so many misinformation and rumours raised by the fanatics of both the sides, which give birth to so many breaches in our language, the cultural habits, the body
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language and almost everything are very much alike of both the countries. So, if the barriers disinformation are broken down, our hostility will change Modern wars are the result of the psychology of the people, their misunderstandings of the situation concerned; their disinformation about the reality. So, here Arundhati Roy's attitude is very well similar to that of Aldous Huxley. Aldous Huxley in his famous essay Nature and causes of War aptly deals with all manufactured things that lead us to atrocious warfare. We see that many people like war because their lives frustrating and boring. Some people listen to war news with the same excitement, which they listen to a Cricket match commentary. Some rulers feel that they cannot be called great rulers until they have fought some wars, even though without any cause. Caesar and Tamburlain, Alexander and Napoleon are glaring examples in our hand. Moreover, sometimes patriotism and nationalism leads to jingoism. This is what today we find in both the countries. The book, presents a harsh and rugged satire on the snobbery and hypocrisy of politics in India. Politicians oft his country seldom care for the peace and prosperity of the general people. They know only how to live upon them and how to grease their own palm. They want to identify themselves for the healthy values of the nation. If they lack in gaining the identity, and persuaded people to vote for it. However, the fault, according to Roy, does not directly goes to the politician but it goes to the nature of our system of centralized government. The fault goes to a congenital, defect in our particular brand of democracy she says: The greater the numbers of illiterate people, the poorer the country and the more morally bankrupt the politicians, In a situation like this, illiteracy is not just sad; it is down right dangerous. However, to be fair cobbling together a viable pre-digested 'national identity' for India would be a formidable challenge even for the wise and visionary. Every single Indian citizen could, if he or she wants to, claim to belong to same minority or the other. The fissures if you look for them, run vertically, horizontally, layered whole, circular, spiral inside out and outside in.IS
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The novelist also develops a very poor opinion about the diplomacy of Mrs. Indira Gandhi who' injected the venom into our political veins' and invented our particularly vile local brand of political expediency it is the who showed us how to conjure enemies out of thin air, to fire at phantoms that she had carefully fashioned for that very purpose. She also 'discovered the benefits of never burying the dead, but preserving their putrid carcasses and trundling them out to worry old wounds when it suited her. And what about BJP? It is just the spectre of Mrs. Indira Gandhi'a spectre that fed and reared itself in the political spaces and communal suspicion that the congress nourished and cultivated.(P.43) Arundhati Roy, a great observer of men and manner, makes a fine comparison between the BJP and Mrs. Indira Gandhi. She hold the view: While Mrs. Indira Gandhi played hidden games with politicians and their parties, she reserved a shrill convent school rhetoric, replete with tired platitudes, to address, to address the general public. The B.J.P., on the other hand, has chosen to light its fires directly on the streets and in the home and hearts of people. It is prepared to do by day what the congress would do only by night)9 This shows that she has a very poor opinion about the political activities of India. She thinks that most of the ills of India can be mended if the politicians of the nation know their duties and devote themselves to the progress of the true sense of the term. However, what we see today is just the otherwise. They are getters, not begetters, gainers, not beginners". They diverse the milestone. Gone are those days when leaders used to sacrifice their lives on the altar of the nation. U
The author has also shown a great love and sympathy to the tribal people, who are ill treated, oppressed, cheated, robbed of their lands and shunted around like surplus good by the state and its minions. The tribal are those people who may be known as the real Hindus of the country. Why? Because new research of history and anthropology has dearly shown today that though the Hindus are
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ancient people no doubt, but more ancient are tribal people who were the real inhabitant of this country. There were human beings on the earth before there was Hindustan. Humayun Kabir in his famous lecture, the unity of Indian Culture rightly observes: Till recently the Aryans were regarded as the earliest invaders of the land. It was thought that came to a country, which was uncivilized and barbarian, but modem research has proved that there were invaders even before the Aryans poured into this land. They had evolved a civilization higher than that of the Aryans hordes who came in their wake. Today whatever is Indion, Wheatever it be an idea a world, a form of art apolitical institution or social custom, is a blend of many different strains and elements.2o 50 keeping in mind of the importance of the tribal community, the government of India should always pay a heed to the causes of their welfare, security and development. The government could make a public undertaking that more dames like 5ardar 5arovar on the Narmada will not be built, that more people will not be homeless, that they should not be devoid on that original homeland, the forest. But un fortunately, the government turned a deaf ear to their several demands. To quote the author: But of course that would be unconceivable wouldn't it? why? Because it is impractical. Because tribal people do not early matter. Their duties are dispensable. They must learn to sacrifice these things for great today of nation that has snatched from them everything they ever had. 21 The last portion of the book again deals with the author's antinuclear vision. It says that India is a country of millions and millions of people who mostly live in a country of millions and millions of people who mostly live in villages. They have the right thing to get themselves acquainted with the nuclear blast. However, surprisingly enough nobody has informed them about anything. Really, this is
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the greatest horror in a country like India that believes in the theory of democracy or "Janata Janardan". Arundhati Roy, like a ferocious and a wounded tiger filings her anguished reaction to the government in particular and complete democratic system in general: Who the hell conducted those opinion polls? Who the hell is the prime minister to decide whose whose finger will be on the nuclear button that could tum everything we love our earth, our skies, our mountains, our plains our river, our cities and village - to ash in an instant? Who the hell is he to reassure us that there will be no accidents? How does he know? Why should we thrust him? What gas he ever done to make us trust him? What have any of them ever done to make us trust them?22 Here the surmises and prophecy of the author is apt and inevitable: In fact the atomic weapon is a veritable Frankenstein monster. If it runs amuck, who can control it? This dreadful fact is realized by all and sundry, including even those who produce these monster bombs What prompts nations to put faiths in its production is mutual suspicion, hatred and fear. Therefore, the real solution of the atomic menace is to change of the world. In addition, this is exactIywhat Pt. Nehru did in his life. Moreover, the common person in every nook and comer of the world has to raise his voice against atomic war. Let the peace loving citizens of the world join hands in a crusade against the hellish atomic weapons. They should carry on a worldwide campaign to ban their production and experimentation. The diplomat of the world may think in terms of war and few engines of destruction as we saw during the Gulf war, but the average person in every part of the globe has no interest in fighting. What he loves is quite, secure, peaceful and happy existence, Moreover, this is what should be the principal guide of the politicians and diplomats of all over the world. Therefore, what is need of the day is not to waste our power but to tum them into right direction. Science is a blessing when it is carefully used. However, it becomes curse when is used for the annihilation of human race. In short the nuclear bomb is the most
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anti-domestic, anti-national, anti- human, out right evil thing that man has ever made. It is a man's challenge to god. It can rain death and disaster and can annihilate the whole civilization of human being within a second. So, it is high time we should remember the apt observation of Lord Tennyson who rightly remarks: Let knowledge grow from more to more But more of reverence in us dwell, That mind and soul according well May make one music as before.23 III
The mind and attitude of Arrundhati Roy can be seen in her revolutionary article (now it is in the from a book) The Greater Common Good, which was first brought out by Frontline Magazine (June 4, 1999). It deals with the author's rational and progressive attitude to the dam projects of the government; her sympathetic talks with the sufferers of the Narmada valley project; her harsh and rugged satire on the faulty decision and adverse attitude of the political parties and above all, her Wordsworthian nostalgia for the natural scenes and sights of nature. The book reminds us of what Wordsworth the great poet and philosopher of Nature observes: The World is too much with us, late and soon Giving and spending we lay waste our powers. Little we see in Nature that is ours We have given our hearts away to a sordid boon. 24 The book opens with an innuendo: "I stood on a hill and laughed out loud". Here the laughing but is not general laughing but it is full of sarcastic irony on the resettlement of the sufferers of the Sardar Sarovar Dam. The author laughed loud because the sons and daughter of the displaced tribal people are not happy at all in the resettlement colonies through there is see- saws and slider and swings in every park. Why? Because the homes of the tribal people are not the big buildings or great mansions in the polluted and populated cities, but an open sky far from the madding crowd,
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intertwined with age long myths, traditions, songs and dances, fruits and flower. In other words, to quote Shakespeare, the tribal people find tongues in trees, sermons in stone and good in everything. 25 And perhaps this is what made Arundhati Roy 'laugh out loud' on a hill. The excerpts from a letter from Bava Mahila of Jalsindhi village in Jhabua district to Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Dig Vijay Singh in 1994, very clearly answers the laugh of the Booker Prize winner author, Arundhati Roy. The letters says: We have lived in the forest for generations. The forest is our moneylender and banker. In hard times, we go to the forest. We build our houses from its wood. From its rushes and splints, we weave screens. From the forests we make baskets and cuts, ploughs and hoes and many other useful things; we gate various kind of grasses and when the grasses become dry in summer we still get leaves ... If there is a famine, we survive by eating roots and tubers. When we fall sick our medicine men bring us leaches, roots, bark from the fores:. We collect and sell gum, tendu leaves, bahera, chironji and mahua. The forest is like our mother; we have grown up in its lap. We know how to live by suckling at her breast. If we were made to live by suckling at her breast. If we were made to live in a land without forests, then all this knowledge that we have cherished for generations will be useless and slowly we will forget it all. 26 Therefore, according to Arundhati Roy, to give morden facilities and other materialistic advancements to the displeased tribal people is not to show sympathy to them but to deprive them of their natural instincts and nostalgic coherence. As a matter of fact, it is the psychology of human mind that however poor and miserable the man's home may be he is so much emotionally tagged to it that all through his life the memory of his birth place always haunts him and compels him to come back to his home. The house may be
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a place of all the facilities but it lacks love and affection affinity and happiness. On the other hand a home though without any wall and roof, just under the shade of a tree is always made of love and dreams. And the forests and the rivers, the hills and mountains, of the tribal people are their real homes which provide them love and affection, livelihood and nourishment. This shows that tribal people cannot adjust in the society full of pollution and corruption; the society which seldom harbours a sense of co-operation and intimacy among its people these days; the society in which the ceremony of innocence is drowned in the "blood dimmed tide,,27 of aberrations of several kinds. J.B.5. Haldane, in his famous essay, the scientific point of view points out that common person is more interested in the emotional and ethical side of a problem than its facts. For instance, the segregation of the American Negro is more of an emotional and ethical problem than a biological one. He observes: In the country districts of the southern states, the birth-rate of the Negro population exceeds the death rate. In the southern towns, and due to the fact that, in environments suitable to a white man, they die of consumption and other diseases, just as the white man dies on the west coast of Africa, the Negro's original home. 28 It is to be noted that in America there is a public debate over the possible dismantling of dams built 50 years ago. Today it is proved there that dams have done more harm than good. But in India, we continue to built more and more. There is sufficient evidence to show that good watershed management is a much more effective and economical way of storing water. In conserves water and leads too mush higher agricultural productivity with far less danger of salinisation one of the results of large dams and extensive irrigation systems. The other import thing, which always goes beyond our notice, is that by water shed development, as suggested by the Narmada Bachao Andolan, rather than increasing the heights of the dam, the tribal people could be gainfully employed where they live. Arundhati Roy rightly observed:
The fact that they do more harm than good is no longer just conjecture. Big dams are obsolete. They
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are uncool. They are undemocratic. They are a Government's way of accumulating authority. They are a guaranteed way of talking a farmer's wisdom away from him. They are a brazen means of talking water, land and irrigation away from the poor and bestowing it upon the rich. Their reservoirs displace huge population of people, leaving them homeless and destitute. Ecologically, they are in the doghouse. They cause floods, water loggind, salinity they spread disease. 29 So, big darns, these days, are no longer the monuments of modem civilization, emblem of man's ascendancy over Nature. Monuments are generally unaging, timwless and are full of worship and devotion. But the recent havoc caused by the big gams all over the world is the testimony of the factthat big dams do the opposite of what people say about them. Perhaps this is why dams building is not the first priority of the developed country. The dam building industry in the First World is in great trouble and out of work. It has been transported to the Third world where poverty and malnutrition, unemployment and population are widely prevented. The First world encourages the poor world to make increasingly darns only to become increasingly poor and destitute. Consequently, they provide the Third World developmental aid with their other waste like old weapons superannuated aircraft carriers and danned pesticides. The author thinks that aid is justanother praetorian business enterprise. It is just like colonialism. Yet, in India our leaders welcome the strategh of the First world with slavish smile. Moreover, it is very astounding that the government of India has detailed figure for production of food grain but hasnta Fidurefor the number of people displaced by dams or scarified in other ways at the altars of liN ational Progress". The author holds the view: The millions of displaced people in India are nothing but refugees an unacknowled war. And we like the citizens of white American and French Canada and Hitlers Germany, are condoning it by looking awa y. Why? Because we are told that, it is
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Arundhati Roy's Life, Mind and Art being dine for the sake of the Greater common Good. That it is being done in the name of progress, in the name of National Interest. Therefore, gladly, unquestioningly, almost gratefull, we believethat what we are told. We believe that it benefits us to believe.30
Arundhati Roy aloes makes a difference between the city and the village. She seems to fling a mild irony on those who say that India lives in the villages. But to Arundhati Roy, India doesn't live in her villages but dies in her villages. India gets kicked around in her villages. Truly speaking, these days India lives in her cities and the country villages live only to serve her cities. The other problem the author raises is associated with the dam project which India has taken from the World Bank for the development aid given to the sufferers of the said project. However, the irony is that India is in a situation where it pays back more money to the bank in interest and repayments of principal than it receives from it. We are forced to create new debts in order to be able to repay our old ones. The author is of the view: The relationship between us is exactly like the relationship between a landless labourer steeped in debt and the poor man loves his Bania because he always there when he needed. It is. not for nothing that we call the world a global village. The only difference between the landless labourer and the Government of India is that one uses the money to survive. The other Just Funnels it into the private offers of its officers and agents, pushing the country into an economic bondage that it may never overcome}1 It is to be noted that water is an important source of irrigation
and power necessary for the agricultural growth and industrial production of the country. Water is channelised for irrigation of agricultural fields. To produce hydro-electricity. All these projects are already having deep beneficial effect on India's economy. In
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short, they provide power to the industries water to agriculture and electricity to villages and cities for better living. The Government says that Sardar Sarover projects which purposes are multipleirrigation, power production and flood control, will produce 1450 Mega. But according to Roy, the fact is just the otherwise. She observes: Irrigation uses up the water you need to produce power. Flood control requires you to keep the reservoir empty during the monsoon months to deal with an anticipated surfeit of water. And if there is no surfeit, you're left with an empty dam. And this defeats the purpose of irrigation, which is top store the monsoon water. It's like the riddle of trying to ford a river with a fox, a chicken and a bag of grain. The result of these mutually conflicting aims, studies say, is that when the Sardar Sarovar projects are completed, and the scheme is fully functional, it will end up producing only 3percent of the power that its planners say it will 50 Mega watts. 32 The other great drawback, which Roy points out, is the earthquake caused by the reservoir of the dam. Activity protesting ageinst the construction of dams on the Narmada (in Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh), the Tehri (in Utter Pradesh)and Bedthi (Kamataka) argue that dams would lead to RI.S. (reservoir-inducedseiesmicith) and subsequently earthquakes. The UUer-Kashi and Jabalpur earthquakes are often cited to support their arguments, but the fact is somewhat different as observed by the recent research in the field of seismology, we should aloes not forget that despite all these scientific and technological developments, an element of seismic risk could haunt a dam and cast a shadow on its construction. But this anticipation of risk shouldn't stand in the way of progress particularly a contra like India, which needs water and electricity to provide its people good living standards. Hydropower is the solution to the country's requirements, and this can be achieved by storingwatet in dame. Now the question is: can
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electricity or other facilities be generated at the cost of a number of poor people of the villages or the forests? Is not wrong to displace a large number of tribal people from their homeland - the brests and the rivers to which they are nostalgically attached? Certainly it is an inhuman, brutal and callous act on the part of the Government if it concerned authority doesn't pay any heed to demands of the displaced people. This inhuman treatment to the daHt and the displaced, the poor and the defenseless compelled Arumdhati Roy to visit the site of the dam and made her to write this poignant ode on the trials and tribulations. This is why, the Author calls upon all section of society to come and think over this giant and universal problem. She thinks: The war of The Narmada valley is not just some exotic tribal war or a remote rural war or even an exclusively Indian war. It is a war for the rivers and the mountains and the forests of the world. All sorts of various from all over the world, anyone who wishes to enlist, will be honored and welcomed. Every kind of warriors will be needed. Doctors, awyers, actors, singers, lovers. The borders are open, Folks; come on!.33 The state Governments of Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra are very harsh, as pointed out by the author, to their dealings with the displaced people. On paper, the Government of Gujarat has a lot of things for the welfare of the displaced people. It has a good rehabilitation package which offers land to the sufferers. But in point of fact, the Government of Gujarat hasn't even managed to rehabilitate people from its own 19 villages slated for submergence. The people of these villages are scattered to separate rehabilitation sites. In practice, it is seen that the people of the rehabilitation sites have to face so many obstacles and hurdles without being done anything. Some people have been given land, other have not, some have land that is always water-logged. Some have been driven out by landowners who sold land to the Government but have not been paid yet. The picture of the resettlement site was welf painted by Arundhati Roy in a poetic language:
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In several resettlement sites, people have been dumped in rows of corrugated tin sheds which are furnaces in summer and fridges in winter. Some of them are located in dry riverbeds, which during the monsoon tum into fast-flowing drifts. I have been to some of these sites. I have seen film footage of others; Shivering children perched like birds on the edges of charpais, while swirling waters enter their tin homes. Frightened fevered eyes watch pot and pans carted through the doorway by the current, floating out into the folded fields, thin fathers swimming after them to retrieve what they can. 34 To crown the effect, the poor people of these resettlement sites have to starve to death for want of food. They have to walk several kilometers to the nearest town to offer themselves as wage labour. What a great irony in the forest, they gathered everything they needed- food, fuel, fodder, and what not. In their old houses, they had money, but they were insured. Moreover, in the villages, they felt a sense of affinity, congeniality, and above all, stability. But here in the town, they are suffering form a sense of claustrophobia and nostalgia. It is not for nothing that Andrew Marvell, a great Metaphysical poet, praises the solitude of the village and feels that plants may grow among plants: Your sacred plants, if here below Only among the plants will grow: Society is all but rude To this delicious solitude.35 A man who leads a pastoral life is always simple, innocent, and docile. However, when he comes in contact with society his innocence and simplicity begin to bleed. So far, the tribal man lives in the lap of nature, he is nearest to goodness. The forest dweller has the opportunity to study Nature in a very intimate manner, and the intimacy thus established with even the inanimate things is of such a profound order that it becomes possible for him to replace human society with all that is implied by the companionship of
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these forest dwellers. It, thus, comes to happen that what books and sermons do the people in the public life of the world of urban civilization, the and books and stones do to these dwellers. It is evident here that Arundhati Roy stands like a lawyer to plead the case of the rural fold that what they are loading must be restored to them justifiably. With a hammer in her hand, Roy wants to blow hard in ill-treatment of the state and the Government who turn a deaf ear to the requests of the forest dwellers and sufferers of the dam projects. In this sense the book may be termed as an elegy on the pathetic and miserable condition of the villagers of the big dam area. The author weeps on the absolute neglect of the poor; the insulted and the injured. she feels that there is human dignity in them, which ought to be recognized. A nation ought to be thankful to them because they live on their produce and creates no nuisance. They are happily engaged in their rural vocation of cultivating the land. Further, they have the pleasure of the limited domestic life where they are looked after by their housewives and children. It is affections that they get from them, but in the resettlement site, they feel like fish out of water. Here Roy's portrayal is tantamount to that Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard in which the poet advises the rich and ambitious people:
Let not ambition mock their useful toil Their homely joys and destiny obscure Nor grandeur hears with a disdainful smile. The short and simple annals of the poor.36 The Greater common Good also shows the tyranny and injustice, insult and abuse of the wealthy caste people to the sub caste and the have - note. The author mentions an event of the village Jalud, in the plains of Madhya Pradesh where the scourge of the shameful caste divisions can be felt. Here in this village a majority of the land owning farmers are the Rajputs. Their houses are always filled with sacks of wheat and rice. The Dalit of this area were badly beaten when they objected to their land ceiling. They told the author how when they objected, cement was poured into their water pipes, their standing crops were bulldozed and the police occupied the land by force. Consequently all the 12 families became
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landless and they have to work as wage labour. It reminds us of The God of Small Things in which Velutha, a Dalit of the village, has to suffer a lot by society and administration. He was so mercilessly tortured by the dishonest and cruel police that he breathed his last in the police custody. The author very beautifully presents a heart - rending picture of Velutha and she seems to show her sympathy: Velutha appeared in the scummy, slippery floor. A mangled genie invoked by a modem lamp. He was naked, his soil Mundu had undone. Blood spilled form his skull like a secret. His face was swollen and his head looked like a pumpkin, too large and heavy for the slender stem it grew form. A pumpkin with a monstrous upside-down smile. police boots stepped beck form the rim of a pool urine spreading form him, the bright ,bare electric bulb reflected in it.37 It is remarkable to note that the outlook of Arundhati Roy
conforms to that Father of the Nation who had a strong belief in the existence of the village in which the soul of India resides. Mahatma Gandhi believed that unless the miserable condition of a large number of people mostly the villagers is improved, we cannot claim the progress of the nation in the true sense of the term. The last portion of the book rings with the note of Roy's anger and her harsh and direct satire on the big men of society which she termed them 'Laltain' in her book, The God of Small Things. She compares the Big Dams to the Nuclear Bombs. She concludes: Big Dams are to a nation's development what Nuclear Bombs are to its military Arsenal. They are both weapons of mass destruction. They are both weapons Governments use to control their own people. Both twentieth century emblems that mark a point in time when human intelligence has outstripped its owe instinct for survival. They are both malignant indications of civilization turning upon itself. They represent the link, not just the
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Arundhati Roy's Life, Mind and Art link - the understanding - between human beings and the planet they live on. They scramble the intelligence that connects eggs to hens, milk to cows, food to forests, water to rivers', air to life and the earth to human existence.38
The book is not simply the work of lines and statements but a fine piece of a good art. The thoughts and feelings of the author are not vague, dry, and monotonous but they are woven into the fabric of art and literature. Some of the words and phrases, images and symbols of this book are highly suggestive. Sometimes the author uses words and dictions in such a fine way that sound of the sentence suggest the sense. Like T.5. Eliot ,her expression is not the 'turning loose of emotion'; We get some sentences intermittently in the course of the expression in the book which very well express the author's great anger and emotion. The sentence is independent in nature and it separates two paragraphs. It reminds us ofT.5. Eliot's The Water Land. Some examples are cited below which are idiomatic and poetic; powerful as well as prophetic: i.
I stood on a hill and laughed out loud.
ii. I feel like someone who's just stumbled on a mass grave; iii. Did I hear someone say something about the world's biggest democracy? iv. There is a hole in the flag that needs mending; v.
Old Nazis probably soothe themselves in similar way.
The book also abounds in fine similes and metaphors. The similes used here sniff the smell of modernity and take us back to the realm of Yeats and Eliot, Pound and Auden. One of the salient features of the similes used is a fine correspondence between the major and the minor terms. Let us see some of them: a.
I could see little children with littler goats scuttling the landscape like motorized peanuts; (p.4)
b.
I went because writer is drawn to stories the way vultures are drawn to kills;(p.6)
c.
I feel like someone who has just stumbled on a mass grave; (p.7)
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d. The relationship between us is exactly like the relationship between a landless labourer steeped in debt and the local Bania;(p.11) e.
It is like the riddle of trying to ford a river with a fox a chicken and a bag of grain;(p.13)
f.
The ancient teak beams dismantled form their previous homes, carefully stacked away like postponed dreams, now spongy, and unusable. (p.20)
Thus, this brief survey shows that Arundhati Roy has amply lived up to the ideals of great art. Her art is a blending of both 'poetic truth' and 'poetic beauty'. Right form the beginning to the end of the book, the author seems to be berserk with great anger and contempt against the Government and unsympathetic attitude of the state and the administration against the people of the resettlement sites. Yet her satire is not rugged and abusing in nature like that of Alexander pope; but it is mild and congenial, refined and sublime. The Greater Common Good expresses the author's unremittingly hostile outlook to the adverse and entirely inhuman treatment inflicted upon the displaced sufferers of the Government's big dam projects. It also shows how the tribal people habituated to live in the lap of nature are being forced to live in an entirely new and uncongenial atmosphere devoid of their natural instincts and nostalgic affection. It describes' Big Dams 'as' nuclear Bomb' But what matters most is the new and original style - a style that lulls us away form the world of dream and fantasy to the world of drab reality; a style that turns and twists language to conform to the feeling; a style that has sometimes ungrammatical construction, bizarre phrases and idiosyncratic capitalization. The author' s sympathetic attitude to the Dalit and the deserted, the have- nots and the defenseless and her elegiac vision for ecological imbalances will last for generation to generation so far as man will be a creature of flesh and blood, emotion and imagination. Thus this brief survey of Arundhati Roy's life, mind, and art obviously shows that she is a writer of the DaHt and the downtrodden. Her heart is full of the milk of sympathy, Love, and affection. She never hesitates to fling satire on the big men ofsociety;
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she even goes to the extent of condemning the wrong policies of the Government. She is also very bold and courageous in her straightforward attitude towards the millions of people of India unnecessarily neglected by the big guns. Her attitude is very near to those of Aldous Huxley, Bertrand Russell, G.B. Shaw and other great celebrities who championed the cause of equality, liberty and fraternity. References
1.
Roy, Mary, India Today, Connought Place, New Delhi: Editor Aroon Purie, Cover Story, P.26.
2.
First City, Delhi: City Magazine, June 1997, p.24.
3.
Ibid., p.24.
4.
Sunday, Magazine, 30 March -5 Aprie 1997, Calcutta, p.4l.
5. 6.
Ibid., p. 37. First City: op. cit. p.22.
7.
Sunday, op. cit. p.42.
8.
Ibid., p.39.
9.
Dhawan, R.K., ed, Arundhati Roy: The Novelist Extraordinary, New Delhi: Prestige Publication, 1999, p.12.
10. Roy, Arundhati, The End of Imagination, Kottayam, Kerala:D.C. Books, 1998, pp.12-13. 11. Krishanan, A. Gopal, Chennai: The Frontline: Magazine, May22-June-4, 1999, p.114. 12. Roy, Arundhati, The End ofIimagination, pp.-20-21. 13. Buck, Pearl S., India through a Traveler's Eyes, Intermediate ProsePoetry Selection, Patna: Sunrise Pub., 1994, p.16. 14. Lt. Gen. (Retd.) Eric. A. Vas: The Times Of India, Delhi: 25 Oct. 1999, p.7. 15. Roy, Arundhati, : op. cit., p.30. 16. Nasrin, Taslima, Lazza, New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1993, preface, p.ix-x. 17. Roy, Arundhati, op. cit., p.34.
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18. Ibid., pp.39-40. 19. Ibid., p.33.
20. Kabir, Humanyun, The Unity ofIndian Culture, Intermediate ProsePoetry Selection, p.51. 21. Roy, Arundhati: op. cit. p.46.
22. Ibid.,pp.52-53. 23. Tennyson, Lord, In Memorium, The Works of Tennyson, Wordsworth Poetry Library, p.285. 24. Wordsworth, William, The World is Too Much wuth Us, Palgrave's Golden Treasury, Calcutta: Oxford University Press, 1964, p-299. 25. William, Shakespeare,As You Like It, Act II, Sc. I. Line 15-19. 26. Roy, Arundhati, The Greater Common Good, The Frontline Magazine, May 22, June4, 1999, p.14. 27. Yeats, W.B., The second Coming, Palgrave's Golden Treasury, Calcutta: Oxford University Press, p.424. 28. Haldane, J.B.S., The Scientific Point of View, Intermediate Prose Poetry Selection, p.31. 29. Roy, Arundhati, The Greater Common Goof, op. cit.p. 6.
30. Ibid., pp. 8-9. 31. Ibid., pp.11-12. 32. Ibid., p.13. 33. Ibid., p.17. 34. Ibid., p.20. 35. Marvell, Andrew, Thoughts in a Garden, Palgrave's Golden Treasury, p.92. 36. Gray, Thomas, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, Palgrave's Golden Treasury, p. 146. 37. Roy, Arundhati, The Small of Small Things, India Ink., p.320. 38.
, The Greater Common Good, op. cit. p.29.
000
THE THEME OF DEATH AND SUICIDE IN THE POETRY OF KAMALA DAS: A THEMATIC STUDY OF HER VERSES - R.K. Mishra
Kamala Das as an accomplished Indian poet is predominantly preoccupied with the theme of love and sex in her poetry. Her secondary preoccupation with that of death aud suicide in poetry ,stirs much discussion and debate in as much as they pervade many of her verse~'A study of her poems brings to light the various factors and incidents that occurred in her life and aroused her death consciousness. She was profoundly concerned with death in her life and revealed her conception of it in her poetry. She heartily welcomed her end of life with a view to escaping the pangs of mental agony that sprang from her disillusionment in marital understanding and betrayal in her extramarital relationship. In poem after Poem, Kamala Das has projected her own image obsessed with a sense of suicide. Like Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton she has often contemplated to end her life prematurely on account of her discontent with her marital life. She found her life not worth living because of her perpetual misunderstanding with her husband who was aggressive and obtrusive in dealing with her. As a result her agonized mind frequently yearned for suicidal death. In her poems Kamala Das has candidly confessed her discontent in her
The Theme of Death and Suicide in The Poetry of Kamala ... 187 relationship with her husband and her frustration in attaining satiety in love with her lovers. She attributes the arousal of her mental agony to the cold indifference of her husband towards her thirst for love which she expected from him. She reveals this discontent in the following lines. I was in love with a hUsband, who did not want love and it was a sweet torment to lie with my face buried against his feet while he slept, mine was a crushed love, a beautiful and futile emotion.! Her strong urge to escape from the grip of her husband and her d~ppointment in desperate return to his grip find their revelation in the following lines: If nowhere else
Here in your nest of familiar scorn. The poem The Invitation reveals how the poet is inclined towards suicide by the haunting pains of disillusionment in her marital life. As Kamala Das reflects: "her death by the sea provides some kind of comfort and the lover's company offers another kind of death,,2. She writes: Think of your self Lying on a funeral pyre With a burning head. The death imagery of the funeral pyre is contrasted with the cool bathe as suggested in the poem. This poem The iinvitation is a meditation on death, life and suicide resulting from the feeling of torture that accompanies sexual love. The poet after contemplating death finally turns down the sea's .invitation to death by suicide. In the poem The Silicide the dominating metaphor is the sea. The poem is versified as a dialogue between the poet and the sea. This dialogue is interspersed with the poet's reflection on death. The sea symbolizes a temptation to return to simplicity and innocence through death. In her autobiography My Story Kamala Das confesses: "Often I have toyed with the idea of drowning my self to be rid of my loneliness" (3).
188 The Theme of Death and Suicide in The Poetry of Kamala ... liThe poet's contemplated suicide is averted by her inability to choose between physical and spiritual death" (4). Like Walt Whitman she also considers the body and the soul as inseparable. However, the consolatory words of her husband who asked her to refrain from suicide attempt served to deliver her from the impulsive desire for death. She writes:
I want to be loved
And If love is not to be hat I want to be dead. Like Plath and Sexton she considers life bereft of love to be suicidal and hence she desires to welcome death being deprived of love. She is however, able to overcome the temptation of suicide by her own assertion of life. She desists momentarily from contemplating death when she nostalgically looks back to her grand mother's house and her white lover. The pleasure that she derives from her recollection of her grand mother's love for her, deflects her from the path of suicide. The poem Substitute opens with vague images of the sea and death. The poem is an attempt to escape from memories of frustration and disappointment. The poem The Joss-sticks at Cadell Road refers to the sight of cremation of corpses near the sea. The poem The Seashore also evokes thoughts on death. On some evening I drive past the cremation ground And seem to hear the crunch of bones in those vulgar Mouths of fire or at times I see the smoke, in strands
In the poem The Descendants Kamala Das writes: Not for us even to question death, but as child to mother's arms We shall give ourselves to the fire or to The hungry earth to be slowly eaten devoured. These lines are expressive of the inescapability and inevitability of death of human beings. In the poem Gino too she writes about the perish ability of human body:
The Theme of Death and Suicide in The Poetry of Kamala ... 189 This body that I wear without joy, this body Burdened with lenience, slender toy owned By man of substance shall wither.
The Flame, Death is so Mediocre, A Holiday for Me, Tomorrow, The Sensuous Woman-lIl, Life's Obscure Parallel and A Souvenir ofBone are the poems that manifest Kamala Das's obsession with death. Her concern with death and suicide finds a more mature and profound expressions in these verses which echo the tone and sentiment of Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Judith Wright and John Berryman. In her conception of death and suicide Kamala Das seems to have been influenced by American confessionalists like Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton and John Berryman who expressed their desire and foretaste of suicide in their verses and resorted to this kind of unnatural death in the prime of their life. All these poets mentioned above were fascinated cy suicide and they contemplated it before embracing death. This hunger for suicidal death manifests by and large in their verses. Critics attribute the suicide of these poets to their creative madness that enticed their self-destructive urges.
Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton suffered from creative madness due to mental depression that arose from their frustration in marital life. Plath invariably longed for suicide and once she expressed her death wish to her mother. Her confession alarmed her mother, who rushed her to a psychiatrist. In her first attempt of suicide she swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills. She was discovered and hospitalized. In her second attempt she succeeded in killing herself in a gas oven. The news of her commission of suicide upset the mind of Anne Sexton who pronounced her own death wish in the following lines: Sylvia Plath's death disturbs me, makes me want to do it she took something that was mine, that death was mine? (5) She versified her sentiment on Plath's death in the following lines: Thief How did you crawl in to
190 The Theme of Death and Suicide in The Poetry of Kamala ... Crawl down alone In to the death I wanted so badly and for so long. (Sylvia's Death) Alvarez a British critic observes: Plath's self-destructiveness is the very source of her creative energy; it was precisely a source of inspiration to her to exercise her creative power in writing. Death is the price she pays for the immortality of her words. 6 The poems she wrote during the weeks before her death expose her strong desire to die and get released from her perpetual agony. Her poem Lildy Lilzarus expresses her death-wish in the following lines: Dying Is an art like everything else? I do it exceptionally well Plath had already written a number of poems before her death suggesting her preoccupation with death in life. All the Dead Dears, Full Fathoms Five, Suicide Off Egg Rock, The Ghost's Leave Taking, The Colossus are the poems that give vent to Plath's desire for death. These poems are the outcome of her deep dejection and despondency in life. She visualizes her own death as a state of perfection. In the poem Edge she writes: The woman is perfected Her dead Body wears the smile of accomplishment. Like Plath, Anne Sexton too contemplates death and expresses her concept of death in the poems The Double Images, Live or Die and The Death Note Books. In the part II of the poem The Double Image Sexton describes her first suicide attempt resulting from her guilt over her child's first seriousness. She writes: I cannot forgive you suicifle, my mother said And she never could. She had my portrait done instead.
The'Theme of Death and Suicide in The Poetry of Kamala ... 191 In Part II she writes: Only my mother grew ill She turned from me as if death were catching As if my dying had eaten inside of her.
The Death Baby a poem from The Death Note Book consists of six parts. "The poem explores the nature of death in terms of woman's role as a daughter and a mother"(7}. In this poem Sexton projects her own vision of death. In the second part of the poem entitled "Dy-dee doll" the death of the doll is another form of experiencing death in imagination. The doll dies in misery and with knowledge "From the doll's two types of death Sexton moves to her own premature or false death of attempted suicide. In these attempts she was getting to know her death asking for a sign. She writes:
And death took root in that sleep and I rocked it And was rocked by it Oh! Madonna hold me The baby is herself the baby is death. Both Plath and Anne Sexton influenced each other to welcome and experience death. They were contempofaries. Both were married and had children. They both experience~ fits of madness. Their conjugal life shattered. Their mental tensions and struggles are recorded in their works. Both committed suicide. Their poetry is born out of their deep agonies of life. Anne Sexton identified Plath and her own self as "death mongers". She comments on their suicidal tendencies: We talked death with burned up intensity, both of us drawn to it like moths to an electric light bulb suckng on .:it!! In The complete Poems she writes: Suicides have a special language Like carpenters they want to know which They never ask why build tools.
192 The Theme of Death and Suicide in The Poetry of Kamala ... John Berryman is another confessional poet who was invariably obsessed with the desire for suicide. Like Plath and Sexton he killed himself prematurely. In his poems Love and Fame Berryman is closer to mortality; more profoundly aware of his own eventual death. In his elegy on Roethke No-18th he envies Roethke for gaining in death a freedom from the excessive cost of art and love. But his envy of Roethke in death is reminiscent of Anne Sexton's envy of Sylvia Plath's end. His yearning for suicide is revealed in his poem Of Suicide. In the poem Berryman writes: Age and the death and the ghosts Her having gone away In spirit from me, Hosts Of regrets come and find me empty. Judith Wright a confessional poet of Australia projects her own perspective of death in her poems. In her interface III she continues to delineate the theme of death and suicide introduced in her Interface II. She interprets the suicidal tendency as some kind of madness a mental disorder that propels a man towards selfannihilation. Unlike Plath, Sexton and Berryman, She expresses her contempt for suicide that people, countries, nations and societies have been pursuing through the ages destroying each other. In her poem 'Midnight' the central theme is death and rebirth which are like the two sides of a coin. In her poem Love and Death she explains the syndrome of these two features of human life. The poems that are revelatory of her concept of death are Dream, Australia 1979, Bullocky, The Bean Stalk Meditated Later, Brothers and Sisters and Birds and Legends. Although she has versified on death yet she has never welcomed it in her verses. A study of Kamala Das's verses on death leads us to assume that her concept and vision of death have been moulded and reshaped by her contemporary Western confessional poets and by her Indian predecessors like Sarojini Naidu. Most particularly the impact of the American poets on her poetry is distinctively discernible. Her concept, meditation and treatment of death in poetry have been influenced by the thoughts and vision of death professed by the Western confessionalists. Consequently her perspectives on
The Theme of Death and Suicide in The Poetry of Kamala ... 193 death bear considerable similarity with those of the American poets whom Kamala Das seems to have imbibed and emulated in her versifica tion. Notes & References
1.
Das, Kamala, I have Lived Beautifully, Debonair-V-III, 15th May, 1975, p.41.
2.
Nair, K.R. Ramachandran, The Poetry of Kamala Das, New Delhi: Reliance Publishing House, 1993, p.28.
3.
Das, Kamala, My Story, Sterling Publishers, New Delhi: 1974, p.215.
4.
Nair, K.R. Ramachandran, The Poetry ofKamala Das, New Delhi: Reliance Publishing House, 1993, p.65.
5.
Morrow, Lance, Pains of the Poet and Miracles, Time, September, 1991, p.76.
6.
Alfred, Alvarez, The Svage God: A Study of Suicide, New York: Random House, 1972, p.99.
7.
Juhasz, Suzanne, Naked and fiery Forms: Modern American Poetry by Women, A New Tradition, New York: Octagon Books, 1978, p.l34.
8.
Newman, Charles The Art of Sylvia Plath, London: Faber and Faber, 1970, p.78.
DOD
EXISTENTIAL ALIENATION IN BHARATI MUKHERJEE'S WIFE - Dinesh B. Chaudhary
Women writer constitutes a major segment of the contemporary Indian writing in English. Bharati Mukherjee, an Indo-American writer of recent times, has presented her themes in different dimensions than ever before. She was born on July 27,1940, to an upper-middle class Hindu Brahmin family in Calcutta, India. In 1947, her father was given a job in England and he brought his family to live there until 1951, which gave Mukherjee an opportunity to develop and perfect her English language skills. Bharati Mukherjee's novels and short stories often reveal contemporary themes and concerns. The emotional and psychic consequence of search for self-identity, which is infecting a part of diasporic experience. She !las paid special attention to the condition of the Indian woman immigrant in North America. In her 1990 interview, she emphasizes: Many of her stories are about psychological transformation, especially among women immigrants form Asia} Bharati Mukherjee focuses attention on her characters growing awareness of the dark spots in their lives, and their courageous
Existential Alienation in Bharati Mukherjee's Wife
195
efforts to discover areas of fight. This search for light, for happiness and fulfillment is subtly linked in her fiction to her protagonists' struggle for self-actualization. As a writer, Bharati Mukherjee has a sly eye with which to view the world, and her characters share that quality. The clear eyed but affectionate immigrant in American society,2 has become a celebrity for her distinctive approach to expatriatehood. Bharati Mukherjee throughout her writing discusses the condition of Asian immigrants in North America, with particular attention to the changes taking place in South Asian women in a new world. While the characters in all her works are aware of the brutalities and violence that surround them and are often victimized by various forms of social oppression, she generally draws them as survivors. The quest of identity which has a broad spectrum meaning and it has been manifested in various ways in the will to exist despite all odds and to survive all odds. In fact, it is very important and one • of the most important factors in the life of an individual as well as of a nation or a race. The diasporic literature focuses on the unsettlement or dislocation of an individual or race and consequent alienation. Alienation leads to a sense of loss but life consists not in losing but in rediscovery of self. Bharati Mukherjee has this discovery as her recent theme. Bharati Mukherjee' novel Wife deals with an entirely different problem of expatriates. It resembles ArunJoshi's The Foreigner and Anita Desai's Cry, the Peacock. In fact, her protagonist in Wife lives on demarcation line of the culture crisis- the antithesis of the coalescence of two cultures. The central character of the novel, Dimple plays important parts in shaping the life in India as well as America. Significantly, Dimple's problem does not lie out there but . it is within herself, like the problem of Maya in Anita Desai's Cry, the Peacock. Prasanna Sree Sathupati writes for Dimple's psychotic violence: Dimple is an escapist lost in her private world of fantasy. In the beginning, at home in Calcutta, Dimple is dreamin~ about marrying-any body-but preferably a neurosurgeon, and her father is
196
Existential Alienation in Bharati Mukherjee's Wife combing the matrimonial ads for an engineer. She is twenty and already afflicted with signs of passive anger. The tension between her actual powerlessness and forms of freedom suggested to her by the changing Indian culture has made her sick. She reads "The Doctrine of Passive Resistance" for her university exams and expects to employ domestic passive resistance, for instance without holding affection, to win the love of the unknown husband, who is the only hope of adult freedom she has. At last a matrimonial candidate is found, Amit Basu, a consulting engineer, who is ideal in that he has already applied for emigration.3
Dimple Basu is married to Amit, an engineer who has already applied for immigration to Canada and the U.S. In America, she becomes increasingly addicted to the media, and begins to lose her sense of balance and her sense of reality. She is extremely lonely and feels cut off from every thing around her. Tara and Dimple are both essentially lonely w()men. Dimple appears to be a psychically disturbed woman, a schizophrenic, as her mental makes-up is filled with immense depression that results from the morbidity of her mind. As a young woman who was raised to be passive, Dimple lacks the inner strength and resources it takes to cope in New York City as the young wife in an arranged marriage. Her immigration to New York soon after her marriage wiih Amit, never allow dimple to disavow depression. Being essentially a mimetic novel, Wife invites the traditional test of plausibility and verisimilitude and passes it without a question4 says Krishna Balaev Vaid. She does not even love Amit, her husband. Dimple has a subterranean streak of violence. She is uprooted from her family and familiar world, and projected into a social vacuum where the media become her surrogate community, her global village. The height of her abnormality reaches when she skips her way to abortion: She had skipped rope until her legs grew numb and her stomach burned; then she had poured
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water from the heavy bucket over her head, shoulders, over the tight little curve of her stomach. She had poured until the last of the blood washed off her legs; then she had collapsed. 5 Amit is an average human being and is not "god like with boyish charm"(89) as Dimple wished him to be. She cannot understand Amit or try to. Dimple's vision of Sita's docility, sacrifice and responsibility is a flag with many messages. She wants to break through the traditional taboos of a wife. She aspires for freedom and love in marriage. This aim brings her indignation, grief, resentment, peevishness, spite and sterile anger. Dimple is trapped between two cultures, and aspires to a third, imagined world. Living in her social vacuum, Dimple is not unlike hundreds of American men and women who believe and are betrayed by the promise of fulfillment offered by the media, and who choose the solution suggested by a violent environment. Dimple thinks: Marriage had betrayed her, had not provided all the glittering, things she had imgained. (102) Her own body seemed curiously alien to her, filled with hate, malice, an insane desire to hurt, yet weightless, almost airborne. (117) Dimple suffers from a terrible angst. The anxiety of living haunts her. She loses her balance of mind. Mentally disturbed, she begins to develop nausea for things around her. Television introduces her to love, middle-American style. Her T.V. watching stuns her by the incredible violence. It becomes a diabolical trap, a torment without hope of either release or relief. Even the apartment objectifies the psychic decay and degeneration. "There were too many images of corrosion within the apartment." (127) Her bodily reaction is expressed through her eating habits. "After the fifth spoonful, she realized, she was not hungry, was on the contrary, feeling ill and had spilled milk and cereal flakes on her clothes." (128) Dimple suffers from a terrible angst. The anxiety of living haunts her. She loses her balance of mind. Mentally disturbed, she begins to develop nausea for things around her. It was becoming the voice
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Existential Alienation in Bharati Mukherjee's Wife
of madness, and that leads to her decision to "Kill Amit and hide his body in the freezer."(195) The murdering of Amit is an assertion of her American identity. It is American somehow: "Almost like a character in a T.V. series."(195) She brought her right hand up and with the knife stabbed the magical circle once, twice, seven times."(213) Like any other feminist writer Mukherjee'S women characters offer- "a frontal challenge to patriarchal thought, social organization and control mechanism".6 Her novels are the expression of this voice that occupies a unique place in her aesthetics. All the casual resemblances between Bharati Mukherjee and the other expatriate and immigrant novelists are but peripheral. No doubt there is a thematic resemblance in the treatment of the problem of "rootless ness" and "expatriation," but her approach and artistic execution is totally different from Naipaul and Markandaya. The quest for self is a metaphor for existential alienation; immigration is also a metaphor for the reintegration of alienated sensibility in the works of Bharati Mukherjee. References
1.
Glearson, Jessie and Tom Grimes, An Interview with Bharati Mukherjee, Lowa Review, vol. 20, Spring, 1990, p. 3.
2.
Steinberg, Sybil, PW Interviews, Publishers Weekly, 25 August, 1989, p.47.
3.
Sathupati, Prasanna Sree, Psychotic Violence of Dimple in Bharati Mukherjee's Wife, Indian Women Novelists, ed., R.K, Dhawan, Prestige Books, 1995, Set III, Volume- 3, p.llO.
4.
Vaid, Krishna Baldev, Review of Wife, in Fiction International, No.4 & 5,1975.
5.
Mukherjee, Bharati, Wife 1997, 42. (Hence after the textual insertion are referred with page numbers in the text.)
6.
Singh, Sushila, Recent Trends in Feminist Thought, Indian Women Novelists, ed., R.K. Dhawan, Prestige Books, 1991, Set. 1, Volume1. P. 65.
000
THE THEME OF BREAKDOWN OF
COMMUNICATION IN MARITAL LIFE IN JHUMPA LAHIRI'S STORY
A TEMPORARY MATTER - B.s. Nimavat
}humpa Lahiri is one of the few leading Indian English writers today. Her collection of short stories Interpreter ofMiJladies made her a well-known name in literary circles in India and abroad. Interpreter of Maladies is more like a cycle of short stories than a collection 'of short stories.
A Temporary Matter the first story in }humpa Lahiri's debut Pulitzer Prize-winning collection Interpreter ofMiJladies. It captures a pivotal moment in a couple's relatively short but eventful marriage. At times absurdly funny, at others he.artbreakingly sad, Lahiri's tale examines how a tragic loss can lead to indifference and a breakdown in communication between two peoplE: who once loved each other. The author's use of irony in various forms make the transition even more poignant, for it underscores an element of suspense as it brings about the story's denouement. Thus, Lahiri enhances the story's ironic quality by creating a situation whereby her characters, isolated in darkness yet sustained by the customs of their native land, must confront each other with the truth.
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The Theme of Breakdown of Communication in Marital ...
Lahiri increases the ironic quality of the story by setting up a situation in which the emotionally distant couple must interact more closely. Because the utility company will tum off the electricity for one hour each night for five consecutive nights to make repairs after a recent snowstorm, Shoba and Shukumar, deprived of their usual distraction, must tum to each other for companionship on the" quiet, tree-lined streets" that experience the nightly power outrage and not the shops near the trolley stop. Although the utility company assures th~ residents of the neighborhood that the inconvenience is only" a temporary matter", the blackout has a transforming effect on the neighborhood and its residents. Despite the cold, neighbors chat with one another as they stroll up and down the street carrying flashlights. The darkness and cold, fresh air instill a restless feeling while enforcing a sense of community, "Tonight, with no lights, they would have to eat together", says the narrator, describing the situation inside Shoba and Shukumar's house. The power outrage forces a change in routine-from voluntary separation to forced interaction. Ever since the loss of their child in September, Shoba and Shukumar have lived separate lives under the same roof. Within the span of only a few months, they have c,?nstructed for themselves a routine life forever. In an effort to delay her homecoming and an inevitable confrontation with her husband, Shdba spends long hours at work and at the gym. Shukumar, on the other hand, remains ensconced on the third floor, ostensibly writing his d:ssertation. Both husband and wife are depressed and neither is willing to acknowledge that their marriage has lost something vital, something more than just romance. Until recently, Shoba had always been neat and tidy, but now she deposits her briefcase in the middle of the hall and leaves her clothes strewn about the room; she is so weary that she does not even brother to untie her shoes before removing them. At thirtythree, she looks "like the type of woman she'd once claimed she would never resemble", Shoba's slightly rumpled appearance reminds Shukurrtar of a time when she was more carefree and all "too eager to collapse into his arms", Alas, those days are no more,
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and her rumpled appearance reveals a different attitude toward Shukumar. The relationship has deteriorated to the point that Shukumar never leaves the house, not even to retrieve the mail, and sleeps until it is almost lunchtime, drinking coffee Shoba had brewed earlier that morning. He cannot find the motivation he needs to finish his dissertation but read novels instead. Everything in his life seems to have lost color, vibrancy. The love he once felt for Shoba has lost its ardor, for he sees her beauty fading, "the cosmetics that had seemed superfluous were necessary now not to improve her but to define her somehow" The woman he once loved has disappeared and with her his own passion. What proves even more ironic is that Shukumar's growing alienation toward his wife is exacerbated by the knowledge that it is reciprocated. The couple has reached an impasse that has quickly led to indifference. The two live separate lives, yet they pretend to participate in a marriage. When Shoba finally stops in to greet him at night, Shukumar tries to look busy, "Don't work too hard," says Shoba ironically, aware, perhaps, that the dissertation is not progressing smoothly. Shukumar seeks to escape his wife's attention by moving his office to the nursery, a place Shoba avoids. "It was the one time in the day she sought him out, and yet he'd come to dread it. He knew it was something she forced herself to do. "Shoba and Shukumar occupy separate floors of the house, masquerading as a couple-that is, until the lights go out." In addition to highlighting the couple's estrangement, the power outage adds an element of suspense as it draws the characters 'differences sharply into focus. Eating dinner that first night in the dim glow of birthday candles which Shukumar must light constantly, Shoba is reminded of the power failures she experienced as a child in India. To pass the time, her grandmother would have Shoba and the other members of her family tell a joke, recite a fact, or a story for all to enjoy. Wishing to break the awkward silence between her and her husband, Shoba has the idea that she and Shukumar should pass the evening in the same manner, the only difference being that they must tell eachother something they've never told before. While it is ironic that they never thought to make
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such personal revelations until the lights go out, the idea of a marred couple divulging their deepest secrets to each other adds an air of mystery to the darkness that surrounds them and heightens the suspense of what will actually be revealed. Upon hearing his wife's idea, Shukumar observes that Shoba "hadn't appeared so determined in months," unaware of the real purpose behind her suggestion. An air of suspense enhances the story further as Shukumar reluctantly agrees to play the game even though he doesn't have a childhood story about India to share." What didn't they know about each other?" he thinks, foreshadowing the story's conclusion. Thus, Lahiri enhances the story's ironic quality by creating a situaifn whereby her characters, isolated in darkness yet sustained by tI'e customs of their native land, must confront each other with the truth. At first revelations are harmless and insignificant. They involve jntrusions of privacy or lapses in thought, white lies told in brief moments of selfishness, or desperate, unconscious attempts 10 preserve one's sense of dignity. With each night that passes, the truths that Shoba and Shukumar exchange become bolder and more honest as the couple struggles to relate and communicate. "Somehow, without saying anything, it had turned into this. Into an exchange of confessions-the little ways they'd hurt or disappointed each other, and themselves. " As the nightly game progresses, Shukumar contemplates what he should say to his wife. He is so happy, in fact, that he cannot decide the order in which to make his confessions. Moreover, the thought of what Shoba will say next excites him, creating a sense of anticipation which the reader shares. Each revelation appears to bring them closer together though, as the story's ironic conclusion demonstrates, any hope of a reunion is beyond reach."Something happened when the house was dark," says the narrator. "They were able to talk to each other again." This improved communication between Shoba and Shukumar inspires displays of affection long from their marriage. She is kind and patient with him, holding his hand in hers to show understanding, whereas he takes even more pride in planning and prep~ring the meals they now enjoy by
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candlelight. On the third night, Shoba and Shukumar kiss awkwardly on the sofa like a couple exploring each other's bodies for the first time. On the fourth night, they make love awkwardly climbing the stairs to their bed." Apparently they seem to have forgiven each other for their acts of neglect and selfishness. But, on the morning of the fifth night, they receive a notice from the utility company stating that the repairs have been competed early, signaling an end to their apparently rekindled romance." I suppose this is the end of our game," Shukumar says when he sees Shoba reading the notice. It is ironic that Shukumar should make this statement, because he doesn't know the half of it, for the period of harmony and affection that Shoba and Shukumar have experienced is, like the power outage that brought it about, "a temporary matter," the calm before the storm-the one that heralds the end of their marriage. Together, they have played a game in which they have pretended to want the same things when neither one of them has had the courage to state the obvious; their marriage is over. Moreover, the loss of their child has proved insurmountable, for neither spouse is willing to suffer that kind of pain and sorrow again. "Only he didn't want her to be pregnant again," the narrator says as Shukumar anxiously awaits Shoba's final declaration."He didn't want to have to pretend to be happy." As she prepares to make her final revelation, Shoba changes the candlelight ritual, insisting that they leave the lights on, moving them at once to a less intimate but more vulnerable position, since neither is able to hide; "1 want you to see my face when I tell you this," she says gently, though she refuses to look him in the eye. Shoba tells Shukumar that she has signed a lease for an apartment on Beacon Hill, he understands immediately that the confessions they've made recently have served as a preamble for a far more serious revelation. Shoba has not made her confessions in an attempt to restore their relationship but to prepare herself for a transition to a more independent life. Lahiri uses suspense to heighten the irony of the scene as the reader anticipates Shukumar's reaction. It sickened Shukumar, knowing that she had spent these past evening preparing for a life without him. He was relieved and yet
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he was sickened. This was what she'd been trying to tell him for the past four evening. This was the point of the game. The irony of their situation is painfully clear to see. The "little ways" in which they have disappointed each other have become for Shukumar acts of betrayal, leading to Shoba's final act of betrayal. But Shoba, in making her latest revelation, has lIDwittingly brought about a reversal in power-the power to wound-which Shoba thinks is hers exclusively. As though the game were continuing, Shukumar counters Shoba's announcement with one of his own that proves devastating in the end. Though the death of their child has been difficult for Shoba to accept, there is also an undercurrent of resentment, as expressed by her mother that the loss would have been somewhat easier to bear had Shukumar been at the hospital for the delivery. Shoba believes that she has experienced her loss alone. Moreover, she seeks consolation in the thought that the baby's gender has remained unknown, therefore preventing her from forming too deep an attachment to her dead child, for, when an ultrasound was taken, Shoba declined the doctor's offer to know the child's sex." In a way she almost took pride in her decision, for it enabled her to seek refuge in a mystery"'. But now Lahiri adds a twist, making the revelation that, although Shoba "assumed it was a mystery for him too," Shukumar knew. Ironically, now it is Shukumar who has power to wound. Thus the stage is set for Shukumar's final, heartbreaking revelation. "There was something he'd sworn he would never tell her, and for six months he has done his best to block it from his mind," says the narrator, yet the present circumstances weaken Shukumar's resolve to the breaking point. Actually Shukumar arrived at the hospital shortly after the baby was born, only to find his wife asleep, and then taken to see their child with the hope: '''holding the baby might help him with the process of grieving.'" That day Shukumar "promised himself that he would never tell Shoba, because he still loved her then, and it was the one thing in her life that she had wanted to be a surprise." Shoba's decision to move out makes her husband realize that their marriage is, indeed, loveless. There is nothing left to bind him to his promise. Shoba, who is " the type to prepare for surprises, good and bad," finds herself unprepared for the biggest surprise of all.
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When Shukumar describes for Shoba how he had held their son, his tiny fingers" curled shut" like hers while she slept he saw his wife's face" contorted with sorrow," for, though she had initiated their separation, she fully comprehend the loss that has engulfed them. Without a word, she turns out the lights and sits down at the table, where Shukumar jOins her. "They wept together," says the narrator, !lfor the things they now knew." Although Shoba has been changed by the loss of her child, she found the strength and determination to restart her life. She goes to her job, and she even works out at a gym. She still has the will to plan ahead and to take the initiative; she even channels her energy in new directions. Instead of stocking the pantry and planning parties, she carefully plans how to extricate herself from her marriage. She initiates a game designed to gradually open a ch,nnel of communication between Shukumar and herself that is wide enough to accommodate the message she has to deliver. Shukumar, on the other hand, is a passive victim of those same circumstances. He stays in bed late and does not leave the house or even brush his teeth regularly. He rarely initiates interaction with Shoba; instead, he reacts to her action. When she leaves her gym shoes and satchel in the kitchen, he moves them out of his way without saying anything to her. When Shoba suggested that they eat candlelight dinner, he searches out candles and lights them. When Shoba starts the game of revealing secrets, it becomes the focus of his days. He spends hours thinking about what she might say to him and what he should say to her that evening. The roles in marriage, those of the active woman and passive man, were established long before the tragedy. Early in the story, reader learn that Shukumar finds Shoba's ability to plan ahead. In a description of their past trips to a farmer's market, Shoba leads him through the crowds and does all the choosing, haggling, and bu ying. Shukumar is seen "trailing behind her with canvas bags." Shu kumar's trip to the conference in Baltimore, which resulted in his being away at the time of the stillbirth, was made at Shoba's insistence. He had not wanted to go, but he did as she told him to. These incidents and others set the stage for Shoba's manipulation of Shukumar during the week of the power outages.
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Readers know that Shoba is leading and Shukumar is following long before it is clear where they are going. Shukumar, however, does not even realize that Shoba is leading him until the game has played out. 'The Temporary Matter' is a poignant tale of absence of communication in conjugal life. Works Cited 1.
Basudeb, Chakrabharti, and Angana Chakrabharti, Context: A Comparative Studies of Jhumpa Lahiri's A Temporary Matter and Shubodh Ghosh's Jatugriha The Journal ofIndian Writing in English, 30.1,2002, 23-29.
2.
Choubey, Asha, Food Metaphor in Jumpa Lahiri's Interpritor of
Maladies, The Literature and Culture of the Indian Subcontinent (South Asia) in the Postcolonial Web, 2001. 3, May 2003. 3. Devis, Racio G., Trancultural Reinventions: Asian American and Asian Canadian Short Story Cycles, Toronto: Tsar Publication, 2001.
4.
Dubey, Asutosh, Immigrant Experience in Jhumpa Lahiri's
Interpreter of Maladies, The Journal of Indian Writing in English, 30.2,2002, Pp.22-26.
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MANJU KApOOR'S DIFHCULT DAUGHTERS:
A
STUDY - Dinesh B. Chaudhary
The last decade saw the sudden emergence of Indian women novelists writing in English and witnessed an abundant growth of novels by women writers. The impact of patriarchy on the Indian society varies from the one in the West and therefore, the Indian women novelists have tried to evolve their own stream of feminism grounded in reality. They have their own concerns, priorities as well as their own ways of dealing with the predicament of their women protagonist. Manju Kapoor is a professor of English at Miranda House in Delhi University. She is married to Gun Nidhi Dulmia and lives in New Delhi. She wrote three novels: (1) Difficult Daughters (1998), (2) A Married Woman (2002) and (3) Home (2006) which received huge international acclaim. Manju Kapoor's first novel, Difficult Daughters received the commonwealth Writers Prize for the best first book of Eurasian region and a number one best seller in India.
Difficut Daughters is set during India's independence struggle and is partially based on the life of Kapoor's own mother. Virmati Manju Kapoor realistically narrates women of three generations, focusing on Virmati, the difficult daughter of the second generation. The novel depicts the story of a woman tom between family duty,
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the desire for education, and illicit love. The major portion concerns with Virmati's love affairs with professor - Harish who is already married. The opening line of the novel gives a jolt to the readers: "The one thing I had wanted was not to be like my mother".l This cryptic statement is spoken by Virmati's daughter, Ida. She could not develop and understanding with her mother during her life time and after Virmati's death. Ida sets out on a journey into her mothers past by piecing together the fragments of memory in search of a woman she could know and understand. The consciousness of the reader shuttles between the present and the past along with Ida who visits different places and meets her mother's relatives and acquaintances to know about her mother. The woman protagonist Virmati born in Amritsar into an austere and high minded Punjabi family belongs to preIndependence society. She is the eldest daughter of Kasturi and Suraj Prakash. The family in which she is born believes in Swami Dayanand Saraswati's ideology and woman education. Her mother Kasturi too is educated and her marriage had been arranged through advertisement in the Samajist's newspapers. Both the families are broadminded and educational. They believe in education for girls and also believe that girls must be married off. This belief still persists in Indian Society if the daughters are not strong willed and career - oriented. In the early tone of the novel with Kasturi and Lajwanti (Virmati's Aunt) talking about marriage of their daughters, Virmati and Shakuntala. Kasturi mentions: It is the duty of every girl to get married, and furtherA woman's shaan is in her home. Now you have studied and worked enough, shaadi. ... After you get married, Vira can follow. (13)
Shakuntala is Virmati's cousin and is an M.Sc in chemistry, working at Lahore. She is vibrant and intelligent and has a life of her own away from the family. She tells Virmati: These people don't really understand Viru, how much satisfaction there can be in leading your own
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life, in being independent. Here we are, fighting for the freedom of the nation, but woman are still supposed to marry, and nothing else. (14-15) Shakuntala's advice to her cousin, Virmati, is to continue her studies: "times are changing and women are moving out of the house, so why not you?" (16) She is neither depe>ndent on males nor does she regard them essential in her life. Virmati is already engaged to a canal engineer, Inderjeet. But when she saw Shakuntala, tasting the wine of freedom, the seeds of aspiration are planted in Virmati. She secretly nurtures the desire> of being independent and leading a life of her own. She falls in love with Harish, a professor who is already married. Virmati's parent decides to marry her to an engineer, Inderjeet, but due to the death in his family marriage is postponed for two ye.1rs. During this period Virmati passes her FA exam and denies for marriage. Professor insists Virmati on being firm. Now Virmati becomes mentally disturbed and goes to TM.lshika and drowns herself. She is saved by the servants of her grand fathe>r. Everybody inquires the reason but finally she declares that she does not li"e the boy and wants to study further. So this marriage is settled with lndumatl, the second daughter of the family. Now Kasturi has to go with Virmati to Lahore for getting her admits in college and principal assures Kasturi that there will be no problem. Shakunta la who has been a source of inspiration for Virmati, visits her regularly. Professor's course of meeting to her has yet not stopped and during this period she becomes pregnant. She becomes restless and with the help of her roommate, Swarnlata, She gets abortion. When Harish comes to know of this he feels that she h.ld dOI1L' the right thing since he still could not decide to marry her. When Virmati returns home she finds that he had moved away without leaving his new address. Trapped by the circumstances and the professor's absence and unwillingness to marry her, She rl'.llizes: "Nothing was hers, not her body, her future, not even .1 pair ui paltry, insignificant gold bungles" (161) and feels trapped for llw life:
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She was his for life, whether he ever married her or not. Her body was marked by him, she could never look elsewhere, never entertain another choice. (163)
Professor Harish is an Oxford returned and highly educated person and the neighbour of Virmati's family. Temperamentally, he is romantic and believes in female education and the equally of sexes. He holds society responsible for women's present pred icament because it keeps them ignorant by not allowing them any sort of enlightenment through education. He writes to Virmati: Who is responsible for this state of affairs? Society, which deems that their Society that decides that Children - babies really - Should be married at the ages two and three as we were. As a result both of us needlessly suffer for no fault of ours. (95) Professor Harish's generosity and encouragement of Virmati for higher education are by no means without selfish motive. The real motive behind his desire to educate her is ha\ ing a good and educated companion and not a wife. Barish's attitude towards her is patronizing and demeaning. I tis interest in her is an extension of sdf love. But Virmati's emotionell dependence on the professor, who constelntly evades the question of marriage, stops her from doing elnything that he disapproves. After completing her B.T., she returns to Amritsar and is offered the principal-ship of a college at Sultanpur. But here too Harish \ isits her and these meetings elre observed by Lalaji, the manager of the college. She is dismissed bv college. At last she meets a close friend of Harish who is already aware of their intimate relationship. So he does not let her go and calls }-Ielrish. He performs all the rituals of marriage. Professor with Virmelti returns home. During her conjugal life Virmati feels that it would have been better if she had not been married with HJrish. After sometimes she gives birth to a daughter Ida. At the beginning of the novel this girl, Ida narrates her mother's life. The Concluding lines of the novel reiterate Ida's rejection of \,irmclti, not as a mother but as a woman:
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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 live me be. Do not haunt me any more. (285) Thus, it is not only about difficult daughters but also about difficult mothers. About mothers who do not understand their daughters, about daughters who want to break out into new paths. It starts very well and is quite gripping at the beginning with a daughter going on a quest to understand her mother, after the mother has died. The glaring and most interesting thing about the book is the unresolved dichotomy about the character of Virmati. On one hand she is very Strong and has strong will power and can resist all kinds of social and family pressure. On the other hand she is very weak, because she just cannot kick the professor out of her life. Manju Kapoor has her own concerns priorities as well as her own ways of dealing with the predicament of her women protagonist. The lives women live and struggle tmder the oppressive mechanism of a closed society are reflected in the writings of Manju Kapoor. Work Cited Kapoor, Manju, Difficult DallgTlters, New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1998, P.l. (Henceafter the textual insertion are referred with page numbers in the text.)
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