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by Anjana Appachana Random House, New York, N.Y., 1998 |
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As I had very much liked Appachana's short story collection, I started reading Appachana's first novel, "Listening Now" quite eagerly. Also liked the book at the beginning; liked the structure of the book. Unfortunately though the first three chapters are interesting, and then the book starts to lose its appeal. Though Appachana tries to present the same incidence from the view of point of different people, which is a nice idea indeed, she fails in her attempt as she does not succeed in developing these people into interesting characters. One of the later chapter which I liked was the one on Rukmini as basically I like to read about what old people think, what do the mothers of this world feel at the lives their children have chosen. This is yet another book which is not very flattering to the Indian men. Karan is another of those umpteen spineless men written about by Indian women writers. (Should I leave out women here?) He marries to please his mother, and then spends his life apparently thinking of Padma whom he jilted. There is hardly any other male character in the book worth talking about. Having said that, the book is neither very positive about the Indian woman. The girl, Mallika, expresses the state of affairs quite clearly when she visits her father in the hospital: "...after you mary her, you'll want to take her away from our house and our friends and from her job - to your house and ther you'll make her look after your old mother and look after your sisters and their husbands when they come, and spend all her time in the kitchen...." Time and again we read in the books about women like Anu who spent years learning music or dance before getting married and can't use their talent once they are married or like Shanta who get gold medal in their master's degree to end up cleaning and cooking. I could believe that it is how life was 50 years ago. But now, in 1998?! If it still so, who is responsible? The book turns quite filmy at the end. Even though the end is unlike what one normally expects from a run of the mill hindi movie, I am sure that Listening now would make a passable Hindi movie. Not having seen a hindi movie for almost twenty years, (and not being familiar with today's heroes and heroines) I can only imagine the ever sufferring Meena Kumari in the title role, with Dharmendra as the jilting lover. A couple of lilting melodies would have come out of such a movie to entertain the audience when the hero and heroine run around trees in the garderns of Delhi or try to catch each other in the gardens of the red fort or around the iron pillar. Perhaps if I had seen such a movie at that time, I too would have sighed at the injustice of the whole thing, appreciated the guts of Mallika and Padma who reject Karan at the end, and hummed the tune which Meena Kumari would have sung looking at the moon. But if I would see such a movie now, I would walk out of the theater. The concept of curse is something else I had problems with in the book. For curses to have an effect the one who is cursed is as much responsible as the one who curses. It is purely psychological. If I am all the time afraid that something will happen, it may well happen. As the writer Shashi Deshpande says, we make our fate. If I do not know that somebody has cursed me, however badly and know ABSOLUTELY nothing about it, it would have no effect on me or my life. That is why the importance given to the curses of Shanta and Rukmini in the book was irritating to me. Karan had no idea of their curses. He himself made his life miserable. Nobody else was responsible for that. As far as Sita's children dying at birth, such deaths happen unfortunately quite often, whether the mother has been cursed or not. Such ideas are difficult to buy. As for as Shanta having a black-tongue, oh, I used to listen to such talk way back. We even used to believe that if one has black spots at the tip of one's tongues whatever that one says will come true. Shanta of Listening now does not have a black-tongue. She is just a frustrated woman. To describe the book in one phrase: Much ado about nothing. After spending time reading through the book, I ask myself what did it bring me. The answer is, very little. Perhaps Appachana should write more short stories for a while, before attempting another novel. She is after all quite good at short stories. |