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by Anjana Appachana Random House, New York, N.Y., 1998 Another View |
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Anjana Appachana’s "Listening Now" is the story of Padma, who has lost Karan, the love of her life. The novel deals with how Padma copes with her situation and makes a life for herself and her daughter. Curses play a major role in this novel, and here I would like to look at the power of curses as Appachana uses them in the book. The curses I want to consider are uttered by Padma's sister Shanta. The curses are directed at Karan's sisters and shatters their and their mother's psyche. This happens when Shanta and Padma's mother visit Karan's house with an offer of marriage, to realise that he has already been married off. Referring to Shanta's curses, I don’t think the author was so much asking us to believe in the power of black magic and black tongues, as she was showing us the force of the anger, frustration, and fear that Indian women like these found themselves holding inside. She makes us taste that venomous rage – that poison -- which gets passed from one generation to the next, and is not appeased even by the morbid satisfaction of cursing an enemy. I did not feel demanded by the book to believe in curses so much as to believe in the ghastly power of anger and fear. She paints the lives of women for whom shameless manipulation and the dealing of curses are the only heavy weapons they can resort to within the confines of their society. While we might think of curses as being from the domain of the village mentality in India, moving to an Indian city or town doesn’t automatically erase the influence of that mentality. And I like the way the book raises the question of what the real curse is: were the characters attacked by the power of that one vengeful incantation, or by the horrible force with which they try to manipulate one another’s lives? Was it destiny or their mentality? shanta, the character with the "black tongue" doesn’t just have a bizarre power of prophecy. She is a chained lioness pacing in her tiny cage, seething all her life with anger that she lashes/curses people with. She is acutely aware of being caught in the huge collective curse that so many Indian women of her time lived amidst, and whose familiar characteristics are voiced by the women in this book: -- The demand to sacrifice education, self-esteem, personal interests, dreams – everything – for one’s parents, husband, in-laws, and children; -- The awkwardness, humiliation and disappointment of being assigned to an arranged marriage, with scarcely any preparation; -- Watching brothers receive preference in everything simply because they are boys, "sons"; -- Cooking and cleaning all day long amidst the relentless nagging of a mother-in-law; -- The horror of seeing their own metamorphosis from bright and beautiful young women into replicas of their mothers and mothers-in-law; -- Listening to their mothers profess that they had done all this happily, and sensing in the end that there was not a breath of truth in their words; -- Realizing that generation after generation of women have lived like this, not to fulfill the glorious ideal of a pati-vrata, but out of fear of being condemned by family/society if they didn’t. In a strange way, the mother’s curse reminds me of the stories of the rishis. If they were provoked to anger, they could transmute the immense power they had collected internally from their tapasya, and hurl it out at someone as a curse. (It’s always more uplifting when they use that power to give blessings. But that’s another subject.) In an oddly parallel way, the women in this book had performed their own reluctant "austerities" and it is this force -- mixed with their boiling life-long anger -- which turns into curses of various forms. The central character—Padma - has what the other women lack: education, a career, the experience of romance, and no in-laws to snarl at her. Yet her unspeakable grief doesn’t allow these things to mature in her, and she ends up hopelessly seduced by the memory of the idyllic days when she was in love. Just as her sister locks herself in the bathroom to read filmy novels, she buries herself in her bedroom to "re-read" the memories of her own teenage romance. And in this way, she ends up cursing herself, in spite of the exquisite friendships that sustain her life. I found the book a very engaging exploration of the relationship that three generations have with the collective curse they live in. The oldest generation who won’t seek ways out of the curse, the middle generation who naively pioneer into the realm of education and romance in their quest for some freedom, and the children who seem to have the courage and the opportunity to actually explore freedom. Another important thing to note here is that the author gives us a less stereotyped impression of Indian men. Rather than being merely spineless, she lets them reveal themselves as being just as trapped and misunderstood as the women are. I really liked the way the author used the style of having several characters tell the same story from their unique perspectives. Admittedly, there is a certain melodramatic quality to the story. But that’s how life can be when you write it down. And while this story is full of sadness, and has lots of aggravating characters with whom I argued as I read the book, it isn’t depressing. There is plenty of humor and innocence amongst the scenes. And for me that sets it apart from books like "God of Small Things" which is lusciously written, but so depressing. The first chapter "Listening Now" is a particularly enchanting piece of writing. I was very moved by this book. |