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by Jai Nimbkar Orient Longman limited, 1993, ISBN 0 86311 328 1 |
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I recently read Jai Nimbkar's Temporary Answers That was her first book that I read. Though I did not like the book much, I was interested enough in her writing style to read more. So I was quite happy to borrow the book, Come Rain, from the local library. I had expected that this book would be better than Temporary Answers as there was a gap of nearly twenty years between the publication of the two books. Unfortunately the book, Come Rain, proved to be a big disappointment. It is full of cliches and half baked ideas. The characters are kind of frozen in their roles. No idea is thought out logically, no character is developed to completion. The book starts and ends on the same level. In between there are 267 pages, where nothing much happens to change or develop the idea that is put forward on the first page. Come Rain is the story of Ann, an American woman and her Indian husband, Ravi. The novel starts with Ann lying in bed looking at the "Moonlight touching with milky iridescence the coconut fronds framed by the bedroom window". So you know that Ann is in India! "She began to experience the sweet languor one feels when a very tired body begins to relax. Then a fresh burst of laughter from downstairs assailed her ears and fuelled her anger...Finally - she didn't know how long after she had come up - there were footsteps, voices, coming closer, then the door opened and Ravi came in. He said casually, 'You still awake?' The casualness of his tone was the final insult..." Yes, you have guessed correctly. It is Ann's first day in India. The very first ten lines of the novel establish Ravi as an uncaring and insensitive husband. Nimbkar has taken great pains to keep him like that for the rest of the novel. He wants Ann to become a meek and docile wife, and not be as vivacious and independent minded as she was till then. Ann refuses to trim herself to his views and wants. It is the foreign returned Ravi who hates the squalor, the dirt, the poverty of India. It is naturally Ann who is open to all the new sights and sensations India has to offer to her and consumes it all with an insatiable appetite. It is Ann who does social work, and finds satisfaction in visiting slums to educate the young kids. Ravi, of course, does not want to go near one of those huts. It is Ann who applies for Indian citizenship. It is Ravi who plans to go back to US without even finding out whether his wife has the same wish. It is quite obvious at the very beginning of the novel that this marriage will not work. It does not. Neither does the novel. |