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by Manju Kapur
Faber and Faber Ltd., 1998 ISBN 0-571-19289-0 |
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The book is a simple book in which the author tells the story in a straight forward way. So one does not have to look for hidden meanings much. Both the photographs, on the front and at the back, add attraction to the book, lending to it an air of reality. It could be Virmati we see on the front of the book, and the back photograph could be that of the Professor. The photographs have this look of belonging to the old trunk in the attic, that one feels that these are the real photos of the author's parents. And the citation attributed to Vikram Chandra on the front page, which says that this book is "An urgent and important story about family and partitions and love". So I started reading the book with lots of interest. The book is mainly about putting the ghosts to rest. The sentences at the very end are, "This book weaves a connection between my mother and me, each word a brick in a mansion I made with my head and my heart. Now live in it, Mama, and leave me be. Do not haunt me any more". 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 life of a punjabi family in Amritsar is interesting, the character of the girl Virmati, the eldest of a batch of 11 kids is well built up. "By the time Virmati was ten, she was as attuned to signs of of her mother's pregnancies as Kasturi herself." So Virmati is the mother to all her sisters and brothers. She cares for them, she bosses over them. She has to protect herself from the comments of an aunt (a mother of only TWO children) who lives next door. Thus at the beginning it is interesting to know how a young girl reacts to such pressures in her life, how she manages them. The family has moved to a new house which has more light, is more airy. The aunt has managed to get one built for her family too. Part of that house is rented out to the family of the Professor, an Oxford returned English Literature man who sways always in the sky talking about beauty, symbols and hidden meanings in literature. He was married as a child to an illiterate woman, whom he had tried to educate, and had miserably failed. This wife has no name till almost the end of the book. She is the woman with a big, round, red bindi on her forehead, with sindhur along the partition of her hair, whose life's mission was to cook for and feed her family (husband, mother-in-law, sister-in-law, daughter) and keep the house clean. So the professor falls in love with his student Virmati who is passionately interested in studies. Falling in love happens because he notices her intensely staring at him, (the real reason for which was that she was short sighted and did not wear glasses.) Though not much is written about the beginning of this love affair, and how Virmati responds to the overtures of the Professor at the beginning, the major portion of the rest of the book is devoted to the affair between the two. The professor continues to profess his love for Virmati, writes love letters to her, and gains complete control over her mind. Virmati refuses to marry the man selected by her family, tries to committ suicide, is saved, and is locked up, and finally packed off to Lahore to study further. Pages 1-2 |