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by Shashi Deshpande
First published in 1988 by Virago Press Ltd., Published by Penguin Books, 1989 |
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This Sahitya Academy award winning novel tells a haunting tale of how Jaya, who is disillusioned with her marriage and her life, rediscovers herself. Who is Jaya? Rather, who was Jaya? She is Mohan's wife. She is Rahul's and Rati's mother. She was a writer who had given up serious writing, and had taken up writing a weekly column on Seeta, a plump, good humoured, pea brained but shrewd and devious woman. Deshpande's Jaya was a woman who did not ask questions, because she had learnt early in her life that when women ask questions - particularly questions like, "Why, why this injustice?" they would simply hang heavily around in the air, refusing to go away, causing eyebrows around her to raise at her audacity in asking such questions. Jaya was related to mad Kusum who had killed herself by jumping into a well, and had died not by drowning but of broken neck as there was no water in the well. Jaya was sure of her sanity as long as Kusum had lived, because if Kusum was mad, then Jaya must have been "normal". After Kusum's suicide, Jaya does not know any more who she is. Is she just Mohan's wife who had fragmented herself, who had cut off the bits that had refused to be Mohan's wife? Is she like the sparrow in the bed time story of the wise sparrow and the foolish crow, which she had heard as a kid? That story goes like this: There was a foolish crow who built his house of dung, and a wise sparrow who built hers of wax....And when it rained, the house of wax stood firm, while the crow's house was washed away. And the poor crow, shivering and sodden, went to the sparrow's house and knocked on the door, calling, "Let me in, sister, let me in." And the sparrow called back, "Wait a minute, my baby has just woken up." After a while, the crow knocked again, pleading, "Let me in, sister, let me in." And the sparrow said, "Wait a minute, I'm feeding the baby." And so the story goes on, the foolish credulous crow standing out there in the rain, begging to be let in, while Sister Sparrow spins out her excuses...till finally she say, "Come in, you're all wet aren't you, poor fellow?" And she points to the pan on which she has just made the chapatties. "Warm yourself there," she says. And the silly crow hops on to it and is burnt to death. Deshpande uses this story to paint vividly how the life of a woman like Jaya is. She says that their life's basis can be summarised as, "Stay at home, look after your babies, keep out of the rest of the world, and you're safe." For all outside appearances hers was a happy family, her husband was in a top position, they had two children - one boy and one girl - and she was yet another wife and mother whose life centred around her family and her home - nothing more. |