Note: I write a monthly column called Read & Reflect for Indian Weekender these days. I will be posting the pieces here after they are published in New Zealand.
Read & Reflect Column #1
Another Man’s Wife by Manjul Bajaj
Having read Manjul Bajaj’s first book Come, Before Evening Falls with deep appreciation only a year ago,
I approached her second offering Another
Man’s Wife with high expectations. The latter, a collection of short
stories, did not disappoint. Her strengths remain the same: strong characterisation,
detailed depiction of period detail and cultural context, and finely nuanced
storytelling.
The first story, ‘Ripe Mangoes’, is a stellar example of all
this. A young Kathak dancer, married for convenience to her father’s creditor,
yet tries to hold on to all that is dear to her. She leaves behind her family
orchards, her lover and her old life in Murshidabad and moves to “a grey
matchbox of a home” in Calcutta where she looks after her three growing
children. A home where she installs a tutor for her sons, the man she has loved
most of her life. A life which is now threatened by her adolescent daughter who
is unable to bear the weight of her mother’s adultery.
The motif of blurring lines is central to ‘Crossed Borders’
where old crimes follow an immigrant gardener around all his life. As an old
man he think he has finally achieved the anonymity needed for a peaceful
existence but a yellowed newspaper clipping lands him in the hands of his
employer, a vengeful ex-wife looking for somebody to murder her husband’s new
love.
‘The Birthmark’
is a more fanciful, less satisfying tale. Discussing the female infanticide
rampant in the Doab areas, it pits a mother-in-law prepared to keep her
bloodline ‘pure’ against the Bihari tribal worker her younger son married.
Pregnant with a girl, the daughter-in-law refuses an abortion and her
mother-in-law finds herself resorting to scheming against this “strange dark
witch” who is teaching her son to accept a girlchild.
Cory Fernandez, in her story ‘Me and Sammy Fernandez’,
offers a setting which is almost filmy in its extravagance: an aspiring music
journalist falls in love with the son of a celebrated Goan singer. Rejecting
the demands of her own Parsi background she enters into a relationship that
turns abusive. Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) is described in disturbing
detail as Cory struggles to reconcile her conscience, work and family with her
rapidly souring marriage. The
final straw comes when she discovers the truth behind the death of her husband’s
singer mother Amethyst, the idol of Cory’s youth.
The young village boy who dreamt of ‘Marrying Nusrat’, of
giving the young NGO worker the stability and love she did not find in her
marriage finds his path rockier than planned. Nusrat came from “some do-gooder
agency” in Lucknow to organise the chikan workers of the village into a
co-operative. In the process she opened the eyes of many of the villagers to the
world outside the village and herself received unconditional love and support
from them in her time of need. This story provides an eye-opening account of
the lives and hopes of the men and women who provide the exquisitely
hand-embroidered that are sold in ‘Indian’ shops everywhere.
One of my favourite stories in the book is ‘Underneath a
Moonlit Sky’, about two couples who meet while honeymooning in Kashmir. Against
the backdrop of the violence that destroyed Kashmiri tourism in the 1990s the
Kashmiri husband and wife struggle to keep their love and marriage alive; in
Madras the ex-honeymooners have their own troubles with childlessness and demanding
relatives. Each year Rohini sends a little photo-postcard to Kashmir,
unconsciously creating mementoes of happier times as well as of guilt and
despair.
The eponymous ‘Another Man’s Wife’ is possibly the highlight
of the collection. Kuheli and Devji grow up together in an adivasi village in
Gujarat. They plan their lives together, forseeing a future of children,
farming, togetherness. The building of a dam disrupts their lives, flooding
their villages and making them penniless refugees overnight. Their struggle for
survival is further complicated by the government official who wishes to make
Kuheli his mistress. The resulting strain on their marriage is almost more than
the bonds can bear.
Manjul Bajaj’s poetry and blog posts can be found online at
http://manjulbajaj.blogspot.in/
and
http://www.youtube.com/user/ManjulBajaj
