It’s a nice little
give and take between different spheres of storytelling which appeals to my
Mass Communications graduate side, since it allows both kinds of art lovers,
the viewers and the readers, to enjoy the same art depending upon their tastes.
And even though movie adaptations are all the rage these days, there’s
something particularly pleasing to me about the idea of two women, the director
and the author, choosing to tackle controversial, bold topics while supporting each
other in their artistic endeavours.
And controversial this
book must have been, given that it is talking about the treatment of widows in
pre-partition India. While Gandhi and politics forms part of the background, it
is truly the story of an eight-year-old child bride named Chuyia (Why, though?
Why name your child a literal mouse?! Sometimes parental decisions make
absolutely zero sense). Chuyia is married off when she’s SIX YEARS OLD, in a
super wtf moment, even more horrifying because within the setting of the story her
parents, and especially her father, seem to think it a great decision to be marrying
off their very tiny daughter.
“A girl is destined to leave her parents’ home
early or she will bring disgrace to it. She is safe and happy only in her
husband’s care.”
Early marriages have
always been a plague of South Asian communities, and it’s only the law these
days which prevents a significant number of families from marrying off their very
young daughters. Even now, a lot of people marry their girls with fake birth
certificates, or with the argument that as long as her guardians give approval,
it’s alright (and I say this with experience, having seen our maid’s daughter
married at 13, with two kids at 16). Overall, it’s a convoluted mess of
interpreted-as-convenient religious teachings (ironically enough, both Hindus
and Muslims, who seem to disagree on a very basic level about the number of
gods, seem very eager to agree on the concept of early marriages) and a patriarchal culture
that really, really likes to view women solely as child-producing and house-cleaning machines. In fact, I’m pretty sure one could easily write a story
about a Muslim girl caught in the same situation, because Islamic teachings can
and have been manipulated for the same sick purposes since years.
“In the Brahmanical tradition,” said Somnath,
“a woman is recognized as a person only when she is one with her husband. Only
then does she become a sumangali, an auspicious woman, and a saubhagyavati, a
fortunate woman.”
But the child marriage
isn’t even the worst part of the whole tale. Even before Chuyia has started
menstruating and is thus still living with her parents instead of her forty-four-year-old
husband, he passes away. Thus, at eight years old, Chuyia is declared a widow,
and sent to live in an ashram. Her head is shaved, she’s given a single piece
of unstitched cloth to wear, and unceremoniously shoved into a place filled
with women of all shapes and sizes, all bound together by one single fact: a
dead husband.
I’m not really going
to spend a lot of time going over how sickening all of that is. It’s disturbing
on so many levels, and even more so because treating widows like discarded
material is a still a common practice today. But the book doesn’t really spend too much
time focusing on Chuyia’s bad luck. It instead brings our attention to the characters in the
Ashram: the iron-fisted Madhumati, the sycophantic Kunti, the patient and wise Shakuntala,
and the beautiful Kalyani, whose lack of baldness is explained by her furtively
being bartered as a prostitute. For a book with such a heavy topic, it would
have been easy to be didactic, but it’s fascinating how quickly the plot keeps
moving forward, ensuring we are propelled along as a young Gandhi-lover falls
for Kalyani, aided by Chuyia’s role in the love story.
As a protagonist,
Chuyia is an interesting pair of eyes to view the story from, because she is
inherently naïve, and unable to view the misogynistic, unfair world that she
resides in from the perspective of an adult. Thankfully, the point of view does
shift to other people, who can tell a different version of the story, and who
provide greater insight into the lives and desires of those who live in or are
connected to the ashram.
“You
must take care of yourself,” Madhumati cooed, and Kalyani noticed she was
stroking her thigh. “You are the jewel of this house,” the woman said, gazing
at her fondly. “If you are happy, our clients are happy. And when they’re
happy, I am happy!”
Kalyani couldn’t take it any more. “This is an
ashram, didi, not a brothel,” she said quietly.
There is also bound to
be some politics in any book based in the 1940’s in the subcontinent. Ignoring
the politics of that decade is almost impossible, given how tumultuous it was
and how huge an impact it had on the futures of two separate countries. But I
love books like these, which bring the political down to a very personal level.
I had expected that the politics would mostly stay in the background, but the
ending really does fold the story into the upheaval of the subcontinent, with a
climax that is heart-breaking but that I really should have seen coming, given the
tone of the whole narrative, and how brutal the lives of the women within the
tale truly are.
“Outside of marriage the wife has no recognized
existence in our tradition. A woman’s role in life is to get married and have
sons. That’s why she is created: to have sons! That is all!”
Honestly, at the end
of the day it’s hard to say whether the book measures up to the movie, mainly
because I haven’t seen it. It’s entirely possible that the book is a sub-par
effort at describing what the movie tries to express. But on its own, the book
is a great read, albeit horrifying on multiple levels. Still, I’m a proponent of
reading things that make you uncomfortable, if only to get over your own
privilege, and there can be no greater privilege than to be born a woman
protected by time and space from the dictates of a society which could
potentially decide that an eight-year-old deserved to be cast aside for being a
widow. Things aren’t great, but they’re getting better in some places, and at
the end that’s all we can hope for.