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CHAPTER V
MANJU KAPUR
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CHAPTER V
MANJU KAPUR
Manju Kapur, the noted novelist was born in Amritsar and studied MA in English
Literature from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada and MPhil from Delhi
University. She taught at Miranda College, New Delhi for over three decades and
then took a sabbatical inorder to spend more time in writing. Her first novel Difficult
Daughters published in 1998 won the Commonwealth Prize for the best first book in
1999. Her other novels are A Married Woman (2003), Home (2006), The Immigrant
(2008) and Custody (2011). She also edited Shaping the World: Women Writers on
Themselves, a work that documents the literary journey of twenty-four women
writers.
Manju Kapur is a compelling storyteller and a perceptive chronicler of the urban
Indian middle class and the microcosm called the joint family. In an interview with
Hindustan Times she says that writing is “conveying a world view, it aims to
persuade, to convince, to move. Obviously it is easier if you attempt to do all this
with something you know.” Her novels portray the struggles of the Indian women of
these times as they oscillate between tradition and transition, duty and desire, family
and self, suppression and independence. This is the internal conflict which is an
ongoing battle due to her conditioning which is challenged by education and
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experience. The external oppression results from patriarchal forces that prohibit
formal education, job or marriage of one‟s choice. Kapur‟s women characters can be
categorized into three kinds: conventional orthodox women, the emancipated women
and the category to which most of her protagonists like Virmati, Ida, Nisha, Astha
and Nina belong, i.e. the ones who struggle between convention and emancipation.
Kapur shows that choices exist before these women but often they fall back on the
same conventional path tread by their mothers. She does not set out with a conscious
feminist agenda but is deeply influenced by feminism and feels that “it is impossible
to live in the world today as a thinking person and not be one”.
Kapur opines that women‟s fiction is often called domestic or family-centered and
this label is not derogatory but condescending. “Literature by women, about families,
always has larger considerations. With years of studying texts, it becomes almost
second nature to look beneath the surface at social and economic forces, gender
relationships and how they are played out in an area that, in my writing, happens to
be the home.” Within these stories, she touches bigger themes like corruption,
consumerism, dowry, immigration, communalism, religion and superstition etc. She
negotiates different issues emerging out of the socio-political upheaval in the country
by presenting the Independence struggle, Partition, demolition of Babri Masjid and
Rath Yatra. She also deals boldly with taboo issues like female sexuality,
masturbation, infertility, sexual abuse, sexual dysfunction and frustrations. She says
“All issues are grist to the writer‟s mill” and hence there is no issue that she wouldn‟t
touch. More specifically she is concerned with the consequences of these problems
as it affects both men and women in the family.
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A brief summary of the plot of her novels is given below. Difficult Daughters is set
in Amritsar and is the story of three generations during the time of Partition. The
saga of Indian Independence overlaps with Virmati‟s quest for freedom and as the
former was marred by Partition, Virmati struggled for and attained her desires but
lost a part of her self. Being the eldest of ten siblings, she is burdened with family
responsibilities due to the incessant pregnancies of her mother Kasturi. Belonging to
a high-minded Punjabi family, she is conditioned to think that it is the duty of a girl
to get married and is duly engaged to a boy selected by the family. But in the delay
in marriage caused by two deaths in the family, she asserted herself to study at AS
College as the seventh girl in a class of four hundred boys. Prof Harish their
neighbour was the teacher and he noticed her „flower like‟ appearance and forced
himself into her mind, laying at her feet the anguish of being married to Ganga an
illiterate woman. Caught in the hopeless situation of passion for the Professor and
loyalty to her fiancé, she found it “splitting her into two socially unacceptable
pieces” and in the confusion she attempted suicide. After a volley of secret letters
between them, she conclusively decided that she had already shamed her family,
refused marriage and hence she never meant to marry, nor wished to continue any
relations with the Professor but would leave him to his pregnant wife. With the
budding of the New Woman, she sets off to study in Lahore aspiring to be self-
reliant through education. Through her roommate Swarnalata, she becomes aware of
the wider vistas open to women through active participation in Indian freedom
struggle and politics. But as the Professor came knocking at her door as an exigent
and ardent lover, her resistance broke down and so did her new born selfhood. The
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horror of pregnancy and abortion broke her heart and body and once again she left
him to start life anew at Nahan as the Principal of a girls‟ school. But the Professor
who saw a companion in her pursued her and this time she had to pay for it with her
job. With her heart set towards Shantiniketan she moved on but Syed the Professor‟s
friend forced and arranged their marriage. Virmati moved from one patriarchal
threshold to another, as she had to share him and his house with his first wife Ganga.
Her own family disowned her, she miscarried and life was a mess again. The
professor sent her to study MA at Lahore. Gradually she learnt to hold her own,
returning only when Ganga and the others shifted to Kanpur. Her personal tragedy
gets swallowed up in the collective tragedy of partition. Ida the narrator of the story
was born to them and they shifted to Delhi.
A Married Woman is the story of Astha, the only child of struggling middle class
parents and their aim in life was to see her happily settled. She is married off to
Hemant, a rich bureaucrat living in the posh colony of Delhi. In quick succession,
she fulfils her responsibility of producing a daughter and a son for the family. She
had everything in life, but she was frustrated. Hemant had an inherent inability to
respect her as an equal and felt that she should be the stay-at-home wife and mother.
When she took up the job of a school teacher she felt “the pleasure of interacting
with minds instead of needs” but her family always found ways to project her
incompetence. The turning point in her life was the workshop in her school by The
Street Theatre Group led by the intellectual artist Aijaz Khan. She was given the
responsibility of preparing the script for the play on Babri Masjid. The experience of
scholarly research on the topic widened her horizons about communal attitudes in
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India, awakened her sense of social responsibility and brought out her creativity
which had never really found an expression. In childhood, her father shunned her
paintings and Hemant reacted against her poetry but Aijaz had wholeheartedly
appreciated her thoughts and opened out her personality. Few days later the news of
his murder made the cause of communal harmony more significant for her. She
joined the rally for peace, made paintings on the issue for the Manch and conducted
exhibitions. She took the bold step of joining the protest rally in Ayodhya where she
made her first public speech, an appeal for religious unity. But in all this she was
always walking a tightrope, with constant questioning leading to great stress and
frustration. Pipeelika, the widow of Aijaz was a bold, independent woman,
heterosexual by nature. Astha‟s pain, frustration, helplessness and need to have a
voice drove her to Pipeelika and they bonded instantly over their personal sorrows.
Talking and sharing with her was like a balm to Astha, leading eventually to a
powerful physical relationship based on perfect understanding of each other. Both
helped the other to grow but eventually Astha could not consent to Pipe‟s demand
that she leave Hemant and live with her. The relationship ended when Pipe decided
to go abroad for further studies.
Home is the story of a joint middle class family, the Banwarilals, in Karol Bagh in
Delhi. The story opens with the life of two sisters, Sona and Rupa. Sona is married
into the Banwarilal family and the latter to a junior government officer. The novel
focuses on the life of Sona in the joint family, her struggles and her childless state for
ten years and then the birth of her two children Nisha and Raju. Rupa is also
childless but starts her own pickle business with help from her husband and remains
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content in life. To this story, the sub-theme of Sunita the daughter of the family is
added. She had a sad marriage and after her „accidental‟ death in the kitchen, her son
Vicky came to live in the maternal house. Confused and uncared for, he becomes the
black sheep of the family and he sexually abuses his cousin Nisha. The traumatized
girl is sent away to live with her aunt Rupa where she is given a proper education.
The story shifts its focus to Nisha as she pursues BA in English, meets and falls in
love with a low-caste boy Suresh who abandons her. Her life is riddled with
humiliation and disappointment and it expresses itself in the breaking out of her skin,
permanent itching, black patches and bloody scars. Her life takes a turn when she
seeks her father‟s help to start a garment boutique Nisha‟s Creations and succeeds
well. Soon her marriage is fixed and burdened with the responsibility of her home,
husband, twin children and old mother-in-law; she reluctantly hands over her
business to her sister-in-law to eventually tread the path of her mother.
The Immigrant is only partly set in India but for the major part it is in Canada and
revolves around the story of Nina and Ananda. Ananda leaves his home in Delhi
after the tragic death of his parents, to qualify as a Canadian dentist in Halifax, under
the direction of his maternal uncle who had settled there. The story brings out the
painful process of assimilation he goes through in Canada with regard to food, stay,
study and relationships. Though in the next seven years, he becomes Canadian in
thought, it has handicapped him internally. He fails tragically in his physical
encounters with white women expressed in his inability to sustain the act due to
premature ejaculation. His sister‟s insistent pleas to get married and on the other side
Mrs Batra‟s perpetual nagging leads to the marriage of Ananda and Nina. The story
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then shifts to the life of the couple in Halifax. Nina is confused with her new
immigrant status and life as a lonely bride without any family or friends in an
unfamiliar setup. Confounded to this is her discovery of Ananda‟s sexual disorder
and her inability to conceive. As Ananda refuses to talk of it or take help, it
traumatizes both of them and becomes a big struggle. Nina goes in search for
answers in different directions; goes for her health checkup, joins a woman‟s group,
talks to Sue, takes up a job and then goes for a two year course in Library Science.
Unknown to her, he goes for treatment with the help of a sex therapist. When she
comes to know of it she is very hurt. He tries to improve his condition and prove
himself by entering into a relationship with Mandy and others. He improves to a
great extent but by then the gap of non-communication has widened between them to
a great extent. Anton enters her life bringing her sexual liberation. But it is a
temporary affair as both are married and they connected only as bodies. The relation
comes to an end when he forces himself upon her and she is mentally traumatized.
She realised that she had always depended on men and it had given her nothing but
grief. Her relation with Ananda and Anton failed and felt it was „a signal to move
on‟. The novel ends with her decision to find her feet in a new place with a new job.
An indepth analysis of these four texts, reveal the sensibilities of the author reflected
in myriad ways through the characters and their responses and reactions. It is
enumerated as follows:
1. Focus on the urban Indian middle class family
2. Focus on the life of women and their struggles; a gynocentric approach
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3. Portrayal of difficult daughters
4. Significance of marriage in society
5. Theme of female bonding
6. Desire for motherhood in the women characters
7. Openness in discussion of sexuality by the author
8. Importance given to education by the author
9. Discussion of many socio-political issues
Manju Kapur chooses the urban Indian middle class as the sociological base for her
works. She feels she is most familiar with this class and comfortable writing about it.
It is difficult to define a class but it can be identified by its specific features. The
Indian middle class represents the majority of the population. They have been
identified with the joint family structure although this notion has also undergone
change. The family lives together and personal space is limited. Education is
important and preference is given to government jobs with security. Marriage is
considered a union of two families. This class is riddled more with worries about the
ownership of a house, education of children, health and future security. Moreover
class is not just an economic category but is also how people think, feel and believe.
Modesty, high morals, thrift, saving for the future and hardwork are the important
features in the people of this class.
Kapur chronicles the life of three generations of the Banwari Lal family who were
cloth merchants and three generations of Lala Diwan Chand family who were into
jewellery and food grains business, in two of her novels. The patriarch in both cases
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was the head of even the married sons. Banwari Lal emphasized the importance of
collective thinking, “United we stand, divided energy, time and money are
squandered.”(7) He was strictly against partition of the house and business between
Yashpal and Pyare Lal. Lala Diwan Chand had a standing in society and he had
brought up his family by the strict principles of austerity and charity. Chander
Prakash was agitated because he had two children and Suraj Prakash had ten and by
persistant harping he got his father to construct two separate houses. Kapur also
shows the transition in family structure by referring to the changes in living
structure. Astha‟s marital home also had a joint family structure but the in-laws
stayed on the top floor. In the fourth novel, she narrows down to a nuclear family.
Working through the various stories, she shows how difficult the joint family is for
the women due to lack of privacy, sense of competition among the women,
antagonistic in-laws and pressure of domestic work. She shows the change in
thinking when the third generation of the Banwarilal sons diversified to readymade
garments and newer shops. Children of the third generation leave the family business
to choose their own path. And as described in Home, “there was a time when joints
in the joint family became more visible.” (107)
The middle class families are full of worries about the future. Hence there is an
emphasis on thrift and saving. The „unbuilt home‟ always loomed large in the mind
of Astha‟s parents. Ananda bought a car for his parents but they never used it and
always insisted on walking. They worked very hard to come up in life. The
Banwarilals worked hard to set up business in Karol Bagh, after they were forced to
close down one of the largest cloth shops in Lahore after Partition. They never took
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holidays and survived on leftover cloth. Hemant worked hard after leaving his job to
set up TV business in India. So did Ananda with his Dental course and Nina with her
study. Nisha worked hard as a businesswoman to set up Nisha‟s Creations.
Middle class is associated with high values of morality. When Astha‟s dairy full of
experiences of her teenage romance was discovered by her mother she felt exposed
and in her hands, “it looked awful and soaked in sin” (27). Nisha‟s affair in college
was not taken well by the family and they did all they could to separate the couple.
Nina and Ananda both have moral values imbued in them by their parents. So though
they pursue sexual fulfillment, they are guilt ridden. Again for the sake of family
honour, they did not take any action against Vicky for abusing Nisha nor make any
inquiries into Sunita‟s death. Thus the importance of the family as an institution is at
the center in all these four novels and the changes happening within this basic
institution.
All the novels have female protagonists. Ida narrates the story of her mother and
traces the journey back because she never got any well-defined answers to her
questions from her. Now “without the hindrance of her presence, I can sink into the
past and make it mine.” (280) Astha as the protagonist, shares the journey from
childhood to the process of becoming a wife, mother, teacher, activist and painter
and the struggles in holding all these roles together. The first half of Home is about
the struggles of Sona and then the life of her daughter, Nisha. Nina‟s unmarried
status at thirty, and then her marriage, immigration to Canada and her struggles
against loneliness form the story of the fourth novel.
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There are a number of women characters in these novels. As discussed earlier, one of
the categories to which they can be placed is the conventional orthodox type
including Kasturi, Ganga, most of the characters of mothers and mothers-in-law.
Marriage is the destiny of their lives and they wish the same for their daughters.
They do not want them to be highly educated or hold a job. They are unconsciously
the voice of patriarchy. Kasturi says, “A woman without her own home and family is
a woman without moorings.” (111) Ganga is a suffering wife, and though she excels
in cooking and domestic duties, her husband rejected her for being illiterate. Sona‟s
mother-in- law grudged her love marriage saying, “the girl must have done some
black magic ….I myself will disappear to make way for the wretch.” (4) Astha also
had to listen to taunting remarks from her mother-in-law for continuing to work after
the children were born. Virmati‟s mother-in-law treated her badly till she came to
know that she was pregnant. In case of Nisha, her husband gave more importance to
his mother than to her. Kapur sharply paints many of these old women who are
plagued by loss of husband, status, old age and health problems, yet they continue to
live in the centre of the family. The life of Astha‟s and Nina‟s mother is candidly
depicted with bereavement and hopelessness after the death of their husbands. In
their case their loss is much larger than the death itself because life comes to a
standstill. Though Kapur does not dwell into the issue in detail, Jasbir Jain considers
the narrative of loss caused by the death of the husband, an articulation of the new
awareness of self and a study of whether women are affected differently by it than
the male counterparts.
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The other extreme includes single independent feminists like Swarnalata,
Shakuntala, Sue, Zenobia, Rupa, Beth and Gayatri. Virmati‟s cousin Shakuntala was
ahead of her times. She worked and attended conferences and believed that women
must not be confined to the home. In her, Virmati saw a new version of womanhood
and was attracted to her life of education and freedom and it had planted seeds of
aspiration in her. She thought, “work was not something to do when marriage didn‟t
work” (112) Swarnalata her roommate was a fierce activist, involved in woman‟s
reformist group that agitated against rising prices, stood for ration shops, equality
and religious harmony. She was a part of the demonstration that was against the
Hindu code bill because “men don‟t want family wealth to be divided among
women”. (232) Zenobia was independent with her own house and job and nobody to
question her. “Been there, done that was her attitude to matrimony” (8) and she had a
full life with family and friends and occasional sexual encounters. Astha felt that if
she had money and an independent house like her friend Zen, she could be brave in
many ways. Beth and Gayatri were members of the co-counselling group, Nina had
joined in Canada and they prided in their studies and work. Space is an important
metaphor in discussing freedom. All these women have a physical space or house
that they own, or a mental space provided by their job or their women‟s group.
Freedom is worked out in the resistance to imposition of stereotypical traditional
roles. They continue to remain active politically like Swarnalata even after marriage.
However though it is easily said, Kapur does not really show how they have
achieved this and the process they had to go through and how has society reacted to
them.
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Kapur‟s focus is however on women who have to maneuver between tradition and
modernity. Virmati, Ida, Astha, Nisha and Nina are all women from good educated
families who have been conditioned to think of marriage, motherhood and
housekeeping to be the destiny of their lives. But they have a deeper quest for love,
understanding, freedom, self-expression and fulfillment beyond the limits of their
families. Neglect, loneliness, rejection and subordination are recurring features and
within them is a deep awareness of being on trial. The novels show what actually
happens to Indian women in the present context and the paths they choose, either
going back to the path of their mothers or forging new untrodden paths. But there is a
price that must be paid at the end. Virmati marries Prof Harish who had an undying
love for her but she is disowned by her family and has to share him with his first
wife and her kids. Astha gets a job, develops her hobby, gets involved in a social
cause, attains sexual satisfaction, but not without being considered negligent and
irresponsible. Nisha loses her lover and boutique but has her taste of freedom and
accepts her life. Nina realises that Ananda and marriage only stifle her and she has to
go away „to think‟ though she knows that the life ahead is wrought with pain,
difficulties and solitude.
Tradition and modernity are often viewed as being in opposition to each other. But as
Jasbir Jain in her book Writing Women across Cultures opines, tradition is a norm
based on religion or society and modernity represents the questioning or resistance of
the norm. They are both concepts which are permanently in a state of flux.
“Tradition sets the ground for self-definition, and modernity for self-development.”
(2002:97) All these above mentioned women are products of tradition. Tradition here
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represents a cloistered setup with set codes of behavior and action. Childhood for all
these women symbolized a need to please their parents and elders by fulfilling their
traditional roles as daughters. This meant taking care of numerous siblings, engaging
in domestic chores, behaving like a girl of a good family who did not associate with
boys and imbibing the values of the family and looking forward to marriage. It meant
literally crossing the threshold from the parental home to the marital home without
any deviations in mind, body or spirit. The study focuses on the life of these women
in detail.
Virmati was psychologically affected by the lack of expressive love and affection
from her family, especially the unmotherly treatment of her mother. It was this
inherent and unconscious longing for love that made her respond to the advances of
her married Professor. Especially when he “spread his anguish at her feet” (54) of his
child marriage to an illiterate Ganga with whom he could never live „in any
meaningful way‟. Virmati could very well understand the language of need and her
own desire to be the cause of pleasure. The situation became more complex due to
their clandestine meetings and she felt that her destiny was decided by the first touch
of a man on her body. But all this while she was engaged to a boy chosen by the
family and she decided to evade marriage by saying that she wanted to study ahead
and not get married. Her mother considered it a deprivation of reason and „grabbed
her by the hair and banged her head against the wall.‟(59) Her suicide bid was foiled
and she was locked up. Finally she decided that she did not want to continue her
relations with the Professor but would leave him to his pregnant wife and go for
further studies to Lahore.
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The girl who went to Lahore showed the budding of a New Woman who had chosen
self-reliance through education. She was introduced to the world of active politics
and independence by her roommate Swarnalata. But this exposure made her “feel out
of place, an outcaste amongst all these women….these larger spaces were not for
her.”(144) This inability to fit in to the independent category shows what childhood
conditioning had done to her. As the Professor grew exigent, her new found selfhood
weakened, she gave in to her innermost longing to be desired although all her
meetings with him now were a plea for marriage. But the study period came to an
end without any move from his side and on his asking about her future plans she felt
“the despairing recognition that her future plans must not include marriage”.(150)
Virmati‟s life is shaped by the experiences of her life, the choices and decisions she
made. On one hand she was clear that “a life for herself without marriage, which was
strange and not quite right. It meant she would be alone, and she wasn‟t sure she was
capable of it.”(152) In the context of women‟s lives in India, the concepts of freedom
and fulfillment mean two different things. Freedom is a release from chains of
patriarchy or conventional modes of life whereas fulfillment is the need to achieve
the fundamental human requisites of love, space and self-expression. Virmati‟s life is
an example of the quest for fulfillment than freedom; she was looking for love and
again through the institution of marriage. It was this need that made her long self
destructively for the Professor.
The Nahan period, where she was the Principal of a reputed girls school, appears as a
Utopian moment in her life. She had a room of her own, social standing and financial
security but when Professor Harish pursued her seeking her companionship, she
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demanded, “I want to know where I stand before anything else.”(189) Her situation
was ambivalent, a moment of bliss and then a time when the devils of anger,
irritation and cynicism seethed within her. His careless roaming in Nahan costs her
her job, and she wondered, “How many new beginnings had her relationship with the
Professor led her to?” (197) Eventually a friend forced him to marry her, but her
married life was a disaster. She wilted under the hostile look of Ganga and the
antagonism of his mother. This was the most traumatic period of her life when she
was disowned by her family, lost her freedom and had a miscarriage. This is
symbolized in the tight silence she maintained about her past, even with her
daughter. Virmati‟s life becomes one-dimensional, characterized only by her love for
the Professor and complete devotion to him. She had so deeply internalized it that
she has turned this relationship into self-satisfaction. So as a character who has
followed her needs she is modern to her times but her path never completely left the
traditional tone. This is indeed a true picture of Indian women.
Astha in A Married Woman, was prone to paternal indoctrination and dominance.
She is not affected by overt cruelty but benevolent relations. Her father‟s lack of
interest in her drawings, her mother‟s insistence on marriage and lack of faith in her
ability to handle money, Hemant‟s notion of a wife, his lack of enthusiasm regarding
her career and hobby reflects the effacement of her personhood and enslavement to
the idea of dutifulness. The novel begins with the portrayal of an awkward girl with
pulpy feelings and fantasies of romance and lack of any other direction in life other
than the path of marriage decided by her parents. Jasbir Jain quotes Carolyn
Heilbrum in Reinventing Womanhood, “wifehood calls for abandonment of self”.
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(48) Astha‟s mother was satisfied to see her daughter happily married to Hemant
and become the mother of two children and enjoy a life of financial stability and
future security. Astha‟s life is the example of women of the present who have
everything materially and socially but are in a quest for their space. Her job had
made her realise that she had changed “from being a woman who only valued love,
to a woman who valued independence. Besides there was the pleasure of interacting
with minds instead of needs.” (72) Her salary meant she didn‟t have to ask Hemant
for every single rupee she spent. But she had no idea where and how money was and
he didn‟t approve when she asked him of the money given by her mother after the
sale of her parental house. She felt, “what kind of fool she had been to expect
Hemant to understand? She had a good life, but it was good because nothing was
questioned.” (99)
Kapur uses the imagery of the joint family to show how it encroaches on a woman‟s
personal space. Astha‟s job meant she had to take the help of her in-laws to take care
of the children. She was accused of negligence. Her involvement in the Theatre
workshop during the holidays was looked at with displeasure and her creativity or
work was not appreciated. She had scripted a play on the most burning issue of the
time, the demolition of the Babri Masjid and it did not evoke any response from her
family. On the contrary, Hemant‟s absolute indifference and insensitivity and
communal strain angered her. But unlike Virmati, the social cause burned in her. She
went to the funeral procession of Aijaz, the massive protest rally and resurrected her
latent talent of painting to donate to the painting exhibition to support the cause of
unity and secularism. As she did not get enough family -support, the multitasking
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took its toll on her health and she was tired all the time. Hemant asked her to leave
the job but after ten years of working she couldn‟t , “it represented security…….a
place where she could be herself”.(149) Being a part of the Manch was a tightrope;
constantly being aware of the time, the family waiting at home and the need to do
something for society. Each time she was late, there was frosty reception at home
and a multitude of tasks awaiting her. She had to get the children to finish the
homework, put them to sleep and make amends with Hemant and she felt guilty that
“tired women cannot make good wives.” (154)
Astha oscillates between her desire for fulfillment and traditional concept of duty. “A
willing body at night, a willing pair of hands and feet in the day and an obedient
mouth were the prerequisites of Hemant‟s wife.”(231) Through Aijaz, she had
achieved creative fulfillment but it was through Pipeelika that she found emotional
fulfillment. Pipeelika came home to read her pamphlet and see her paintings and she
critiqued it with an understanding eye. For Astha, “there was no aphrodisiac more
powerful than talk, no seduction more effective than curiosity.”(218) They met often,
sharing their lives, talking on phone and her husband accused her, “Women
…..always mind-fucking”.(218) She considered it crude and derogatory. It was Pipee
who initiated the physical encounter and Astha had responded. It was difficult to
explain, she brooded over her sexual nature and that since they were both women,
marriage was not threatened. It gave her a new awareness of mutuality in
relationships and she “realised how many facets in the relationship between her
husband and herself reflected power than love.”(233) Astha and Pipee spent three
weeks together for the Ekta Yatra wherein her she found satisfaction in her devotion
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to Pipee. But this was also the time when holes in the relationship manifested, Pipee
was more demanding that she leave Hemant, prolong her stay and a wall had come
up between them after Astha went to US for the vacation with her family. Finally
there had been the goodbye and Pipee left to study abroad. Astha felt the dislocation
in her life, she lived with Hemant‟s body but the face she saw and the hands she felt
belonged to Pipee. She focused on painting and they had become strong and
effective, enough to emerge from the shadow of the Manch. “as her brush moved
carefully over the canvas, her hand grew sure…….her mind more focused…..she
thought of her name. Faith. Faith in herself. It was all she had.” (299) In two years
she made twenty canvasses and sold more than half and made almost two lakhs.
Astha‟s life like that of Virmati had many beginnings but ultimately she realised that
her larger self was with her family. Unlike Virmati she found satisfaction in the
public life. As a New woman, she learnt to draw her strength from her inner
resources.
Nisha‟s life also swings between tradition and modernity. She too like the other
protagonists was brought up to behave like a modest girl. But her life took an early
negative colour when she was sexually abused by her cousin. Nobody really took an
active step but she was sent away to her aunt‟s house to study. However it remained
as a repressed thing in her subconscious mind. The novel fast forwards to her college
days where the high point was her meeting with Suresh. He had been responsible for
her external metamorphosis as a typical college girl with a short haircut and painted
nails. He appreciated her beauty and engaged in physical relationship with her. Nisha
was resistant and her mind was divided, “one part on college and parents, one part
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following his hypnotic touch.”(191) She had missed classes and her relationship was
found out. They stopped her college and rejected the boy. They bribed him to stay
away. A chapter in her life came to a close but she bore the consequences. Her skin
pricked, developed itching which then turned into bloody sores and black patches.
Rumours about her condition drove away many proposals.
Her father arranged a job for her at a playhouse. But her heart was not in it. It was
when a colleague brought a home-made salwar kameez for sale that her life took a
turn. She started calculating the actual cost and she thought of her knowledge of
textiles and dreamt of herself as a maker and seller. She spoke to her father that she
wanted to do business, “give me a chance to show you what I can do.” (287) Her
father provided her a loan, rented out a basement and she balked in the trust of her
father. She hired workers, a master tailor, purchased sewing machines, went to
wholesalers for thread, made designs and created her boutique called Nisha‟s
Creations. She learnt to price her products, employed more people and did a brisk
business. This selfhood was however short lived. Her marriage was fixed to Arvind,
a widower who was a person who had fixed notions about wifehood. Rather than a
wife, he had wanted a daughter-in-law for his mother. Nisha‟s life was confined to
his house and she had to struggle to gain permission to go to her boutique. After the
birth of her twins, her sister-in-law wanted to take over her set business and she had
to relent. She accepted the conventional path of her life. Nisha represents the women
who have tasted fulfillment but choose to give priority to motherhood not in a
resisting or rebellious mode but of acceptance.
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Nina‟s life as an unmarried woman of thirty was a great source of worry for her
mother. It was rubbed in all the more by many factors especially her body. Nina had
expected to feel young but “her body stepped in to make a difference to her
mind.”(49) As a college teacher at Miranda College, she felt that “education was a
gift and she would not exchange the life of the mind for any humdrum marriage”. (3)
The delay in her marriage was also because the early death of her father had
financially, emotionally and socially led to their spiraling down the social ladder.
Her marriage to Ananda was not a traditionally arranged marriage because she had
made the choice and not forced although the pressure was paramount due to her age
and the widowed status of her mother. She and Ananda had talked, gone out
together, spent some cozy sexual moments together. After months of indecision, she
felt that if she didn‟t say yes, she would regret it all her life and finally to push her
over the fence her mother and friend Zen “held out the tantalizing option of divorce.”
(79)
Her wedding was a simple affair and he had insisted on taking the whole payment on
himself. She was married to a dentist, who seemed caring and provided her the new
status of an immigrant wife in Canada. But he had a sexual problem and as their
unpenetrative nights continued, she wondered, “her husband was giving her the best
of everything. Was she going to be so unreasonable as to demand penetrative
orgasms as well?” (96) Nina had to deal with the newness of the place, the climate,
the western clothes and food. He got her a library membership, cooked for her and
she was “more prepared for the brevity of their sexual encounter.” (121) She had
always masturbated and now she had to once again resort to it. She felt frustrated and
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panic filled her over her infertility and as Ananda was not prepared to consult a
doctor, her first major decision was to go to a doctor. With no child and sexual
satisfaction, her life was heading nowhere. Ananda finally visited a sex therapist but
he had not informed her about it which had hurt her a lot because she felt that
marriage was based on companionship. Her future was unclear to her as on the day
she had wed.
This led her to focus on another field in her life revolving around her job as a
librarian and her two year study of Library Science. She also became a part of a
women‟s group where they encouraged her to work through her problems in life.
Later she joined another group of independent women and talking and sharing
helped her to be more aware of herself. They introduced her to feminist books and
she searched for an answer to who she was, “A woman, an Indian, an immigrant”.
(221) An understanding of these three areas of her life was important in the new
place. Her helplessness is shown in the following words, “I used to be a teacher,
infact I taught for ten years before I came here. And now I do nothing. I have even
been unable to conceive…I don‟t know what I want.” (232) Anton came into her life
bringing sexual liberation. Though her moral sense pricked her, she felt she had
really lived life in those moments with him. With the break in this sexual taboo, she
also broke down her other taboos of non-vegetarian food and western clothes. She
joined a gym and became more conscious about her body. She spent more money on
buying attractive clothes. But as she was berated by her husband, she decided to earn
her own money. She broke ties with Anton when he after her resistance, forced
himself on her. Coupled with this trauma was also the death of her mother in India.
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When she came back she made a vow to be happy. The death of her mother was a
turning point because she felt adult; completely her own responsibility and now the
bonds of marriage did not feel the same. When she found a blonde hair in her
bedroom on her return, she decided that no one could be the anchor of their lives but
their own selves. She decided to take a job elsewhere and she hoped independence
would facilitate her thought process. “She looked down the path on which there
would be no husband and saw the difficulties, the pain, the solitude. Nevertheless
treading it was not unimaginable.”(333) Of all Kapur‟s protagonists, Nina is the one
who completely chooses a different path, leaving behind marriage. Inorder to do this,
the character is placed out of India and children are left out from the plot because
they affect women‟s decision making.
A very important feature in Kapur‟s novels is the mother-daughter relationship
which is wrought with a lot of tension. Her first novel that marks this theme is itself
titled, Difficult Daughters. The other novels also deal with it characteristically. The
main reason for this is that the mothers are mostly conventional in nature but the
daughters choose to lives differently, looking for love, fulfillment and independence.
They try to liberate themselves through education and job. They look to forge new
relationships. They may fail, be exploited or not find the real thing they search for
but the journey is meaningful. At least their choices are their own. The first novel
begins with Ida‟s exclamation that the one thing she did not want was to be like her
mother. She was born during the time of Partition, a time of pain and violence. Her
family of three had shifted to Delhi for her father‟s job. Her mother‟s insistence on
her being a model daughter was always a strain. She always tried to find escape
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routes and asked why it was so important to please her father. She remembered her
mother Virmati as being bad-tempered and nothing was right between them. She
never answered any of her questions about her past. It was only after her death that
Ida went on a journey to her mother‟s past to find out about her.
Ida realised that Virmati‟s relationship with her mother Kasturi was also one of
insensitivity. Her relationship with Prof Harish, ostracized her from her family. They
disowned her after her marriage. Ida came to realise about her mother‟s terrible
abortion through Swarnalata. Ida understood her pain that had made her so tight-
lipped and withdrawn regarding her past. Virmati‟s life was so traumatic that she lost
everything in her path to gain love. Even when she was married to Prof Harish, it
was a disaster and she was rejected by his family and she suffered a miscarriage.
Virmati‟s past had infact destroyed her present. In gaining one relationship with the
Professor, she had invested so much that she could not give meaning to any other
relationship, even to her daughter.
Astha was brought up with large supplements of fear as a girl. She was kept under
surveillance all the time. Her mother did not trust her and she cut off her relationship
with any boy she knew. She kept advising her all her life to live a life of submission
to her family. There was never an understanding between them. Astha was very
pained when she sold off all her father‟s books without informing her and handing
over all the money from the sale of the house to Hemant. When she needed support,
her mother „s advice left her all the more restless. Nina‟s mother too kept harping on
marriage and children. Nina‟s struggles with her inability to conceive were unknown
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to her. She was the anchor that kept her rooted to an unhappy marriage. Her death
was a kind of release for her from expectations. Sona was also equally tough on
Nisha. She never knew about her childhood trauma and her inability to concentrate.
She berated her for laziness and lack of cooking skills. She was so insensitive that
she failed to see the real reason behind Nisha‟s psychosomatic ailments. She was
fully against her business and “Nisha could never forgive her mother for this.”(290)
Thus we see this strain of difficult mother-daughter relationship in all the novels.
The theme of marriage is central to all these novels. Though they deal with
childhood, youth, old age, education, marriage is central. The focus is on the man-
woman relationship i.e, Virmati-Professor Harish, Nisha-Arvind, Nina-Ananda and
Astha-Hemant. Except the first which was a love marriage, all the others are
arranged marriages. This reflects the major reality for Indian society. As Astha
realised, many facets in her relationship with her husband symbolized power than
love whether it be sharing of ideas, sex, decision making, handling of finance, her
own freedom and expression. It is true in all cases. Harish loved Virmati and pursued
her but could never really grasp the pain she went through in being his lover. Ananda
felt that an Indian wife would be understanding about his sexual dysfunction and
never thought about how it would affect her physically and emotionally. It was not
possible for him to accept his weakness and go for medical counseling with her. His
behavior with Nina, drove him away from her. Love was never a word between
Arvind and Nisha and he had married her to please his mother. Of all the male
characters the most difficult husband was Hemant. He was sex obsessed and used
Astha for his pleasure. He considered her job to be useless, her poems to be neurotic,
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her participation in public rallys as rabble rousing and called her and Pipeelika as
mind-fuckers. He travelled abroad four times a year and was angry and irritated
when she was out of home. The money she acquired from the sale of her paintings,
he insensitively used it to buy her flight tickets. Inorder to climb the social ladder, he
made her go from one party to another on New Year‟s Eve even though she was least
interested. Ananda and Hemant also had extra marital relationships. Nina had found
a blonde hair in her bedroom when she returned from India and Astha had found a
condom in his suitcase after one of his trips. It affected the wives and shocked them
about the hypocritical nature of their lives.
Apart from love and arranged marriage, Kapur also shows the extra marital affairs
and premarital affairs. She shows the live-in relationship between Virmati and the
Professor for a long time before marriage. There are really no issues she would not
touch in her stories. Kapur openly discusses the reasons and consequences of deviant
social behavior. In case of Virmati, she shows how her need for love was met
through sex. The Professor‟s undying love is fulfilled in clandestine meetings and
love proves to be the most painful thing for her. Astha at sixteen was „prey to
inchoate longings , desired almost every boy she saw.‟(8) Bunty was her first crush
and with Rohan she had entered into deeper bond. But both of them left her due to
one reason or the other. After her marriage, when Hemant “attacked the who le thing
with great urgency”, she wondered if she had been misled about the magnitude of the
act. She was shyly ashamed at her longing for him. Kapur also shows how Astha
feels drawn towards Aijaz and his words and gestures. Astha spent a lot of time with
Pipee and she always had to lie about where she had been to Hemant and thus “an
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element of secrecy had entered the relationship and gave it an illicit character.”(218)
Kapur touches the theme of lesbian relationship here. When Pipee sucked her
fingers, Astha hardly dared to breathe and initially felt strange making love to a
woman. “And it also felt strange, making love to a friend instead of an adversary.”
(231)
Nisha was five when she was sexually abused by her cousin Vicky. Kapur sharply
paints the picture of the duo on the terrace, brother and sister at play, one instant and
in the next he was touching her private parts. The child was gripped with fear and
she struggled to get her hands off the “dark thing”. The second time was in her room
and she wanted to die of shame. No one understood when she said “I was here only.
Vicky also”. (64) She had bad dreams at night and screamed with fear. She was sent
away to Rupa Masi‟s house and it was she who noticed how she avoided Vicky and
told her father that she should stay with her till some arrangement was made about
Vicky. Nisha‟s relation with Suresh in college began in the bus. He helped her with
notes and took her to a beauty parlour and brought about a transformation in her. He
took her out to movies and restaurants. Once he took her to a friend‟s house and tried
to establish a physical relationship with her. She was terrified and walked away. But
over the months he kept begging and longing that she acquiesced more than she
would have liked. On those evenings she tried to avoid her parents as if her face was
stamped with what she had done. Due to the stress, she developed a skin problem
which lasted many years.
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Kapurs depicts pre-marital relationships of these women protagonists. Boys like
Suresh, Rohan, Bunty, Rahul entered their lives with the promise of love, richness of
experience, physical intimacy and fun. Hemmed in by family traditions and customs,
the girls project various stages of acceptance, though riddled with fear and guilt.
These relationships also show the change in social behavior. Nina even had an extra
marital relation with Anton. But Kapur has also shown how people enter into it and
she does not aim to pass any moral judgment. Kapur also shows the problem of
sexual dysfunction in Ananda. He was born into a Brahmin family with set notions
of morality. When he came to Canada, in his effort to assimilate he had broken down
many taboos. This involved relationships with White women as well. But his first
relation with itself proved to be a failure. It was his sense of morality and the
newness that affected him and he suffered from premature ejaculation. Kapur uses
this as a reason that breaks the marriage, because it was not looked at as a problem
that needed to be solved but a humiliating issue.
Kapur‟s women characters show a strong desire for motherhood and a sense of
fulfillment in it. Ida had never wanted to abort her child and she had to do it on the
insistence of her husband. That death always haunted her and it became the reason
for her divorce from Prabhakar. Sona‟s barrenness was a great source of pain for her.
When she conceived after ten years she was given the greatest care by her family.
Her husband gifted her with a gold necklace. Her mother-in-law also treated her
kindly. Her first child was a daughter but it was when the son was born that she felt it
was the most blessed moment of her life. Years later, Nisha gave birth to twins, a
boy and a girl. It was their birth that helped her to look upon her family anew and fill
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with satisfaction. Astha had always wanted to have babies but her husband had
delayed it. When she finally gave birth she felt fulfilled and it “made her feel that she
had partaken of the archetypal experience marked out for the family‟s race.” (69)
Nina too longed for children. Every time she imagined that „her eggs were fertilized‟
but each time she had her periods her childlessness was sadly reinforced. In Canada
she noted that morning time was „mother and child time‟ and she longed for her own.
She wanted a child to settle down to give her focus in the new country. Two years of
living with Ananda, her tests and his sperm analysis didn‟t lead anywhere and he was
concerned about the medical cost. She felt empty. All these characters in one way or
the other show their longing for motherhood deeply. Jasbir Jain opines about
motherhood as displayed in the women writers, “it is one of the central impositions
which deny woman personhood. And though life is born out of the sexual act,
motherhood itself erases both sexuality and selfhood. It is asexual.”(122) However in
Kapur‟s works, motherhood is a celebration that gives women a sense of fulfillment
although child rearing is presented with all its tedium and worry.
Female bonding is another important area of focus. In Astha‟s case, Kapur says that
she had wished to show how women bond with each other differently than men and
the lesbian angle was initially never intended. Nisha is close to only Rupa Masi. She
is the only one she reveals about having a lover. Virmati shared a close bond with
her youngest sister Paro. She was very young when the tragic incidents happened in
Virmati‟s life and so she was the only one who did not judge her but loved her. Even
later when she talked to Ida about her affair, she put the blame on the Professor. She
said that her sister was a simple girl and the Oxford returned Professor had dazzled
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his way into her life and she didn‟t stand a chance against him. Nina was very close
to her friend Zenobia, and even while she was in Canada, she sent small mental notes
to her. She told her about Anton and after a long time it was a release for her. Sue
was her first Canadian friend whom she shared her problems. Female bonding takes
on a formal dimension in Nina‟s life in Canada. Sue introduced her to the League
where married women got together to meet, compare notes and receive support from
each other. It believed in the positive affirmative feminine relationships. But Beth
and Gayatri from the second group that Nina joined were more assertive and
believed in finding answers to their problems by themselves. They were like a
community united with warmth and acceptance. Their purpose was to explore
themselves, be independent and fight for their space. Astha‟s relationship with
Pipeelika is presented as a lesbian relationship. Jane Freedman is of the opinion that
lesbianism does not always mean sexual relationship but withdrawal from
relationships from men. Even Adrienne Rich says:
If we expand it to embrace many more forms of primary intensity between and
among women, including sharing of a rich inner life, the bonding against male
tyranny, the giving and receiving of practical and political support….we begin to
grasp breadths of female history and psychology which have lain out of reach as a
consequence of limited, mostly clinical definition of lesbianism. (648)
Kapur gives importance to the education of women in all the novels and also their
job as educators is taken seriously. Virmati was very keep in studies and she studied
more than any other girl in her family. Often she had to juggle the book and the
kitchen knife and when she looked at her cousin Shakuntala she felt that she had not
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taken the process of learning as seriously as she should have. Though her mother felt
that it was education that ruined her, it gave her a job and financial stability. But she
did not continue in it. The central male character is the Professor who had a high
standing in society. Virmati‟s brother Kailashnath was his student and he reminisced
“he brought the subject alive. Most of us had never stepped out of Amritsar. The
things he talked about, his expression, his way of speaking, we felt we were in
another world.” (53) When Astha took up the job as a school teacher, she felt her
days were fuller. She started a reading club, writing club and a painting club. With
Aijaz help she scripted a play for the Theatre workshop. Nina was a teacher before
marriage. She did not value it much till she lost it. She “had known the excitement of
breaking into minds” and this she missed in Canada. She read voraciously and
initially they helped her to understand Canada better and then they became a
soporific. Feminist books helped her to understand herself better. Her course in
Library Science taught her the importance of doing as opposed to thinking. Being a
teacher of English Literature herself, Kapur cannot avoid references to books or
allusions to them.
The novels of Manju Kapur deal with some socio-political concerns of the times.
The novel is set during a specific time like Partition in Difficult Daughters and
thereby the author chooses to comment on the issue or take up some aspect and deal
with it specifically. In A Married Woman, the issue of Babri Masjid is weaved into
the story because the protagonist has to write a script of a play on it. The Immigrant
takes up the issue of Emergency during the reign of Indira Gandhi. All these
problems are presented through the perspective of women. And the epicenter of all
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these issues is Delhi and the northern part of India which is the setting of these four
novels. The Acknowledgments in the novels reveal that they are all extensively
researched through libraries, important reference books and people. But as she says
in an interview they are all “imaginative reconstructions”.
The theme of Partition forms the backdrop of Virmati‟s story. There is a sense of
contrast because the story begins on a positive note when food was unadulterated,
there was more value for money, school fees was affordable, Arya Samaj education
was prevalent and people lived at peace. But as time progressed, they became
“legendary items” connected to some remote past and invoking a sense of loss.
Lahore was not the capital of another country but their very own cultural capital with
beautiful colleges and the place where conferences like Anti-Pakistan Conference,
Arya Bhasha Sammelan, Urdu Conference, Women‟s Conference and many others
were conducted. Then the strain of being the colony of a warring nation was seen
and cost of living increased, prices rose, bureaucratic procedures multiplied and “the
dark face of control emerges, the black market”.(234) Every product had to be
stamped and the price fixed and in the process, many shops were sealed and
bargaining became difficult.
The talks in the educated circles were of war, prices, ration shops, Hitler and
Independence. Communal disturbance had started. “The word Pakistan appears more
and more often in the newspapers….the language of crisis is used about food”. (249)
The later part of the novel depicts the unrest that that spread in the whole country.
Many Muslims did not want Pakistan and the Sikhs would resist it until death.
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Killings spread through the whole country, “People die – roasted, quartered,
chopped….legacy of thousands of tales of sorrow.” (263) Pakistani Sikhs turned
against Muslims. In Punjab, no single party rule was possible. In Amritsar, 51% of
the population was Muslims. The narrative of Virmati‟s life overlaps with the
narrative of Partition. All the unspoken things suppressed in the recesses of the mind
burst out in the revelation of individual tragedy and the tragedy of the nation. The
entire country was burning, people came with lathis and swords. People narrated the
horrible sights of trains that came from Pakistan with blood everywhere, dried and
crusted and the train had to be taken straight for washing. Kapur voices the view of
many Indians, “The British left us with a final stab in the neck….We were forced to
accept the Partition”. (268) Many writers have taken the issue of Partition as the
main theme, but here it is presented as a story of terrible collective loss which
swallowed many incidents of personal loss as seen in the life of Virmati.
The Babri Masjid was a squat, three-domed monument that caused centuries of
bloodshed due to ambiguity regarding its actual history. The Muslims and Hindus
claimed the structure to be theirs. It had become an open political battleground. It
evoked fanaticism on both the sides. For some period it was locked up then the
government had ordered it to be open. Astha traces all this history through her
research in the Library inorder to form the script. Astha‟s small son Himanshu was to
represent the temple in the play. It is suggestive of the delicateness and fragility of
the Masjid. The tone of the play was secular in nature. This became Astha‟s point of
view for life. She was angered by Hemant‟s hatred for the Muslims. Aijaz was
murdered when he went to sensitive areas of India with his message of harmony.
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This had really affected Astha, the larger perspective of living life for a cause. And
she had spoken to the crowd in Ayodhya that whatever happened it was a loss to
women and to families. Kapur presents the evil of communalism in both these
novels.
In the fourth novel she chooses the times when “Indira is India, India Indira”. (10)
This period was characterized by absolute control of the government, press was
censored, opposition jailed, demonstrations banned and activists tortured. Indira was
considered the “probing eye” that delved into every house and heart. Kapur
lampoons her useless twenty point programme, the sterilization drive and Garibi
Hatao movement. Many bastis were razed to the ground to make “a Delhi Beautiful”.
(59) Kapur brings into the story a close encounter with the first family of India by
portraying Ramesh, the brother-in-law of Ananda and The Son as classmates. He got
many benefits because of it. And the family was awaiting his posting abroad as a
reward which infact was to keep him as he had been used to raze down the bastis. It
was a give and take relationship solely. Political parties aligned together as a united
front against the Emergency and the PM. “The forces of dictatorship seemed so
firmly entrenched that Nina voted Janata in despair rather than hope.” (102)
Whenever the state of India was discussed in Canada, a sense of despair pervaded
her. People claimed that the name of Nehru would protect Indira and the NRIs
believed that they were lucky to be out the country. After two years when Nina came
back to India, politics was in every conversation, the Congress had lost and the
people were fed up with the power mongering in the Janata. Inflation was on the rise
and the general picture was of depression and hopelessness.
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In A Married Woman, Hemant is against nationalization of banks causing constant
interference of the government. But he used his knowledge of being a bank
employee to procure loan of ten lakhs in his wife‟s name under small scale industry
inorder to start his TV business. He had a grasp of the rules of getting by and to
exploit situations to his benefit. He had started in black and white TV but the
Minister for Information declared that India would go colour before Asiad of 1982.
Hemant left his bank job to travel to South Korea and twenty thousand colour sets.
Other issues which occupy a small area of the novels are the custom of dowry and
providing for the girl child right from her birth, the importance attached to the boy
child, generation gap, immigrant experience, influence of swamis, horoscopes etc
Coming to the technical aspects of the works, the following points are enumerated:
1. Autobiographical strain
2. Plot and structure
3. Dramatic tension in the plot
4. Feminine descriptions and images
5. Indianness in Language
All the four novels have autobiographical strains. Virmati‟s story is actually her
mother‟s tale. She says in an interview, “it became much more important for me to
tell in my first novel. She was not very forthcoming at first, as she regrets being a
source of trauma for her parents. There was also the trauma surrounding the events
of Partition.” Talking about Home she says that it “was first conceived in response to
the home situation of some of my students who came from conservative
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backgrounds”. About the fourth novel she says, “The phenomena of the NRI…..has
become widely known and discussed in India. I experienced being away from India
when I was a student in Canada in my youth, so I wanted to write about this.” This
specific strain reflects a consciousness of self and reflects back to a selection of
incidents that have impacted the writer. The aspects of Kapur‟s life especially her
academic life is a visible continuous strain in the works. Like her many characters
are students or teachers of Miranda College. Teaching is a profession followed by
Virmati, Nisha, Astha and Nina although many of them diversify. As Kapur chose to
take up writing, Astha chooses painting and Nisha chooses to open a boutique.
Another feature is the presence of letters and diary entries of various characters
which presupposes the consciousness of self in a more subjective manner and
emphasizes the autobiographical strain.
All the novels are long but the storytelling mode makes it easy to read. The first
novel has 27 chapters (280 pages), the second has 10 chapters (307 pages), the third
has 26 chapters (336 pages) and the fourth has three parts (334 pages). A study of
these 1300 pages approximately is long. Kapur talks of her painstaking process of
editing her drafts twelve to fourteen times, which means what is retained is of
importance and hence needs complete attention. Moreover there are a number of
characters and the joint family setup provides the perfect setting. Like Astha,
everything is put in miniature on a large canvas, the whole history of the
contemporary political events with small figures and symbols filling the entire
canvas to represent everything connected to the event. The novels start at the
childhood of the central characters and in a fast pace moves to the setup of marriage
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and lingers over it till the end. A number of turns and twists are introduced and
unless a careful reading is done, many things could just be missed.
This particular style of writing creates dramatic tension in the novels of which there
are numerable instances. Some of them are: Virmati was locked up in her home yet
she and the Professor managed to pass more than a dozen letters between them
always at the risk of being caught. When she comes to know that she is pregnant, she
goes home, tries for some way to communicate her situation, even the Professor was
away and she walks up and down the terrace till her mind grew empty. The
description of Nisha and Vicky playing on the terrace and then the detailed
expression of the traumatic turn of events is a tense moment in the novel. The New
Year eve for Astha was quite stressful as she had to participate in a demonstration
and then join her husband for three parties one after another. She chose not to inform
him but got ready and Hemant questioned why she had to go when he was free. It
mattered to him because “going out with him must be highlight of her day, not
something she was squeezing into the rest of her activities.” (173) It was a candle
march followed by submission of memorandum and other things, and Astha kept her
eyes on the watch to reach home by eight-thirty. Then three parties at a stretch and at
two they had made their way home and Hemant had drunk more than he should have
and there was no tone sufficiently neutral in which she could convey it. The
conversations between them are terser. Astha no longer found the need to take
permission but she merely informed.
There is a march today.
201
The husband said nothing.
Astha persisted with her information. „It‟s going to be a tremendously big march…..
Nothing.
„OK?‟
The husband saw a female bull charging from the distance and his body taunted…..
„I always admired your sense of proportion,‟ he said at last
Astha raised her eyebrows and looked inquiring.
„out in the street jostling with the goondas, neglecting your family, all for some fool
masjid you didn‟t even know existed before your great friend Aijaz chose to educate
you.‟
„it has nothing to do with Aijaz,‟ sid Astha choking on the rage she had kept inside
her for the last three days.
„Then his widow.‟
„I suppose I have no mind of my own.‟
„I didn‟t say that.‟
„You meant it.‟
„I refuse to talk to hysterical women,‟ said Hemant. (293-4)
202
This reflects the tense air between them because of Hemant‟s fixed notions of a wife,
his sense of control and suspicion.
Another feature of her writing is the presence of feminine consciousness reflected in
the matter of food and clothes. This is because they are a part of a woman‟s daily
routine and her consciousness. Cooking is an integral part of her life and she spends
a great deal of time over it. Hence the writers have mentioned it.
1. Kasturi was taught that food was one of the ways to please the in-laws. “she could
make puris with syrupy gram inside, luchis big as plates, kulchas, white and
long…..rotis…parathas….morrabas…seasonal pickes of lemon,
mango,carrot……..sherbets of khas, rose and almonds with hot and cold spiced
milk….papad…” (63)
2. Nina‟s wedding trousseau is described, “She took out her saris and stroked the
intricate woven surfaces. Benarasi, Kanjeevaram, Orissa patola, Gujarati Patola,
Bandhani, she had fancied carrying all parts of India to Canada in her clothes. (114-
115)
3. Descriptions of delivery, nursing, baby naming ceremony are seen in all the
novels. Kishori Devi elaborates on the food to be given to pregnant women; sweet
cold things in the first three months, Shashtika rice with curd in the fourth month,
with milk in the fifth, with ghee in the sixth.
4. Nina thinks of her age in association with her body; “ her womb, her ovaries, her
uterus…they were busy marking every passing second of her life.” (1)
203
5. Structure and interior of the house are also a part of the description. The new
house in Tarsikka with the orchards, vegetable patches, kitchen, shops, gardens and
the nearby canal give a complete picture of Virmati‟s house. Through Nina‟s eyes
can be seen the page long description of the New York Public Library complete with
halls, staircases, floors, tables, stacks, catalogues ,reference system and so on.
6. The author takes us briefly along with Astha from Kanyakumari, many villages
and towns, Karnataka, Bangalore, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar
Pradesh and finally back to Delhi. As a part of the Ekta Yatra it had dawned on
Astha that India represented Unity in Diversity.
Finally coming to the linguistic analysis, the novels are lucid and readable. Kapurs‟
English has a local flavor due to extensive use of Hindi and Punjabi. There are
numerous examples of Indianisation of vocabulary, loan translation, use of repetition
and linguistic creativity.
1. Words related various levels of experience are used in Hindi e.g. food
(chutney, dahi bhalla, Idli, Pakora), clothes ( Pyjama, palla, salwar kameez,
dhoti), relations ( Penji, Saheb, Masi ), utensils (Thali, tashtris, kaddhai),
events ( godh bharayie, shaddi ), places (dharamshals, kothi)
2. Slang usages: Baap re, Shor-shar, Har har, He Bhagwan
3. Code-mixing indicating the use of more than one language in the same
utterance: mithai boxes, pull her sari palla, morabbas in huge jars
204
4. Code-switching indicating movement from one language to another: use the
fresh butter in the doli, away from home with others from the basti, drank a
kulhar full of sweet tea
Concludingly, it can be stated that Manju Kapur has explored the complex subject of
the Indian family with much insight. Her women characters challenge the limits of
passive and ordinary existence and try to cull more from life. They are characters
that move to different destinations in search of their self. They vow to „learn not be
afraid‟ like Astha or earn their own money like Nina or acquire their privacy. Her
plots are familiar but crafted with much tension and drama. Her understanding of
human relationship is deep and she uses the joint family to play out these qualities.
She does not pass judgement but shows people and situations with forthrightness.
Her strength lies in the ability to chronicle the ordinary and it gives the feeling of
things that were often thought but never so well expressed.