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BOOKS
The Fall Of Paradise
This slender first novel captures the subtle nuances
of class conflict in Bihar
By Meenakshi Mukherjee
The smell of retting
jute in the river Kosi and the odour of decaying feudalism pervade the
early part of the novel. But far from being unpleasant, for the little
girl at the centre of the story, these form a warm and secure world where
she is cherished by everybody, most of all by her grandfather, the landlord,
who pampers her with everything a child could wish for and more. It is
paradise before the fall, and as the girl grows up she is forced to confront
another level of reality.
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BLOOD TIES
By Ameeta Rathore
Penguin India
Price: Rs 250
Pages: 175 |
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Blood Ties is
an unusual first novel, unusual because it catches unerringly, in a quiet
and understated way, the subtle nuances of a class conflict that is not
unfamiliar to us in life, but is rarely touched upon in fiction. It deals
with unresolved tensions between two families in Bihar, connected by marriage,
which stand for different kinds of power. The landed elite whose elegant
way of life and influence on the local people continued even after zamindari
was abolished, thought it prudent to form alliances with the new symbol
of authority. Ameeta Rathore's novel deals with the marriage between the
only daughter of a once-rich and still-proud landlord and an IAS officer
of the same caste, who has come up the hard way from a humble background,
socially insecure and embittered by his "long battle against the
station he had been born into". The wife dies soon after their estrangement
and the daughter becomes the site of his revenge. Because the central
character is eight-year-old Ila (she grows to be 15 during the course
of the story), the clash of values is never schematised-it is built up
through specific situations, through smell and touch, through concrete
objects like books, clothes and hairpins, and through details of food
and music.
 A
range of subsidiary characters gives density to this world-from domestic
servants to imperious great aunts and high court judges, each one vividly
brought to life through acute observation and humour. The one who figures
most prominently is Machali Yadav, the faithful retainer of the landlord,
who nevertheless manages to own more land than his master by the end.
The time is the 1960s and the location, north Bihar and Patna. "The
'backward castes' had yet to strike back, the social upheavals that would
split everybody into 'backwards' and 'forwards' had yet to take place.
He was just plain Machali Yadav-not backward or forward, just canny, hard-working,
risk-taking Machali Yadav who had bought land on both sides of the shrunken
Kosi."
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EXTRACT
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Machali
Yadav was one of Ila's friends. Her childhood was filled with stories
he told her while she sat next to him on his riverside land, the
smoke from his beedi wafting towards her. He was always battling
tigers and wild elephants in the Terai in these stories, frightening
and delighting Ila at the same time. He had caught scores of tigers
by their tails, had grappled with them and come out unscathed. Years
later, when the warden in her hostel in Delhi used to shout at the
servants for bringing the smell of bidi smoke into the college dining
hall, Ila would ache to return to Brahmnagar, the reviled beedi
smoke bringing back the safety and happiness of those years.
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With casual confidence Rathore not only uses
Maithili words whenever necessary, without italics or explanation, but
makes startling use of the Madhubani ritual of painting the wall of the
bridal bedroom with fish and elephants-to hint at the rupture between
Ila's parents. Rathore manages to pack a lot in this slender novel, creating
an entire intricate world which holds the reader's attention from the
beginning, and in fact leaves the reader slightly dissatisfied at the
end because expectations had been roused for more. I only wish the town
by the river Kosi had been given some name other name than Brahmnagar-a
name which comes uncomfortably close to Brahmapur of A Suitable Boy, a
place not too far from the locale of the novel in time and space.
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