Satendra, Mukesh, Manoj
Manju Kapur's Difficult Daughters: A Saga of Woman's Struggle
nārī tū ha aisā ūpwan, jisne mahakāyā sabkā jīvan;
nārī ha iśwar kā vardān, isko mile uchit sammān.
It is an accepted fact that the women writers have added a new dimension to Indian-English fiction with their exquisite perception of men and matters. Their fiction constitutes a major segment of the contemporary writing in English. It provides insights, a wealth of understanding, a reservoir of meanings and a basis of discussion. Through women writers’ eyes we can see a different world, with their assistance we can seek to realize the potential of human achievement. They have dealt with the place and position of women in Indian society and their problems and plights from time to time. While doing so, they have analyzed the socio-cultural modes and values that have given Indian women their role and image along with their efforts to achieve a harmonious relationship with their surroundings. In due course, they aimed at portraying realistically Indian women's sense of frustration and their alienation. Time and again we see the Indian women as displaced, alienated figures, ground in the mill of convention, domestic injustice and institutionalized tyranny, the victims of their time, of their society, of their own romantic illusions. When the woman awakens, she awakens to the absurdity of life which follows the disintegration of familiar reality. It is aptly quoted here:
viduśī nārī to murdo ko bhi jīlā sakati ha,
ūngli se himālaya ko bhi hilā sakati ha;
ye deś ha waha deś jahan nārī mā bankar,
bhagwān ko godī me khilā sakatī ha.
Amritsar born Manju Kapur who also authored A Married Woman (2002), Home (2006), writer and Professor of English at Miranda House in Delhi University, insists that the world she creates in her novels is not because of any personal analysis of the world in front of her. All her novels deal with the state of middle class women in Indian society. While Difficult Daughters (1998) depicts against the backdrop of India's partition. Her first novelis the result of five years of researchand writing. She, a celebrated author of the prize-winning novel, has written as a seductive story of love, set at a time of political and religious upheaval. It stems the intellectual experience of her academic life. ‘I can analyze only because I am a teacher', revealed in one of the interviews (Interview. The Hindustan Time). Having started her writing career late her 40s- middle-age angst had something to do with it- she realizes she cannot afford to take forever on one book. She is happy as she is passing her moment between college, home and writing. 'Writers are not stars. They are not public figures', she believes. In one of the interviews she unlocks: ‘I get both inspired and depressed. I wish I could write like that. Writing is a muscle that needs to be exercised all the time.’ (Interview. The Hindustan Time)
The present paper entitled Manju Kapur's Difficult Daughters: A Saga of Woman's Struggle is the creative and exclusive effort to look at the scene in a heightened moment of time from the window to scan the past history of women, assess the present and imagine the probable future image and its impact in the society. In the novel woven from the fabric of the separation era, Kapur narrates the story of Virmati, the trials and tribulations of that age, the bloody battle waged between her loyalties to her family and her love. The Indian flavour is brought across beautifully and subtly so as not to mar the language. It reaches out to the readers across the barriers of time and place merging a bygone era into contemporary life. Virmati's tale is one of a vicious circle of longing, hate, hesitation, hopes and innocent aspirations. In love with a Professor Harish Chandra who is already married with a wife having two kids, hers is a saga of revolt against deep rooted family tradition, self doubt, resolution and acceptance. The relationship parallels India’s struggle for freedom, and eventually with the Independence along with the partition of country, Virmati becomes the Professor’s second wife resulting in her ostracism from family. The story is partially based on the love story of Kapur’s own mother, Virmati. Manju Kapur was so moved by the love story of her parents set in partition times that she has tried to reintroduce it bit by bit, before it evaporates from her memory. It is not only about difficult daughters but also about difficult mothers, about mothers who do not understand their daughters, about daughters who want to break out into new paths. It starts very well and is quite gripping at the beginning with a daughter going on a quest to understand her mother, after the mother has died.
The novel published in 1988 just after Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things and recipient of the Commonwealth Writers' prize for the best first book, Eurasia region, depicts women of the three generations, focusing on Virmati, the daughter of the second generation. Belonging to a deeply traditional Punjabi family, Virmati grows up with the conditioning that the duty of every girl 'is to get married' (13) and a woman's shaan is in performing her duties in her home and not in doing a job. She is already engaged to Inderjeet, a canal engineer. However, she secretly nurtures the desire of being independent and leading a life of her own. Defying the patriarchal notions that enforce a woman towards domesticity, she asserts her individuality and joins A.S.College 'the bastion of male learning'. It is here that she is caught in the whirlpool of misplaced passion towards the Oxford-returned and already married Professor Harish Chandra. For the sake of their love she avoids marriage, attempts suicide and bears confinement but soon she realizes the hopelessness of her illicit love when she learns about the pregnancy of the Professor's wife. At this juncture, in Virmati we see the budding of ‘a new woman’ who is bold, outspoken, determined and action-oriented, very coolly and confidently she manages to leave home to study in Lahore and spread her wings in the new horizon.
But does Virmati blossom into ‘a new woman' in the real sense? Seemingly no. In spite of her illicit revolt against the family and firm stand against the Professor she succumbs to his implorations and gets involved in a useless love, doubtful marriage and unwed pregnancy. She is being used and the Professor enjoys the best of the two worlds. Even when he marries her reluctantly, she wilts under the implacable and hostile gaze of Ganga, her husband's first wife, and loses all sense of identity. She is given ‘pariah’s status and is forced to live in a cramped space. Professor's attitude towards her is patronizing and demeaning and all she does is 'adjust, compromise and adapt.'
Virmati's tale is seen through the eyes of her daughter Ida, going on a quest to understand her mother (Virmati) after her funeral who used to be "...a silent, brisk, and bad-tempered'(2) mother. She decides that she"...must go to our birthplace, hers and mine, overrun with aunts and uncles still living in the ancestral home (2). The opening statement of the novel made by Ida, 'the one thing I had wanted not to be like my mother’(1) gives a jolt to the reader. It is possible to trace the feminism implicit in Ida's edginess towards her mother's weakness. Virmati's unwed pregnancy, its heartless termination, disregard for filial duties and the way she usurps Ganga's rights is unpalatable to Ida. Though Ida does not have the heart to reject Virmati as her mother but head rejects her as a woman after having an insight into her mother's past. Apparently educated and childless Ida leads to free life than her mother's external terms and succeeds in breaking out of an unsuccessful marriage and staying single. Yet inside her she feels some of the same anxieties as had plagued her mother. ‘I feel my existence as a single woman reverberate desolately’, says Ida who has achieved more than her mother and much more than her grandmother but still she feels alienated from everything around her.
The story moves like pendulum to and fro sometime in Lahore and at the other times in Amritsar and in between L.G. Road. Suraj Praksh and Kasturi Devi had eleven children ‘Breeding like cats and dogs. Harvest time again’ (12). The eldest daughter was Virmati, the protagonist around whom the whole story is webbed and framed. She has been engaged early with one engineer but Virmati did not want to marry rather she lingered on the marriage by dint of death in the family of her future husband as well as in her own family. ‘Hai re! What is the need to do a job? A woman’s shaan is in her home. Now you have studied and worked enough.’(13). ‘Study means developing the mind for the benefit of the family’(14), revealed Kasturi.It is solely by the word of Shakuntala pehnji that she got boost up ‘times are changing and women are moving out of the home, so why not you’? Why not, indeed, thought Virmati, looking, at her almost breathless with admiration and love” (16).
Shakuntala’s visit to Dalhousie planted the seeds of aspiration in Virmati. It was possible to be something other than a wife. She was M.Sc. in Chemistry and tasted the wine of freedom while Virmati had drunk only creamy milk in winter. Once she finished VIII, was sent for Stratford College. Anyhow she passed her F.A. exams and made entry in A.S College, ‘the bastion of male learning’. It is here that she came in the clutch of Oxford returned Professor Harish Chandra who made her the toy of his physical lust in the name of mental thirst.
A new chapter opened in the life of Virmati that she had to develop illicit physical relationship with him only in pursuit of her studies consumed by the desire of standing on her own leg in the idle pursuit of quenching her mental thirst. A new arena was constructed of exchanging love letters which culminated in illegal and unwanted relationship. Again she was forced to marry by the family but she tried for the suicide. As a result of that Indu, the second daughter of Kasturi, was married with Inderjeet (80).
Virmati shared her lover that ‘all I want is a change from my old life and chance to do something useful. I do not mean ever to marry’ (101). As a result of that she was sent to RBSL College, Lahore for further studies where she was anchored by her room mates Swarnalata: ‘It is because of my father that I am here. My mother wanted me to marry’ (107). At this junction Syed Husain, friend of Professor, again paved the way for their romance in his guest house. ‘She could feel the pressure of the Professor’ thigh against her own. At such moments the meaning of her life seemed perfectly plain. She just had to follow that memory upwards, to feel him thrusting inside her strong and large, as she moaned and arched with pleasure’ (133). Many times Swarnalata advised her ‘men do take advantage of women but she was too trapped to come back’ (138). The result was that she became pregnant and this was another crucial stage in her life that she had to bear and finally she had no option but the abortion. After passing the exam she got an opportunity to administrate a school where she performed her duty well. But see the stroke of fate Professor did not live her there and sucked her body like mango and as a result of that she was terminated from her service. Now Virmati planned to go Shantineketan and while going to Shantineketan she halted at Delhi in the house of poet, friend of Professor where after much hiccups their marriage with Professor was launched and they got the license to move freely. ‘As Virmati rubbed her eyes, watering from the smoke, she knew rather than felt that the burden of the past five years had lifted,’ (186).
Virmati came in the house of Professor where she had to reside just like a prisoner with Ganga, the first wife of him with two children and she thought ‘I should not have married him but it is too late’(195). Like Lady Macbeth she had murdered sleep and was the only one awake (149). She made her mind that ‘A woman’s happiness lies in giving her husband happiness’ (210). After marriage she visited her mother’s house first time where she got the bolt from the blue as against her wish: ‘It would have been better if you had drowned in the canal than live to disgrace us like this’, said her mother. ‘You have destroyed our family, you badmash, you randi! You have blackened our face everywhere! For this I gave you birth’. Virmati got up and faced Kasturi. ‘I am going.’ Her heart was breaking but her voice was determined, ‘You will never see me again (204). Meanwhile she got a job in nearby school. By almighty’ grace she also conceived but after three months there was miscarriage of the issue. She thought that ‘He (God) was punishing her for the first time (227).
To remove the dullness of her deportment she was given an idea to do M.A. in Psychology and sent to Lahore. It was the good idea for Ganga as she will get the full love of her lost husband. ‘Ganga rejoiced. He was sending her away. True, she was going to study…the house would be all hers. Just like it used to be. Poor Virmati. What woman would want to exchange a home for a classroom’? (228-29). With the passage of time Virmati again conceived and this time she begot a girl who was given a name Ida, the daughter of third generation, which means ‘a new slate, and a blank beginning’(256). The novel ends with the words of Ida, ‘This book weaves a connection between my mother and me, each word a brick in a mansion I made with my head and my heart. Now live in it, Mama and leave me be. Do not haunt me any more’ (259). She is shown as a radical modern woman of contemporary India. She is an issueless divorcee who succeeds in breaking out of an unsuccessful marriage and staying single, a phenomenon unheard of in her grandmother Kasturi’s time. As she was not in good terms with her mother, after her death she delved into her mother’s past in order to understand their relationship. She went to Amritshar to their ancestral house to trace the history of her parents. Virmati never told Ida to assert her identity and in inheritance from her mother she got ‘Adjust, compromise and adapt’ (236). Ida tormented by the fact that she never understood her mother, tries to create the space that her mother had carved for all her life as a way to make peace with her.
The story of Virmati is just like the swamp and marsh, the more efforts she makes; the more she goes down entrapped by her own sensuality as much as lured by the seductive promise of the Professor. Passion transforms her so much that she fails to see things in the light perspective. Trampling patriarchal norms, she defies societal expectations to assert her individuality and hopes to achieve self -fulfillment but what does she really get? Totally alienated from her own family she fails to create a space for herself for which she had been striving all along. What happens to Viramati is unfortunately the most representative destiny of the Indian woman even if she is highly educated. This is the irony of Manju Kapur's women. There comes a transitional phase in their life and they tend to become different from a traditional woman and want to break out into new paths. However, the chance is more of theoretical in nature, when it comes to offer boldness in reality. It is then she lacks courage and resumes to patriarchal hegemony. We all know about women's emancipation today, but the day before yesterday things might have changed, but how much really? Even today, thousands of girls sit within the four walls of their houses and wonder why they don’t have the right to choose their own lives, decide for themselves whether they want to be homemakers or more. Marriage is still the reason for their birth. When once asked if this examination of women's histories was a persistent theme, Kapur in an interview The Hindustan Times replied:
"One of the main occupations in all my books is how women manage to negotiate both the private and public spaces in their lives -what sacrifices do they have to make in order to keep the home fires burning-and at what cost to their personal lives do they find some kind of fulfillment outside the home. They have to do so many things, they have to play so many roles and there is a lot of stuff to say about women and it is also what I know."(2,3 & 4)
By her undying passion and thirst she was able to have a niche and slot in the heart of the readers. In order to determine a new meaning in life Viramti is led to either a false existence or else to death and destruction. Both way, it is painful and she is penalized. This sense of the essential absurdity of life, of wilful waste of human potential, comes through the reading of the novel. One realizes that equality and liberation are operative words which can’t be reconciled with the existing reality even if wealth, beauty, education, and opportunity are used as means of tipping the balance in favor of woman.
yaha duniyā ek ūpwan ha, to nārī iskā māli ha,
vo jhuka jāya to sitā ha adh jāya to candī kāli ha.
Khulī chato kei deeiye kab ke bujh gayei hotei
koi to ha jo hawāho kei par katartā he.
Notes
- Quoted in Manusmarati (3/56). Manu, the earliest of law givers had stated: ‘Where women are honored, there the gods are pleased but where they are not honored, no sacred rites yield rewards’. It is further explicated in the following Sanskrit śloka:
jamayo yani gehani śapantaya prati pūjita tani,
kritya hataureiva vināśijanti samantatah.
(Doomed to be destroyed is that house whose woman, for not getting proper regards and respect, curses it to be destroyed.) Manusmarati translated by Buhler, Rising of Women, Dharma (Quoted by P. Thomas). The story of Satyawān-Sāvitrī and Anusuyā cannot be underestimated while sharing the history of women.
- The predicament of Indian woman in Difficult Daughters could be summed up in the following words of Vidyapati (Early15th Century A.D.):
Let no one be born,
But if one must
Let no one be a girl.
if one must be a girl
then may she never fall in love,
If she must fall in love
Free her from her family.
3. Betty Freidan in her book The Feminine Mystique declares that: A woman can find fulfillment only in a creative work of her own and those women authors like Shashi Despande, Arundhati Roy, Githa Hariharan or Shobha De on whom the image of the suffering but stoic woman eventually breaking traditional boundaries has had a significant impact. Virmati is the girl caught in the flux of tradition and modernity, custom and fashion. The novel reveals a saga of Indian woman’s innocent aspirations, her rebellion against the tradition-bound society, self-doubt, resolution and acceptance.
4. Helene Deutsch, The Psychology of Women: A Psychoanalytic Interpretation (1944, rpt New York: Bantam, 1973): 298. Helene writes: ‘They (the women) often participate in violent anonymous protests and join revolutionary movements. Most of the time that they are unconsciously protesting against their own fate. By identifying themselves with the socially oppressed or the non-possessing class, they take up a position against their own unsatisfying role’.
Works Cited
Kapur, Manju. Difficult Daughter, Delhi, Penguin Books, 1998
………………Interview. The Hindustan Times. 16 April, 20