On widowhood by pandith ramabai ,{ the high cast Hindu women}

    The High Caste Hindu Woman by Pandita Ramabai Sarasvati Pandita Ramabai

Source://:-Author(s): Barbara Celarent

Source: American Journal of Sociology

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American Journal of Sociology
354
the entrance examinations to the E´ cole Normale Supe´rieure—Ramabai
was given the honorific titles by which she has since been known. Pandita
(roughly, “one greatly learned in Sanskrit and religious texts”) was not
enough, so her astounded admirers added Sarasvati (goddess of learning).
A series of controversial life decisions—her cross-caste marriage, her trip
to England, her conversion to Christianity, her evangelical witness—even�tually cost her her great reputation, at least in India. Yet by the late 20th
century, feminists, Indian nationalists, Anglo-Catholics, and evangelicals
would all be claiming her as a shining predecessor. Only the metropolitan
social scientists remained unaware of this extraordinary woman.
During her brief career as a social analyst, Ramabai wrote two works
that command our attention. The first, The High Caste Hindu Woman
(HCHW), presented Indian society to Americans via an analytic indict�ment of the place of women in traditional upper-caste India. Impassioned
and critical, the book yet maintained both Indian national pride and a
profound sympathy for the Hindu culture that Ramabai would never lose.
Reversing the exchange, Ramabai’s second book, Conditions of Life in
the United States (CLUS), presented American society to an educated
Indian (Marathi-speaking) audience. A synthetic work, it can be read
beside the other great foreign analyses of 19th-century America: Frances
Trollope’s Domestic Manners of the Americans (1832), Harriet Marti�neau’s Society in America (1837), Tocqueville’s Democracy in America
(1840), and Bryce’s American Commonwealth (1888). Unlike them, it
brings a nonmetropolitan vision to its task.
The life that left us these books is the stuff dreams are made of. Ramabai
was born April 23, 1858, at her father’s ashram. Anant Shastri Dongre
was a learned Chitpavan Brahman who, although a rigidly orthodox
Hindu, conceived the forbidden idea of teaching his wife Sanskrit, the
sacred language. This dream failed with his first wife, who herself opposed
it. But after she died, another Brahman saw Anant Shastri bathing at a
sacred site one day and offered Shastri (then about 40) his nine-year-old
daughter as a wife. (The story is told in HCHW, without naming names.)
The girl fell in with her new husband’s linguistic plans and eventually
became herself a master Sanskritist. When public outcry about the lan�guage instruction grew annoying, Anant Shastri moved his new family
to a site he built deep in the forested mountains. Here he became a well�known holy man, and his ashram became a school.
And here Ramabai was born. Soon, however, her father’s money ran
out, and the family went on permanent pilgrimage. Moving constantly,
they read the Puranas in public (receiving in return the alms on which
they lived), visited the sacred sites, and gave away many of the alms they
received. Through all this, Ramabai’s mother taught her Sanskrit, the
Puranas, the Gita, and the commentaries. By 15, Ramabai was herself a
puranika, intoning the sacred texts for a living (indeed, she could recite
the 18,000 lines of the Bhagavata Purana from memory). Having wan�dered the whole of the subcontinent, she could speak Marathi, Kannada,&#0;
       
and Hindi. It was now a time of famine, however, and when Ramabai
was in her late teens, her father, then mother, then elder sister all suc�cumbed. She and her brother wandered another two years, then came to
Calcutta, where the girl became a sensation for her learning, receiving
the titles of Pandita and Sarasvati from the most learned Indian and
Western scholars of the city.
In Calcutta Ramabai began her disillusionment with Hinduism as then
practiced, becoming a Brahmo (a monotheistic sect). She left Purana re�citing and became a popular lecturer, speaking largely on women’s topics.
Here, as throughout her career, audiences found irresistible the combi�nation of her astounding learning, her broad culture, her great beauty,
and her quiet charisma. In this period, she also began reading the for�bidden books—the Upanishads, the Vedantas, and ultimately the Vedas
themselves. After two years, Ramabai’s brother died of cholera. Surprising
her progressive countrymen in Maharashtra (who were planning to bring
her back to western India and fund her work), she quickly married a
long-standing suitor, who was a pleader in the Indian courts. It was a
forbidden marriage, for Bepin Behari Das Medhavi was a Kayastha (al�though Ramabai nearly always referred to him as a Sudra, which may
simply have shown her ignorance of all caste distinction beneath her own
level). The marriage caused a furor, followed by tragedy when Ramabai’s
husband died, leaving her with an infant daughter.
Ramabai then went to Poona, where she caused another furor by ad�vocating the education of women (especially of women doctors) and found�ing an organization for the advancement of women. After about a year,
she went to England to study medicine, planning to support herself as a
lecturer in Sanskrit during her studies. She first stayed with the Anglo�Catholic Sisters of St. Mary the Virgin, whose missionary community she
had known in India. Within months of her arrival, the friend who had
accompanied her committed suicide (another parallel with Durkheim,
whose close friend Victor Hommay committed suicide when Durkheim
was 28). Ramabai’s baptism as a Christian—never fully explained—came
a month later. About this time, too, deafness put an end to her dreams
of becoming a physician.
The Sisters of St. Mary proved too rigid for Ramabai, and she moved
on to Cheltenham Ladies’ College, again supporting herself in part by
teaching Sanskrit. After two years of being mentored by Cheltenham’s
remarkable Dorothea Beale, she went to the United States to attend a
countrywoman’s graduation from the Woman’s Medical College of Phil�adelphia. Caught up in the active world of late 19th-century American
feminism, she conceived the idea of creating a school for Hindu widows
(the child-marriage system guaranteed that there were many of these). In
her new language of English, she quickly wrote The High Caste Hindu
Woman as a fund-raising tract. She traveled thousands of miles around
the United States, lecturing and organizing “Ramabai Circles,” which
would contribute the money necessary for her planned school. Also during&#0;
    
         
American Journal of Sociology
356
these American years, she took extensive notes, and on her return to India
(via Japan and China) she completed these as texts and assembled them
into the Marathi book Conditions of Life in the United States.
Thus by age 32, Pandita Ramabai had circumnavigated the globe,
raised metropolitan funding for a feminist social reform in her native
land, converted to a new religion (but only on her own terms), and written
two insightful pieces of social analysis. The rest of her career—founding
and managing her schools, becoming an evangelical Christian (and
thereby losing even more of her Indian supporters), translating the Bible
from original languages into Marathi (and in the process producing the
first Marathi textbooks for both Greek and Hebrew), and raising her
daughter—these things must be set aside here. We are concerned only
with her social analysis. But there is one last tragic parallel to Durkheim.
Like her French peer, Ramabai suffered the loss of a beloved child. Her
daughter Manoramabai died in 1921 at age 40. Ramabai followed, nine
months later.
Ramabai’s two major pieces of social commentary are yoked by an
eager desire to translate across cultural boundaries. In both works, the
foundation of that translation is women’s experience. Ramabai takes it
for granted that certain aspects of female experience—in particular moth�ering and being mothered—are universal to all types and kinds of people.
This focus on maternalism of course reflected the young widow’s own
life. In England she first lived in the all-female world of the sisters at
Wantage. Although Ramabai often disagreed violently with her spiritual
advisor Sister Geraldine, she was filled with respect and love for the much
older nun. At Cheltenham, she came under the spell of the forceful, devout,
but more free-thinking Beale, and in Philadelphia under the equally char�ismatic power of Dr. Rachel Bodley of the Woman’s Medical College of
Philadelphia. And behind all of these was her own beloved mother Laksh�mibai, who had died less than a decade before.
It is little wonder then that in places both works read like tracts from
the militant world of late 19th-century American maternalism, accepting
as given the notions that women are more moral than men, that women
are thereby society’s instructors in morality, and that the advent of women
to any workplace or social setting inevitably improves its social order and
harmony. Her accounts of the advances of women in education, in em�ployment, and in such social movements as the Women’s Christian Tem�perance Union all suffer from this somewhat one-sided position. But when
her empirical self dominates, Ramabai is plain enough about the failings
of women that complement this optimistic view of maternalism. In her
eyes, many American women are preoccupied with fashion that has no
meaning, with clothing and food that require the massacre of animals,
with small matters and trivial thoughts. Many of them, like their male
counterparts, participate in ethnic and racial hatreds that Ramabai finds
repugnant. As for the Hindu women, many of them have neither the&#0;
        
education nor the emotional depth to take on mothering at the early stage
of life when it is forced on them.
But all the same, it is an audience of women and, more particularly,
reform-minded women that Ramabai takes for granted. Women’s expe�rience is the touchstone of her writing, and she is, for Indian women at
least, the figure who first systematized the feminist case against “tradi�tional” Hindu institutions. What made her difficult for later feminists to
swallow was her explicit Christian commitment, which increased with
time and which, despite her own efforts to contain it, would at times
become overbearingly evangelical. Yet while Ramabai remained an active
administrator and social reformer to her death, she turned increasingly
inward, becoming in her later years a holy person like her father: focused
on prayer and meditation and on the task of conceiving the meanings of
the Bible in three different languages.
The complex inward self of the later Ramabai is not evident in these
early works, however. Here feminism forms the universal experience that
can sustain translation between radically different cultures. For Ramabai
remained a Hindu, despite her conversion. Filling the pages of CLUS,
for example, are long celebrations of the beauty of nature and the graces
of the plant and animal environment. The writing is laced with Indian
proverbs. As a denizen of the tropics, Ramabai found snow unutterably
beautiful, but at the same time dangerous and frightening. Accustomed
to the calm waters of the Indian Ocean, she was overwhelmed and en�ergized by the fierce weather of the North Atlantic. These passages in
CLUS on the natural beauties of America are among the best in the book.
No other major social commentator on the United States took the
country’s physical beauty so seriously.
Also Indian is Ramabai’s implicit social theory. The most obvious ex�ample is her sympathetic treatment of the “Indians” of America, whom
she regards as analogous to the Indians of the subcontinent precisely
because the expanding Europeans defined them as related peoples. The
American “Indians” are for her an object lesson for the subcontinent, a
fate to be avoided. But there is a broader nonmetropolitan aspect to her
social theory. Throughout CLUS, she uses the word jati—typically ren�dered in English by “caste”—to mean “kind.” Racial bigotry is thus (lit�erally) kind-bigotry. Women are a kind. The black ex-slaves are a kind.
Each immigrant group forms a kind. To be sure, there are “kinds” that
later social critics would take seriously which Ramabai does not. Class
is one. She traveled first-class on the North Atlantic passage and makes
only a mild apology about getting preferred treatment when the boat ran
aground. Or again, she remarks in HCHW that high-caste women “have
inherited from their father to a certain degree, quickness of perception
and intelligence” (p. 132). Thus she accepts certain differences without
critique, although in the main her position is that “kind”-ness is not a
legitimate rationale for the differential treatment of human beings. Or
indeed of animals: her sympathy for the freezing herds out on the blizzard-&#0;

       
coated Great Plains is quite of a piece with her sympathy for mistreated
immigrants and slaves. One does not find such things in Martineau and
Tocqueville.
To be sure, one could read her entire position on “kind” as being utterly
aristocratic and Brahmin, a view from “above it all.” That this was not
the case becomes clear later in her life, for she moved steadily toward a
position that all human beings are in some sense equal. A better reading
of “kind” in these early works would therefore be that Ramabai was
deploying an early version of what would later be called the “other”
concept. She altogether avoids particular words for “tribe,” “community,”
“race,” “caste,” “ethnic-group,” “people,” and “sex.” All are jati—kind. By
doing this, Rambai insists that we view the world as filled not with
particular stratification orders and groups, but rather with “kind”-ness.
This is an important advance, one sadly missed by several of her later
English translators, who dutifully render the words into their different
(for the West) dimensions of difference.
Ramabai’s position implies that it is human to be particular and that
particularity comes in many types and kinds. Ramabai had, at one point,
early in her public life, a similar theory of religion: that there is, as she
put it, only one religion. “Now by religion one should not understand the
many doctrines such as Hindu, Muslim, Christian, etc. These names in�dicate doctrines and not religion. Religion is single in form” (“Strı¯ Dharma�Neeti” [1882], trans. Meera Kosambi [New Delhi: Oxford, 2000], p. 76).
Ramabai’s implicit theory of “kinds” of humanity thus seems an important
precursor of later ideas.
Ramabai’s view of temporality curiously combines a theory of decline
with a theory of progress. On the one hand, her interpretation of many
of the evils of her contemporary world was that they resulted from the
loss of the original messages. She goes to great lengths in HCHW to show
that the Code of Manu was more hostile to women than the earlier Vedas.
But she exonerates Manu on the subject of sati, which she attributes to
later priests and their deliberate mistranslation of the Vedas. Similarly,
she was scandalized to discover that Christians were as internally divided
as were the Hindus, and she attributed this sectarianism to a failure to
read and follow the original message of the Bible.
Thus Ramabai had a theory of decline. Yet at the same time, she
accepted the 19th-century West’s profound belief in progress, an accep�tance which is evident not only in her accounts of American trade, in�dustry, and agriculture, but also in her belief that most social problems
can be overcome by sufficient education and by an end to ignorance and
mutual distrust. Her faith in her American mentors Rachel Bodley and
Frances Willard—and more broadly in the American example—is no�where more clear.
Ramabai’s ambivalence about the direction of history is complemented
by her ambivalence about colonialism. It is easy to see her as having gone
over to the imperialists’ side. She chose their religion, although rejecting&#0;
    
        
their particular version of it. She accepted western arguments for progress
and change. She got her funding and, after her Indian reputation faded,
most of her personal support from outside India. Yet at the same time
she was often a militant nationalist. In praising the religious pluralism of
the United States, she emphasized that it did not undercut patriotism:
“Although there are differences of belief among them [the Americans]
there is no fundamental difference in the religion they espouse. These
differences of belief do not stand in the way of anything that concerns
the welfare of the country” (CLUS p. 197). Similarly, she disliked the
Church of England because (among other reasons) the name of the im�perial nation was part of its name. Or again, a problem with Hindu high�caste women is their failure to help their nation: “[Women] grow to be
selfish slaves in their petty individual interests, indifferent to the welfare
of their own immediate neighbors, much more to their nation’s well-being”
(HCHW, p. 119). And “The men of Hindustan do not when babes, suck
from the mother’s breast true patriotism and in their boyhood, the mother,
poor woman, is unable to develop that divine faculty in them owing to
her utter ignorance of the past and present condition of her native land”
(HCHW, pp. 121–22). This nationalism occasionally crops out in the de�monization of the preceding imperialists (the Mughals), on whom she
blames (among other things) the rise of women’s formal seclusion.
In this, then, as in so many ways, Ramabai became a woman between
two cultures. One sees this especially in her analysis of sati. She gives a
straightforward feminist account of sati as a device for controlling women
with their “dangerous” desires. She is entirely in sympathy with the British
government’s proscription of sati. Yet she also realizes that that abolition
in some ways made matters worse, since many widows had chosen ritual
suicide, either because widowhood itself was so horrible, or because they
genuinely believed the official interpretation of sati, or because they truly
loved their husbands beyond life itself. The abolition, that is, removed
from women even their power to act and condemned them to the horrors
of widowhood or its only alternatives, escape and prostitution. It is a very
modern analysis.
Ramabai challenges us, finally, because she exemplifies those many
analysts of social life who were not professionals. Pandita Ramabai pro�duced her view of America not because she was theoretically interested
in improving a body of common knowledge called social science, but
because she had an ambition to change the place of women in India. She
thus takes a place beside the many reformers of the late 19th century
whose work laid the foundations of sociology in the United States (foun�dations quite different from the historical and positivistic foundations in
Germany and France, respectively). Most of that reform work disappeared
from the sociological canon, partly for want of method, but mostly for
want of “theoretical concerns,” the trope by which an emerging academic
discipline came to define itself.
But for Ramabai, social analysis was a precondition to—and a means&#0;
 
   of—reform. It was therefore a way station on the path to her fulfillment
as an activist whose life proceded directly from her religious devotion.
So also was social analysis a mere prelude to political power in the life
of Jomo Kenyatta or to cultural banishment in the life of Qu Tongzu or
to romanticized revolution in the life of Frantz Fanon. The non�metropolitan world could little afford the calm contemplations of aca�demic life. So we often find social science texts issuing haphazardly from
lives whose logic quickly drove their protagonists elsewhere.
This haphazard social science is all the more important for its com�mitment. A social science from nowhere lacks humanity: no human lives
in nowhere. Hence a committed social science is doubly valuable. But at
the same time, a social science utterly particular is equally problematic,
denying as it does the validity of others’ experience. The roots of humane
social science thus lie in translation, in making the systematic leap from
one social standpoint to another. Of this leap Pandita Ramabai Sarasvati
provides a profound example, both in her writing and in her life.&#0;

That long silence by shashi deshpande

Shashi  Deshpande’s  Small  Remedies  is  a  self-conscious  novel  which  has  internalized  a sophisticated  awareness  of  current  literary  theory;  it  presents  many  of  the  contemporary  issues which  a  woman writer  has  to  face  in  her  life  as  well  as  work.  Like  many  postmodern  novels  of  today, it  problematizes  the  relationship  between  fiction  and  reality,  and  delineates  the  role  of  language  in our  attempts  to  construct  our  own  realities.  She  has  realized  that  though  the  really  important aspects  of  life  defy  verbalization,  there  seems  to  be  a  genuine  relationship  between  the  process  of fictionalization  through  words  and  our  own  attempts  to  organize  personal  experiences  through memory.  So  this  novel  is  as  much  about  novel  writing  as  it  is  about  the  characters  who  inhabit  the fictional  world.  This  is  the  kind  of  novel  which  presents  a  problem,  analyzes  it,  and  posits  a  kind  of solution  so  that  the  focus  is  on  the  psychological  process  of  becoming  a  mature  person.  The desperate  search  for  meaning,  the  effort  to  find  a  sense  of  one’s  identity  and  one’s  relationship  to  the world  outside,  culminates  in  the  realization  that  loss  is  never  total,  and  it  is  essential  to  realize  it because,  in  any  event,  life  has  to  be  made  possible.  The  task  of  re-integrating  a  fragmented  person involves  an  inevitable  sliding  into  chaos,  into  madness,  and  what  emerges  as  an  urgent  need  is  a  call for  re-evaluating  and  re-assessing  many  of  the  accepted  values  behind  the  stereotyped  roles  we ascribe  to  ourselves.  This  paper  proposes  to  show  how  this  philosophical  need  to  accept  the inevitable  is  psychologically  made  viable  through  an  analysis  of  the  fictional  mode  of  representation. Madhu,  the  heroine  of  Small  Remedies,  has  lost  her  only  son  Adit,  and  she  is  trying  to  get  over  the paralyzing  sense  of  shock  by  writing  the  biography  of  the  famous  singer  Savitribai,  for  which  she has  come  to  Bhavanipur  where  she  is  staying  with  a  young  couple,  Hari  and  Lata.  On  the  one  hand, we have  the  actual  story  of  Madhu  and  what  happens  to  her  at  Bhavanipur,  like  her  visits  to  Bai,  her relationship  with  Lata  and  Hari,  the  paralytic  stroke  that  attacks  Bai,  how  Madhu  is  once  attacked  by a  group  of  people,  and  so  on,  all  these  shown  as  happening  in  the  present.  On  the  other  hand,  there
        
is  the  story  of  Savitribai,  as  told  by  Bai  but  re-interpreted  by  Madhu,  which  is  interspersed  with memories  of  Madhu’s  own  past,  starting  from  the  days  when  Bai  was  her  neighbour  to  the  day  she lost  her  son.  There  is  a  lot  that  is  common  to  both  Madhu  and  Bai.  Bai’s  daughter  Munni  was Madhu’s  childhood  friend,  and  by  a  strange  coincidence,  she  too  was  killed  in  the  same  bomb  blast as  her  own  son  Adit.  But  Bai  had  renounced  Munni  long  before  her  actual  death;  she  acknowledged neither  Munni  as  her  daughter  nor  Madhu  as  Munni’s  friend;  and  Madhu  is  probing  through  the external  facade  of  indifference  to  arrive  at  her  actual  feelings.  Both  of  them  are  artists:  one  a novelist,  the  other  a  singer;  both  are  childless  mothers;  thus  Madhu’s  attempts  to  bring  out  the woman or the  mother  behind  the  successful  artist  in  Bai  is  really  an  attempt  to  understand  her  own self.  More  importantly,  besides  being  the  story  of  Madhu  and  Bai,  this  novel  reveals  the  way  in  which novels  are  written:  how  Madhu  listens  to  the  words  of  Bai  but  interprets  them  in  her  own  way,  often stressing  the  pauses  and  silences  in  Bai’s  narrative,  bringing  into  this  operation  her  own  knowledge of  human  nature  in  general  and  her  knowledge  of  Bai  in  particular.  Thus  the  autobiography  of  the subject  merges  with  the  biography  of  the  object,  revolving  round  the  central  principles  of  imaginative reconstruction,  thereby  tracing  the  evolution  of  the  story  from  the  totality  of  loss  to  the  possibility  of retrieval  through  memory. Small  Remedies  employs  the  same  philosophical  principles  of  literary  composition  as  That  Long Silence  so  that  it  will  not  be  an  exaggeration  to  suggest  that  both  novels  are  simply  variations  of  the same  theme.  There  is  a  sense  in  which  it  can  be  said  that  Jaya  is  potential  Madhu.  While  Jaya resists  her  attraction  towards  Kamat,  Madhu  yields  to  the  painter.  Both  are  writers,  both  treat  the process  of  fictionalization  as  the  inevitable  path  to  overcome  their  loneliness,  despair  and fragmentation.  Both  are  dangerously  possessive,  both  of  them  are  strongly  attached  to  their  fathers, the  transition  is  brought  about  for  both  by  a  catastrophe  –  the  shattering  of  the  stable  routine  for Jaya  by  the  imminent  dismissal  of  Mohan,  and  the  death  of  her  son  for  Madhu.  Both  slip  into  a temporary  period  of  insanity  from  which  they  slowly  emerge  as  integrated  persons.  While  Madhu loses  her  son  and  feels  guilty  about  it,  Jaya  has  opted  for  an  abortion  and  continues  to  feel  guilt. Towards  the  end  of  That  Long  Silence,  Jaya,  wondering  what  she  has  achieved  by  this  writing, concludes:  “  I’m  not  afraid  anymore.  The  panic  has  gone.  I’m  Mohan’s  wife,  I  had  thought,  and  cut  off the  bits  off  me  that  had  refused  to  be  Mohan’s  wife.  Now  I  know  that  kind  of  fragmentation  is  not possible”  For  Jaya,  as  for  Madhu,  writing  is  a  vital  process  whereby  she  is  trying  to  order
                

and  organize  her  life  so  as  to  bring  some  sense  to  her  existence.  She  has  to  let  go  the  illusion  of happiness  as  she  discerns  the  gap  between  her  mental  picture  of  a  happy  family  and  the  actuality  of hostile  relations  in  her  own  family.  She  realizes  that  she  is  like  the  sparrow  in  the  story  of  the  crow and  the  sparrow:  they  build  their  houses  with  dung  and  wax  respectively.  When  the  crow’s  house  is washed  away  in  the  rain,  and  as  he  comes  knocking  at  the  door  of  the  sparrow,  he  is  kept  out  for long  under  several  pretexts.  Finally  the  sparrow  lets  the  crow  in  and  invites  him  to  warm  himself  on the  pan  on  which  she  has  just  made  the  chapattis.  The  poor  crow  hops  on  to  it  and  is  burnt  to  death. Like  the  sparrow,  Jaya  had  thought  that  the  way  to  be  safe  is  to  stay  at  home,  look  after  the  babies and  keep  out  the  rest  of  the  world.  “  I  know  better  now.  I  know  that  safety  is  always  unattainable. You’re  never  safe”  (TLS-17).  Now  she  begins  to  see  herself  in  a  totally  different  perspective.  She begins  to  see  things  in  her  own  unique  way.  For  example,  when  Mohan  narrates  how  his  father  used to  ill-treat  his  mother,  and  thinking  of  his  mother’s  stoic  response  to  his  cruelty,  Mohan  saw  “strength in  the  woman  sitting  silently  in  front  of  the  fire”,  but  Jaya  saw  only  ‘despair’  (TLS-36).  Look  at  the  way she  records  her  own  method  of  reconstruction:  “This  is  not  Mohan’s  story  entirely.  I’m  writing  it down,  I  have  put  together  so  many  things  –  things  he  told  me,  things  he  left  unsaid  as  he  told  me this  story,  things  I  have  imagined  myself,  and  the  expression  on  his  face  as  he  spoke  to  me”  (TLS-3435).  This  is  precisely  the  method  Madhu  uses  in  writing  the  story  of  Savitribai.  The  version  Bai  gives is  different  from  the  one  Madhu  is  building  up.  While  Munni  sticks  to  her  own  version  of  ‘the  truth’, Hasina  gives  her  truths  about  her  grandfather  Ghulam  Saab  whom  she  knows  better  than  anyone else  does  and  so  she  alone  can  give  the  complete  truth  about  him.  “  It  is  important  for  her  to  correct the  idea  that  I  have  of  his  role  in  Bai’s  life”  (SR-273).  Madhu  is  fully  aware  of  the  subjectivity  of  her version  and  the  relativity  of  truth:  “I  think  of  the  seven  blind  men  trying  to  describe  the  elephant,  each one  making  a  different  discovery  about  the  animal,  each  convinced  that  his  knowledge  about  the elephant  is  the  entire  truth”  (SR-278).  So  she  has  to  discover  her  own  truth  from  the  different  bits  of information  offered  to  her  in  order  to  “create  an  elephant  out  of  these  disparate  bits”(SR-278). It  is  this  very  same  method  Madhu  and  Jaya  use  in  telling  their  stories.  Further,  it  must  be  added  that far  from  being  a  purely  literary  method,  it  is  the  very  method,  which  enables  Madhu  to  understand other  people.  She  learns  about  Lata  from  the  way  she  hands  out  ‘random  slices  of  her  life  to  the other  person,  wholly  ignoring  the  spaces  between  them,  explaining  nothing’  (SR-40).  Similarly,  when Bai  is  telling  her  story,  Madhu  is  aware  of  ‘the  gaps  in  her  story’,  that  ‘she  is  following  the  one
                 
straight  line  of  her  pursuit  of  her  Guruji’s,  bypassing  everything  else’  (SR-129);  so  her  task  involves filling  these  gaps.  Madhu’s  reflexive  comments  on  the  complex  nature  of  writing  are  worth  quoting: I’ve  realized  that  there  are  three  books  here.  Firstly,  there’s  Bai’s  book,  the  book  Bai wants  to  be  written,  in  which  she  is  the  heroine,  the  spotlight  shining  on  her  and  her alone.  .  .  .  Then  there’s  Maya  and  Yogi’s  book.  A  controversial  one.  Trendy.  Politically correct,  with  a  feminist  slant.  .  .  .  And  there’s  my  book,  the  one  I’m  still  looking  for.  It’s evading  me,  not  giving  me  a  hold  anywhere.  (SR-125) Thus  we  see  that  there  are  several  narrators  in  this  novel.  Madhu  is  obviously  the  chief  narrator. Then  there  is  Savitribai,  giving  her  own  version  of  her  life  as  a  singer,  Hasina  modifying  it  by  giving her  version  of  Ghulam  Saab’s  story  and  his  role  in  Bai’s  life,  Munni  with  her  ‘stubborn  adherence  to her  own  truth’  (SR-77),  and  so  on.  What  distinguishes  Madhu  from  other  narrators  is  her  singular status  as  the  one  who  not  only  reports  the  other  stories  but  also  performs  the  task  of  fitting  the various  pieces  to  solve  the  jigsaw  puzzle.  While  filling  the  position  of  the  author  to  her  own  story,  she fulfills  the  creative  role  of  the  ‘reader’  to  the  other  stories,  and  assimilates  them  into  the  main narrative.  Hers  is  the  only  voice,  which  refuses  to  be  monologic. It  is  not  an  easy  task.  Bai  is  still  suffering  from  the  residual  effects  of  a  cardiac  stroke,  and  Madhu has  to  grope  her  way  ‘through  the  density  of  words  to  get  at  her  meaning’  (SR-61).  By  excluding Munni  and  Ghulam  Saab  from  the  story,  she  is  presenting  ‘her  own  illusion  of  her  life’  (SR-78).  Once Madhu  told  her  that  she  was  discussing  her  with  Hasina,  and  Bai  became  angry;  she  insisted  on  her exclusive  right  to  tell  her  story  –  her  portrait  of  the  artist  as  a  young  woman.  She  asked  Madhu  not  to write  about  the  old  woman  that  she  is  now.  Bai  is  interested  in  projecting  only  that  part  of  her  young self  in  pursuit  of  her  goal  of  becoming  an  artist  as  her  true  self.  She  seems  to  have  severed  the connection  between  the  artist  and  the  woman,  and  Madhu  wonders  whether  Bai  faces  “the  truth  that confronts  me  every  moment  of  my  life  –  the  futility  of  life  without  children”(SR-154).  Madhu  feels that  Bai  is  ‘a  nasty,  tyrannical  creature’  (SR-61);  often  she  wonders:  “  what  kind  of  a  woman  are  you, denying  your  own  child?”(SR-78).  At  one  moment  Bai  appears  to  be  ‘the  heroine  of  a  passionate, beautiful  story;  at  other  times,  she  is  just  ‘a  calculating,  ambitious  woman,  using  the  man  for  her  own ends,  abandoning  him  finally  when  her  need  for  him  is  over’  (SR-176).  She  formulates  her  task  like this:  “I  have  to  negotiate  my  way  between  this  woman  and  the  cruel  mother  of  my  memory.  Between this  woman  and  the  dazzlingly  beautiful  singer  with  her  lover,  whom  she  kept  purposefully  in  the background  So  if  she  introduces  Munni  into  Bai’s  story,  it  is  like  saying:  this  is  how  it  was.
           

But  do  we  always  know  why  we do things?  “  Child  though  I  was,  I  had  the  wisdom  to  know  you  don’t need  to  know  everything  about  a  person”(SR-175).  As  she  is  aware  of  the  power  of  the  writer-creator, she  is  wary  of  trapping  and  sealing  her  into  an  identity  she  creates  for  her.  Instead  of  imposing  her own  vision  over  Bai’s  story,  she  wants  to  capture  her  essence  in  all  its  contradictory  aspects  –  as  a rebel,  a  feminist,  an  artist,  a  woman  who  gave  up  everything  for  love,  a  mother  who  denies  her  own child,  an  ambitious  woman  who  uses  men  to  further  her  own  ends,  and  so  on.  “Then  where  is  the  real Bai?  The  pampered  child?  The  young  girl  who  discovered  what  her  life  was  going  to  be?  The  young woman who abandoned  her  child  and  eloped  with  her  lover?  The  great  musician,  the  successful Savitribai  Indorekar?”(SR-283).  And  her  answer  is:  “All  of  them,  of  course.  It’s  always  a  palimpsest, so  many layers,  one  superimposed  on  another,  none  erased,  all  of  them  still  there”  (SR-283).  It  is  not even  necessary  that  she  understand  everything:  “  Some  mysteries  have  to  remain  unsolved,  some answers  will  never  come”(SR-322).  The  only  way  to  arrive  at  the  truth  is  through  imaginative reconstruction  the  rules  of  which  are  exactly  the  same  as  those  we  use  in  our  daily  life.  “  Fiction, then,  it  seems,  is  inevitable”(SR-169). In  writing  the  story  of  Bai,  Madhu  is  really  engaged  in  the  act  of  self-discovery.  Madhu  explains  it thus: We see our  lives  through  memory  and  memories  are  fractured,  fragmented,  almost always  cutting  across  time.  .  .  .  Truly,  dreams  are  the  stuff  of  life,  the  hidden  truth  that lies  beneath  the  hard  reality.  Invention,  creation,  is  sometimes  the  greater,  possibly  the best  part,  of  reality.  Even  to  write  our  own  stories,  we  need  to  invent.  (SR165) This  is  the  kind  of  novel  Jaya  would  have  written.  When  Mohan  was  displeased  with  her  first  story, she  opted  for  the  unproblematic  enterprise  of  writing  humorous  pieces  like  ‘Seeta’,  thereby  shutting out  all  the  other  women  who  were  clamouring  for  attention.  By  the  end  of  the  novel,  Jaya  emerges  as an  integrated  person,  a  woman  who  can  speak  for  herself  in  her  own  language.  Her  creativity  is liberated:  the  novel  itself  is  testimony  to  it.  Jaya  has  written  the  novel  in  which  she  herself  is  the main  character.  She  has  learnt  to  speak,  to  listen,  and  to  erase  the  silence.  She  has  learnt,  as  she says,  “to  retrace  my  way  back  through  the  disorderly,  chaotic  sequence  of  events  and  non-events that  made  up  my  life”(TLS-187).  Small  Remedies  gives  expression  to  all  those  women  held  silent within  Jaya.

             
                  That  Long  Silence  is  obviously  the  story  of  Jaya  from  a  single  perspective  –  that  of  Jaya’s.  But towards  the  end  of  the  novel,  she  ponders  over  a  few  interesting  questions:  “But  why  am  I  making myself  the  heroine  of  this  story?  Why  do  I  presume  that  the  understanding  is  mine  alone?  Isn’t  it possible  that  Mohan  too  means  something  more  by  ‘all  well’  than  going  back  to  where  we  were? (TLS-193).  As  if  in  answer  to  these  questions,  Small  Remedies  displays  the  multiple  versions  of  her palimpsest  story.  Madhu  is  Jaya  awakened. Despite  the  superficial  similarities,  Jaya  and  Madhu,  it  seems,  are  speaking  about  the  same  woman, the  same  things,  same  problems.  Both  novels  end  on  a  similar  note:  Mohan  returns  to  Jaya,  Madhu returns  to  her  husband  Som.  Though  they  have  become  different  persons  now,  though  their  lives  are going  to  be  qualitatively  different,  they  are  bent  on  starting  a  new  life,  both  for  themselves  and  their husbands. Shashi  Deshpande  highlights  the  Indian  tradition  in  suggesting  the  continuity  of  family  life  despite the  threatening  darkness  which  surrounds  our  lives.  It  is  not  accidental  that  the  solutions  come  from our  ancient  sages.  While  Jaya  draws  strength  from  the  words  of  Krishna  to  Arjuna  in  the  Gita,  Madhu understands  the  meaning  of  ‘Putra-Moha’,  an  expression  she  hears  from  Som’s  father,  which  is  not love,  but  ‘obsession’,  which  involves  ‘confusion,  ignorance,  illusion  and  pain’  (SR-188).  She  learns from  Akka’s  ‘drishti’  ceremony  –‘the  ritual  to  ward  off  the  evil  eye’  (SR-189)  –  where  the  chant  asks the  child  to  be  protected  from  neighbours,  strangers,  and  so  on,  including  fathers  and  mothers.  Now she  learns  that  it  is  ‘from  those  who  love  us  that  we  need  to  be  protected’  (SR-190),  because  it  is  with them  that  we  become  vulnerable  and  defenseless. One  of  the  distinctive  features  of  both  these  novels  is  its  subtle  manipulation  of  female  psychology. In  terms  of  Freudian  psychology,  Jaya  and  Madhu  manifest  clear  signs  of  Electra  complex.  Both  are strongly  attached  to  their  fathers.  Jaya  harbours  a  grudge  against  her  mother  for  making  her homeless  by  selling  their  house  after  her  father’s  death.  Her  grouse  against  her  father  is  simply  that he  died.  His  death  shatters  her  completely.  Again,  she  cannot  relate  herself  to  her  daughter  Rati  but she  is  very  sensitive  to  the  needs  of  her  son  Rahul.  There  is  a  constant  bickering  between  Mohan and  Rahul,  but  Mohan  can  never  perceive  that  quarrels  between  fathers  and  sons  is  the  most  natural thing  in  the  Freudian  world.  This  becomes  more  prominent  in  Small  Remedies.  Even  though  Som and  Adit  get  along  very  well,  and  though  Madhu  remarks  that  it  upsets  Freud’s  theory,  her  own attachment  to  her  father,  and  her  clinging  to  her  son  are  essentially  Freudian.  For  example,  when
                .
Munni  tells  her  that  her  father  has  a  mistress,  she  cuts  off  all  connection  with  Munni  immediately. Such  strong  reaction  is  more  that  of  a  wife  than  that  of  a  daughter.  It  is  interesting  to  note  that  her first  sexual  affair  was  at  the  time  of  her  father’s  death,  with  a  man  who  was  her  father’s  special friend,  a  kind  of  father  figure  to  her.  The  fact  that  he  had  once  painted  her  picture  as  a  child  is  a metaphorical  way  of  indicating  him  as  her  father-creator.  Perhaps  the  imminence  of  her  father’s death  had  liberated  the  suppressed  desire  in  her  to  possess  him.  The  act  of  sex  with  the  painter  is her  way  of  claiming  her  father  back.  As  it  is  a  forbidden  one,  she  soon  forgets  the  incident.  Som finds  it  difficult  to  believe  that  she  could  so  easily  have  forgotten  her  first  sexual  experience.  Even the  readers  may  find  it  a  little  unnatural.  The  whole  thing  can  make  sense  only  when  viewed  as  a forbidden  fact  suppressed  and  relegated  to  the  backstage  by  her  subconscious  mind.  The  memory returns  to  her  after  several  years  in  a  dream,  where  the  corpse  inside  the  gunnysack  is  obviously  the memory  buried  deep  inside  her.  Her  clinging  attachment  to  her  son  is  also  typically  Oedipal;  Hari  is  a son-figure  to  Madhu,  and  the  figure  is  reinforced  when  he  mutters  ‘Adityaya  namaha’  which  revives in  her  memories  of  her  dead  son  Adit,  and  that  must  be  why  she  recoils  at  the  comforting  touch  of Hari. Discovering  one’s  identity  and  establishing  meaningful  communication  with  others  are  two  clear signs  of  a  healthy  personality.  Writing  is  self-expression,  but  it  is  fraught  with  problems.  In  writing the  story  of  Bai,  Madhu  is  extremely  conscious  of  the  difficulty  in  turning  Bai’s  Marathi  into  English,  ‘ the  language  I’m  going  to  write  the  book  in’  (SR-28).  But  her  attitude  to  English  itself  is  significant: “The  language  suits  me.  It  avoids  intimacy  and  familiarity  and  confers  a  formal  politeness  on  our relationship”  (SR-39).  Madhu  does  not  believe  in  the  efficacy  of  words  to  communicate.  Apart  from language,  there  is  the  additional  difficulty  of  having  to  ‘filter  out  what’s  irrelevant’  (SR28). The  problem  of  identity  is  sometimes  expressed  through  the  names  of  characters,  and  their  own consciousness  about  it.  Madhu,  like  Shashi,  is  a  man’s  name,  and  people  often  point  it  out.  For  Tony, to  be  called  Anthony  Gonsalves,  was  a  real  torture.  Munni  denies  her  name  of  Meenakshi  and  later turns  it  into  Shailaja.  Madhu  wonders:  “  if  she’s  Munni,  why  does  she  call  herself  Meenakshi?  And  if she  is  Meenakshi,  why  does  everyone  call  her  Munni?”(SR-31).  The  novelist  seems  to  be  inviting  our special  attention  to  the  strangeness  of  names,  again  as  in  the  case  of  Madhu’s  mother  and  her sisters,  who  all  have  the  names  of  rivers,  such  as  Sindhu,  Yamuna,  Narmada,  Kaveri,  and  so  on.
           

In  spite  of  Shashi  Deshpande’s  apparently  random  handling  of  events  and  incidents,  Small Remedies  manifests  a  very  clear  structural  organization.  The  problem  Madhu  faces  is  stated  in  the ‘Prologue’  itself.  After  the  death  of  Adit,  she  recalls  this  line  from  Eliot’s  Murder  in  the  Cathedral:  ‘  In the  life  of  one  man,  never  the  same  time  returns’.  And  she  adds:  “  The  line  tells  me  the  totality  of  loss, the  irrevocability  of  it”(SR-5).  Then  she  tries  to  write  the  biography  of  Savitribai,  and  her  main concern  is  to  discover  how  Bai  has  managed  to  live  without  her  child.  Finally  the  solution  appears  in the  last  lines  of  the  novel:  “  Memory,  capricious  and  unreliable  though  it  is,  ultimately  carries  its  own truth  within  it.  As  long  as  there  is  memory,  there’s  always  the  possibility  of  retrieval,  as  long  as  there is  memory,  loss  is  never  total”  (SR-324). Thus  we  see  that  both  these  novels  delineate  the  eternal  predicament  of  human  existence  through the  various  encounters  of  the  heroines  with  life.  As  Madhu  says:  “  It’s  always  a  losing  battle.  Such small  remedies,  these,  to  counter  the  terrible  disease  of  being  human,  of  being  mortal  and vulnerable”  (SR-181).  She  believes  that  “we  are  responsible  for  our  actions,  that  there  are  no  excuses we can  shelter  behind”  (SR-122).  Similarly  Jaya  also  believes  that  an  ‘act’  and  ‘retribution’  always ‘followed  each  other  naturally  and  inevitably’  (TLS-128).  But  they  know  that  one  cannot  escape through  amnesia.  Madhu  recalls  the  words  of  Joe,  the  words  which  helped  her  once  to  accept  her father’s  death;  the  same  words  enable  her  now  to  accept  her  son’s  death:  “  It  hasn’t  gone  anywhere, your  life  with  your  father  is  still  there,  it’ll  never  go  away”  (SR-324).  Jaya  has  also  learnt  that  though there  is  only  one  life,  “  in  that  life  itself  there  are  so  many  cross-roads,  so  many  choices”  (TLS-192). She  recalls  the  words  of  Krishna  to  Arjuna  –  ‘  Do  as  you  desire’  –  the  words  with  which  “Krishna confers  humanness  on  Arjuna”  (TLS-192).  Acknowledging  our  human  situation  in  its  entirety,  it seems,  is  the  only  victory  possible  to  us.

The mistress of spices by chitra banerjee divakaruni

 This post is reference by Dr  D.  B  Gavani.  Immigrant  Indian  Writers.  Ravi  Prakashan,  Gadag, 2011. 

I.  Introduction:   Chitra  Banerjee  Divakaruni  is  an  award-winning  author,  poet  and teacher.  Her  work  has  been  published  in  over  50  magazines,  including  the Atlantic  Monthly  and  The  New  Yorker,  and  her  writing  has  been  included in  over  50  anthologies.  Her  books  have  been  translated  into  29  languages, including  Dutch,  Hebrew  and  Japanese. Much  of  Divakaruni’s  works  deal  with  the  immigrant  experience, an  important  theme  in  the  mosaic  of  American  society.  Her  book Arranged  Marriage,  winner  of  an  American  Book  Award,  is  a  collection of  short  stories  about  women  from  India  caught  between  two  worlds.   In  The  Mistress  of  Spices,  named  one  of  the  best  books  of  the  20th Century  by  the  San  Francisco  Chronicle,  the  heroine  Tilo  provides  spices, not  only  for  cooking,  but  also  for  the  homesickness  and  alienation  that  the Indian  immigrants  in  her  shop  experience.  In  Sister  of  My  Heart,  two cousins—one  in  America,  the  other  in  India,  share  details  of  their  lives with  each  other  and  help  each  other  solve  problems  that  threaten  their marriages.  In  One  Amazing  Thing,  a  group  of  strangers  of  varied backgrounds,  trapped  by  an  earthquake  in  an  Indian  visa  office,  discover
         
    what  they  have  in  common  as  they  struggle  to  save  themselves. Divakaruni  writes  to  unite  people.  Her  aims  are  to  destroy  myths  and stereotypes.  She  hopes  through  her  writing  to  dissolve  boundaries between  people  of  different  backgrounds,  communities  and  ages. II. Plot :  Chitra  Banerjee  Divakaruni  presents  multiple  consciousnesses  as an  identity  that  is  in  between  such  oppositional  states,  characterized  by being  neither  rather  than  both.  In  The  Mistress  of  Spices,  the  process  of self-perception  is  the  foundation  of  identity  formation  for  the  central character  Tilotamma  (Tilo).  As  Tilo  strives  to  define  herself  as  South Asian  and  American,  she  develops  multiple  consciousnesses  that  manifest themselves  in  both  her  experiences  and  her  subsequent  relationships  with her  racial  and  sexual  identities.  While  Tilo  is  living  in  America,  she  is incapable  of  pure  self-perception,  and  can  only  see  herself  through  the eyes  of  those  around  her,  leaving  her  own  self-seeing  as  a  secondary  and almost  marginal  perspective.  Tilo  views  herself  through  the  lens  of  her surrounding  society,  thereby  leading  to  various  and  often  conflicting simultaneous  visions  of  her  identity. III. Magic Realism in The Mistress of Spices: The  Mistress  of  Spices  is  the  story  of  Tilo,  a  young  woman  born  in another  time,  in  a  faraway  place,  who  is  trained  in  the  ancient  art  of
          
spices  and  ordained  as  a  mistress  charged  with  special  powers.  Once  fully initiated  in  a  rite  of  fire,  the  now  immortal  Tilo--in  the  gnarled  and arthritic  body  of  an  old  woman--travels  through  time  to  Oakland, California,  where  she  opens  a  shop  from  which  she  administers  spices  as curatives  to  her  customers.  An  unexpected  romance  with  a  handsome stranger  eventually  forces  her  to  choose  between  the  supernatural  life  of an  immortal  and  the  vicissitudes  of  modern  life.  Spellbinding  and hypnotizing,  The  Mistress  of  Spices  is  a  tale  of  joy  and  sorrow  and  one special woman's magical powers. Mistress  of  Spices  is  a  story  of  a  girl  who  is  born  to  poor  parents and  regarded  as  a  one  who  will  again  put  her  parents  in  misery  as  they will  have  to  pay  dowry.  Little  did  they  know  at  the  time  of  her  birth  that she  is  born  with  supernatural  powers  of  foreseeing  future.  As  her  fame spread,  pirates  hear  about  her  and  abducts  her  one  day!  However,  she  was powerful  enough  to  overthrow  the  chief  and  became  the  queen  of  pirates. She  was  not  satisfied  and  when  in  search  of  peace,  she  comes  to  an  island where  she  is  to  become  the  Mistress  of  Spices  under  the  rigorous  training of  First  Mother. The  First  Mother  teaches  her  along  with  other  girls  all  about  the Spices.  These  spices  are  later  to  be  used  to  cure  other  peoples’  misery when  given  to  them  with  the  magical  chants.  Once  she  manages  to  learn all  those  Special  Powers,  she  is  to  run  a  Spice  Store  in  Oakland.  She  is
          
    
     given  the  name  ‘Tilo’.  Tilo  should  never  leave  the  store,  she  should  never use  the  powers  for  herself  but  for  others  to  help  and  last  but  not  the  least she  should  not  make  any  physical  contact  with  any  human  being.  As  the story  progresses,  readers  find  smaller  stories  intertwined  where  Tilo  uses her  powers  to  help  others.  While  helping  others,  she  is  so  taken  into  it  that one  after  another  she  starts  breaking  the  forbidden  rules  laid  for Mistresses.  Not  only  she  breaks  rules  but  she  also  allows  herself  to  fall  in love  with  a  lonely  American.   D.  B  Gavani  Commented:  “For  the  second  generation  Indian  like Geeta,  the  question  about  identity  is  differently  poised.  She  challenges continuous  identification  with  patriarchal  traditions  which  she  associates her  grandfather.  Tilo  empathizes  with  Geeta,  tries  to  assenge  their  pain and  the  novel  tells  us  that  she  succeeds  in  restoring  within  the  family” (Gavani,  79) At  first,  Tilo  allows  these  perceptions  of  herself  as  created  by others  to  dominate  her  thinking,  yet  as  she  assimilates  herself  to American  culture  throughout  the  course  of  the  text,  Tilo  comes  to  claim her  own  self-perception.  The  result  of  this  knowledge  is  Tilo's  recognition of  her  multiple  consciousnesses,  and  although  this  tiplicity  is  replete  with contradictions,  Divakaruni  nevertheless  presents  it  as  a  possible  solution for  Tilo's  dilemma  of  cross-cultural  identity  formation.  
         

An  older  woman  born  with  supernatural  shaman-like  abilities  in  a small  village  in  India,  Tilo's  gift  is  her  ability  to  elicit  specific  powers inherent  in  spices  and  use  them  to  cure  the  maladies  of  those  around  her. In  Tilo's  preteen  years,  pirates  storm  into  her  home,  murder  her  entire family  and  abduct  Tilo,  taking  her  on  board  their  ship  as  a  prisoner. Eventually,  Tilo  overthrows  the  pirate  captain  to  become  the  pirate “queen,  leading  [her]  pirates  to  fame  and  glory,  so  that  bards  sang  their fearless  exploits.”(TMOS,  20) But  Tilo  abandons  this  exalted  position  when  mystical  sea  serpents tell  her  about  the  existence  of  an  island  upon  which  she,  and  other  women like  her,  can  develop  their  supernatural  talents  to  use  them  for  a  greater good.  This  isolated  island  is  a  haven  for  these  women,  who  call themselves  the  “Mistresses  of  Spices”  and  are  under  the  care  of  the  First Mother,  the  eldest  and  wisest  teacher  of  all  the  women.  The  women  are trained  in  the  art  of  listening  and  controlling  the  spices,  and  are  then  sent forth  into  the  greater  world  to  aid  humanity.  After  Tilo  learns  all  that  she can,  she  is  sent  to  Oakland,  California,  to  a  tiny  Indian  spice  shop  where she  must  begin  her  duties  of  healing  the  masses.  Thus,  she  is  thrust  into the  chaos  of  American  life  and  the  newness  of  a  culture  to  which  she must  adapt.  Although  Tilo  has  already  begun  her  diasporic  journey,  she does  not  feel  the  loss  of  a  home,  but  rather  a  finding  of  many.  Tilo  sails
         
upon  a  ship  to  the  island  of  the  Mistresses,  a  reference  to  the  kalipani,  or dark  water,  the  term  used  in  order  to  describe  the  journey  made  by indentured  laborers  and  immigrants  from  the  motherland  of  India  to  other foreign  lands,  creating  what  we  today  refer  to  as  the  “diaspora.” Already,  Divakaruni  presents  Tilo  as  inextricably  mired  in  the workings  of  the  diaspora,  and  the  entire  notion  of  home  becomes displaced,  transformed  into  an  intangible  condition  that  is  not  based  on  a singular  location  but  rather  a  movement  among  many  places.  When  Tilo arrives  on  the  Island,  she  and  the  other  young  girls  like  her  are  given  new identities,  indicating  that  the  past  is  being  relegated  to  memory  and  new personas  are  being  forged.  Tilo  meets  the  First  Mother,  a  figure  who foreshadows  the  paradoxical  identity  that  Tilo  will  soon  find  herself grappling  with.   The  First  Mother  is  elderly  and  maternal,  representing  the traditionalist  notion  of  the  South  Asian  woman  in  the  domestic  sphere. Yet  at  the  same  time,  she  is  outside  the  boundaries  of  conventional culture,  for  she  lives  on  an  isolated  island,  possesses  magical  powers  and urges  the  young  girls  toward  progression  and  change  rather  than  the maintenance  of  the  status  quo.  She  is  at  once  the  old  world  and  the  new,  a juxtaposition  of  differing  geographical  spaces,  times  and  cultures.  Upon their  arrival,  the  First  Mother  tells  the  girls,  “Daughters  it  is  time  for  me to  give  you  your  new  names.  For  when  you  came  to  this  island  you  left your  old  names  behind,  and  have  remained  nameless  since.”  (TMOS,  42)
             
       D  B  Gavani  commented:  “Divakaruni  is  writing  the  script  of women’s  rebellion  against  the  pressure  to  suppress  their  desire  and  their bodies.  The  order  of  Mistresses  clearly  replicates  patriarchal  struggle  and Tilo  must  be  made  to  break  free  of  them.  She  struggles  with  her  own passions  as  she  builds  emotional  relationship  with  Native  American  man, whom  she  calls,  Raven.  She  transforms  herself  into  a  woman,  feeling guilty  about  her  self  indulge,  but  decides  to  brave  the  retribution  that  she would  have  to  face”  (Gavani,  80) Tilo,  the  mistress  of  spices  takes  her  name  from  Tilottam,  the divine  danseuse  in  Indra’s  court.  But  she  also  brings  another  meaning  to the  name.  She  associates  herself  with  till,  the  sesame  seed.  In  this  sense the  divine  and  the  earthly  are  united  into  Tilo.  When  she  decides  to  give up  the  divine  and  restrict  herself  only  to  the  human,  she  takes  another name  Maya,  a  name  with  profound  mythological  and  philosophical associations.  Maya,  in  Hindu  philosophy  is  feminine  and  is  the  principle behind  the  entire  material  universe.  The  material  universe  is  considered an  allusion.  When  Tilo  assumes  the  name  Maya,  she  once  again  reasserts her  earthly  and  feminine  character. Tilo  receives  her  new  name  and  identity,  leaving  her  childhood  in  a village  in  India  behind  her,  and  assuming  a  temporary  persona  that  is  of the  uncertain  present  rather  than  the  definitive  and  historical  past.  Tilo
            
spends  decades  learning  the  delicate  art  of  the  spices,  but  the  moment arrives  when  she  must  leave  the  island  and  continue  the  diasporic  journey she  has  begun.  Before  Tilo  is  sent  to  Oakland,  the  First  Mother  gives  her a  knife  as  a  gift,  the  purpose  of  which  Tilo  believes  is  “...to  cut  my moorings  from  the  past,  the  future.  To  keep  me  always  rocking  at  sea” (TMOS,  53) Tilo  has  entered  a  state  of  liminality,  a  space  between  the  past  and the  future  and  without  a  precise  knowledge  of  where  the  present.  She  is unmoored  and  treading  the  dark  waters  between  the  lands  of  her  past  and the  lands  of  her  future,  a  theme  that  will  reappear  throughout  in  the  text's representations  of  the  relationship  between  time  and  space. The  Island  is  the  first  diasporic  space  that  we  encounter,  and  while it  exhibits  the  same  liminality  and  ambiguity  as  America  does, Divakaruni  clearly  genders  the  island  differently  than  she  later  will America.  The  Island  exudes  femininity  -  specifically,  Divakaruni constructs  it  as  a  maternal  space  with  the  figure  of  the  First  Mother  and the  presence  of  only  females  on  the  island.  The  Island  nurtures  Tilo, educating  and  preparing  her  for  the  next  stage  of  life  she  will  encounter when  she  leaves,  and  also  imbuing  Tilo  with  a  sense  of  singularity  of identity.  While  its  women  learn  and  grow,  the  Island  itself  never  changes- the  daily  routines  of  the  Mistresses  remain  the  same  and  an  ambiance  of

That long silence by shashi deshpande

Kingmaker surya posts Shashi  Deshpande’s  Small  Remedies  is  a  self-conscious  novel  which  has  internalized  a sophisticated  awareness  of  current  literary  theory;  it  presents  many  of  the  contemporary  issues which  a  woman writer  has  to  face  in  her  life  as  well  as  work.  Like  many  postmodern  novels  of  today, it  problematizes  the  relationship  between  fiction  and  reality,  and  delineates  the  role  of  language  in our  attempts  to  construct  our  own  realities.  She  has  realized  that  though  the  really  important aspects  of  life  defy  verbalization,  there  seems  to  be  a  genuine  relationship  between  the  process  of fictionalization  through  words  and  our  own  attempts  to  organize  personal  experiences  through memory.  So  this  novel  is  as  much  about  novel  writing  as  it  is  about  the  characters  who  inhabit  the fictional  world.  This  is  the  kind  of  novel  which  presents  a  problem,  analyzes  it,  and  posits  a  kind  of solution  so  that  the  focus  is  on  the  psychological  process  of  becoming  a  mature  person.  The desperate  search  for  meaning,  the  effort  to  find  a  sense  of  one’s  identity  and  one’s  relationship  to  the world  outside,  culminates  in  the  realization  that  loss  is  never  total,  and  it  is  essential  to  realize  it because,  in  any  event,  life  has  to  be  made  possible.  The  task  of  re-integrating  a  fragmented  person involves  an  inevitable  sliding  into  chaos,  into  madness,  and  what  emerges  as  an  urgent  need  is  a  call for  re-evaluating  and  re-assessing  many  of  the  accepted  values  behind  the  stereotyped  roles  we ascribe  to  ourselves.  This  paper  proposes  to  show  how  this  philosophical  need  to  accept  the inevitable  is  psychologically  made  viable  through  an  analysis  of  the  fictional  mode  of  representation. Madhu,  the  heroine  of  Small  Remedies,  has  lost  her  only  son  Adit,  and  she  is  trying  to  get  over  the paralyzing  sense  of  shock  by  writing  the  biography  of  the  famous  singer  Savitribai,  for  which  she has  come  to  Bhavanipur  where  she  is  staying  with  a  young  couple,  Hari  and  Lata.  On  the  one  hand, we have  the  actual  story  of  Madhu  and  what  happens  to  her  at  Bhavanipur,  like  her  visits  to  Bai,  her relationship  with  Lata  and  Hari,  the  paralytic  stroke  that  attacks  Bai,  how  Madhu  is  once  attacked  by a  group  of  people,  and  so  on,  all  these  shown  as  happening  in  the  present.  On  the  other  hand,  there
         
         
is  the  story  of  Savitribai,  as  told  by  Bai  but  re-interpreted  by  Madhu,  which  is  interspersed  with memories  of  Madhu’s  own  past,  starting  from  the  days  when  Bai  was  her  neighbour  to  the  day  she lost  her  son.  There  is  a  lot  that  is  common  to  both  Madhu  and  Bai.  Bai’s  daughter  Munni  was Madhu’s  childhood  friend,  and  by  a  strange  coincidence,  she  too  was  killed  in  the  same  bomb  blast as  her  own  son  Adit.  But  Bai  had  renounced  Munni  long  before  her  actual  death;  she  acknowledged neither  Munni  as  her  daughter  nor  Madhu  as  Munni’s  friend;  and  Madhu  is  probing  through  the external  facade  of  indifference  to  arrive  at  her  actual  feelings.  Both  of  them  are  artists:  one  a novelist,  the  other  a  singer;  both  are  childless  mothers;  thus  Madhu’s  attempts  to  bring  out  the woman or the  mother  behind  the  successful  artist  in  Bai  is  really  an  attempt  to  understand  her  own self.  More  importantly,  besides  being  the  story  of  Madhu  and  Bai,  this  novel  reveals  the  way  in  which novels  are  written:  how  Madhu  listens  to  the  words  of  Bai  but  interprets  them  in  her  own  way,  often stressing  the  pauses  and  silences  in  Bai’s  narrative,  bringing  into  this  operation  her  own  knowledge of  human  nature  in  general  and  her  knowledge  of  Bai  in  particular.  Thus  the  autobiography  of  the subject  merges  with  the  biography  of  the  object,  revolving  round  the  central  principles  of  imaginative reconstruction,  thereby  tracing  the  evolution  of  the  story  from  the  totality  of  loss  to  the  possibility  of retrieval  through  memory. Small  Remedies  employs  the  same  philosophical  principles  of  literary  composition  as  That  Long Silence  so  that  it  will  not  be  an  exaggeration  to  suggest  that  both  novels  are  simply  variations  of  the same  theme.  There  is  a  sense  in  which  it  can  be  said  that  Jaya  is  potential  Madhu.  While  Jaya resists  her  attraction  towards  Kamat,  Madhu  yields  to  the  painter.  Both  are  writers,  both  treat  the process  of  fictionalization  as  the  inevitable  path  to  overcome  their  loneliness,  despair  and fragmentation.  Both  are  dangerously  possessive,  both  of  them  are  strongly  attached  to  their  fathers, the  transition  is  brought  about  for  both  by  a  catastrophe  –  the  shattering  of  the  stable  routine  for Jaya  by  the  imminent  dismissal  of  Mohan,  and  the  death  of  her  son  for  Madhu.  Both  slip  into  a temporary  period  of  insanity  from  which  they  slowly  emerge  as  integrated  persons.  While  Madhu loses  her  son  and  feels  guilty  about  it,  Jaya  has  opted  for  an  abortion  and  continues  to  feel  guilt. Towards  the  end  of  That  Long  Silence,  Jaya,  wondering  what  she  has  achieved  by  this  writing, concludes:  “  I’m  not  afraid  anymore.  The  panic  has  gone.  I’m  Mohan’s  wife,  I  had  thought,  and  cut  off the  bits  off  me  that  had  refused  to  be  Mohan’s  wife.  Now  I  know  that  kind  of  fragmentation  is  not possible”  For  Jaya,  as  for  Madhu,  writing  is  a  vital  process  whereby  she  is  trying  to  order
                 

and  organize  her  life  so  as  to  bring  some  sense  to  her  existence.  She  has  to  let  go  the  illusion  of happiness  as  she  discerns  the  gap  between  her  mental  picture  of  a  happy  family  and  the  actuality  of hostile  relations  in  her  own  family.  She  realizes  that  she  is  like  the  sparrow  in  the  story  of  the  crow and  the  sparrow:  they  build  their  houses  with  dung  and  wax  respectively.  When  the  crow’s  house  is washed  away  in  the  rain,  and  as  he  comes  knocking  at  the  door  of  the  sparrow,  he  is  kept  out  for long  under  several  pretexts.  Finally  the  sparrow  lets  the  crow  in  and  invites  him  to  warm  himself  on the  pan  on  which  she  has  just  made  the  chapattis.  The  poor  crow  hops  on  to  it  and  is  burnt  to  death. Like  the  sparrow,  Jaya  had  thought  that  the  way  to  be  safe  is  to  stay  at  home,  look  after  the  babies and  keep  out  the  rest  of  the  world.  “  I  know  better  now.  I  know  that  safety  is  always  unattainable. You’re  never  safe”  (TLS-17).  Now  she  begins  to  see  herself  in  a  totally  different  perspective.  She begins  to  see  things  in  her  own  unique  way.  For  example,  when  Mohan  narrates  how  his  father  used to  ill-treat  his  mother,  and  thinking  of  his  mother’s  stoic  response  to  his  cruelty,  Mohan  saw  “strength in  the  woman  sitting  silently  in  front  of  the  fire”,  but  Jaya  saw  only  ‘despair’  (TLS-36).  Look  at  the  way she  records  her  own  method  of  reconstruction:  “This  is  not  Mohan’s  story  entirely.  I’m  writing  it down,  I  have  put  together  so  many  things  –  things  he  told  me,  things  he  left  unsaid  as  he  told  me this  story,  things  I  have  imagined  myself,  and  the  expression  on  his  face  as  he  spoke  to  me”  (TLS-3435).  This  is  precisely  the  method  Madhu  uses  in  writing  the  story  of  Savitribai.  The  version  Bai  gives is  different  from  the  one  Madhu  is  building  up.  While  Munni  sticks  to  her  own  version  of  ‘the  truth’, Hasina  gives  her  truths  about  her  grandfather  Ghulam  Saab  whom  she  knows  better  than  anyone else  does  and  so  she  alone  can  give  the  complete  truth  about  him.  “  It  is  important  for  her  to  correct the  idea  that  I  have  of  his  role  in  Bai’s  life”  (SR-273).  Madhu  is  fully  aware  of  the  subjectivity  of  her version  and  the  relativity  of  truth:  “I  think  of  the  seven  blind  men  trying  to  describe  the  elephant,  each one  making  a  different  discovery  about  the  animal,  each  convinced  that  his  knowledge  about  the elephant  is  the  entire  truth”  (SR-278).  So  she  has  to  discover  her  own  truth  from  the  different  bits  of information  offered  to  her  in  order  to  “create  an  elephant  out  of  these  disparate  bits”(SR-278). It  is  this  very  same  method  Madhu  and  Jaya  use  in  telling  their  stories.  Further,  it  must  be  added  that far  from  being  a  purely  literary  method,  it  is  the  very  method,  which  enables  Madhu  to  understand other  people.  She  learns  about  Lata  from  the  way  she  hands  out  ‘random  slices  of  her  life  to  the other  person,  wholly  ignoring  the  spaces  between  them,  explaining  nothing’  (SR-40).  Similarly,  when Bai  is  telling  her  story,  Madhu  is  aware  of  ‘the  gaps  in  her  story’,  that  ‘she  is  following  the  one
                  
straight  line  of  her  pursuit  of  her  Guruji’s,  bypassing  everything  else’  (SR-129);  so  her  task  involves filling  these  gaps.  Madhu’s  reflexive  comments  on  the  complex  nature  of  writing  are  worth  quoting: I’ve  realized  that  there  are  three  books  here.  Firstly,  there’s  Bai’s  book,  the  book  Bai wants  to  be  written,  in  which  she  is  the  heroine,  the  spotlight  shining  on  her  and  her alone.  .  .  .  Then  there’s  Maya  and  Yogi’s  book.  A  controversial  one.  Trendy.  Politically correct,  with  a  feminist  slant.  .  .  .  And  there’s  my  book,  the  one  I’m  still  looking  for.  It’s evading  me,  not  giving  me  a  hold  anywhere.  (SR-125) Thus  we  see  that  there  are  several  narrators  in  this  novel.  Madhu  is  obviously  the  chief  narrator. Then  there  is  Savitribai,  giving  her  own  version  of  her  life  as  a  singer,  Hasina  modifying  it  by  giving her  version  of  Ghulam  Saab’s  story  and  his  role  in  Bai’s  life,  Munni  with  her  ‘stubborn  adherence  to her  own  truth’  (SR-77),  and  so  on.  What  distinguishes  Madhu  from  other  narrators  is  her  singular status  as  the  one  who  not  only  reports  the  other  stories  but  also  performs  the  task  of  fitting  the various  pieces  to  solve  the  jigsaw  puzzle.  While  filling  the  position  of  the  author  to  her  own  story,  she fulfills  the  creative  role  of  the  ‘reader’  to  the  other  stories,  and  assimilates  them  into  the  main narrative.  Hers  is  the  only  voice,  which  refuses  to  be  monologic. It  is  not  an  easy  task.  Bai  is  still  suffering  from  the  residual  effects  of  a  cardiac  stroke,  and  Madhu has  to  grope  her  way  ‘through  the  density  of  words  to  get  at  her  meaning’  (SR-61).  By  excluding Munni  and  Ghulam  Saab  from  the  story,  she  is  presenting  ‘her  own  illusion  of  her  life’  (SR-78).  Once Madhu  told  her  that  she  was  discussing  her  with  Hasina,  and  Bai  became  angry;  she  insisted  on  her exclusive  right  to  tell  her  story  –  her  portrait  of  the  artist  as  a  young  woman.  She  asked  Madhu  not  to write  about  the  old  woman  that  she  is  now.  Bai  is  interested  in  projecting  only  that  part  of  her  young self  in  pursuit  of  her  goal  of  becoming  an  artist  as  her  true  self.  She  seems  to  have  severed  the connection  between  the  artist  and  the  woman,  and  Madhu  wonders  whether  Bai  faces  “the  truth  that confronts  me  every  moment  of  my  life  –  the  futility  of  life  without  children”(SR-154).  Madhu  feels that  Bai  is  ‘a  nasty,  tyrannical  creature’  (SR-61);  often  she  wonders:  “  what  kind  of  a  woman  are  you, denying  your  own  child?”(SR-78).  At  one  moment  Bai  appears  to  be  ‘the  heroine  of  a  passionate, beautiful  story;  at  other  times,  she  is  just  ‘a  calculating,  ambitious  woman,  using  the  man  for  her  own ends,  abandoning  him  finally  when  her  need  for  him  is  over’  (SR-176).  She  formulates  her  task  like this:  “I  have  to  negotiate  my  way  between  this  woman  and  the  cruel  mother  of  my  memory.  Between this  woman  and  the  dazzlingly  beautiful  singer  with  her  lover,  whom  she  kept  purposefully  in  the background  So  if  she  introduces  Munni  into  Bai’s  story,  it  is  like  saying:  this  is  how  it  was.
            

But  do  we  always  know  why  we do things?  “  Child  though  I  was,  I  had  the  wisdom  to  know  you  don’t need  to  know  everything  about  a  person”(SR-175).  As  she  is  aware  of  the  power  of  the  writer-creator, she  is  wary  of  trapping  and  sealing  her  into  an  identity  she  creates  for  her.  Instead  of  imposing  her own  vision  over  Bai’s  story,  she  wants  to  capture  her  essence  in  all  its  contradictory  aspects  –  as  a rebel,  a  feminist,  an  artist,  a  woman  who  gave  up  everything  for  love,  a  mother  who  denies  her  own child,  an  ambitious  woman  who  uses  men  to  further  her  own  ends,  and  so  on.  “Then  where  is  the  real Bai?  The  pampered  child?  The  young  girl  who  discovered  what  her  life  was  going  to  be?  The  young woman who abandoned  her  child  and  eloped  with  her  lover?  The  great  musician,  the  successful Savitribai  Indorekar?”(SR-283).  And  her  answer  is:  “All  of  them,  of  course.  It’s  always  a  palimpsest, so  many layers,  one  superimposed  on  another,  none  erased,  all  of  them  still  there”  (SR-283).  It  is  not even  necessary  that  she  understand  everything:  “  Some  mysteries  have  to  remain  unsolved,  some answers  will  never  come”(SR-322).  The  only  way  to  arrive  at  the  truth  is  through  imaginative reconstruction  the  rules  of  which  are  exactly  the  same  as  those  we  use  in  our  daily  life.  “  Fiction, then,  it  seems,  is  inevitable”(SR-169). In  writing  the  story  of  Bai,  Madhu  is  really  engaged  in  the  act  of  self-discovery.  Madhu  explains  it thus: We see our  lives  through  memory  and  memories  are  fractured,  fragmented,  almost always  cutting  across  time.  .  .  .  Truly,  dreams  are  the  stuff  of  life,  the  hidden  truth  that lies  beneath  the  hard  reality.  Invention,  creation,  is  sometimes  the  greater,  possibly  the best  part,  of  reality.  Even  to  write  our  own  stories,  we  need  to  invent.  (SR165) This  is  the  kind  of  novel  Jaya  would  have  written.  When  Mohan  was  displeased  with  her  first  story, she  opted  for  the  unproblematic  enterprise  of  writing  humorous  pieces  like  ‘Seeta’,  thereby  shutting out  all  the  other  women  who  were  clamouring  for  attention.  By  the  end  of  the  novel,  Jaya  emerges  as an  integrated  person,  a  woman  who  can  speak  for  herself  in  her  own  language.  Her  creativity  is liberated:  the  novel  itself  is  testimony  to  it.  Jaya  has  written  the  novel  in  which  she  herself  is  the main  character.  She  has  learnt  to  speak,  to  listen,  and  to  erase  the  silence.  She  has  learnt,  as  she says,  “to  retrace  my  way  back  through  the  disorderly,  chaotic  sequence  of  events  and  non-events that  made  up  my  life”(TLS-187).  Small  Remedies  gives  expression  to  all  those  women  held  silent within  Jaya.

              
                  That  Long  Silence  is  obviously  the  story  of  Jaya  from  a  single  perspective  –  that  of  Jaya’s.  But towards  the  end  of  the  novel,  she  ponders  over  a  few  interesting  questions:  “But  why  am  I  making myself  the  heroine  of  this  story?  Why  do  I  presume  that  the  understanding  is  mine  alone?  Isn’t  it possible  that  Mohan  too  means  something  more  by  ‘all  well’  than  going  back  to  where  we  were? (TLS-193).  As  if  in  answer  to  these  questions,  Small  Remedies  displays  the  multiple  versions  of  her palimpsest  story.  Madhu  is  Jaya  awakened. Despite  the  superficial  similarities,  Jaya  and  Madhu,  it  seems,  are  speaking  about  the  same  woman, the  same  things,  same  problems.  Both  novels  end  on  a  similar  note:  Mohan  returns  to  Jaya,  Madhu returns  to  her  husband  Som.  Though  they  have  become  different  persons  now,  though  their  lives  are going  to  be  qualitatively  different,  they  are  bent  on  starting  a  new  life,  both  for  themselves  and  their husbands. Shashi  Deshpande  highlights  the  Indian  tradition  in  suggesting  the  continuity  of  family  life  despite the  threatening  darkness  which  surrounds  our  lives.  It  is  not  accidental  that  the  solutions  come  from our  ancient  sages.  While  Jaya  draws  strength  from  the  words  of  Krishna  to  Arjuna  in  the  Gita,  Madhu understands  the  meaning  of  ‘Putra-Moha’,  an  expression  she  hears  from  Som’s  father,  which  is  not love,  but  ‘obsession’,  which  involves  ‘confusion,  ignorance,  illusion  and  pain’  (SR-188).  She  learns from  Akka’s  ‘drishti’  ceremony  –‘the  ritual  to  ward  off  the  evil  eye’  (SR-189)  –  where  the  chant  asks the  child  to  be  protected  from  neighbours,  strangers,  and  so  on,  including  fathers  and  mothers.  Now she  learns  that  it  is  ‘from  those  who  love  us  that  we  need  to  be  protected’  (SR-190),  because  it  is  with them  that  we  become  vulnerable  and  defenseless. One  of  the  distinctive  features  of  both  these  novels  is  its  subtle  manipulation  of  female  psychology. In  terms  of  Freudian  psychology,  Jaya  and  Madhu  manifest  clear  signs  of  Electra  complex.  Both  are strongly  attached  to  their  fathers.  Jaya  harbours  a  grudge  against  her  mother  for  making  her homeless  by  selling  their  house  after  her  father’s  death.  Her  grouse  against  her  father  is  simply  that he  died.  His  death  shatters  her  completely.  Again,  she  cannot  relate  herself  to  her  daughter  Rati  but she  is  very  sensitive  to  the  needs  of  her  son  Rahul.  There  is  a  constant  bickering  between  Mohan and  Rahul,  but  Mohan  can  never  perceive  that  quarrels  between  fathers  and  sons  is  the  most  natural thing  in  the  Freudian  world.  This  becomes  more  prominent  in  Small  Remedies.  Even  though  Som and  Adit  get  along  very  well,  and  though  Madhu  remarks  that  it  upsets  Freud’s  theory,  her  own attachment  to  her  father,  and  her  clinging  to  her  son  are  essentially  Freudian.  For  example,  when
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Munni  tells  her  that  her  father  has  a  mistress,  she  cuts  off  all  connection  with  Munni  immediately. Such  strong  reaction  is  more  that  of  a  wife  than  that  of  a  daughter.  It  is  interesting  to  note  that  her first  sexual  affair  was  at  the  time  of  her  father’s  death,  with  a  man  who  was  her  father’s  special friend,  a  kind  of  father  figure  to  her.  The  fact  that  he  had  once  painted  her  picture  as  a  child  is  a metaphorical  way  of  indicating  him  as  her  father-creator.  Perhaps  the  imminence  of  her  father’s death  had  liberated  the  suppressed  desire  in  her  to  possess  him.  The  act  of  sex  with  the  painter  is her  way  of  claiming  her  father  back.  As  it  is  a  forbidden  one,  she  soon  forgets  the  incident.  Som finds  it  difficult  to  believe  that  she  could  so  easily  have  forgotten  her  first  sexual  experience.  Even the  readers  may  find  it  a  little  unnatural.  The  whole  thing  can  make  sense  only  when  viewed  as  a forbidden  fact  suppressed  and  relegated  to  the  backstage  by  her  subconscious  mind.  The  memory returns  to  her  after  several  years  in  a  dream,  where  the  corpse  inside  the  gunnysack  is  obviously  the memory  buried  deep  inside  her.  Her  clinging  attachment  to  her  son  is  also  typically  Oedipal;  Hari  is  a son-figure  to  Madhu,  and  the  figure  is  reinforced  when  he  mutters  ‘Adityaya  namaha’  which  revives in  her  memories  of  her  dead  son  Adit,  and  that  must  be  why  she  recoils  at  the  comforting  touch  of Hari. Discovering  one’s  identity  and  establishing  meaningful  communication  with  others  are  two  clear signs  of  a  healthy  personality.  Writing  is  self-expression,  but  it  is  fraught  with  problems.  In  writing the  story  of  Bai,  Madhu  is  extremely  conscious  of  the  difficulty  in  turning  Bai’s  Marathi  into  English,  ‘ the  language  I’m  going  to  write  the  book  in’  (SR-28).  But  her  attitude  to  English  itself  is  significant: “The  language  suits  me.  It  avoids  intimacy  and  familiarity  and  confers  a  formal  politeness  on  our relationship”  (SR-39).  Madhu  does  not  believe  in  the  efficacy  of  words  to  communicate.  Apart  from language,  there  is  the  additional  difficulty  of  having  to  ‘filter  out  what’s  irrelevant’  (SR28). The  problem  of  identity  is  sometimes  expressed  through  the  names  of  characters,  and  their  own consciousness  about  it.  Madhu,  like  Shashi,  is  a  man’s  name,  and  people  often  point  it  out.  For  Tony, to  be  called  Anthony  Gonsalves,  was  a  real  torture.  Munni  denies  her  name  of  Meenakshi  and  later turns  it  into  Shailaja.  Madhu  wonders:  “  if  she’s  Munni,  why  does  she  call  herself  Meenakshi?  And  if she  is  Meenakshi,  why  does  everyone  call  her  Munni?”(SR-31).  The  novelist  seems  to  be  inviting  our special  attention  to  the  strangeness  of  names,  again  as  in  the  case  of  Madhu’s  mother  and  her sisters,  who  all  have  the  names  of  rivers,  such  as  Sindhu,  Yamuna,  Narmada,  Kaveri,  and  so  on.
            

In  spite  of  Shashi  Deshpande’s  apparently  random  handling  of  events  and  incidents,  Small Remedies  manifests  a  very  clear  structural  organization.  The  problem  Madhu  faces  is  stated  in  the ‘Prologue’  itself.  After  the  death  of  Adit,  she  recalls  this  line  from  Eliot’s  Murder  in  the  Cathedral:  ‘  In the  life  of  one  man,  never  the  same  time  returns’.  And  she  adds:  “  The  line  tells  me  the  totality  of  loss, the  irrevocability  of  it”(SR-5).  Then  she  tries  to  write  the  biography  of  Savitribai,  and  her  main concern  is  to  discover  how  Bai  has  managed  to  live  without  her  child.  Finally  the  solution  appears  in the  last  lines  of  the  novel:  “  Memory,  capricious  and  unreliable  though  it  is,  ultimately  carries  its  own truth  within  it.  As  long  as  there  is  memory,  there’s  always  the  possibility  of  retrieval,  as  long  as  there is  memory,  loss  is  never  total”  (SR-324). Thus  we  see  that  both  these  novels  delineate  the  eternal  predicament  of  human  existence  through the  various  encounters  of  the  heroines  with  life.  As  Madhu  says:  “  It’s  always  a  losing  battle.  Such small  remedies,  these,  to  counter  the  terrible  disease  of  being  human,  of  being  mortal  and vulnerable”  (SR-181).  She  believes  that  “we  are  responsible  for  our  actions,  that  there  are  no  excuses we can  shelter  behind”  (SR-122).  Similarly  Jaya  also  believes  that  an  ‘act’  and  ‘retribution’  always ‘followed  each  other  naturally  and  inevitably’  (TLS-128).  But  they  know  that  one  cannot  escape through  amnesia.  Madhu  recalls  the  words  of  Joe,  the  words  which  helped  her  once  to  accept  her father’s  death;  the  same  words  enable  her  now  to  accept  her  son’s  death:  “  It  hasn’t  gone  anywhere, your  life  with  your  father  is  still  there,  it’ll  never  go  away”  (SR-324).  Jaya  has  also  learnt  that  though there  is  only  one  life,  “  in  that  life  itself  there  are  so  many  cross-roads,  so  many  choices”  (TLS-192). She  recalls  the  words  of  Krishna  to  Arjuna  –  ‘  Do  as  you  desire’  –  the  words  with  which  “Krishna confers  humanness  on  Arjuna”  (TLS-192).  Acknowledging  our  human  situation  in  its  entirety,  it seems,  is  the  only  victory  possible  to