Malti Agrawal
Manju Kapur’s Home: A Chronicle of Urban Middle Class In India
In the first conference of Progressive Writers Association, held in Lucknow on 13th April, 1936, the social responsibility of writers was ascertained and a manifesto was adopted according to which “it is the duty of Indian writers to give full expression to the changes taking place in Indian life and promote scientific and radical outlook and set such critical standards that could adequately combat outdated ideas and beliefs about family, religion, sex, war and society. It is incumbent upon them to check the growth of such ideas and trends, which advocate communalism, racial prejudice and human exploitation” (Qtd. Akhtar 149). The Post-Colonial Indian English novelists, keeping themselves close to the manifesto of the first conference of Progressive Writers Association, studied the changing scenario of Indian families where women are not merely passive entities but fight for their identity, selfhood, individuality and emotional independence.
In Post-Independent India, the archetypal image of woman is changing rapidly and now she is trying to lay claims for more space within the familial bonds. The fictional works of the women writers like Kamala Markandaya, Shashi Deshpande, Rama Mehta, Nayantara Sahgal, Anita Desai, Manju Kapur and others study the problems of women in a patriarchal structure where men are the dominant sex and the cultural construction and social mechanism perpetuate gender inequality. These writers reflect various facets of the struggle of woman’s autonomy.
Manju Kapur, a professor of English at Miranda House in Delhi, is a new entrant in the world of Indian English fiction. This emerging new novelist has three novels to her credit. Her first novel, Difficult Daughters published in 1998, received the Commonwealth Award for the Eurasian region and established her as a chronicler of Urban Middle Class of India. In her second novel A Married Woman published in 2002, Manju Kapur maintained her earlier practice of narrating the tales of Urban Middle Class in India. Home, her third novel published in 2006, also excelled in depicting the real picture of a Delhite trader’s family. Suresh Kohli (the reviewer of Home) calls it “a worthy successor to her earlier attempts in the same direction” (189).
Manju Kapur has created ripples in the literary world by her three novels. All her three novels have been laid in the backdrop of some or the other important Indian historical event which eventually helps the writer to highlight the inner turmoil of the urban middle class family in question. Nevertheless Kapur has vividly painted the sufferings of the females in such fragmented middle class families.
Like many other Indian women writers, she voices the trails and tribulations of her female characters who, no doubt, recognize the primal essence of family bond but are conscious of their individuality. While living in the suffocating atmosphere of the traditional values of middle-class constraints, Kapur’s heroines-Viramati, Astha and Nisha-all strive to assert themselves. These heroines give us a rare glimpse of a modernized (or perhaps westernized) Indian woman who in her aggression may enter into a scandalous relationship with her married neighbour, the Professor or develop lesbian relationship as Virmati does in Difficult Daughters and Astha in A Married Woman respectively. But Nisha in Home is different from her predecessors. Though she disagrees to the stereotyped values of her lower middle class joint family, she does not pick up any corrupt value rather she takes the road of self-reliance as she knows that the economic independence will save her individuality.
Home, this latest novel of Kapur, details Nisha’s (the female protagonist of Home) search for a home i.e. search for a place of shelter and security. Unfortunately to women in India, home is not a place of comfort and relaxation and it does not ensure them any emotional security, nonetheless, it sometimes does not provide them any physical security. The novel unravels the story of an ordinary middle class joint family’s life in Delhi. Kiran Nagarkar’s comment, given on the backside of the jacket of the novel, provides an insight into the silent strife which often goes on in middle class Indian families-‘Manju Kapur is one of the most perceptive chroniclers of the microcosm of the nation state : the joint family. The narrative voice is deceptively soft, for Kapur lays it all bare-conflicting loyalties, intrigues, triumphs and tragedies”. Nilanjana Roy’s comment indented again on the jacket of the text confirms Nagarkar’s view-“Few writers have explored the complex terrain of the Indian family with as much insight and affection as Manju Kapur. She describes the small rebellion and intense power struggles with a knowledge of the human heart that is at once compelling and terrifying.” Generally, in Pre-independent and even in the Post independent era, joint families in India had tranquil world where the head of the family, obviously a patriarch, adhered to the traditional values and believed that “men work out of the home, women within”, where women were supposed to follow the old ways unquestioningly. But gradually spread of education and the light of the new world made these women aware of their rights and they began to raise their voice against this undemocratic setup. Kapur’s new novel Home resonates with such complex themes.
Like her first two novels, Difficult Daughters and A Married Woman, in Home also Kapur describes a Punjabi middle class family, uprooted through the partition. The novel opens with an introduction to the joint family which forms the prologue to the novel. The novelist writes, “The Banwari Lal family belonged to a class whose skills had been honed over generations to ensure prosperity in the market-place. Their marriages augmented , their habits conserved. From an early age children were trained to maintain the foundation on which these homes rested. The education they received, the values they imbibed, the alliances they made had everything to do with protecting the steady stream of gold and silver that burnished their lives. Those who fell against the grain found in their homes knives that wounded, and once the damage had been done, gestures that reconciled” (1).
Lala Banwari Lal who owns a cloth shop in Karol Bagh is a Punjabi refugee from Pakistan. His cloth shop in Lahore was destroyed by the communal forces. He with his son, a daughter and pregnant wife came to Karol Bagh where he now lives with two sons Yashpal and Pyare Lal. Yashpal, the elder son, falls in love with a girl of ordinary family. The boy’s mother wails and calls the girl a witch since in traditional business families marriages are arranged with great care where “The bride had to bring a dowry, come from the same background and understand the value of togetherness” (4).
But the father, a practical business, approves his son’s choice since he knows how to save the family from fragmentation. He knows, “This was not a democracy, in which freewheeling individualism could be allowed to wreck what was being so carefully built. United we stand, divided energy, time and money are squandered” (7). Soon the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law syndrome gets momentum, when two years passed and Sona couldn’t be pregnant. How the problem of childlessness or curse of barrenness pinches every female in a middle class family in India is presented with pictorial narration. Her humbleness and fair skin are of no use if she fails to give birth to a son who can forward the family line. She in her agitation prays her favourite image of God, the little Krishna. She mutters, “Please, I am growing old, bless us with a child, girl or boy, I do not care, but I cannot bear the emptiness in my heart” (20). Sona tolerates the taunts of her mother-in-law. Soon Pyrare Lal’s marriage with a rich man’s daughter fills Sona with a sense of inferiority when she thinks of her own marriage which was very poor in gifts.
Lala Banwari Lal who is a strong supporter of joint family does not allow his younger daughter-in-law to cook upstairs because he knows that “Separate kitchens led to a sense of mine and yours, dissatisfaction, emotional division, and an eventual parting of the ways” (13). The strength of the joint family lies in eating together-“If families did not even eat together, what was the point of living as a unit? you might as well emigrate, pursuing your autonomy in lonely isolation” (13). The story takes a turn when Banwari Lal’s daughter dies and her ten-year-old son, Vicky, is pushed towards Sona. Despite her unwillingness, she is made a mother of a borrowed child. In joint families, the personal likings and dislikings do not matter. “I want my own child”, are the unheard melodies whom nobody pays attention to as it is the kismet of a woman in a traditional family to go without choices.
Sona continues to be the reluctant mother of the poor orphaned boy. One day she discovered she has conceived. She gives birth to a daughter. But she becomes the most blessed of her life when she becomes the mother of a son who can carry on the family name. Poor Sona feels secure only after delivering a male child.
The novel revolves around the story of Nisha, the young daughter of Yashpal and Sona. Kapur raises multiple issues which often raise the eyebrows of modern woman. Nisha, since childhood, faces the evil of gender discrimination when like her brother, she is not allowed to ride a tricycle and go out. The following excerpt from the text bears testimony to this discrimination, observed by most of the middle class families in India-
“Nisha set up a wail. ‘I want to go too’.
‘You can’t’, said her mother shortly.
‘Why ? Why can’t I ?’
‘It is better for girls to remain inside’.
‘Why ?’
‘You will got black and dirty’.
‘So what ? Raju is black. Blacker than Vicky’ (52).
Mark the answer made by the mother-‘Raju is the colour of Krishna’. But the girl retorts, “He is not. Krishna is blue’ (52). She insists on her mother to allow her to go out and play cricket. She says, ‘I also want to be the colour of Krishna. I am going to play cricket in the sun’. ‘Krishna is a god. You, you will look like the sweeper woman who comes to the house, you want to look like a Kali bhainsi ?” (52). Moreover, Nisha’s mother reminds her of the duties a woman has to perform. She comments, “This is the life of a woman to look after her home, her husband, her children and give them food she has cooked with her own hands” (127). Sona wants her daughter to be grounded in the tradition that would make her a wife worth living. She wants that “the art of service and domesticity should shine in her daughter so brightly that she would overcome her negative karma to be a beacon in her married home” (129). She knows that a girl’s real education is in the kitchen. Moreover, a girl has no right to choose her place of happiness. Sona states clearly, “What is there in happiness? A girl has to be happy everywhere” (135).
Besides, Kapur hints to certain other evils also which go on breeding in these middle class joint families. Home which refers to a place where people live together and are cared for by others assumes different nuances in Kapur’s Home. Home is usually supposed to be a place where people feel relaxed and comfortable but Nisha in her own home is sexually abused by her own cousin. The pious bond of brother and sister is smashed. Home, the place of relaxation and comfort, turns out the most unsafe place for her and she begins to have nightmares. Nisha then goes to live with her aunt Rupa and for sometime her search for home comes to an end because here she feels comfortable, she knows that this is a place where she is needed.
Kapur mirrors the physical and emotional unrest which prevails in urban middle class families. Home imparts the picture of the female revolt against deep-rooted traditional family. Nisha, the protagonist, falls a little rebellion but ultimately her anti-patriarchal rage subdues and confines her to familial bonds. She is shown having love affair with a guy of low caste. Kapur brings into light the attitude of the caste ridden society in modern India.The girl tries to go against her family but at last she surrenders to the wish of her parents. At the end, Kapur makes her to give up this socially unacceptable relationship.
The story of the only daughter in the whole family has been narrated devotedly by the novelist. The external and internal turbulations of Nisha’s life are depicted at length. Nisha’s skin disease brings to light her internal tremors which split her personality and blemish her fair skin. She looses dignity and respect in her own home as Pooja, her brother’s wife, does not want her to touch her baby. Nisha finds herself unwanted and undesirous. She tells Rupa-“You see Masi, …….. there is no place for me in this house” (281). Later she tells her father, “I want to leave this house. There is nothing for me here” (282). She wants to go to an ashram and devote herself to homeless widows. At least there she can live with dignity and respect. The narrative proceeds with details of Nisha’s becoming an entrepreneur. It ends at her eventually getting married to a widower and becoming the mother of twins-a robust girl and a fragile boy.
Manju Kapur’s depiction of her heroine, her traversing the labyrinth of rules and regulations of traditional middle class milieu and stepping out to start earning for her existence are superb. A girl in Indian family is whining under the burden of patriarchy. She while living in her home feels herself homeless-shelterless. She strives to explore space for herself. She tries to be self-reliant in order to survive.
Works Cited
Akhtar, Javed. Progressive Writers’ Movement in Urdu Literature. Indian Literature. Sahitya Akademi’s Bi-Monthly Journal, New Delhi, 234 July-August, 2006
Kohli, Suresh. Book Reviewed. Indian Literature, Sahitya Akademi’s Bi-Monthly Journal, New Delhi, 234 July-August, 2006
Kapur, Manju. Home. New Delhi : Random House India, 2006