....That is how I reacted after reading this book, why did I ever pick it up? I usually don’t regret reading books but this one didn’t go down well with me. Why? Let me try and explain. I know it got the booker prize but still I didn’t like it. After all there is no rule to like books with booker prizes!
First of all the language. Looks like it is for aid of those students in India who intend to take TOEFL or GRE. I do not, so I just could not appreciate the muddle of the language this book offered. Words were just too arduous and somehow didn’t seem to flow with the theme but to clutter it. Though I am a patient reader and don’t get deterred easily by language and things like that but is not all. I have a few other problems with this book.
Here in India (I am an Indian and this book is about India) we believe that people writing in English fall into two categories, one who paint India as exotic, like we have all to offer to the world from nirvana to ahimsa. The second, who portray Indians as barbarians where women are looked down upon, streets are dirty and we just don’t know what to do with ourselves. This is just a skeleton of the two arguments, I invite the reader to add to list along these lines. Both the themes sell.
I think Ms. Roy falls into the second category. I feel that both the views are simplistic caricatures of the complex reality of what India is. Though I will be the first person to admit that there are problems.
Now coming to the theme of the book. Let me state one thing at the outset, this book is not about India in general but is set up in a southern state of India, Kerela. There is a family, which discriminates against the women folk, very typical. But the love relationship that makes the backdrop of much of the story is rare even in India. There are two reasons for it. One most of the people don’t have much of choice. Marriages are still arranged.
Secondly, affairs are much more common among certain classes. Like the educated earning women and among the people who live on the margin, and for others who are in between. Sure the kind of ill-treatment the man and the woman get in the story can happen and at times true stories are reported in media but it is not that common even out here. So please, it is not that every second women goes through what Ms. Roy’s heroine went. It can be much subtle and maybe even worse. But such melodrama…
Thirdly, when the twins grow up and are talking towards the end of the story was it my imagination or is it that something like incest happens? I am not sure and I don’t want to go back and find out. But if someone else noticed it can one give a comment about it? Anyway incest does happen but I don’t see any beauty in it. And I feel it was put in some semi-romantic frame in this book.
So folks in all I was thoroughly disgusted with the book. I will never say that the reality is very rosy out here but there are many other good books, which capture it in a realistic way. One is Anita Desia’s ’fasting feasting’, this years booker nominated author again from India. Another one is by an author not so popular in west, but writes very well, Sashi Deshpande’s, and her book ’That long silence’. To me, these books are chilling in parts when they portray the reality of an Indian women with out being melodramatic.