Anamika, a well educated, financially independent, career woman well into her thirties, acutely aware of her depleting eligibilty in the marriage market, refuses to be objectified or taken for granted by her men-friends. In search of the ideal, she is ready to experiment with life. She is human and makes mistakes, yet does not give up on hope. Illustration of a typical modern woman with an obsessive urge to be in control of her life but not always her fate. Heartbreaks are inevitable. However, its these failures that strengthen her conviction to surge towards more self- satisfying pursuits which hitherto she has neglected or overlooked.
Munmun Ghosh’s second novel, ’Unhooked’ is a Clarion Call for all those women who in their desperation to prove themselves fall prey to self alienation. In today’s stressful existence, getting ’hooked’ to an obsession is remarkably easy. The obsession may be an indulgence of a baser kind or an addiction of a higher order. However justifiable the singleminded focus be, the outcome is a disastrous disconnect from our own selves and Nature. While Anamika’s friend Uday needs physical fullfillment preceding a soul stirring rendition, Mohini, her best friend, sprints from one affair to the other to satiate an overpowering biological thirst.
Ghosh insists on a mind body convergence to attain a more balanced perspective in life when she says:
"The whole modern life-style was mounted on the mind body bifurcation and their separate gratification...Live as minds and earn money. Come evening and you become a body...Minds by day and bodies by night sequentially indulging each. And we, the modern women had taken the tone from the men and lapped up the ideal and were struggling to pursue it even if it dissatisfied us."
A dismal picture which heightens the innate barrenness of a superficial co-existence wherein fickle relationships render physical and mental infidelity rampant. The consequent identity crisis is endemic. Human beings, by nature gregarious, distanced and gripped in suicidal isolation forge artificial alliances, which are as much disintegrating as divisive. While bodies unite, souls despair and minds fumble for a rationale.
Munmun Ghosh deftly scoops up discomforting challenges to male psyche. Time and again, the authoress pinpoints the inability of the opposite sex to grapple the innermost desires and wants of a woman, especially a woman, intellectually alert and aware of her being. Whether it is Shekhar, Varun or Nalin, the three men in Anu or Anamika’s life, readily get seduced by her ’sensuous intellect’ yet refuse to accept her as life partner. Is it the formidable beauty and brain conjugate that wards off men? Is accepting a wife who is on equal footing unsettles men? Thus, Shekhar is comfortable being a cradle snatcher unceremoniously dumping Anu on grounds of ’incompatibility’.
After every such fiasco, Anu blames herself - her dark skin, mediocre looks, unbecoming body and failure to arouse the men in her life. The self-castigation that follows is perhaps the ramification of the ’genetic mapping’ of all Indian women. The sanskar or that compelling belief that she is to be blamed for all disasters is probably embedded in the DNA of every woman of the sub-continent.
Munmun at times is very harsh and critical of Anu, satirical of her defeats and sarcastic of her repetitive blunders. She is spitefully humorous of male show-offs, flaunting their manhood through that age-old, primitive route - physical subjugation of women. She is sinfully candid in baring the dark secrets hitherto cosily closeted in the maze of a woman’s mind. Unhooked is a book strongly recommended for all men and women who are desirous of bridging the ever-widening chasm deflecting them through mutual understanding, empathy and appreciation.
"Was there a state in which we were as much body as mind and the balanced, consumed at peace? One, like the sky?" sums up the essence of this engaging novel.
For all you readers who have not singled out this one in your "To Read" list, go get it mighty soon to get hooked to Unhooked.
Happy Reading!!!