Chapter I

Chapter I

Introduction

Indian Fiction in English has got a world-wide interest. It is the most characteristic

and powerful form of literary expression in Indian Literature in English. It embodies

experiences and ideas of human beings. It is the outcome of a national ferment and upsurge.

It is brought about by the impact of the colonial rule in India. It manifests the cultural and

socio-political life of India.

In the twenty first century, India advances itself in the field of fiction in English.

There are a large number of writers, writing fiction in English. They show their talent in

writing novels. They delineate the hopes and aspirations and failures and frustrations of

the individuals in their writings. Indian fiction in English attracts a widespread interest in

India and abroad. It is not inferior to any other literatures written in English. Indian English

fiction is used as a medium of creative exploration and expression of their experiences in life.

Indian fiction in English has become the most characteristic and powerful medium of

literary expression. The Indian Novel in English is the most acceptable way of embodying

experiences and ideas of human beings. It provides a sort of documentation. It reveals the

social tradition and socio-cultural changes. It concentrates on the changing social patterns.

It exposes the social transformations and values. It reveals the individual’s predicament

in a society in transition. It explores the the life of the ordinary man. It offers a wider

scope for the treatment of motives, feelings and the phenomena of man’s/woman’s inner

life.
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It gives voice to the lower and middle class characters. Such characters form a

substantive part of the modern India. It developes a widening and deep sympathy with

man as man.

It spreads the spirit of humanitarianism. It is the realistic presentation of the society.

The early nineteenth century marked the beginning of Indian writing in English.

Indian novel in English came into existence in the later part of the nineteenth century.

Bankim Chandra Chatterjee was the first Indian novelist in English in India. He wrote the

novel, Rajmohan’s Wife in English. K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar in Indian Writing in English

points out that “the real beginnings were with the works of the great Bankim Chandra

Chatterjee’s (1838-1894). His first published novel – Rajmohan’s Wife (1864) – was in

English” (351). Later, Rabindranath Tagore, and Sarat Chandra Chatterjee became

well-known novelists in English. K. S. Venkataramani wrote Murugan, the Tiller (1927) and

Kandan, the Patriot (1932). After Venkata Ramani, the well-known novelists are Raj Anand,

R. K. Narayan and Raja Rao. All these novelists write about the middle class. The novel

in English started in Bengal. But immediately, its traces could be seen in Madras,

Bombay and other parts of India. Sumita Ashri in “Ruth Prawer Jhabvala as a Novelist: A

Post-Colonial Study” states:

The genesis of novel writing in India is a very complex phenomenon, as it

was conceived, nurtured, sustained and finally delivered, because of and

through a number of socio-economic and psycho-political considerations

and conditions. The rise of the novel in India like England was not purely

a literary phenomenon; rather it was the product of a multipronged interaction

of a wide spectrum of socio-economic and psycho-spiritual forces operative

within the society and devoted to the fulfilment of social needs. Hence, it

was associated with social, political and economic conditions, which led

the writers to analyze and express this spectrum of social reality, comparable

to the dynamics of society, with its attendant forces. So, the appearance of

the novel as a literary form in the nineteenth century India, as it did in the

eighteenth century England, synchronized with all the consequent political

and social reorientations, which followed. Also, its rise was one aspect of

the dawn of what may be called the modern era in Indian Literature-an era,

which was ushered in by a fast changing social order. (1)

The entire history of Indian fiction in English is divided under four heads:

i. the first head (1830-80) is called‘The Phase of Imitation’. It includes

Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s Rajmohan’s Wife (1864), S. B. Banerjee’s

One Thousand and One Nights , Toru Dutt’s Bianca and Ramesh Chander

Dutt’s The Slave Girls of Agra and The Lake of Palms.

ii. the second head is called ‘Indianization’. It can be seen in the works of

Toru Dutt.

iii. the third head began with the dawn of the new century. It witnessed an

increase in Indianization.

iv. fourth head began with post-independent period. The novels published are

K. S. Venkataramani’s Murugan, the Tiller (1927) and Kandan, the

Patriot (1932), Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable (1935) and Coolie (1936)

and Raja Rao’s Kanthapura (1938) and The Serpent and the Rope (1960).
 4

Indian English fiction in the post-independent India retained the momentum that

the novel had gained during the Gandhian age. Bhabani Bhattacharya wrote So Many Hungers

(1997) and He Who Rides a Tiger (1954). It was followed by Manohar Malgonkar’s novels

The Princes (1963) and A Bend in the Ganges (1964). Khushwant Singh, wrote novels

like Train to Pakistan (1956) and I Shall Not Hear the Nightingale (1959). Arun Joshi

and Chaman Nahal were sensitively alive to the human predicament in the modern times.

They wrote about the absence of values and faith, which have defrauded human beings.

Joshi wrote novels like The Foreigner (1968) and The Last Labyrinth (1981). Chaman

Nahal wrote My True Faces (1973), Azadi (1975) and The English Queens (1979). These

novels deal with the theme of understanding and the relevance of love and feelings in human

life. Vikram Seth and Amitav Ghosh wrote novels like The Golden Gate (1986) and A Suitable

Boy (1993), The Circle of Reason (1986) and The Hungry Tide (2004). These novels explore

the socio-cultural matrix of the human society.

In the beginning, Indian English novel adhered to tradition. Novelists wrote on

various themes. They wanted to write about social change, social justice, freedom,

non-violence and so on. They had shed off their preceding counterparts’ obsession with

idealism, troubles and tribulations. They projected their own native reality. They restored

the identity and roots that had been lost. They are classified into three generations.

1. The first generation had the significant writers like Anand, Narayan and Raja Rao.

2. The second generation had writers like Khushwant Singh, Desphande,

Bhattacharya, Malgonkar, Desai, Markandaya, and Sahgal and so on.

3. The third generation consisted of, mostly Contemporary novelists, like Rushdie,

Seth and Roy.

Among the novelists like Anand, Narayan and Rao, “Anand is the novelist as a

reformer, and Narayan the novelist as a moral analyst, Raja Rao is the novelist as a

metaphysical poet” (Walsh, Indian Literature: 31). Anand has the realistic and the socio-

cultural reformatory attitude. Rao writes about the complex philosophical implications of

Indian culture. His fiction is a balanced one. It is a communication of the realities of Indian

life. It expresses the complexities of Indian philosophical thought and orthodoxy. Narayan

gets a place between these polarities. His fiction mixes the reality of Indian life along

with the traditional and religious preoccupations of India.

Indian English novel has acquired recognition. It has gained a worldwide acclaim.

It is due to the growth of novels written by women. Indian English novel by Indian women

has dealt a variety of themes. It proves their maturity in narrative skill. Indian women

novelists have earned grounds and won critical appraisal and international recognition.

Their works are not considered as something derogatory. They are not melodramatic or

sub-stuff. They have proved that they are born story -tellers. They delve deep into the

inner workings of human mind. They show sympathy, sensitivity and understanding.

They present women as the silent sufferers. Women are presented as the upholders of the

tradition and traditional values of family and society. They have experienced a mighty change.

They present a woman as an individual. She rebels against the traditional roles/images.

They break the silent suffering. They try to move out of the slavish existence to assert their

individual selves. They add a new dimension to Indian fiction in English. They have exquisite

idea of men and matters. Their fiction constitutes a major-segment of the contemporary

Indian Writing in English. Their novels provide insights, understanding and a meaning of

life. They deal with the place and the position of women. They also portray their
 6

problems and plights. They analyze the socio-cultural modes and values. They give

Indian women their role and image along with their efforts to achieve a harmonious

relationship with their surroundings. They aim at portraying Indian women’s sense of

frustration and their alienation.

Twentieth century noticed a sudden spurt in feminist writing. Indian women novelists

write about their in betweenness, hybridity and multicultural, multi-lingual and multi-

religious social dimensions. While the gynocritics consider that women novelist speak the

same language of silence, Indian women novelists like Gita Hariharan, Meena Alexander

Deshpande, Roy, and Kapur attempted to highlight with the physical, psychological and

emotional stress and syndrome of women. They delineate their inner life and subtle

interpersonal relationships as individualism and protest have remained alien ideas.

They also write about the marital bliss and the women’s role at home. It results in the

emergence of Indian sensibility. It becomes an expression of cultural displacement.

They show their stronghold and grip. They show the world the unique power of imagination,

spontaneity and lyricism. They detail the depth of human psyche, especially women’s

psyche. They show strong consistency and stamina to locate them in different

perspectives.

The history of Indian women novelists in English starts with Toru Dutt. Her novels

share with the autobiographical elements of her own life. She writes about the agony and

catharsis arising out of the sisterly love and bereavement. After the Second World War,

Indian women novelists like Kamala Markandaya, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Anita Desai,

Nayantara Sahgal, and Nergis Dalal enumerated new dimensions and depth to Indian

fiction in English. The flowering of women writers has manifested the birth of an era.
 7

It promised a new deal for the Indian fiction in English by women. Some women

novelists dealt with the battle of emancipation. They communicated to the world by

sharing their own bitter experiences through their writings as women. They shared experiences

of Indian women in common. They presented them in fictional form. They started reflecting

the sparks that came from this plight of a woman. They presented a change in her status,

in life and in the society. It could be assessed by reference to her image reflected in

literature in general and literature produced by her in particular. The reason could be

related to the emergence of educated women. They began to feel an increasing urge to voice

their feelings. They intuitively perceived the gender issues upsetting women. They presented

women as individuals, who fight against suppression and oppression of the patriarchy.

Manju Kapur had discussed the women of the 1940s. Her women had no voice to assert

their rights. They raise their voice against the male chauvinism. They want to claim the

rights of economic independence. Her women wrestle against the taboos, social and joint

family restrictions and curb laid by the patriarchy in the traditional life of India.

Women novelists in India are aware of feminism. Women’s liberation does not

mean loss of moral values. It is not to break the social harmony and institutions. Women’s

liberation is a state of mind. The women novelists in India have presented with immense

social and moral concerns. They understand their female characters. It is through the

confines of a novel, one can see what it means to be Indian women. Fiction helps them

see the depths of a woman’s psyche-as a mother, a lover, a victim and always a heroine.

Woman is earth, air, ether, sound; woman is the microcosm of the mind,

the articulation of space, the knowing in the knowledge, the woman is fire;

movement, clear and rapid as the mountain stream; the woman is that which
 8

seeks against that which is sought. To Brahma she is Varuna, to Indra, she

is Agni, to Rama, she is Sita; to Krishna she is Radha. Woman is the meaning

of the word, the breath, touch, and act: woman that reminds man of that

which he is and reminds herself through him of that which she is, woman

is kingdom, solitude, time. Woman is growth, the woman is death; for it is

through woman that one is born; woman rules, for it is she, the Universe.

Often criticized as mere verbiage, Raja Rao’s description in these lines is

still the embodiment of the fundamental and basic image. Woman

sustains life, she is the preserver of the home and a protector of culture.

(Glimpses of Woman: 26)

Indian women novelists focus their attention on women’s issues. They have a

woman’s perspective of the world. R. K. Dhawan in “Introduction to Indian Women

Novelists” says:

One of the reasons that women have, in such large number, taken up their

pen is because it has allowed them to create their world. It has allowed them

to set the condition of existence, free from Ththe direct interference of

men. Similarly, so many women have taken to reading women’s writing

because it allows them a ‘safe place’ from which they can explore a wide

range of experience of the world, from which they can identify with a range

of characters and a variety of existences. That’s why women’s writing has

occupied such a significant and central place in women’s lives. It is also

why women’s writing can share much the same disparaged status as

women in a world dominated by men. (11)

Women novelists in English in India are bequeathed with an increasing popularity

and prestige. They have given a distinct dimension to the image of women in the family

and in the society. They come to hold the central position in the fictional world of India.

They write about their own experiences in their novels. They present the dilemma, which

modern women face in recent times. They exploit their skill in projecting the agonized

mind of the persecuted women. Their women characters invariably bear authenticity to

their feminist approach, outlook and perspective. They have keen observation of life and

of the Indian women and their interest in the study of their inner mind. It is evidenced by

their clear and scenic portrayal of their plights. They focus on the existential predicament

of the subdued women in a male dominated society. It is governed by strict traditions and

restrictions. They probe deep into the inner mind of the repressed women. They bring out

the virtue of their feminine sensibility and psychological insight. They deal with the issues

that are the outcome of their psychological and emotional imbalances. They write that

Indian women have remained more chained to their circumstances than liberated. They are

presented as tradition-bound than modern and more restricted and confined than

emancipated. They feel restlessness and uneasiness. They have a kind of turbulance in

their inner psyche. It makes them to be at odds. They are in a state of unsettlement. They

seek something which always deceives them. They suffer in life. Arundhati Chatterji in

“Different Facets of the Indian Woman in Nayantara Sahgal and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala” says:

Projecting the socio-political themes, these women novelists have also

portrayed human poverty, hunger and suffering of the villagers. In all, they

have turned their attention to the individuals, especially the women as the

victims of conflict between the rural and the urban, the East and the West,
 10

the tradition and the modernity, the spiritual and the material. Their portraits

are very original and convincing not only because of the fact that they

themselves are Indians, rooted deep in Indian traditions and convictions,

but also because of the fact that being women their feelings and

experiences are much more authentic. They have a deeper insight into

female psychology. (104-5)

They portray a woman in a society. They also detail how she is exploited by the

conventions of a patriarchal society. The following are some of the things that Indian

women novelists in English do:

1. They commermorate their defence of norms and boundaries. They

expose its constructed nature.

2. They voice their experiences. They also destroy the culture of silence.

3. They inquiry the polemics of sexual politics.

4. They focus to create a discourse, called resistance discourse.

5. They scrutinize the myths which demonize women.

6. Their writings exhibit their bodies. The ‘woman speak’ inserts the

narrative of women’s sexuality into the typology of culture.

7. They identify the radical interconnectedness of beings. They are alert to

an ecological consciousness. It highlights their writings.

8. These writers interrogate every aspect of social order. They write about

community-marriage, motherhood, control of sexuality and moribund

traditions.
 11

9. They disbelieve history. They point out the exclusion of women from it.

They name for a revisionist history. It is a history from below. Their voice

is not under erasure.

10. As women in diaspora, they reveal their pangs of uprootedness at the

intersections of gender / race / class / dislocation in their writings.

11. Their works record important shifts in the ways of seeing, showing,

saying and even not saying. They discuss about Indian women, as

representation of independent thought and action.

Manju Kapur (1948 - ) is a successful Indian women novelist. She was born in

Amritsar in 1948. She got her BA. Degree from the Miranda House University College

for women. She took an MA degree from Dalhousie University, Halifax. Then from

Delhi University, she obtained an M. Phil. She had her career as a Professor of English.

She taught English literature in Miranda House College, Delhi. She is popularly called

the Jane Austen of India. Her novels deal with the modern family and the patriarchal

society. Her novels give a clear picture of the contemporary women’s lives. Her women

are eager to liberate themselves from the domestic walls of their own. They want to build

a life of their own. Her novels present a new woman. Her new woman wants to identify

herself. She deals with the issues of women. She deals with their family problems, domestic

violence, education and their working conditions. She writes about the problems of the

modern world like lesbianism, infidelity, infertility, divorce, adoption and so on. A feministic

tradition can be seen in all her novels. She insists on the search for control over one’s fate.

She voices for the middle-class society. She can be compared with Jane Austen. She presents

her women characters in problematic situations. Her women characters are well-educated.
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Their education leads them to independent thinking. It helps them take a bold stand

against the society. They are ready to pull down the patriarchal rules and regulations.

They understand the value of education as it is the only way to self-reliance. Her area is

always larger than life. In her novels, she captures the minute details of everything.

She sees her life through the prism of family. All the novels of Kapur is set in the backdrop of

a historical event in India.

Kapur is a distinguished woman novelist. She is the author of six novels. Her first

novel, Difficult Daughters (1998) won the Commonwealth prize for the first novel

(Eurasia Section). Her second novel A Married Woman (2002) was called ‘fluent and

witty while her third, Home (2006) is a multi-generation family saga. The Immigrant

(2008) has been listed for the DSC Prize for South Asia Literature. Her novel Custody

(2011) talks about women’s lust for a glamorous and luxurious life. Her recent novel

Brothers was published in 2016. In all her novels, male characters affect the psyche of

women characters. It is to such an extent that all her major women characters like Virmati

of Daughters, Astha of Woman, Nisha of Home, Nina of Immigrant, and Shagun and

Ishita of Custody, are on the verge of secludings themselves from the company of men.

They are searching for a place for themselves in the male dominated society. Society,

morality and values are all bondage to them. Her novels account for the complexity of life.

They display different histories, cultures and different structures of values, the woman’s

question and so on. In her novels, women are presented under the patriarchal pressure and

control. Her women characters are discriminated and are biased in lieu of their sex. She writes

about the lives of women. Women live and struggle under the oppressive mechanism of a

closed society. It is reflected in the novels of Kapur. She presents new women. Her new
 13

women do not want to be mere puppets for others to move as they like. They defy the

patriarchal notions that enforce them towards domesticity. They affirm their individuality. They

aspire for self-reliance through education. They foster the desire of being independent. They

want to lead lives of their own. They are not silent rebels. They are valiant, outspoken,

strong willed and action-oriented women.

Kapur’s debut novel Daughters presents the story of Virmati and it relates her

sincere efforts to get education. It also tells about her love with the married professor

Harish. Her life story is nostalgically remembered in the novel. It is narrated by her

daughter, Ida. Her second novel, Woman, is a revolutionary novel. It traces the emergence

of a new woman from the bondage of sex and marriage. It details the life of Astha.

It also relates her marriage with Hemant, and her lesbian association with Pipeelika.

It also shows her involvement in various social activities. Home is a story of Banwari

Lal’s family. It relates the love story of Nisha. It also details how she comes up in life

and ends with her marriage to Aravind. In Immigrant, Kapur takes sex and brings out the

problems of sex. She portrays Nina, the thirty years old Lecturer in English. The novel

also details her marriage to a dentist Ananda, and her bored sexual life in Canada. It also

explains how she falls in love with Anton in the end. Her Custody is the story of Raman.

He is a marketing executive at a global drink company. Shagun is his wife. They have

two children Arjun and Rashi. Shagun falls in love with Ashok Khanna. He is her husband’s

boss. Ishita falls in love with Raman. So, in all her novels, Kapur focuses on the presentation

of woman in the context of different social involvements. She portrays different kinds of

human relationships. Her main concern is with man-woman relationship and woman-

woman relationship. Her novels can be taken as the journey of a woman. It is from the
 14

state of innocence into experience. She is less complicated in her depiction of various issues

related to woman. She raises the issue of social, political and economic independence of

a woman.

Daughters is located in India of the 1940s. The novel raises issues on the idea of

independence. It took almost five years to do research at Nehru Memorial Museum and

Library at Teen Murti house to write this novel. It is a realistic story of a daughter’s

reconstruction of her troubled past. It hinges on her mother’s story. It is a story of a daughter’s

journey. The daughter gets back into her mother’s past to reconstruct memories of her

mother as the daughter she had been. It is an imaginary tale of a Punjabi family. It covers

three generations of women. Ida is the narrator. She has left behind her a disastrous marriage.

She is a divorcee. Virmati married for love an already married Professor. Kasturi is the

mother of eleven children, including Virmati. She has to come to terms with her daughter.

Her daughter insists on studying and spurns marriage. So it is the story of a woman. She

is torn between family duty, the desire for education and an illicit love. In it, Kapur manifests

the non-acceptance of a liberated and modern woman by a tradition bound Indian society.

It is a story of a young woman’s life. Virmati is caught up in the complex web of social

positions. She has her personal desire and the quest for education. It is against the backdrop

of Indian partition.

Daughters is a novel of female desire and entrapment. It is about compromise and

compliance. It is a story of woman victimization. In it, Ida, Virmati’s daughter, travels to

Amritsar to identify her mother’s roots from her relatives, who says: “What is past is past.

Don’t bother about it, have another Paratha” (DD5). Ida relives her mother’s life. Virmati’s

illicit relationship with a Professor of English is retold by her daughter. Ida has determind
 15

not to be like her mother. The story begins with the funeral scene of her mother. Ida is

watching the cremation of her mother at Manikamika Ghat in Varanasi. It is intervened

with memories and ends in a note of melancholy and depression. It is partly a travelogue.

It is partly an analytical novel. It is also a literary history. It is essentially a story of three

generations. It is covered with historical facts. In it Kapur also gives the regional culture

of Amritsar and Lahore.

The title of the novel, Difficult Daughers, indicates that a woman, tries to search

for an identicy. She is branded as a difficult daughter. Ida, Virmati’s daughter, wanted not

to be like her mother. But in the end, after knowing her mother’s story, she admits that

“Nowhere in it Mama and leave me be. Do not haunt me anymore” (DD 259). Ida has faced

disaster in life. She is husbandless and childless after divorce. I. K. Sharma in “Between

Sita and Helen: A Study of Manju Kapur’s Difficult Daughters and Anita Desai’s Fasting

Feasting” says:

The story is organized round the life and personality of Virmati (mother)

who is the central consciousness of the novel. Her life mirrors the struggle

of an educated young woman of middle class against the norms of a family

that cherishes old values of arranged marriage and children. The novel

illustrates her transition from the restrictions of family structure to a life of

freedom and choice.

The very title of the book is assertive. By placing the adjective ‘difficult’

before ‘daughters’ (noun), the author sends a signal that characters in the

novels are not soft and pliable. They are not likely to yield to pressures-
 16

familial and social-and are sure to carve out the unconventional course in

the unkind world. (67)

The theme of the novel is the search for control over one’s destiny. It refers to the

independence obtained by Ida. Ida reveals:

The one thing I had wanted was not to be like my mother. Now she was gone

and I stared at the fire that rose from her shrivelled body, dry-eyed, leaden,

half dead myself, while my relatives clustered around the pyre and wept.

When the ashes were cold, my uncle and I went to the ghat to collect

them. All around us were tear-stricken people dressed in white, sitting on

benches, standing in groups, some with corpses before them, some clustered

around bodies burning on daises. The air was smoky, and the breeze blew

the stench about. It was not a place to linger on, but I felt unable to move,

staring stupidly at the little pile. The inscription on the raised concrete slab

introduced that a Seth Ram Krishna Dalmia had been burnt there, and his

loving widow, brother and children had labelled this spot in commemoration.

On every bench and burning platform, were names and dates, marks of people

gone and people left behind. Not a scrap of cement was left unclaimed. I stared

again at my mother’s ashes and wondered what memorial I could give her.

She, who had not wanted to be mourned in any way (DD 1).

Virmati’s tale is told from the present day perspective by Ida. Ida seeks to reconstruct her

late mother’s life story. It is against the background of the Independence movement of

the 1940’s. In it, the family comprises of Lala Diwan Chand. He has two sons-Suraj

Prakash and Chandar Prakash. Suraj Prakash is married to Kasturi. Chandar Prakash is
 17

married to Lajwanti. Kasturi gives birth to Virmati. Virmat’s tale is told in the third person.

In the third person narrative mode, Ida leads a freer life than her mother. She feels some

of the same worries which had tormented her mother. She admits: “No matter how I might

rationalize otherwise, I feel my existence as a single woman reverberate desolately” (DD 3).

Ida achieves more than her mother and her grandmother. In Daughters one cannot listen

to Virmati’s voice. She could not speak out. Virmati’s life is reconstructed by her daughter.

It is Ida’s reconstruction. It can be taken as a representation/re-presentation. It is written

against the backdrop of the Indian Freedom Movement, the Partition of India and the War

between allied and Axis forces. It focuses on the dynamics of man-woman relationship.

It hovers around Amritstar and Lahore. It also hinges on an austere Arya Samaji family of

Lala Diwan Chand. His family runs the jewellery business. He has two sons - Chander Prakash

and Suraj Prakash. His second son and his wife, Kasturi, had a large family to look after.

There had been eleven of them. The girls: Virmati, Indumati, Gunvati, Hemavati, Vidyavati

and Parvati. The boys: Kailashnath, Gopinath, Krishnanath, Prakashnath and Hiranath.

Their eldest daughter, “an increasingly sensitive Virmati” (D 215) is the central character

of the novel. Right from her childhood, she has some uncommon capability. Her sister,

Parvati affirms: “Our mother was always sick and Virmati as eldest, had to run the house

and look after us” (4). She is depicted as a young girl of tremendous academic pursuit. “She

was so keen to study, First FA, then BA, then BT on top of that. Even after her marriage, she

went for an M. A to Govt. College, Lahore . . . The Oxford of the East they called it” (4).

She started her schooling from the Arya Kanya Maha Vidyalaya. She had gone for higher
 18

studies to Stratford College, in Civil Lines. “After that, class IX and X, and then two

years to get a Fine Arts degree. And then marriage, said the elders. . . Thirteen-year-old

Virmati listened and felt the thrill of those approaching rites. ” (17)

She did not pass in her FA. Her mother, Kasturi, viewed it differently. “Still, it is

the duty of every girl to get married” (13). A good Samaji family was making inquiries

for Virmati to get married. Their boy, Inderjit, was a canal engineer. Virmati was not at

all interested in marriage. She was drawn towards her cousin, Shakuntala, “to one whose

responsibility went beyond a husband and children” (14). She wanted to liberate herself

like Shakuntala. But her mother remarked “you are getting modern in your thinking”

(13). This was expressed by Virmati too: “Here we are fighting for the freedom of the

nation, but women are still supposed to marry and nothing else” (14-15). She was haunted

by the words of Shakuntala: “Times are changing and women are moving out of the

house, so why not you?” (16). There appeared a Professor in her life. He happened to be

the tenant of her aunt, Lajwanti. He came from Oxford two years ago. He had come to

Amritsar at the request of one of his friends’ father. He was on the board of trustees of

Arya Sabha College, Amritsar. At that time, the college had been searching for a good

English teacher. They needed some professor. They appointed the Oxford returned English

Professor. His name was Harish Chandra. He was given a salary of two hundred and

thirty rupees, twenty rupees more than he was getting at a college in Waltair. He had a

family. Virmati and other female members developed intimacy with the Professor’s

family. It started with the exchange of food items. The Professor sensed that Virmati “has

potential, he found himself thinking” (36). In one of his letters to Virmati he writes: “you

are imprinted on my mind, my heart, my soul so firmly that until we can be united in a
 19

more permanent way I lie in a shawdowy insubstantial land” (82). He uses overwhelming

begging, pleading and imploring. He used to say: “you are the air I breathe” (100). For

Prof. Harish’s sake, Virmati also started dreaming more intensely “than she ever had of

her fiance that shadow figure waiting in the wings to marry her” (35). She had to fight

against her family’s decision to marry Inderjit. She was compelled by her mother to marry

Inderjit. She attempted to commit suicide. She was saved and sent to do her Fine Arts

(FA) degree.

She passed her FA examination with some distinction. She went to go to Lahore

to do her BT. It was supported by the elders of her family. Her mother took her to Lahore.

She got her admission in the RBSL School and College, Lahore. Shakuntala was deputed

as her local guardian. “She (Shakuntla) was glad that her family was at last waking upto

the fact that women had to take their place in the world, but must it always be when marriage

had not worked out?” (103). Kasturi really wished “she (Virmati) was to be supervised

like a jailbird on parole. Marriage was accepted to her family but no independence”

(106). But Prof. Harish Chandra continued his clandestine love affairs with her. He went

to Lahore. His close friend, Syed Hussain, was working there. So the Professor could meet

Virmati. Later, he had sex with her at Husain’s house on the campus of Govt. College,

Lahore. They used to meet at regular intervals. They became husband and wife. They

used to declare: “We cannot allow ourselves to be the pawns in the skeins of fate” (141).

Their continual illicit love ended in Virmati’s pregnancy. She had to take her BT examination.

But her pregnancy turned her completely neurotic and desperate. So, on the pretext of her

preparation for her examination, she got a long leave from the college authorities. She

went to her home town. She wanted to meet the Professor. She wanted to report the matter to
 20

him. She wanted to find a suitable solution for her pregnancy. But, she could not meet

him as he had already left Amritsar for his village home. He was expected to return after

a long gap. She did not know what to do. She came back to her college hostel. She confided

everything to her roommate, Swarna Lata. She consoled and cheered her up: “Marriage is

not the only thing in life, Viru… women are coming out of their homes, Wake up from

your stale dreams” (139). She also came to her rescue. She aborted her foetus during her

BT examination.

Virmati passed BT in her second attempt. Then she set out for her home. Her family

members hoped that she could concede her family’s decision and express her willingness

for a suitable marriage. But, she proposed her own marriage to Prof. Harish Chandra.

Later when she was in the hill state of Sirmaur Prof Harish Chandra started visiting her

there. He also enjoyed a night stay at her place. It came to the knowledge of Diwan Sahib.

He took a resistance to their misconduct. She had to leave the school. She wanted to go to

Shantiniketan. On her way, she had to wait in Delhi for seventeen hours. She decided to

get the help pf professor’s friend. She agreed to delay her departure for three or four days.

Prof. Harish Chandra came there. On his arrival, they got married. Then, they left for Amritsar.

They received a harsh response from the member’s of the Professor’s family. She understood

that “She could see it was going to be difficult to live separately from everybody else” (198).

She was not at all accepted by Professor’s mother, Kishori Devi, his first wife, Ganga, his

sister, Guddiya, his children from his first wife, Chhotti and Giridhar (nicknamed Munna).

Virmati had to be “alone in a place where her pariah status was announced with every

averted look” (198). Later, Kishori Devi softened towards her. Virmati grew pregnant

again. It did not last long. She suffered a miscarriage in the third month. This landed her
 21

in depression. Harish wanted her to go to Lahore to do an MA in philosophy. She could

reside in Leela’s house in Lahore. Meanwhile, he “had become the Principal of A. S. College,

and it was increasingly difficult for him to come to Lahore” (235).

When a violent Hindu-Muslim riot broke out, “it was agreed that they would leave

first. Harish and Virmati could follow once the house was wound up” (245). There had

been communal unrest in Amritsar and Lahore. Virmati left Lahore to start her life as a

housewife for the first time. She gave birth to a girl, named Ida. Later when Harish got an

offer of principalship in one of the new colleges of Delhi University, “the couple moved

to Delhi and a much smaller house” (257). Giridhar and Chhotti to came to their father,

when their schooling demanded as such. Prof. Harish Chandra carried on everything with

his meager income. Giridhar wanted to do business. He ran a chemist’s shop in Karol Bagh.

He married one of his customers Chhotti fared well in her studies. Further, “she joined

the IAS, mainly for the cheap government accommodation that will enable her mother

and grandmother to live with her” (257). Ida failed to display intellectual brightness. She

never intended to be worthy of her parents’ expectations. She married a scholarly fellow

and became divorcee.

Woman second novel thematically a controversial novel. P. C Pradhan in “Challenging

Patriarchal Ideology: Interpretation of Feminist Vision in the Novels of Anita Desai, Shashi

Deshpande, Arundhati Roy and Manju Kapur” points out that Woman is “a femino-centric

protest against the phallocentred patriarchal culture. The male world imposes unlimited

controls on woman. Traditions and customs provided moral sanctions for such inhuman

and cruel impositions to disempower women. Kapur, however, in this novel empowers

her protagonist Astha to give a strong resistance to patriarchy by denouncing the prescribed
 22

norms of a society” (117-18). Kapur’s basic approach to woman’s life in her novels is to

liberate them from the oppressive measures of patriarchy. Her women sustain a lot of

sufferings like physical, emotional and psychological sufferings. Ashok Kumar and Roopali

in “A Married Woman: A Saga of Post- Modernistic Ethics” says that “A Married Woman

may be studied at three levels. First at the feministic level. Second at the historical level

and lastly at the level of deconstruction and post-modernism”. (46. 47). In this novel,

Astha is the replica of Virmati. The novel is a feministic study. Kapur in an interview

with Mona Goel for the question, “Do you believe in women’s liberation?” answers:

do, I do in that because I am a feminist. And what is a feminist I mean I

believe in rights of women to express themselves, in the rights of women

to work. I believe in equality, you know domestic equality, legal equality I

believe in all that. And the thing is that women don’t really have that –

you know even educated women, working women. There is a trapping of

equality but you scratch the surface and it is not really equal. So, I do believe

in that, and I have tried to bring up my daughters believe in themselves

and to believe in their rights. Because I think a lot of problems come from

the way with which we have socialized. We just socialize in a way, you

know, that you take second place, but, you know, the needs – so many needs

come before your own needs so that is the traditional upbringing. (4)

It is set in Delhi. It is against the backdrop of communal unrest. It centered on the controversial

Ram Janma Bhoomi-Babri Masjid. It traces the life of Astha from her childhood to her

forties. It passes through various hopes and despairs, complements and rejections, and

recognitions and frustrations. Astha imbibes a middle class values. She enjoys her mental
 23

bliss for a long time. She feels that there is something certainly lacking in her life. She

troubles from a sense of incompleteness, repression and anguish. Her feelings are further

aggravated by her involvement into the outer world of rebellion and protest.

She is brought up in a traditional set up. Her family is a typical middle class family.

Her mother wants to make her a traditional women and religious piety. It could be practised

through proper rituals. Her father is a bureaucrat. He is concerned with her education. He

wants to give her good habits, tasks and manners. But, she has romantic feelings of love.

She develops her love for Bunty. He is an army cadet at NDA, Khargwasala. Astha and

Bunty write letters to each other. Those letters are for her precious possession. They are

to be displayed and boasted of among her friends. Her love with Bunty soon comes to an

end when Astha’s mother complains against it to Bunty’s parents. During the final year

of her graduation, she happens to meet Rohan in his car at the dark corners of the streets.

Astha and Rohan kiss, touch and press each other. She wants to gratify her body. “All she

wanted was for him to start so that the world could fall away and she be lost. This is love

she told herself no wonder they talk much about it (MW 24-25). Rohan has to leave for

Oxford for higher studies. Her mother happens to read about Astha’s feelings as presented in

her personal diary. She has to hide it by saying that she is writing a story. It is all the writings

of imagination. But her mother has felt that the convent education had spoiled her.

Astha’s father is keen to marry his daughter off before his retirement from the Indian

civil service. Astha is a rebellious women. She refuses every suitor in the final year of her

M. A. They even receive a proposal from the son of a bureaucrat in the commerce ministry.

The son is an MBA from America. He is in service as an Assistant Manager in a bank in

Delhi. He seems to be a perfect match for her. He calls her ‘my baby’. He displays the
 24

usual Indian traditional husband’s attitude. He is patronizing, caring and being considerate.

He is good performer in the bed. He reads sex manuals. He wants to prolong his sex

duration. He has a notion that if a woman bleeds on the first night it proves her virginity.

When he remains very busy in his office work, she joins a school teaching job. She does

not of course like it very much in the beginning. Later she becomes pregnant. Her mother

wishes them to have a boy. Hemant condemns her saying that “in America there is no

difference between boys and girls. How can this country get anywhere if we go on treating

our women this way?” (57). the first child is a girl. Hemant wishes to have a son. He is

changed from an American father into an Indian one. He says that if the second child is a

girl, they could go for the third. But, the second one is a boy. Astha also remains busy

with her children and her school job. Hernant also succumbs to the compelling necessity

of materialistic needs and starts his own factory in the name of Astha. She also complains

that he talks of business, house or Anu but not of them. But he says: “Grow up, AZ, one

can’t be courting for ever. ” (66). He convinces her. He promises her to give more time to

family. “She found this soothing, and later scolded herself for being so demanding. Hemant

was busy, he was building their future, she had to be adjusting, and that was what marriage

was all about. ”(67) She tries to suppress her frustrations. She focuses on her duties as a

mother, wife and daughter-in-law. She learns to adjust with her husband and an interfering

mother-in-law. Marital sex takes up her life. She finds herself trapped in her marriage.

She prefers to continue with her school job. There she is appreciated and valued for her

work. Kapur writes: “between her marriage and the birth of her children, she too had

changed from being a woman who only wanted love, to a woman who valued independence.

Besides there was the pleasure of interacting with minds instead of needs. ” (72)
 25

To compensate her husband’s lack of time for her. She wants to spend more time to

children. But they are already involved with their grand parents. She feels lonely and

alienated. She complains of this to Hemant. He fails to understand her troubles. He says

“it is all your imagination. Why don’t you have me? You are the one who keep wanting

to stay at home with children, or your school work, or your books when we are invited to

parties, or when I want to go to the club. ” (79). Their discussion usually leads to argument,

distance, and greater misery. They fail to seek a temporary relief through diversion. She

begins to writing poems. She draws sketches. She does there to express her anguish and

alienation. She gets some relief to her pent up emotions. “She wrote about gardens and

flowers, the silent dark faces of gardeners tending plants and never getting credit. She

wrote about love, rejection, desire and longing. The language was oblique, but it was her

own experience endlessly replayed. ” (79). Her poems are all about caged birds, and mice

and suffering in different in various situations.

She feels alienation and marginal existence. It intensifies her mental troubles. Her

mother hands over the money to Hemant to be safely invested for his children. She does

it for the reason that Hemant has proved his managing capability. But Astha has never

proved her merit either before marriage or after that. Moreover “the sad thing was that

she herself would have felt nervous handling a large sum” (97). She begins to give more

time to her school, poetry and painting. It is in order to sooth her bruised feelings.

Later she meet Aijaz, a theatre personality. He is a lecturer in history. He organizes

street plays to strengthen communial harmony. He is an expert at the weaker nerves of

the women. He praises her script, poetry and painting. She thinks that he is the only one

who can really understand and value her. She also loves him on the stage. His touch on
 26

her knee makes in her a kind of sensation and romance. It makes her to brood : “ what did

it mean, did he like her, did he want to have an affair with her, why had she been so startled

by his hand on her knee, why two children. (114)

Pipeelika is a modern woman. She defies tradition. She works in an NGO. She is

a Hindu. She is attracted by the personality of Aijaz. Their mutual likeness strengthened

their passion. They get married. But Aijaz’s commitment for public awareness and communal

harmony claims his life. His death was followed by long processions, strikes and dharnas

organized by Sampradaykata Mukti Manch. Astha suffers a lot when the Masjid is

demolished. She becomes politically active. She begins to attend the meetings of the Manch.

She devotes herself to a cause beyond her family and her husband. It is during these

activities, she happens to meet Pipeelika. She gets a good recognition. She earns rupees

thirty thousand by an exhibition of her paintings. Her sense of self respect and self

dependence is deeply injured when her husband does not let her purchase an antique

silver box at Goa. He dissuades her. He also frowns upon her on the very mention of the

money that she had earned. His domineering attitude, arrogant and superior wisdom and

lack of interest in her achievement completely shatter her married life. Her suffering

alienates her further from her husband. Astha and Pipeelika begin to move closer to each

other. They understand each other. They feel for each other. They develop even lesbian

relations. They go on a pilgrimage to Ayodhya. Their bond becomes stronger. In her

company, Astha feels herself stronger. She leaves her children and family. She goes on

the Ekta Yatra from Kashmir to Kanyakumari. It is for the sake of the company of Pipee.

Their closeness makes them crave for each other. During their Yatra, Astha comes to

know of Pipee’s lesbian relations with Neeraj and Sameera. Her demanding passion and
 27

her past associations disillusioned her. She is trapped in a terrible dilemma. She tells

pipee that she loves her. She says her that she is so much means to her. She tries to prove

it everymoment they have togetherand she can’t abandon her family. She tells to Pipee:

“I love you, you know how much you mean to me, Itry and prove it every

moment we have together, but Ican’t abandon my family, I can’t, may be I

should not have looked for happiness, but I couldn’t help myself. I suppose

you think I should not be in a relationship but I had not foreseen”. (242)

Later, Astha begins to distance herself from Pipee. In the end, she comes back to her family

and her children as Pipee leaves for higher studies in America. At the end Astha, married

women realises the importance of marriage and her status in her family and society.

Home moves through the conflicting between tradition and modernity, poverty

and prosperity, man and woman concerns. It presents the picture of a joint family-the

Banwari Lals. The family pursues business with all its heart. The family cannot think of

employment opportunities for its sons and grandsons. The two sons of family- Banwari

Lal, Yashpal and Pyare Lal. They are well settled in business. They are married. The former

to Sona and the latter to Sushila. Banwari Lal’s daughter, Sunita, is wedded to Murli.

He is a jobless man. He is irritable nature. He believes in dowry. He is responsible for the

burning of Sunitha at the age of 32, she leaves behind her only son, Vicky. He is a lean

and thin boy of shy nature. He is left to the care of maternal uncles and their parents.

Sona is a beautiful, but a restless woman. She is issueless. Her younger sister-in-law

is blessed with two sons, Ajay and Vijay. They are married to Seema and Rekha respectively.

This increases her psychic restlessness and mental anxieties. Sona’s younger sister, Rupa

(who is married to Prem Nath), also remains issueless in her life. The latter does not lose
 28

her self composure and the gaiety of her spirits. She concentrates on “financial success”

(33) in her pickle business. Rupa “had not suffered like her sister, nor had she fasted and

done penance” (33). Both the sisters are the victims of thwarted maternal instinct. They

take it in a diametrically opposite manner. For long ten years, Sona practises penance and

austerities She is thereafter blessed with Nisha (daughter) and Raju (son). Rupa never seems

to bother about a child. Instead, she comes to the rescue of Sona and Yashpal. They are

extremely worried about the nocturnal screams of Nisha and her increasingly dwindling

health. Rupa takes away Nisha to her house. She nourishes her back to normal health.

Rupa’s husband is a busy clerk in a general government office (Defence Ministry). He

arranges for Nisha’s proper education. Even he tutors her in spare hours. He makes her a

bright student. Nisha is able to do her BA.

Vicky is taken to Delhi by the Lals to bring him up there. It increases Sona’s

responsibilities at home. Vicky is also weak in studies. He is a neglected child. His condunct

towards Nisha is dirty and cruel “deceitful, cunning, his father’s son not poor Sunita’s”

(76). He makes Nisha frightened and fretful by his dirty habit of maturation. Yashpal

suggests that he should be sent back to Bareilly “an only son, he would shine in his parental

home, here he was lost among cousins” (76). He does not agree to this proposal. He threatens

to kill himself if he is forced to go back to Bareilly. He is married to Asha. Sheis a homely

girl of Bareilly. She is the best suitor of Murli. The new weds are installed in the barsati.

It consists of “a small room on the terrace with an added toilet” (105). A son, Virat, is

born to them.

After her schooling, Nisha is brought back to her home to look after the old

grandmother. Her mother is a typical Indian mother. She always thinks that her daughter
 29

should be a good women. She also comments, that this is the life of a woman: “to look

after her home, her husband, and her children and give them food she has cooked with her

own hands” (121). She also includes her daughter in all pujas. Nisha also joins Duragbai

College for her English honours. Now, Nisha appears to be a “New Woman”. Her life

changes because for the first time in her life she gets freedom. During her bus journey to

college she meets Suresh. He is a student of an engineering college. He begins to take

interest in her. He begins to come to her college. It brings them closer. He tells Nisha that

with her haircut she would look like Suriya, the popular film star. She has to face a storm

at home, if she gets her hair cut. She prepares herself for her rebellious thinking, “of the

girls in her class, girls with swishing, open hair, wavy, curly, blow-dried, or hanging straight,

framing feces with fringes, flicks or stray tendrils. ” (148)She becomes a modern girl with

traditional views. She loves Suresh deeply. She never allows Suresh to violate her chastity.

She says to Suresh, “It is just as well there is something left for when we are married. ”

(192). She is not able to pay her attention to her studies. Her percentage is decreasing.

Her attendance is falls short. She is not allowed to take her examinations. Her family members

come to know about her love. She has to face her family. She is broken and frustrated.

She yields to the family pressure to accept a groom of their choice.

She asks her father to help her in starting a business of salwar suits. She wants

one year to show her ability. “Give me a chance to show you what I can do” (287). Her

father suggests a good name for her shop - “Nisha’s Creations”. She becomes a successful

business woman. She starts responding to the issue of her marriage. She gets a proposal

for marriage with Arvind. She gives her consent for marriage on the condition that she

will continue her business. On the wedding night, she finds no pleasure in her husband.
 30

Arvind is not sensible enough to realize it. She becomes more assertive to demand her

right. She says, “If you are never going to talk or share things with me, why don’t you

take me back to my mother’s house? You have done your duty, married and made me

pregnant. When, the baby is born you can collect it” (330). Next day, Arvind takes her an

outing with Nisha. They have lunch in a hotel. Ten months after her marriage, she gives

birth to twins. She receives many blessings from her family

In Immigrant, Nina is an English teacher at Miranda House, New Delhi. She resides

in a one room apartment with her widowed mother. She is financially self-reliant. She

lost her father. Her mother was her only anchorage. She wanted to see her mother happy.

At a mature age of thirty, she had less hope of finding a husband. When a marriage proposal

came for Nina from an NRI, a dentist by profession who settled in Canada, Nina’s mother

is filled with joy. She prayed for the proposal to materilize. Nina finally accepted to marry,

Ananda. “Then Ananda promised her such a future, laced with choice, edged with beautiful

snowflakes that glittered through the distance, promising at the very minimum change,

novelty, excitement” (I78). She agreed “to join legions of women who crossed the seas to

marry men living in unseen lands” (78). Their marriage was attended by his Canadian friend,

Gary, and his wife, Sue, came to attend the marriage. His maternal uncle with his Canadian

wife and children also came to India to attend his marriage. However, “She knew NRIs

did stay in such hotels, but anxiety about money had been her companion since infancy,

and it asserted itself on every possible occasion. Ananda on the other hand was flush with

dollar confidence. His ability to spend in India (unmatched by any such extravagance in

Canada) had to be savoured fully” (89).

After two days, Ananda left for Canada. He left Nina to join him later after getting

her visa. After three months, she managed to get her visa. She proceeded her journey to

Canada. She felt the first bitter experience of being an immigrant in Canada. When she

reached Toronto, at the immigration clearance counter, she was asked to step aside.

The immigration woman scrutinized each page of her passport suspiciously and asked her

all sorts of irrelevant questions.

Life in Canada began with a sense of freedom. The solitude was pleasing. It turned

to loneliness with no one to talk to and to share her. Homesickness set in her. She yearned

to have a child. She could not conceive. Ananda suffered from pre-ejaculation. Finally,

she decided to get herself examined. She found everything to be normal on her side. Ananda

secretly made a visit to California. After two weeks, he returned with techniques of

overcoming his inadequacies. Nina felt, hurt and annoyed. The idea of using a surrogate

partner appalled her. His training in California made him a happy man. All these years,

he had run away from the sexually assertive white women. He knew his miserable failures.

He was not able to gratify his sexual pleasures. “From the time he had come to Canada he

had felt strangely attracted to the white women who were totally free of any inhibition

regarding their body. He admired the case with which they remained so unself-conscious

of their bodies even when they were so much uncovered” (38). “‘Sex is no great issue in

the west, here it’s no big deal, but in your culture it must be different’, Sue said to him one day

when she was with him for a date. Sex did not mean commitment” (36), and “nobody

owned anybody” (39). He remained bereft of girlfriends. Now, he wanted to test himself.

Nina had an obsession to become a mother. Co-counseling helped her to understand

her situation and take a decision. She decided to take a library degree. Then she got
 32

admission and a fee waiver. “For the next two years Nina felt the comfort of being part of

a student body, no longer the outsider, one of many beyond together by a huge, squat, grey

institutional building…”(244). She had to leave for the university before Ananda came

home late. Library School brought an excitement into Nina’s life. She found everybody

nice and friendly. Anton became her special friend. A trip to national archieve in National

Library made Nina to take the trip to Ottawa. The four day trip was an enjoyable one. On

the last day, they got together to celebrate in a pub. Joining in the fun, Nina held a cigarette

between her finger and had drinks. She felt daring. It was easy to drink and smoke. She

allowed Anton to “take her arms and put it round his waist, doing the same with his own,

fitting her against the contours of his body. They looked like the zillions of couples she

had seen walking around the university campus. Through months of Library Science, she

had gazed covertly at those couples, and now in appearance at least she was one of them”

(258). Anton, had no inhibitions of having sex with Nina. He used to say: “Nobody owns

anybody” (258). She had a sense of her own self. Sex with Anton did not make her feel guilty.

Nina and Ananda carried on with their relationships with Anton and Mandy

respectively. It was “purely meeting of the bodies: a healthy give and take” (269). So, there

was no reason to feel guilty. Nina convinced herself that, “‘I am not taking anything

away from my husband, I am not,’ she rationalized, as it became clear that her trysts with

Anton were not going to stop. All around her she heard of open marriages, of no living

according to the rules of others, her life was her own: she didn’t own anybody any

explanations. If Anton gave her pleasure, if his easy acceptance of her gilded her studies

didn’t she owe it to herself to sleep with him?” (270). Nina adapted herself to the strange

ways of the West. Later the discovery of the ‘yellow hair’, made her realize, that Anton
 33

forced himself upon her, and used her for his own pleasures. She freed herself and moved

on. She took a job and left Halifax and her husband. It “was the ultimate immigrant experience

not that anything was steady enough to attach yourself for the rest of your life, but that

you found different ways to belong, was not necessarily lasting, but ones that made your

journey less lonely for a while. For as immigrant there was no going back. She too was

heading towards fresh territories, a different set of circumstances, and a floating resident

of the western world. When one is reinventing oneself, anywhere could be home” (330).

Custody is a story of two shattered families- Shagun’s and Ishita’s. They suffer

due to infidelity and infertility. Shagun and Raman fight for the custody of their children.

Shagun’s affair, leads husband and wife to go through separation, divorce, remarriage

custody of their children. Shagun does not accept her fate. She wants to become a model.

When she meets Ashok Khanna, her dreams again raise in her mind. She wants to do

something to have a luxurious life. She wants something in her life. She always blames

her husband. She has a notion that she had wasted her time. She starts to see her life in

the other way of liberty. But Raman asks her to be a good mother to her children. She

maintains a secret life with Ashok. She can have a modern world. She breaks her marriage

for her love. Extramarital affair gives her a very pleasant experience. It makes her

substaining, self-assured, powerful, and independent and ingenious. She is very much

towards Ashok. It is proved by her letters to her mother. If she marries Ashok, she can get

an oppturnity in film industry. She can go to Bombay. It is not possible with Raman.

She thinks that she can give bright future to her children. She wants to provider her

children good studies.

Raman has heart attack by divorce. Shagun does not care about that. She does not

worry about him. She stays out on the bedroom. He has to spend with his daughter alone.

Even her daughter also seems to be upset of her father’s illness. “Her father’s illness had

upset the child so much that she had begun to have nightmares, she explained to the bemused

parents” (105). She abandons him and his home for the sake of her lover. She does not

want to lose happiness. She never feels to come back home.

Raman becomes lonely by divorce from his wife. Now, the battle starts about the

custody of the children. Shagun, in the absence of her husband, purloins her children.

Their separation has a great impact on the children. Roohi gets nightmares. Arjun gets

against his father by her mother’s brainwash.

In Custody, Shagun’s story runs parallel to Ishita’s story. Ishita agonizes from

infertility. She is forced out from her in-law’s family by her infertility. Her mother-in-law

is pleased to know that her son is not ineffective but her daughter-in-law is infertile.

Later, Ishita finds her happiness in Raman and in his children. She becomes a mistress to

Raman and a step mother to his children.

All the female protagonists of Kapur are caught up in the marital bond. In their

marital status, they seems to be not satisfied but rejected and frustrated. Their maladjustment

is very clear in their transgression. Modern world and its system of marriage with more

conveyance make them seek for more space for themselves. Hence, they attempt to

transcend the marital norms. Astha’s marriage to Hemant is a failure and But mere effort

without clear objective, strong will power and planned action, Virumati’s flight from one mode

of life and plunging into another, Nina’s marriage with Ananda, and Shagun’s marriage to

Raman are all disastrous flight. Similarly, Astha’s efforts to seek fulfilment through lesbian
 35

relations and Nisha’s dreams of romantic love and marriage and consequent frustrations

are also tragic flights. All her protagonists ultimately end in tragedy. Their world is a

delusory one. They are mere puppets in marriage. They have their own aspirations with

which they want to transgress the marital bond in one way or the other.