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In a palanquin borne by four servants sit a rich man’s three
daughters, the youngest dressed in her bridal sari, her little
banks painted with red lac dye, her hair oiled and set… I
cannot imagine the loneliness of this child. A Bengali girl’s
happiest night is about to become her lifetime imprisonment. It
seems all the sorrow of history, all that is unjust in society
and cruel in religion has settled on her. Even constructing it
from the merest scraps of family memory fills me with rage and
bitterness.
Bharati Mukherjee
enmeshes the socio-cultural history of Bengal, blending it with
personal family history, which is transmitted down the
generations. Central to her story is the impact of western
culture on ethnic Bengali society. She traces the earliest
influence of colonialism, bringing it up to the present when
immigrants have a differential circumstance but essentially the
same confluence of the orient and the occidental. As one
traverses through the novel to see an emergent transition in the
processes of assimilation, simultaneous reactive patterns
manifest in a parallel gender transformation. The earlier women
in the East were protected from an infusion of alien cultures
due to the intractability of social patterns and mores; the
cross-cultural impact was restricted to men’s mobility.
However, the modern feminine emigrant is aware, awakened to
ideal gender notions and rights, so she is quick to adapt yet
acutely sensitised to the plight of her gender back home. Where
there is a sociological statement, she grapples with this
conundrum. Many young feminist diasporic writers have tried to
map the emergence of their identities. They reconceptualise that
in the context of their adopted milieu as well as their former
habitat. Similarly they endeavour a recasting of their sisters
back home.
These are the
theoretical abstractions that one can deduce from the plot as it
unravels. The story is engrossing and well written in Bharati
Mukherjee’s racy style; the plot is quick.
Tara’s story
begins in Calcutta as the author shuttles between the colonial
Bengali society, with the facets that typify emergence of the Bhadralok,
cultural dilemmas westernised lives juxtaposed with the
tradition bound warps of Hindu ritualism which their wives were
subjected to and the emergent social reforms seeping in through
the Bhahmo Samaj Movement, from where the scenario moves on to
California. The observations and reactions are autobiographical
and allegorical since Bharati lives there now. Central to the
theme is Tara’s quest for identity, as her traditional Brahmin
roots and American interlude coincide. When she lives in San
Francisco, she intermittently reminisces spells of her Bengali
Brahmin childhood, thereby portraying the "contrasting
cultures and the emergent eternal migrant dilemmas."
Tara lives in San
Francisco surrounded by an ex-husband, Bish Chatterjee, her son
Rabi and her lover, a Hungarian Buddhist. In parallel projection
are the two men in her life who symbolise two diverse cultures
and her cultural dilemma.
Her portrayal of
her son Rabi, who is a typical product of cross-cultural
upbringing, brings out the conflict of imposing an Indian
pattern of parenthood. "I look at Rabi and, for the first
time in my life, I want to slap him, scream at him and tell him
to shut up, but parents can’t feel this way. No, that’s not
right, I’ve seen them in parking lots and supermarkets. They
get furious and make fools of themselves and security guards
have to be called and they get in the papers for child abuse and
end up in jail. Indian mothers don’t; we don’t have violent
feelings except against ourselves, and never against our
children, at least not against our sons."
She has woven in
her sibling interaction, very Indian in its style but again
showcased in the USA. Apparently, these were the
contraindications for Bharati Mukherjee to contend with. She has
given vent to her emotions in a novel, which has mental turmoil,
mystery, intrigue and primarily a fervent quest for identify and
space.
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CLOSE
on the heels of Manju Kapoor’s Difficult Daughters comes Desirable
Daughters by Bharati Mukherjee, at any rate a progression in the
fictional recasting of gender from the earlier title Enslaved
Daughters by Sudhir Chandra. Interestingly, both the former
books are a search for roots, and an endeavour at mapping gender
identities. With an amalgam of history and fiction, Manju Kapoor
reverted to Lahore as she culled her mothers’ past in the
historical backdrop of pre-Partition Punjab, synthesising fact and
fiction. Bharati Mukherjee imbues the typical diasporic yearning for
her homeland, i.e., her Bengali culture, on which reams of
publication culminated into a vital component of literary
consciousness.
