The repressed conscious

It's almost improbable that Manju Kapur's Home should be as stimulating as it is. This is the simplest of stories""the life of a joint family running a cloth business in Delhi's busy Karol Bagh area""told in the simplest of ways. The style is conversational and there's nothing too out-of-the-ordinary about the plot. Even when there is dramatic tension, it's presented dispassionately. Besides, this is a fast read, and aren't we conditioned to believe that page-turners mustn't be taken very seriously?

What raises Home above its seemingly commonplace concerns is Kapur's understanding of the inconstancy of human beings and their relationships; of our self-delusions, our manipulating of situations to suit our own viewpoints, the instinct for gossip-mongering and groupism, and how the joint family system provides the perfect setting for the playing out of all these qualities. But this book's biggest strength is her refusal to stand in judgement on human foibles.

Without fuss, without any preamble (except for a short introductory paragraph about the workings of the typical lower-middle class business family: "Their marriages augmented, their habits conserved. From an early age children are taught to maintain the foundation on which these homes rest..."), Home draws us into the lives of the Banwari Lal clan. Sona, the wife of the family's eldest son Yashpal, has been childless for the first 10 years of her marriage, which makes her a subject of resentment and pity (and some gloating) among the other ladies in the house""it being understood that a married woman's prime function is to serve as the vessel that will bring forth the next generation. When she finally does conceive, her mother-in-law (known only as "Maji", never by name""indicative of her status as nothing more significant than the patriarch's wife) promptly starts doting on her""which in turn creates a bridge between Sona and Rupa (who all these years had been her sister's confidant in gossip about the in-laws).

Kapur observes these little details masterfully, rarely playing them up but making sure they stick in the reader's mind. The shifts in relationships, the power struggles within a family, the suppression of individual rights and needs, the selective thinking that can allow a woman to feel threatened and aggrieved by her son's bride while completely forgetting her own experiences as a daughter-in-law 25 years earlier""all these things are set down with great economy.

In a parallel thread, the sad fate of Yashpal's sister Sunita creates more complications. When she reached marriageable age, Sunita was disposed of as all daughters are expected to be. The stars were favourable but her husband was an abusive lout and now, after her death in a kitchen "accident", her young son Vicky is brought to Delhi to stay with the Banwari Lals. Confused and uncared for, he is destined to become the family's black sheep, and he takes his first steps in this direction by sexually abusing his little cousin Nisha.

Kapur's handling of this passage is frighteningly matter-of-fact, less a judgement on Vicky than an acknowledgement of the subtle ways in which such incidents can occur among youngsters living in close proximity. But what's even scarier is the aftermath. Some of the elders figure out what might have happened, but bringing it into the open is so unthinkable that the possibility isn't even discussed; instead they covertly decide to let the traumatised Nisha live with her aunt a few houses away. It's just something that has to be done; family honour must be preserved at all cost.

Home suffers a little from the unevenness of its narrative structure""from the dichotomy between its first half, which is freeflowing and takes us into the rooms and lives of different characters, and its second half, which focuses mainly on Nisha and her struggle for emancipation. But this is dwarfed by its strengths. This book has the quality, common to much top-rate fiction, of providing insights into lives built on value systems completely different from one's own. Kapur brings out some disturbing home truths in this novel, yet she does it from an exceptionally mature, detached perspective""suggesting that many of the things that go wrong stem naturally from the human condition rather than from the flaws in any one way of life. She makes her characters believable and sympathetic, and even when we shudder at the repressive ancientness of their beliefs, we can recognise them as being not all that different in their essence from us.

HOME

Manju Kapur
Random House India
Price: Rs 395; Pages: 340