| Awake When All the World is Asleep
Reviewed by Michelle Reale
A
review of Shree Ghatage’s book.
House
of Anansi Press
ISBN: 0-88784-602-5
Formerly
of Bombay and currently a resident of St. John’s Newfoundland,
author Shree Ghatage may well be one of the few Indian
writers not singularly preoccupied with the “politics
of place” as is currently in vogue with South Asian
writers.
Instead, Ghatage’s characters inhabit a world where
the only way to do anything is to simply “be” and here
is where is. It seems incidental whether the occupation
of “being” is played out in India, Canada or the United
States. Ghatage brings to life characters who bear a
common trait, one of resilience, and we read these stories
and catch these characters in the throes of living their
lives, simply, as it comes, day by day.
Perhaps presaging what lies within the pages, Ghatage’s
well-chosen epigraph gives an indication of the role
of fate, or the hand that one is dealt:
Conqueror of cities, young seer
Born with unlimited power,
The spirit sustains every act. .
— Hymn to Indra, the Embodied Spirit, Rig Veda 1.11.4
Exemplifying the interconnect-edness of lives, these
stories take place in India’s urban south, in the Maya
Building, where wives are sought, parent’s lose children
to the lure of opportunity which beckons far and wide,
passion is often covert and forbidden, ties are broken
and what is most fervently sought remains elusive.
In the title story “Awake When All the World is Asleep,”
Veena and Sarla are twin sisters whose fate seems destined
to be spent estranged rather than together. When Sarla
becomes pregnant with her husband Baba’s child she becomes
lonely and bored and is encouraged to accompany her
mother to her weekly rummy group. Leaving Veena and
Baba behind in the evenings sets the stage for unfortunate
and unintended deception. Sharing minted tea one evening,
Veena bends over, pouring Baba’s second cup, the mogra
garland she is wearing in her hair slips and falls into
his cup. Baba leans across, plucks it out of the tea,
and after removing his handkerchief from his pocket,
gently mops the petals. The ones that are beginning
to go transparent he discards. He takes Veena by her
shoulders, turns her around, removes a pin from her
hair and secures the garland back in its place. It isn’t
until his fingers touch her warm neck that Veena moves
away, blushing. She rushes to the opposite side of he
room, gulps her cooling tea and hurriedly leaves the
room.
Pleading with her mother to take her along to the rummy
group, she is refused on the grounds that other women
might want to bring their daughters along as well. Shantabai,
the family servant and ayah since the girls were babies
serves Baba and Veena their evening tea and witnesses
something out of the ordinary: the two holding hands.
What transpires is a downward spiral of shame and recriminations
culminating in Veena being shunned by her family and
turned out of the house.
Ghatage builds the suspense in this story with many
stark and mundane images beginning with the framing
of what a family should be, indeed, looks to be, but
clearly is not and ending with what seems to be unthinkable:
turning a largely innocent daughter out of the house
to avoid scandal.
One need not feel disappointed or left hanging by such
and ending since Ghatage picks up the saga of Veena
in the story entitled “Shantabai.” Shantabai becomes
the surrogate mother in Veena’s exile that she has always
longed to be since Veena’s infancy. As they travel together,
Shantabai offers encouragement, dire warnings and sage
advice admonishing Veena: “. . . Forget him. Get MA.
Shem-A. Your father will find you a good boy in Poona.
Nobody knows what happened between you and Baba Saheb.
Your Ma is telling everyone that you got high fever
and because Sarla is at home, pregnant, too much risk
for unborn baby.” But, although Veena is unwilling to
forget, indeed though it hurts too much to remember,
she lives with the fallout and believed that, in the
end “Shantabi will understand that eve though it is
impossible to forget, it is not always impossible to
forgive.”
In “I Am the Bougainvillaea”, at the urging of her aunt,
Latamavshi, Gopa is introduced to a military man, Prem.,
who in due time introduces her to his son Ram. Soon
enough a marriage is arranged and life with Ram is a
cold and meager existence, a disappointment she feels
undeserved but, not, in the end, unrewarded, albeit
in a very unconventional and surprising way. Ghatage
is incredibly deft at snubbing her nose at the often
ubiquitous formulaic writing which exploits the Indian
stereotypes that a lot of writing is saturated with
and that somehow serves to fulfill a western reader’s
preconceived notion of Indian life. The stories speak
for themselves, leaving the reader to draw conclusions
without the crafty manipulation that so often results
in an automatic response. That the story protagonists
all inhabit the Maya Building and live are intertwined
with and layered upon one another validates the authentic
feeling of “life in the throes” for the reader.
The vast and often bewildering difference between East
and West is treated creatively in “Heaven-Earth Difference”
where Indian born doctor in training Shaila falls in
love with student Simon Roberts who chooses the moment
she boards the plane home to Bombay to propose marriage
to her. Shocked by subtly satisfied that affections
are mutual she arrives home to parents chock full of
expectations for their one and only child. First delaying
details about her relationship and then having to defend
them, Shaila listens to a sermon from her mother, which
she could not know at the time, would be prophetic:
I won’t tell you what you have no doubt already discovered:
there is a zameen-aasmaan pharak, a heaven-earth difference
between the East and the West. However, I will say this.
Remember, you are not simply a product of your own times
where independence and freedom to do as you wish are
prized commodities, but the product of generations of
people who have lived a particular way of life, subscribed
to a particular line of thought for over five thousand
years. I want you to think very carefully before you
reject this culture which is so much a part of you in
order to establish that you - and nobody else - have
control over your life.” Shaila defends Simon while
in India, though when back at home in Canada, she must
defend herself against what was a brewing deception
right under her nose in the last story “Sensible About
Matters of the Heart.”
Clearly Ghatage offers no prescriptions for living,
panaceas or polemics. Simply, interconnected stories
told in an honest and forthright manner touch readers
in ways that continue to reverberate long after the
book is put down. As Hiru, a character who has lost
a succession of wives to freakish untimely deaths, tells
Shantabai one afternoon as the Maya Building regulars
assemble for a regular complaint session: “ . . . so
why for grumble? Who can change fate. It is watching
over all of us . . . It is awake when all the world
is asleep.”
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End Of Article.....
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