Data Loading...
07 CHAPTER I - Shodhganga Flipbook PDF
1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION The present thesis tends to explore the Human Relationships in Shobhaa De’s Novels. Shobhaa De
273 Views
75 Downloads
FLIP PDF 213.67KB
CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION The present thesis tends to explore the Human Relationships in Shobhaa De’s Novels. Shobhaa De is the most prominent socialite, openly straight forward columnist, intellectual, moderate poignant, sharp, shrewd and extremely conservative novelist in Indian English Literature. She is a grandiloquent advocate of the feminist thoughts and a budding genius in the domain of Modern English Literature. She portrays the true picture of modern metropolitan life. Her novels deal with men and women of urban elite class their obsessions, disappointments and insecurities. Human relationships in De’s novels were important to see the fun, feelings, stress and struggle in their lives. She is esteemed for writing proper trashy romance lit and pseudo-erotica. Her art is easily apprehensible and is upright to show the bare disclosure of urban elite society, but she executed through the medium of art and exquisiteness, feeling and form. Her art spreads the message of revolting back for the rights of the woman which has a strong voice of objection and an outburst of suppression and discrimination of women in patriarchal society. She exhibits her characters in numerous types of relationships. Her female characters are rich, beautiful, surefooted and assertive who combines the flapper’s physical freedom, sexuality and stamina with feminist selfassertiveness and traditional domestic feminity. Males are painted in gloomy colors as they are passive, involuntary, unresponsive and rigid. Shobhaa De though a student of psychology possess feminist cum humanistic approach towards life. She stands behalf of the acquisition of Indian English Literature. The study also highlights the evolution of Indian English Literature. English Literature has passed through several phases such as Indo-Anglian, Indo-English, Indian writing in English and recently Indian English literature which manifests modern thoughts, modern life, despite the utterances of fallacious reasoning, patriotic duty and political prejudices it remains good enough and proves itself. It facilitates to focus the readers mental responsiveness and awareness. Many women novelists reflected their portrayals very beautifully and depicted a common relation between past and present, cognitive content and contemporaneity
1
and it is a strong sense of Indianness which has proved an individual identity in Indian writing in English. The study also aims to refer the literary contribution of Shobhaa De as a novelist. Her fiction focuses every variety of heterosexuality, homosexuality, sexual behaviors, psyche of women and her problems. Human relationships in Shobhaa De’s novels consist of hotchpotch of cognitions, emotions and behaviors that obviously unfolds into a flexible fashion depending on the cultural and social environment and the psychomotor objectives of the individual character. The intent of the study is to fill up the hiatus and to highlight the relationships of urban elite people of metropolitan cities of India as mentioned in Shobhaa De’s novels and to create the image of a novelist, who is deeply conventional, highly devoted, a skillful story teller and a determined person. The following novels were selected and analyzed in the thesis. Socialite Evenings (1989), Starry nights (1992), Sisters (1992), Strange Obsession (1992), Sultry Days (1994), Snapshots (1995) and Second Thoughts (1996). Her novels are blinded by the glitter, sadness, hollowness, the artificiality, the pangs and inner fragmentation of falsified life.
Significance of the study 1. The present study signifies the honesty, provocative thoughts, philosophy and intelligence of Shobhaa De. 2. It will contribute substantially towards developing a deeper understanding of the novels selected for the research. 3. It exposes the darker secrets of human relationships of the urban elite people to which a few people know about it. 4. The present study will be pedagogically significant for students as a measure for intensive study of the literature and as a tool of knowledge. 5. It will also help to strengthen the teaching and learning of English literature. 6. It will definitely shape the minds within the society.
2
Objectives of the Study 1. The objective of the research is to study and analyze the human relationships in fiction of Shobhaa De. 2. To study the psychological weaving of characters in the human relationships. 3. To evaluate the contribution of women novelists in the contemporary Indian English Novel. 4. To highlight Shobhaa De’s achievement as a novelist. 5. To find out the problems of the characters underlying the relationships.
Research Method The research will adopt an analytical and interpretative approach to study the human relationships in Shobhaa De’s novels as it is the prime objective of the proposed study. The terms such as ‘human relationships, marginalization, and subjugation’ will be explained with the help of reference books available in the libraries and online.
Scope and Limitations of the Study Scope: This exploratory research is meant to study the Human relationships in Shobhaa De’s novels in the ambit of specific objectives. The study also aims the exploration of the versatile personality of Shobhaa De. It attempts to procure
a realistic picture of a particular urban elite class of
people in metropolitan cities like Mumbai, Delhi and Calcutta captured by the novelist’s naïve realism from the society. It raises the veil of crimeful relations prevailing in high society of contemporary India. It throws significant light on the predicament of women in India. Shobhaa De’s women unhesitantly and unmistakably discuss and practice sex with unusual candor. They practice sex in four-wheel-drive sex in all directions. So the relationships are based on sex, lust and greed. Beneath the turbulent waves of relationships run the placid meaningful orthodox values. The characters chosen are amazingly beautiful, ruthlessly ambitious, filthily rich youngsters who love and hate each other in a said relationship. 3
The research provides the enigmatic fissures in human relationships in changing dilemmas in an urban India. The more positive attitudes towards greed and quest of self centeredness associated with elite people in part impel their attitudes towards increased unethical behavior in relationships. It also describes that how characters get assimilated, suffered or distracted in relationships. Society has to
pay
attention
towards
the
inhumane
relationships
predominating and ruining the Indian culture.
Limitations 1. The present research is based on the seven novels of Shobhaa De upto 1996. The other novels of non-fiction will not come under the purview of proposed research work for analyzing human relationships but they will be studied for literary contribution of Shobhaa De. 2. The study of human relationships in Shobhaa De’s novels will only deal with man-woman relationships and woman-woman relationship and sexbehavioral relationship, it will not deal with the parent-child and siblings relationships as they are subdued in the novels. 3. It will focus only on urban places mostly like Mumbai, Delhi and Calcutta and not other cities or rural places. 4. It is about rich elite upper class people not of poor people.
The present research work proposes to analyze, explain and interpret the novels of Shobhaa De from the humanistic point of view to explore the various patterns of human relationships in Shobhaa De’s novels. It will study the weaving of characters in novels their association with one another and the changing dilemmas in an Indian urban elite society. It is not about just bored and frustrated housewives but also about harden and cynical women who are unsafe to the eternal feminine fantasy of a partner who seems to be ready for any challenge and they think the men think of their supremacy in the most adolescent term. It states that relationships play an important role in one’s health and to discover meaning in one’s life but the picture is changed due to psychodynamic changes, occurring
in
the
characters
due
to
urbanization,
bureaucratization
and
4
individualization as portrayed by Shobhaa De in her novels. Thus it intensifies to combat the deepest study of the novels to mitigate the problem.
Review of literature An expansive literature review has been conducted to collect data towards the research question to find out the human relationships in Shobhaa De’s novels. The primary sources, secondary sources, books reviews, research articles, columns, newspapers, journals and websites have been critically analyzed to gestate the big idea of research. Through a study of a literature review one finds that De is primarily concerned with women and vindicates mental and economic freedom to them and also gives importance to men. She writes from a definite feminine perspective and mentions the contemporary reality more plainly than that of other writers. In conclusion it can be said that underneath the restless waves of her novels proceeds the smooth current of age old orthodox values, which can be found only by those who delves in great depth of her novels. Though extensive studies were not undertaken by researchers on Shobhaa De’s novels and no one has studied the topic Human Relationships in her novels.
Source of Data Moreover, data collection and analysis will be done from both primary and secondary sources. The electronic references will be used ranging from web articles to blog.
Work Plan In the undertaken study of analysis five extensive chapters are presented. Chapter I
:
Introduction
Chapter II
:
The Heterosexual relationships in the novels of Shobhaa De.
Chapter III
:
The Homosexual and the Sex-behavioral relationships in the novels of Shobhaa De.
Chapter IV
:
Problems underlying the relationships in Shobhaa De’s novels.
Chapter V
:
Conclusion Bibliography
5
The First Chapter throws light on the evolution of Indian English literature as a new and an independent discipline. It also discusses the contribution of women novelists in the contemporary Indian English novel and also highlights Shobhaa De’s literary achievement as a novelist. The Second Chapter analyses the man-woman relationships and interpret them. The third chapter is about the same- sex relationships of the characters and the deviant sex-behavioral relationships. The fourth Chapter is about the problems of the characters in their lives and the factors responsible to tie and clear them in a relationship. The fifth Chapter Conclusion presents the general conclusion of the entire research work. The research explicates that all the characters of the Shobhaa De’s novels they aggressively and purposively built relationships and then tapped the power for their mean. The hormones Oxytocin and vasopressin are involved in the bonding process of human beings. Usually all human connections, manners of behaving and feelings are suited to one another. There is a power of attraction that brings them together and one does not know why it occurs. According to the attachment theory of John Bowlby a person’s growth depends on maturation of nervous system and the types of experiences the person possesses. “Every human being is not only a body but also mind, soul and spirit. The reason seems to be chemical as the body shows increased flow of body fluids and chemicals when the physical bonding between male and females takes place”.1
All human inhabitants possess inherited genetic components in shaping attachments. The human race is bound to connect to one another. All these facts occur to form human relationships in human. Definition: ‘Human relationship.’2 Human relationship is defined as a condition of disambiguation between peoples. This research explores the natures of human in the novels of Shobhaa De and the flip flop in relationships. Shobhaa De exercises belief in an open communication, an absolute acceptance of one owns fault while vulnerable on those of the partner. She laid emphasis on the 6
introductory eccentric relation of marriage which is time, tenderness and closeness. She focuses on women’s troubles and gives a current approach to them. She is also a top ten writer in English. Her disputatious novels made her an overnight famous person and the amorous composition of her novels adhere much agitation and she was charged as a ‘Soft porn writer’. She deals with Indian English which today’s world enjoy. She exhibits her characters in numerous types of relationships.
Evolution of Indian English literature as a new and an independent discipline Indian English literature is not absolute fiction, but on the contrary it is an interpretation and collection of Anthropology, History, Sociology, Psychology and a multitude of other areas. So far the real literary artist unfolds life more precisely and with more clear historical facts and statistical details, because he/she shares with the conformity to rule the human heart with the realities of man in society. A group of persons with native or co-native languages associated to write in English and their literary work invoked as Indian English Literature. English is taken up as a language of education ad gesture and an important source of verbal connection of the Indians. Indian English literature is one and half century old. During the British rule also English was the language of supremacy, position and advantage in India. English was used to compose and to hold up possession of administrative officers, clerks and civil servants in vast and expansive sub-continent. It originated in the summer of 1608 when Emperor Jahangir invited with attraction to Captain William Hawkins, Commander of British Naval Campaign in the Moghul Court. It was Indian’s first tryst with the Britisher in English. English became irresistible necessity for the natives to impart with their British rulers. They conveyed their messages and entreaties in English and lodge their ailments with the police in English. English became a matter of endurance of the urban class rather than an issue of self esteem. As soon as the modern population emerged, it started to extend its wings. Most of the early advocates of English literature in India were Britishers. The persons like George Orwell, Rudyard Kipling and Jim Corbett boosted English language and afterwards it was carried on by many 7
British authors. Their tone of philosophy was soon characterized by facts and nonfictional works. English language was too used by many young patriots as a device to strive against the rightful power of British. Raja Ram Mohan Roy and Swami Vivekananda wrote prose; Henry Derozio, Tagore and Sri Aurobindo Ghosh were as poets and prose writers. They wrote literary genres of their choice to make a political change. They spiritualized and fraternized their genres with their yearnings to strengthen the deaden people, to be more communicative in their better feelings and to make them active in their functions. As though Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan has exactly commented in his book The Hindu view of life as: “Our accounts of God are like stories, but all the same legendry. Not one of them is full and final. We are like little children on the sea shore trying to fill our shells with water from the sea. While we can’t exhaust the waters of the deep sea by means of our shells, every drop that we attempt to gather into our tiny shells is a part of the authentic water.”3 -Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan. As Rabindranath Tagore and Sarojini Naidu were contributing to the English literature initially- in that period many boarding schools educated upper class English authors were engendered in the society. They wrote realistic fictions and it was read by all over the world. There was a compensatory pause for three decennaries when India was going through the phase of ambitiousness and reconstruction. Many works produced by the Indian writers set the stage on fire and failed in catalyzing and detonation. Due to the emergence of freedom struggle a radical social change in writing voiced abreast the British Empire. At that time many political leaders like Lala Lajpat Rai, Gangadhar Tilak wrote from different parts of the country. English language became a weapon in the hands of Gandhiji and he edited and presented his autobiography as My experiments with truth to show his literary stylish elegance. Nehruji was an eminent leader who outranked in writing prose. At the same time writer like R.K.Narayan, the writer Mulk Raj Anand and the famous writer Raja Rao started to produce literary work in their early thirties. They were formulating on Indian positions and handling the social matters like superstitious 8
notion, social status, impoverishment, ignorance and social wickedness that were diminishing the life and sustaining properties of Indian society in the English novels and short stories. As India achieved freedom many freedom fighters, leaders and writers started to write efficacious poems. Rabindranath Tagore cited in ‘Gitanjali’. “Where the mind is without fear And the head is held high; Where knowledge is free; Where the world has not been Broken up into fragments by Narrow domestic walls’ Where words come out from The depth of truth; Where tireless striving stretches Its arm toward perfection; Where the clear stream of reason Has not lost its way into the dreary Desert sand of dead habit; Where the mind is lead forward by thee Into ever-widening thought and action – Into that heaven of freedom, my father, Let my Country awake.”4 -Rabindranath Tagore. In 1947 India became free from foreign rule and English language was viewed from 1965. From then English and Hindi are the official languages. English language in India is used to consider mass nouns as count nouns and often use of “isn’t it?” Tag and more grammatical usages like compound form and prepositions came into writings. India came forth as a major literary nation in 1980’s and 1990’s. Salman Rushdie’s ‘Midnight Children’ caused an extreme vehemence in a circle and won the Booker Prize. ‘The Golden Gate’ also made him to enter the arena of international writers and raised an unreasonable mark on the world-wide literary scene. Some of the writers like ‘Eunice de Souza’, ‘Keki Daruwala’, ‘Adil Jassawala’, ‘Kamala Das’
9
used Indian phrases with English words and proved to manifest a mixture of the Indian and Western cultures. Today’s Indian English literature is the manifestation of modern thoughts, modern life, despite the utterance of fallacious reasoning, patriotic duty and political prejudices it remains good enough and proves itself. It facilitates to focus the reader’s mental responsiveness and awareness. From the time of Tagore many intelligent critics emerged with their literary traditions of their own country not considering about their past and not accepting the charm of the modish style. Modern Indian literatures possess the republic of letters in which there are well trained critics who are judicious and fearless and they are writing with happy results. It is noteworthy that in the modern history of Indian English literature many men and women novelists emerged and they created a remarkable visual sensation all around the world with their great master pieces of arts. In around the late 19th century the feminist movement started with the beginning of first wave of feminism. Thomas Stearns Eliot has exactly said that:
“The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an ‘objective correlative’, in other words, a set of objects, a situation, and a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion.”5 The feminists reflected their portrayals very beautifully and depicted a common relation between past and present, cognitive content and contemporaneity and it is this strong sense of Indianness which has proved an individual identity in Indian writing in English. Thus: “Indian Writing in English is no longer a bogie attached to the British Engine, but it is running smoothly on its own track with the help of its own engine. “6 -Amar Nath Prasad. Across India in all over the universities, the Indian writing in English has been prescribed as a separate branch of curriculum. Many writers like Arundhati Roy, Vikram Seth, Anita Desai, Shobhaa De and Salman Rushdie have astounded globally by their perfect writing skills. The first wave of feminism in the 19th to early 20th 10
Century followed the suffrage movement. The second wave of feminism considered the inequality of laws and also the official inequalities. The third wave of feminism arose from the detected failures of the second wave. Homosexuality was also portrayed by Virginia Woolf with a positive degree. Many female writers strived to change the representation of female sexual behaviors and it was also accepted for men to have more than one sexual partner. This was also called as the third wave of feminism. The feminist literatures and the third world women’s problems were shaped by post- modernism. Contrary to the expectations the modern literature which is rising is charged as being obvious, not genuine, superficially limited and formerly also inferior in quality to summon a universal challenge. One can remember the famous words of Salman Rushdie: “What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.”7 -Salman Rushdie
Arundhati Roy, Gita Mehta, Amitav Ghosh, Vikram Seth, Allen.j.Solly and Salman Rushdie have given a new voice, new direction and fullness to the Indian English fiction. Some of the writers like Rohinton Mistry, Naipaul, Chitra Banerjee, Divakaruni, Jhumpa Lahiri and Shobhaa De also belong to Indian Diaspora.
The Contribution of Women Novelists in the Contemporary Indian English Novel The Indian English literature has endowed different intellectual women novelists who submitted Indian editions of books within the border of excellence and modesties. An American writer Gertrude Stein writes in her poem that: “Write without thinking of the result In terms of a result, But think of the writing Which is to say that creation Must take place between pen and paper, Not before in a thought 11
Or afterwards in a recasting, It will come if it is there And if you will let it come.”8 -Gertrude Stein. Their writings reflected their thoughts. In the starting period very few female writers like Sarojini Naidu and Toru Dutt gave importance to English poetry. There was not a single novel written by Indian women. The literary art chiefly written by women and culpably involved with women is called as a feminist literature. Indian women novelists have disposed a new magnitude to the Indian literature. Simone de Beauvoir the great novelist explains the situation of women as: “The situation of woman is that she ---- a free and autonomous being like all human creatures - nevertheless finds herself living a world where men compel her to assume the status of the other.”9 -Simone de Beauvoir.
It was of utmost importance to bring a social change and to raise the situation of women, for that matter a splendid assemblage of writers have been witnessed. Many English novels were introduced by the new age feminist writers. They thought that feminism is an end to all the bad experiences faced by a woman in muteness. From a last few decades Indian English literature is emerging and developing by itself. Female writers of India are framing a position of themselves. Writers from Pakistan and Bangladesh are also writing in English. They are all undeclared or unrecognized sociologist of the world. ‘Nilofar Cagatay’ in women’s conference mentioned absolutely that: “Feminism constitutes the political expression of the concerns and interests of women form different regions, classes, nationalities and ethnic backgrounds……..There is and must be a diversity of feminism responsive to the different needs and concerns of different women and defined by them for themselves.”10 -Nilofar Cagatay.
12
Feminism presents to a different quality of cognitive content, the transcript, movements and agencies for activities. It is an imaginative process which works for the betterment of women. The common ideas and themes are found in women novelist writings. They are concerned with gender issues and the actions performed by the female characters, subjectivity, utilization and subjugation, the notion of being other in a patriarchal society. It represents the growing up of a female from childhood to womanhood, liberating her from self quest, sexual aberrancy, sexual power, relationships, realities, philosophy and artistic movements. She represents a new woman in the Indian culture, globalization, migration, diaspora consciousness, and east-west dissension, the conflict between tradition and modernity and socio-mental status. In India many female novelists like Kamala Markandaya, Nayantara Sahgal, Ruth Prawer Jahabvala, Shashi Deshpande, Anita Desai, Eunice De Souza, Kiran Desai, Kamala Das, Shobhaa De, Jhumpa Lahiri, Arundhati Roy, Mahashweta Devi and others reflected their literary works. Kamala Markandaya the author of ten novels belongs to the ground breaking group of Indian women writers who represented their perfect literary style. Her novels are concerned with gender issues and the actions performed by the female characters, their subjectivity, utilization and the notion of being other in a patriarchal society. She won the international high esteem and honor with the publication of her very first novel Nectar in Sieve. Her art reflects the love and respect for India. Fiction for her is a way of communicating her vision of life. She represents racial clashes, constitutional inequalities. Her first novel Nectar in Sieve mentions the story of a south Indian village where industry and new technology devastates. The major theme of this novel is starvation and dehumanization. Her second novel Some Inner Fury is a tragedy engineered by politics. It also presents about the conflict between the east and the west and also the type of intricacies entangled in the interpersonal relationship. Kamala’s next novel Silence of Desire is a family drama that emphasizes the struggle existing between a husband and wife. It concentrates on the provinces of spiritual realities.
13
A Handful of Rice deals with urban economics. Kamala Markandaya’s thematic concerns are full of realistic touches. She portrays the hunger, degradation or the east-west confrontation and the vice-versa have been realistically portrayed in her fiction. In Two Virgins, Kamala touches upon her favorite subject matter of dissension of east and west again. In Possession she advert the anti-patriarchal anger through the character Lady Caroline Bell – In the words of H.M. Williams, Caroline is a “Monster of Possessiveness.” 11 Kamala Markandaya is carefully weighed to be an innovator of local language, her effort of writing the novel The Nowhere Man foreshadows many local events. Kamala’s novels are better known for the responsive act of creating of characters and conditions which are existing persons of an abundant collection. Nayantara Sahgal is a feminist writer with a powerful political heritage, voices forth her deep conscious awareness of deep sense of nationalistic emotional feelings in her earlier works. She has written eight novels and nine non-fictions. She spent her childhood days in Anand Bhavan, the patrimonial estate of the Nehru’s in Allahabad. Her novels portray the important political events. They also reflected the personal life and bitter marital experiences of her. She presents the woman character as an independent individual in the society. Sahgal while discussing her craft points out: “In a sense writers write about the same thing all their lives though they may hang that theme on different frame works. My on-going theme would probably be freedom.”12 Her idea of freedom as the finest value is a powerful effect by Gandhiji’s belief in it. The more important thematic prepossession of her novel Rich Like Us is the emergency of 1974-75 periods, when the parliament and constitutional rights were suspended. As far as the women’s familiarization was concerned the novel exhibits it along the lines of feminist orientation. In this novel the women are unquestionably aware of the injustice done to them by man, but the usual condition makes them spontaneous prisoners in this world of exploitation and unfairness. Sahgal’s first novel A Time To Be Happy accentuates upon man’s duty to the family and society. 14
In the Day in Shadow Nayantara Sahgal gives a pictorial account of a single woman, Smiriti’s suffering in society. The endurance and the solitariness that has softened Nayantara have been brought forward with deep threshold level in the novel. The character Smiriti seems to be free from the traditional social restraints that have tempered to strain apart from a long relationship which has become unimportant with the meaningless association between husband and wife. Smiriti remains only a conventional woman submitting herself to Raj’s idea of patriarchy. Anita Desai a noted writer of 1960’s and an author of seventeen novels, comprehends the internationally applauded Clear light of Day and In Custody. She achieved Sahitya Academy award in 1978. Her novels are set in India and fully plunged in Indian life. Her special concentration is upon the obscure life of her characters and her main interest is towards the people antecedently marginalized in Indian fiction, chiefly women, children and the elders. Her work unveils the struggle of female power against the background of the patriarchal culture style in India. Her presentation of man-woman relationship has been affected and circumstanced by the existing perplexed social conditions. Desai mentions that, writing is an act of: “Exploration of language: how much can language do, how far it can pretend human experience and feelings.”13
Dr.Shashi Pal in her novel observes that Desai is an: “Obsessive existentialist.”14 In a novel Cry, the peacock she considers the failure of marriage between Maya and Gautam. Maya marries Gautam who is much older than her, but their passions and excitable responses never get matched. The novel is about Maya’s cries of affection and understanding in her unattractive marriage with Gautam. The calamitous end of Maya and Gautam’s married life is seen in which she kills her husband and afterwards kill her by perpetrating suicide. Manisha and Jiban’s married life was also unsatisfied and devoid of happiness. Voices in the City introduces an account of the difficulties faced by two worlds tiresome women doomed to settle in Calcutta. Monish experiences her life-to be
15
devoid of love and meaningless. She suffered loneliness, lack of privateness, lack of love, sterility which makes her a pitiable figure. In The novel Where shall we go this summer? There is a middle aged woman who is hypersensitive, highly emotional, expecting her fifth child. She tolerates marital inconsistency and counterfeits to the island of hallucination. She feels socially disoriented from her husband and is not fit to apprehend at times the behaviors of her four children. Her sufferings make her to comprehend that her marriage and all human relationships are just ridiculous. The character Nanda Kaul in Fire on the Mountain has spent her youthful days with a discontented life and is concerned with her own thoughts and feelings. She lives alone, avoids other people and the arrival of her granddaughter is considered as an unwelcome act of interference to her. She creates a world of imaginary and lives in it with reserving herself from the cruel facts of life. Shashi Deshpande a writer who writes about the act of testing and afflictions of woman in an Indian society. She was brought forth in the early part of twentieth century and became acquainted only in the year 1970. She thinks that men and women write in a different manner. “I think it is very clear that my own writing is very much a woman’s writing. I think just one little example, the beginning of That Long Silence for example: It’s a very start beginning at the same time it uses a metaphor of childbirth for the act of writing. It uses the idea of looking into mirrors to speak of different images. I somehow feel that anybody who reads this would know this is a woman’s writing.”15 All her brief stories consolidate on women, marriage, pertaining to household duties or conditions and family relationships. On the other hand her principle motto is to search woman’s psyche. Her novels represent her feminist beliefs. The main character Indu of her first novel Roots and Shadows accomplish that it is hopeless to declare her individuality. She detests her mother who exhibits gender dissimilarity in considering her son. She becomes secure from her affectionate love of her parents and gets tied in wedlock. She starts to self realize her. The novel That Long Silence depicts the Indian social situations like marriage and family that suppress the 16
manifestation of growth and free expression of the individuals. Jaya, the protagonist of this novel attempts to erase women’s long silence and seize with her own problems of self disclosure and self appraisal through her writings. Ruth Prawer Jahabvala’s novels are often followed with social and economical problems of the present century. Her work presents about the social segment of urban India that she apprehends clearly. Her first four novels are affix in Delhi concentrating in turn on the Indian arranged marriage. The very first novel To Whom She Will concentrates on the corruption in Indian public life. Her novel The Nature of Passion informs the story of an Englishman isolated in India. Her novel Get Ready for Battle pronounces dishonorableness, hypocrisy and victimization of the poor. A new ascendancy ridicules with satire the fanatical patriotism of independent India. Heat and Dust proves the winning of 1975 Booker prize mentioning the contrasts of east-west relationships. She uses fiction as a transmission to present the problems of the Indian society and propose ways and means to clean up these problems. Shobhaa De as a writer is more customary to upper class society and has published seven exceedingly assuring novels. In all her novels she handles the subject matter that is well advised as taboos for women writers.
“Nothing is that important to me careerwise, there are no goals. I’m feverishly working towards, no ambition that I’m going to kill myself for. I’m doing what I enjoy and at this stage of my life it’s what I want to do.”16
She is India’s best selling woman writer. She declares that she has picked up writing as her career only for the passion that she admits.
Arundhati Roy is the most eminent or exalted Indian to achieve the prestigious literary booker prize for her fiction The God of small things (1997) which is strictly an autobiographical novel. She focuses on social rightness and economic disparity. Ammu in the novel is similar to Arundhati Roy’s mother Mrs. Mary Roy. The story of the novel appears like Arundhati Roy’s personal life in many ways.
17
Manju Kapur an Indian writer who wrote five novels on the developing new women in India. She is a great historian of Indian middle class. “She wants her heroines not to be rubber dolls for others to move as they will. They nurture the desire of being independent and leading lives of their own.”17 Her women protagonists are not perfectly quiet ladies but they are bold, candid, resolute and action oriented. Her first novel Difficult Daughters was granted the Commonwealth Writers prize for the best first book. This story is full of uneasiness affection and agrees. The story portrays that Virmati is mangled between family duties, the expressed wish of education and prohibited love. In her second novel A married woman she portrays the story of Aastha as a civilized, urban working Delhi woman. Home is the third novel by Manju Kapur. This is an extravagant story of a common middle class family’s life in Delhi.
Mahashweta Devi is a social aggressively active reformer and an acclaimed Bengali writer. Her art portrays the harsh treatment inflicted upon the tribal minorities by the government and the rich people. She won in 1996 The Jnanpith Award and in 1987 the Raman Magsaysay award in contributing to the literature. The stories written in her novels are used to make a number of films. The stories of the films Rudaali and Hazar Chaurasia Ki Maa are her own self written stories.
Bharati Mukherjee has written fourteen genres of fiction particularly about woman. Her non-fiction is popular for an unpretentious prose style and representation of immigrants in North America. In addition to this she has also won a National Book Critic Circle Award. She stands as an authority in the field of immigrant literature that thrives in the year 1970. Most of her novels depict the stories of her experiences which she had achieved while staying in her husband’s country Canada. “The experience of cutting myself off from a biological homeland and settling in an adopted homeland that is not always welcoming to its dark-complexioned citizens has tasted me as a person but it has made me the writer I am today.”18
18
Her novels explore the modern day culture. She has written Jasmine, The Tiger’s Daughter, Wife, Leave it to me and The Holder of the World and more. The female characters in Mukherjee’s novels face countless problems, meant solely for emigrants. Expatriates they take great attempts to choose and follow the American society and in that act of proceeding they determine that they are unsettled. The character Tara in the Tiger’s Daughter adopts American’s mental attitude towards life and refuses anything that is connected with India. Dimple in the novel Wife ascends for liberty and love in wedlock and this demand persuade her anger, sorrow and bitterness. Though she lives in America but she lacks the immigrant problems. She denounces her husband when he is tempting to acclimatize to American way of life. In Jasmine Mukherjee talks about a young widow who moves to America to
seek employment. In America she makes compromises that are
important to stamp her feet strong and eternally. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is an Indian feminist writer belonging to Indian Diasporas and her literature is the result of Diasporas expectations. She is born and brought up in India and now is an American writer. Her work includes poetry, short stories, fiction, essays and columns. Her novels are Arranged Marriage, The Vine of Desire, Queen of Dreams, Sisters of my heart, One Amazing Thing and The Mistress of Spices. She has written her first novel The Mistress of Spices in 1997. The book possesses the mysticism characteristics as portrayed by Divakaruni. “I wrote in a spirit of play, collapsing the divisions between the realistic world of the twentieth century America and the timeless one of myth and magic in my attempt to create a modern fable.”19 -Patel. Tito, the main character of the book possesses a spice shop in an Indian assemblage in Oakland, California. She entangles with the lives of the customers and assists them through fraudulent husbands. She has won many notable awards. Meantime, it cannot be disclaim that her immigrant literature is charged with information of her native experience, she has written in India prior to her arrival from United States. Chitra Banerjee advocates the principle of humanism which is most worthy for the declaration of her creativity. Her novel Sister of My Heart portrays the Calcutta’s 19
domestic household situation of 1970’s and 1980’s. The characters they strive to live for others. Affection and endurance are the twin dogmas which binds the Indian families together. They gave much significance to the roles as wives and mothers. Jhumpa Lahiri is in addition an immigrant feminist writer extensively read by westerners. Her award winning collection of specimens of brief stories titled Interpreter of Maladies is combined with intimate and insincerely emotional details of Indian customs and civilization. Lahiri says: “India is an inescapable presence in this strong first collection’s nine polished and resonant tales.”20 She explores Indianness in varying degrees in all her stories, wherever they are set whether it is in Calcutta or the United States. Her stories are messages of human utter hopelessness felt especially in the institution of marriage. The story A Temporary Matter illustrates the inner side of Shukumar and Shobha after the death of their premature child. The blackness fades the pain from their mind and they patch up. The novel Interpreter of Maladies is a power sketch of human being solitariness, the disaffection of Mr. and Mrs. Das from their ethnical roots and subjugation of the concurrence of a separate society is presented with the strong undertone of irony. Their exterior charm is set in opposition with their internal morbid of fear and inability. In Mrs. Sen the protagonist Mrs. Sen goes to America after her marriage and determines to be an unable person in an adverse society. Outwardly she proves halfhearted temptation to accommodate herself to a fresh situation. But her responsive courage pleads for her home India. Kiran Desai also an Indian feminist writer is a permanent resident of the United States. She was honored the Man Booker Prize and the national book critics circle fiction award for her second novel The Inheritance of Loss in 2006. The theme of novel is effulgent, amusing and moves on a family story. The main protagonist Sai is affected by pain in the novel but she doesn’t find fault in the living. Kiran Desai commented about the novel Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard: “This enchanting first novel set in the Indian village of Shakhot, details the agreeable chaos that ensues from its underachieving 20
protagonist’s decision to abandon the workaday world and live in a tree.”21 The society of authors of the best novels has given her a prize the Betty Trask Award considering her novel to be good. It is given to the authors, who write romantic and traditional novels under the age of thirty-five. Anita Nair a powerful eminent Indian English writer from Kerala. In her novel vehement and creative The Better Man Nair’s expresses the returns of Mukundan to his native Indian village and is obsessed by the past. She created it as one of the intensive significant feminist novel from South Asia. Her Ladies Coupe is a story of a woman’s quest for endurance and to achieve freedom. Akhila an Income-tax Clerk lives her own life. She is forty-five years old, single. The novel Mistress depicts that Shyam, the Radha’s husband watches that Radha embraces Chris with passion. He also plays the role of a perceiver in his life, captures all the subtleties and oppositions in the relationships being formed and destroyed in front of him. The novel Lessons in Forgetting is an attractive story of salvation, mercifulness and second chance over a series of co-occurrence, depicts the lives of Meera and JAK with turns and twists changing themselves with clear inevitableness of a cyclone. After some time changes occur and they appear as only endings. A Lessons in Forgetting is a moving story of rescues, mercifulness and second opportunities. Namita Gokhale is a well known writer of Indian literature. She has written total five novels in English. Paro: Dream of Passion of 1984 depicts the story of Paro and Priya. It renders their familiarization in life. Paro with her spirit and strong belief becomes the visible sign of liberation and distinctiveness. Nevertheless afterwards, Paro is damned to undergo punishment from atrophy of better feelings and pessimism due to her uncurbed freedom ending up as a disenchanted woman. Priya proves same as Paro which adds to her bad luck. The novel manifests private strata of Indian society beneficial to its stalwartness from the influence of experiences and imagination. Her novels are God, Graves, and Grandmother, A Himalayan Love Story, The Book of Shadows, Shakuntala: The Play of Memory and more. The writings of Namita Gokhale deal with unreciprocated love, sufferings, vigilance, inexperience
21
and other common cognitive mental functions. She stands as one of the most apprehended and wanted writer of an Indian acquainted literary arena. Anjana Appachana is an author of Indian birth living in United States. She has scripted a novel Listening Now. Her women characters in the novel are a part of the post-colonial era of the time starting from 1950’s to 1990’s and they occupy an improbability with the fashionable and energetic portrayals in her lone collection of selected literary passages titled Incantations and Other stories. Her main interest as a writer is to make a study of Indian women and their minds. She considers that writing is not an avocation but it is: “Salvation from the bondage at home.”22 It was a delightful experience that her effort fully fulfills it with total seriousness and with gusto. Nergis Dalal is the best recognized changeable and good writer of English in India. Her writings include the marriages of village life of temples and those who often dwell in the things that break and repair the heart. As a feminist she has written Minari in 1967, The Sisters (1973), The Inner Door (1975) and A Birthday Party (1976) with these she has also written The Nude: Collected stories (1977) and Never A Dull Moment. Her first novel Minari has also a wise saying too– “Marriage should be first of all, a companionship – a friendship lit by passion.”23 Her novel The Sisters is one of the examining novels of Nergis Dalal. It depicts the hostile and oppositeness of a family’s web. The Inner Door is her third novel. The theme depicts the importance of yoga in human action and meditation. She portrays her novels with the thoughts of feminism and writes short stories.
Sudha Murthy writes about the factitious novels. She has written nine novels. She is basically a Computer Scientist, an engineer, the Chairperson of the Infosys Foundation and also working as a member of public healthcare initiatives of the Gates Foundation. She instructs Computer Science and composes fiction. She is the recipient of the R.K.Narayana’s award for literary art and the Padma Shri award in 22
2006. Her book Dollar Bahu is about a middle class family life, in which Gouramma and Shamanna lives in a small house along with their children. Chandru the elder son and Girish the younger one are fortunate and satisfied with their jobs. Her emotions came true when Chandru became happy and was satisfied with his job as a clerk. Her visionary scheme eventually comes true when her son Chandru goes to USA, obtains a green card and stops to work in India without intimating his Indian employer. He returns to India after getting the green card and gets married to Jamuna. The daughter-in-law Vinuta stays with her in-laws. The novel Dollar Bahu is really a good read. She has published Mahashweta, The Bird with Golden Wings, Wise and Otherwise, A Salute to life, Old man and his God, A wedding in Russai, Sweet Hospitality, Gently falls the Bakula, Fasalcut chiefly through penguin. She portrays vulnerability of her unsusceptible views on charity, kindness and fulfillment through her fictional narratives. She depicts her writings with full of simplicity, minute observations and broader knowledge of human behavior. Feminist in India are with down to earth attitudes and they possess accumulated knowledge and harmony of opinions. These foremost ladies strike the average Indian read out with their distinctive Indian self satisfaction concerning gender cognitive content. People started thinking about women writers in a Mills and Boon discourse, but women writers they established that they are serious and exercise discipline and are outward than that. The women authors have seized with complex issues such as sensual pleasures, confinements and groups. They have adjusted them with the awareness of balance never regardless of our Indian traditions, yet noticing that there is more in the predictable future. Women writers in India can no longer be assort as the scooped property of India. Their functioning and their literary art are concerned not only in India but throughout the world.
Shobhaa De’s Literary Achievement as a Novelist Shobhaa De’s literary achievement as a writer of seventeen books fiction and non-fiction introduces the reader to the inner lives of the elite women of urban India. Many women novelists are a part and parcel of Indian English literature from the nineteenth century and De is among one of them. She observes the society keenly and sketches her characters and starts to write.
23
Shobhaa De in a right line delineated as an accurate sensible and practical writer describing the world of charm in the Indian upper middle class environment without any prohibition. She is courageous in a tolerable degree to write brighter about the exact human conditions the way girl think, fantasize and talk with each other when they are persistent about the tabooed subjects, and considers blatantly the problems, feelings and ambitions of the career woman highlighting the gender consciousness, self definition, manifestation and fate. Her writings have always aggravated hostile reactions because of her awareness in profound portrayal of life and her power to set forth the dark secrets but she prohibits herself by expressing that is important for her to endow the glamorous mental imagery of a world which very limited people know about it. She not at all regards herself a revolutionary as it is expressed by her. “I’m only a newspaper hack. My printed opinions are hardly likely to change the world, topple government, makes head roll. A mention or two in my column may help some society lady sell a few more Salwar Kameezes. It may let a few readers of the paper know that such and such person exists and is going interesting stuff or that I feel strongly about certain issues.” 24 De absolutely presents the readers to the inner lives of the elite women mostly of the metropolitan cities in India. In spite of that she presents the psychology of her female characters to present the trauma, insecurity and pain that lies under the gloss and glitter. Her date of birth is 7th January, 1948. She is brought forth by an Orthodox Hindu Brahmin family of Mumbai Maharashtra. Her maiden full name is Shobhaa Rajadhyaksha. At present time she resides with her second husband Dilip De in Cuffe Parade, Mumbai. De began her career as a model than as a columnist and journalist. Her columns are observed in well known paper ‘Times of India’. She also works as a freelance journalist for many magazines like ‘The Week’ and also for the newspapers. She has achieved many awards for her colorful and racy contributions. She writes intellectually productive write-ups for Indian and International Publications. She is concerned for the women’s pain and their marginalization in a particular way. She utters:
24
“I write with a great deal of empathy towards women. Without raising a feminist flag. I feel very sorry about the woman’s situation.”25 She doesn’t announce to be a feminist yet she is a good artist to expose different ways of women’s confinement in a male controlled world. Though appearing to encourage marriage as useful in her book ‘The Second Sex’ she writes. “Marriage is the destiny traditionally offered by society. History proves that marriage is essential to the well being of human society and that celibacy brings ruin upon states.”26 She gives importance to human relationships particularly family ties. She securely exercises that a woman has been endowed a life which she must have to live nicely. Her act of seeing about marriage is very balanced that she writes of men who neglect the psyche of female, more or so she is characterized by resulting in marital rift. The woman characters of her novels are shown frantically in love with the male characters. Affection, alertness and the devious influences are the prominent themes of Shobhaa De’s books. By means of her art she disseminates the idea of disgusting back for the governmental rights of the females. Definitions:‘Marginalization.’27 Marginalization is defined as both a position and condition of a woman. ‘Subjugation of Women.’28 Subjugation of women is defined as forced submission of control by others. ‘Female psyche.’29 Female psyche is defined as the study of behavior mediated by the variable of female sex. Language of Shobhaa De: She has given birth to Hinglish, a wilful, irrelevant combination of Hindi and English which sounds the readers in a different way. 25
From many years, Hinglish has earned some distinguishing traits of its own very different from Hindi and many people have prior started to call it a: ‘Language in the making.’30 Many Hindi snippets have been used by the writers in Indian English. Use of Hindi snippets has been coded in Roman and not in Devanagri; the official script of language has gained a character of its own and has achieved much to what is now being termed as: ‘Hinglish.’31
Examples as: ‘Kitni sweet lag rahi ho!’, ‘Kaajal’, ‘hijda’. She uses it to make her art beautiful, and sound slipshod, not formal and something purposeless. Shobhaa De apprehends very well to establish orally. Her articulation of speech is chatty and aloof. Some of her usages are glittering for instance ‘fluff and frippery’, ‘grime and grit’ and ‘pegs and pakoras’. In her fiction: Socialite Evenings (1989) her maiden novel examines the story of Karuna, an eminent Bombay socialite, who suffered from the overwhelming dream of a broken marriage. Karuna was disturbed due to the failed relationships and an intellectual afflicted sister. However Anjali was an unfortunate regarding her marriage yet she desires to stay with her husband for if he provides her a great degree of protection and social status. The urging nature of patriarchal hold that renders and trouble these modern women can be judged from Karuna’s word: “And all of us in our little women’s club agreed it wasn’t the husbands who were the real villains ---- But how could we communicate anything at all to men who perpetually sat reading the business pages of that The Times of India while concentrative in picking their noses.”32 The protagonist Karuna transforms into a star. Anjali is beautiful but pervert and Ritu is sadomasochist. Krish is helped by his wife in his extra-marital affairs. De’s women are modern, educated and are aware of their marginalization and repression.
26
Shobhaa De’s novel Starry nights (1992) portray a set up of opposing Bombay film world. It presents the story of a young girl Aasha Rani who propels to stardom rendering her body, soul and psyche. Her father abandoned the family when Aasha Rani was a small child and at all the time she had struggled to make the ends meet. At the age of twelve her mother pushed her to perform in pornographic films. She has diverse experiences of sex, both normal and abnormal and even lesbianism. She thinks: “No woman should be foolish enough to be honest with her husband where sex is concerned.”33 She flees to New Zealand with Abhijit; he deserted her than she marries Jamie (Jay) Phillips. She gave birth to her daughter Sasha who enlightens her world. She felt pleasant with Jay her husband. In the end she comes out as a strong woman fighting bravely against her unrighteous conscience and wounded soul. Aasha Rani commanded: “We will all go to Tirupathi soon. Very soon. As quickly as the doctors allow Sudha and amma to be moved. And as fast as Sasha can get here. I am going to call her now and tell her to come over. I know she’ll like that. I just start again. Our name will rule the industry and the studio will regain its story. I promise you that ---You will see that I shall do it and prove it to you.”34 In what way or manner a liberated modern woman may be, true happiness lies within the folds of marriage and family. The Shobhaa De’s novel Sisters (1992) evolves the story of two sisters Mikki and Alisha. The novel deals with the psychic conflict of a liberated woman Mikki who is caught between a personal self and a societal self. Mikki the protagonist is the lawfully begotten daughter of Seth Hiralal and Leelaben. Mikki and Alisha both are good looking and wealthy. Mikki as to have control over money becomes self assertive and hostile as she believes: “Money can buy the best husband in the world.”35
27
Mikki bonds with Navin expecting that he would support her in her father’s business, but he fails to do so and he gets tied in wedlock with Binny Malhotra. Binny was already a married man with his previous wife Urmi. He betrayed Mikki and as she was pregnant he forces her to get it aborted. She is disillusioned and doesn’t want to leave Binny as she reveal in front of Fried Amy: “Trouble is, I love the man, call me a doormat, a slave, a victim, anything. But I feel hopeless and helpless. It is as if I have forgotten what pride is -------- over ever was. He can, and does, trample all over me.”36
Alisha, the half sister of Mikki associates in her emotional affair with Navin, who does not provide her long lasting internal contentment. She immediately has an affair with Dr. Kurein. He is not eager to render satisfaction as he is a married man and possess children. After the death of Leelaben, Mikki and Alisha get united and support each other at the times of unstable situations. Binny dies and Mikki inherits his property.
Shobhaa De’s novel Strange Obsession (1992) revolves around the life and lustful relationship of two young women Amrita and Meenakshi Iyengar. The protagonist Amrita became the super model of the nineties by the medium of different news magazines. She is apprehended by Minx, who unintentionally enters her life. Minx had fallen in love with Amrita and psychologically used to think that her father had raped her. She required love and affection and the only way she thought of obtaining it by foreshadowing and accomplishing it whenever she desired. Her mental condition is much distressed though she is fearful to trust anyone not even her own mother. Her mother organizes her meeting with Rakesh a businessman inhabiting in America. Her mother says: “Look, darling, the ordeal you’ve been through has been bad-something your father and I could never have imagined possible. Don’t complicate matters further. Rakesh is a wonderful boy. Marry him and forget the horrible past---go away as far as you can.”37 28
She undergoes an extreme wicked conscience, as her two repulsive stories about her endeavor were published in the press. Minx possesses a strange obsession with Amrita and could not subsist without her. Minx expressed: “Don’t cry, my darling ----- please don’t. I can’t bear to see you unhappy. And don’t blame yourself either. It was something. I had to do ---- for myself as much as for you.”38
She practices deception to separate Rakesh and Amrita and causes the hut on fire. Amrita came to know the death of Minx in the newspaper after two days, she illustriously got eased and brought her life on wheels through marriage and expected her first child. Sultry Days (1994) exhibits two protagonists God and Nisha in doomed love. It manifests that a woman with an entirely incorporate personality is suitable to unfold many difficulties in a certain way and she doesn’t live as an unfortunate person. Nisha a susceptible teenager perceives God (Deb) in the college canteen and plunges in love with his rough beard, harsh and offensive skin. She sustains Deb till he gets a job or move to earn from his association with Yashwantbhai. She exercises a true picture of coetaneous society. Nisha’s mother Mrs. Verma is satisfied with her married life but is emotionalized knowing about her husband’s extra-marital affair with a Sindhi divorcee. Nisha selects her own path, Inspite her parents are looking for a suitable groom. The end was depressed because each one thinks that life without a man is purposeless. Mona would say: “Let’s face it girls ----- we are hard up. No men, no future. We work, we earn ------- we deserve some fun. And who knows--maybe, one day, while we are sitting at Lancer’s a group of gorgeous guys will walk in and marry us all.”39 The final climatic stage of the novel exerts force which is painful and desirous in striking a clear appearance observed in modern Indian fiction. It is a haemostatic
29
for God, a remedy for Nisha and cathartic for the readers. The complete story is accomplishing, fast surprising and episodic in manner. Snapshots (1995): Snapshots the most efficacious novel of Shobhaa De, unveils the life of six girls of Santa Maria High School. In this novel Swati the main character is a dazzlingly beautiful London based operator, more similar to Pamela Bordes. She has some sort of hatred and malice for her friends in the novel due to some wicked reason of her own. A discord between six women is observed who were friends at school but soon the memories start to surface with a downright poisonous attitude. The friends like Aparna, Reema, Swati, Surekha, Noor and Rashmi lack the clearness of visions. Reema represents their distinctive natures: “Most of the women are like me--- married early to men they didn’t know. Didn’t like. They are bored with their husbands. Nothing new happens in the bedroom. At least by talking about it we know that this restless feeling goes on everywhere. Every woman longs for ------ I don’t know what.”40 Their aimless nature doesn’t praise them to take marriage seriously. In Second Thoughts (1996): Shobhaa De concentrates on the emptiness of Indian marriage. The protagonist Maya is pretty young and keen to avoid her stupid, middle class home in Calcutta and dips into the whirl of Bombay, and lives in Bombay after marriage. Her husband Ranjan is handsome, hard worker and strongly desirous and possess a glamour of an American University with a rich family background. Maya resolved to become an ideal wife but suffers at her husband’s hand. “Why can’t you speak normally and ask normal questions like everybody else? Why do you speak in short hand”? It drives me crazy. Didn’t they teach you to speak properly in your school or college? Our teachers in Bombay were very strict about such nonsense.”41
30
She teaches herself to be cornered and suppressed by the ambits of an organized intimate marriage to a man who discloses rigidly to her and is conformist by thoughts. She suffered the utter loneliness as an unknown person in suburban Bombay, she recalls her mother words: “The issue is, Maya, marriage involves sacrifice. And all the sacrificing has to be undertaken by the woman. The sooner you accept that, the happier you’ll be.”42
Maya recognized it and is been more persuaded. She comes in contact with Nikhil, who is a charming college going neighbor of hers. They felt in love with each other and later he marries Anshu. The novel is an explosive tale of love and betrayal. Maya in the Indian content lasts the incorporeal claustrophobia by surrendering her desire to the predominant social criteria. Non-fiction of Shobhaa De: Uncertain Liaisons (1993): The present Shobhaa De’s non-fiction is the united effort of Shobhaa De and Khushwant Singh. They have appraised sexual facts of human life and composed the story of the book. They have highlighted high class people and their group. It concludes that sexual behaviors such as rape and extra-marital affairs have assumed general line of orientation in today’s life. Feelings are not the part of the marriages. Spousal relationships are precisely signed to acknowledge any property or some amount in the form of bank balance. There is no pure relationship between the partners. At the highest degree both are greatly interested in order to benefit and introduce their lives. There is unpredictability in human life may be it connections or something else. It seems that males are dominating the society and females are left with no other options. Females are left with undesirable and unessential process against them. Innermost connections are important theme of the novel. She firmly persuades that the character of any person is involved in distinct situation that exerts him or her to do wrong things. The Non-fiction Shooting from the Hip (1994) has been watchfully selected and prearranged under the volumes. The book includes exact occurrence of themes, attributes, feelings which are smartly and vibrantly expressed. De’s effective writing makes the reader to read continuously without getting uninterested. It’s a good read in 31
Chawls. De has kept up her style of writing with different topics and stories, besides with extra-ordinary frame work and characters confined in the novel. The content of Shooting from the Hip under different headings is directly usual and in it the personal views of Shobhaa De are expressed.
Small Betrayals (1995) is the act or process of the collection of average stories with glittering frame work highly skilled with the characters of stories. Stories are full of better feelings, adventures and are inevitably hard to understand the type of realities. In the novel De focuses on the utter hopelessness of men and women emerging out of a feminine transaction. The relationships are with positive values. The motor cycle in Small Betrayals expresses awareness of man-woman relationship in the attribute of a brutal and hardened conservative patriarchal family. The hurdles are caused in the way of life of love between Pesi, the Parsee bachelor of 51 years old and Mohini, a Hindu teenager. Pesi’s love tends against the old age norms of an orthodox Parsee family. She opposes: “It is not possible that Hindu girl has done black magic on you. Khodai marriage and that too to a non-Parsee. Have you gone completely mad? Or are you so desperate for ---- for ---- Go to a prostitute, Dikra, if you have to satisfy your urges. But Mark Mama’s words – these sort of ridiculous affairs don’t work. I won’t call it a marriage since nobody in our community will recognize it as one. And mind - you won’t be able to show your face at a Parsee wedding or funeral if you do it.”43 Patriarchal domination is expressed in an exciting way. The constitutional part of the characters in the novel is auspiciously done and the reader remains involved till the extreme last point of the novel. Surviving Men: The Smart Woman’s Guide to Staying on Top (1997): Shobhaa De discloses well cautious male and female secrets in the book. It mentions about how to withhold on top and to gain the contest of sexes. It is after all marked with a destination to women. She discloses that women seldom find humor in real life circumstances. De asked questions to women about men. Shobhaa De expresses in her book her views about today’s working woman’s expectation from her husband. 32
“I bring in as much money as he does. I work equally long hours. I hate it when he offers to “help” me fix dinner. What does he mean by “help”? It is such a presumptuous word. It indicates he has assumed making dinner is solely my responsibility ---- and he is being kind enough to share some of it with me. Bullshit. We both have to feed ourselves. As far as I’m concerned he does has bit and I do mine. It’s a joint effort. No favours.”44 Informal and disputatious, skillful and learned, Surviving Men is the foremost and utmost word of the Indian male. Speedpost (1999): Is a book of letters written by Shobhaa De to her children concerning about the living, affection, warm-heartedness and coping with the world. The most particular human bond is between mother and her children. She has written a number of letters to her six children focusing on the role of a mother and child in the current era. No doubt she had disposed the importance of family beliefs, traditions about sex and friendship and the role of women in the society as she expresses: “A relationship is a cut- and dried transaction with cut-off date and a specified shelf- life.”45
Their occasional approach to the thoughtful issues of life and the manner they change and cast aside bed partners discloses their shallow nature in understanding the women’s problems. De had moreover written about the significances of religion and God and the confrontation of being a worthy parent. The letters written by De in Speedpost are abundant, compassionate, judicious and wise. Superstar India (2008): According to Shobhaa De is an account of the author’s personal experiences or De considers it a very personal story. She is completely hopeful about India. Her book focuses on the Urban India of today which is benevolent, bad and the unattractive, ghearaoed by clearly incompatible neighbors. Indians are going abroad to seek jobs in the west and returning back for a better life. 33
De oppresses about India and feel extreme happiness that Indians take the democracy for granted and are ready to vote as a perfect birth right! A kind senior cop with grey hairs told Shobhaa De about a training programme which he had attended in Yugoslavia. “There are great systems in place there--- the minute the population of any precinct goes up by 1,000; an additional cop is put on the beat to take care of the extra numbers. Collective decisions are taken at all levels. Civic administrators work closely with the police, and pass orders really fast when there is community issue involved. It’s exactly the reverse here. We spend most of our time in wrangles with vested interests, mainly stooges of political bosses. A brand- new concrete, unauthorized road has come up in that slum across our chowki. The orders came from Delhi. There was nothing, we could do ------.”46 She declares her striking reaction and compares her country with the world. De reasons, yet the country have gained Superstar position and with her pleasing character she convinces the reader that her country India will not lose its freshness. Spouse: The truth about Marriage (2005) is another documentary by De published in 2005 in which she mentions her views about marriage, candidly believing that marriage is all about belongings, companionships, love and interdependence. She further describes that marriage means the art of exquisitely balancing between wife, parents, children, friends and a career. The most important criterion for a prosperous marriage is being honest with the partners. Shobhaa De cites: “Don’t you trust me? a young wife asked her husband in my presence. She was pushing for a joint bank account from which she could withdraw as much as she wanted to, whenever. The man was visibly embarrassed as he said, ‘Of course, I trust you----- but ----I’m not comfortable with the arrangement.”47 It indicates that the partners being watchful about their relationship and controls all types of situations. She suggests that for a successful marriage there must be no rules to make the relationship work, the partners must decide of themselves and 34
carry on. The book Spouse has been extensively applauded as good book about the society’s most deliberated marriage system. It advises the reader that each partner must respect the other as a matter what is his or her financial status. Not only this, Shobhaa De addresses the saas-bahu conundrum and the importance of romance. The book is all about fun, savvy, practical and marital relationship of the people, who practically create an adventure of marriage lasting for a long time. Secrets of Getting it Right at any Age (2010) : It is a good read not just for those people who want to ‘Age Gracefully’ but also for anyone who deprives to apprehend a culture coping with new explanations of the old. The book accelerates through the ambits of pre-occupations that affect the mellowing and those who care for them. It describes from health to personal grooming, travel tips and financial recommendation to pertain the enjoyment quotient. It provokes the 60 plus to live it up and stay a little unusual. Inspite anyone has no longer to ascertain anything to anyone. In the book she has cautiously mentioned her deep account of her own feelings of menopause. She had also described the thoughts on the power of ‘Grey Buck’. The book contains many good ideas. De mentions that the advertisers and the companies should see the aged people as an efficacious one. The other book Sandhya’s Secret by Shobhaa De (2009): Mentions that the character Sandhya is at all times on phone, detests her young sister, needs to color her hairs and falls in love with a boy from another school. Her grandmother is a stern lady of old standards. She glares in the direction of Sandhya and utters: “Go and study ----- and stop wearing all these short & tight clothes. In our time, we didn’t allow our daughters to leave the house half dressed like this. Really Beta – you must tell Bahu to keep a stricter eye on these two.”48 Sandhya detests her Dadi. She makes everybody laugh as she escorts Asawari at the door, rustling that not to tell anyone - what she had told her and make a promise from her. She was worried if her mother knew about her love than she will be in profound trouble. Akshi was a dexterous Cricket Captain of the Boy’s School close by. Each and every girl had a massive crush on him. Sandhya also felt in love with him, paying attention to him and spending hours in the corridors in silence for a few 35
seconds. She started to pay heed to her looks also she denied wishing her Nana and Naani. An autobiography of Shobhaa De - Selective Memory: Stories from my Life (1998): The bursting autobiography of India’s most disputatious writer. Many learned persons say that Selective Memory is precisely speaking not only an autobiography but it is a record of her achievements in which she remarks about the abundant chunks of her existence, her intellectual perception, society and human relationships but it is not a full circle to her life. Summoning her past, Shobhaa De recalls her childhood, birth and adulthood. She wonderfully depicted her earlier years, her connection with her parents and siblings. She mentions that the gender differentiation is still dominant in our country. She detects: “Unfortunately for my mother, I was not a second son she’d prayed for. My birth could not possibly have been a day of celebration for the family especially since my maternal grandmother was around to remind everybody that a third daughter had arrived as a additional liability and it had been rather reckless of my parents to have gone in for a fourth child with no guarantee that it would be male.”49 There is still stigma connected to a birth of a girl child. In a fortunate manner many changes for the good intervened after the birth of Shobhaa. She has spent her time living in the most fashionable area of Mumbai. The environment of Mumbai gave Shobhaa a different look. She has done modeling despite of her father’s disapproval during her college days. She became a model and also a magazine editor. She performed different roles in a keen manner and shrewdly chronicled the new India – impetuous, competent and strongly desirous. She observed various types of peoples like high societians, hi-jinks, actors, actresses and celebrity neurosis. She adores Nari-Hira a fatherly figure who promoted her in writings. Marriage to her means a lot to her and she securely understands that both the partners have to work hard. She was cheerful when her husband Sudhir decided to unite in wedlock with another lady, after her second marriage to Dilip De. She narrates her life candidly and confessionally in spite of that she remains calm on different issues relating to her first
36
marriage and discord. She also gives importance to parenting and says that it is most tough task in the world. Let don’t give others a chance to comment on you negatively. “Don’t give up. We can only try hard, do our best. The rest is up to them.”50 She advises the people to know themselves and work in an inefficient manner and create a sharper, tough and glorious India. Her story of life activates to a usual as well as to a determined Indian woman. She exemplifies herself as a most attractive woman of her own time. She had also scripted the famous T.V. Serials like Swabhiman, Kitty Party and Sukanya respectively. She also attributes to ‘Stardust’ published in 1971 by Mumbai based Magna Publishing Company Ltd. by Nari Hira under the editorship of Shobhaa De. She also published Glitzematch Magazine at the esteemed Frankfurt book fair in 2006. The magazine Sorelle was published in Milan and Rome along with Bollywood Nights in May 2007. She had translated her books also in different languages like Spanish, Italian, German, Hungarian, Portuguese, Turkish, Russian and Korean. Candidly and directly Shobhaa De accounts today’s India in her own excellent manner through her blog and twitters account. She writes prolifically for Indian and International publications. All her seventeen books have specified the charts and begotten records and the new one ‘Sethji’ is soon to be published and is presenting waves in literary circles. De an affix is rebel and her writings depict her as a fully matured woman. Instantly she utters with violent excitement over the faults of the younger contemporaries. Shobhaa De is thus obligated for accelerating the sexual revolution in India with her aesthetic novels. This research investigates the patterns of human relationships in Shobhaa De’s novels which emerged a contemporary trend to study the literature and since Indian English literature has experienced its frequent use by the creative writer, the concept deserves to be explored in her entirety. It summaries that the selected novels deal with social realities like the problem of individual in a growing materialistic society, degradation of human values in relationships life style and thoughts which appears to be too harsh, brutish, crude and uncivilized and the perfect handling by the novelist. It comprehends that Shobhaa De uplifted the condition of women to bring a social change and achieved success with latest burning issues like female psyche and relationships. 37
REFERENCES-1 1.
Bowlby, J and Ainsworth, M. (1992).Article on Developmental Psychology. Attachment theory. Retrieved from .
2.
Article on Human Bonding –Retrieved from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
3.
Dr. Sarvapalli, R. (1964). The Hindu View of Life. London: Uniwin Books. p.27.
4.
Tagore, R. (2000). Gitanjali-Song Offerings. Wellesley MA: Branden Books. p.27.
5.
Eliot, T.S. (1951). Selected Essays. London: Faber. p.145.
6.
Prasad, Amar Nath and Kanupriya. (2006). Indian writing in English: Tradition and Modernity. New Delhi. Sarup and Sons Pvt. Ltd. The Swedish Censorship homepage on :.
7.
An article on 19 Great women writers- Dreams of the Great Earth Changes compiled by Dee Finney. Retrieved from .
8.
Gertrude stein poems on Poem Hunter.com. Retrieved from .
9.
Beauvoir, S.D. (1974). The Second Sex. Trans and Ed. London: H.M. Parshley, Penguin Books Pvt. Ltd. p.295.
10.
Cagatay et al. (1986). Nairobi Women’s Conference: Toward a Global Feminism. Quoted in Johnson-Odim, Common Themes. p. 325.
11.
Williams, H.M. (1994). “Victims and Virgins: Some Characters in Kamala Markandaya Novels.” In Prasad, Madhusudan (ed.) Perspectives on Kamala Markandaya. Ghaziabad: Vimal Prakashan. p.151.
12.
Sahgal, Nayantara. (1989). Passion for India, Indian literature.No.129. Vol. XXXII. No.1. (Jan-Feb) p.83.
13.
Desai, Anita. (2001, June 30.). Interview with Magda Costa, SAWNET. .
14.
Dr. Pal, Shashi (2002). “Quest for Self.” Existential Dimensions: a study of Anita Desai’s Novels. Jaipur. Book Enclave. p.69.
38
15.
Deshpande, Shashi. (2003, Sept.14.). Strange -- I always find it easy. BBC World Service. Retrieved from .
16.
De, Shobhaa. (2001, April. 14). I don’t have to please anybody so don’t suck up to anybody. Ashwin Vakil. Rediff Special. < http://www.rediff.com/news/feb/12 shobha 2.html>.
17.
Dr. Sharma, Laxmi. (2008, Nov.04). Emergence of New women in Novels of Manju Kapur. .
18.
Mukherjee, Bharati. (1999). Two ways to belong in America. New York Times. Dec.26. http:/www.mojones.com/mojones.com/motherjone/JF97/mukherjee.html.
19.
Divakaruni, C.B. (1997). Voices from the Gaps. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota press. < http://voices.clu.umn.edu/artistpages/divakaruniChitra.php.1997>.
20.
Lahiri, Jhumpa. (2001, May.2.). Susan Chaco, Rev. of “Jhumpa Lahiri”. < http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/user/sawweb/sawnet/books/jhumpa lahiri.html>.
21.
Desai, Kiran. (1998)A review of Hullabaloo in the Guava orchard in reviews. Mar.15. p. 354.
22.
Pais, Arthur. (1998, Dec. 8.). Why should I spend an hour cooking when I could write? Rev of Listening Now. Retrieved from .
23.
Dalal, N. (1967). Minari. Delhi: Pearl India Publishing House p. 25.
24.
De, Shobhaa (1998). Selective Memory, New Delhi: Penguin Books. p. 230.
25.
The Hindustan Times Magazine. 1995. Feb.12. p. 3.
26.
Rpt. Harmondsworth. 1979. p.45.
27.
Virginia, Renaldo Seitz. (1995). An Article on Women. Development and Communities for Empowerment in Appalachia' Albany: Published by state University of New York Press.
28.
Nicholson, Linda. (1997). The Second Wave: A Reader in Feminist theory. New York: Published by Routledge.
29.
Paludi, M.A. (2008). Psychology of Women: Handbook of Issues and Theories Florence Denmark: Praeger Publishers. p.5.
30.
ITRANS (version 5.34) Retrieved from < http://www.aczoom.com/itrans/>. 39
31.
Hinglish Wikipedia. Retrieved from < http://www.enotes.com/topic/Hinglish. >
32.
De, Shobhaa. (1989). Socialite Evenings. New Delhi: Penguin Books. p.66.
33.
De, Shobhaa. (1992). Starry nights. New Delhi: Penguin Books. p.85.
34.
Ibid., p.400.
35.
De, Shobhaa. (1992). Sisters. New Delhi: Penguin Books. p.165.
36.
Ibid., p.193.
37.
De, Shobhaa. (1992). Strange Obsession. New Delhi: Penguin Books. p.223.
38.
Ibid., p.136.
39.
De, Shobhaa. (1994). Sultry Days. New Delhi: Penguin Books. p.347
40.
De, Shobhaa. (1995). Snapshots. New Delhi: Penguin Books. p.295.
41.
De, Shobhaa. (1996). Second Thoughts. New Delhi: Penguin Books. p.212.
42.
Ibid., p.353.
43.
De, Shobhaa. (1995). Small Betrayals. New Delhi: UBS publishers Ltd.p.15.
44.
De, Shobhaa. (1997). Surviving Men. The smart woman’s guide to staying on top. New Delhi. Penguin Books. p.XVII.
45.
De, Shobhaa De. (1999).Speedpost: Letters to My children about Living. Loving. Caring and Coping with the world. New Delhi: Penguin Books. p. 173.
46.
De, Shobhaa. (2008). Superstar India. New Delhi: Penguin Books. p.319.
47.
De, Shobhaa. (2005). Spouse: The truth about marriage. New Delhi: Penguin Books. p. 100.
48.
De, Shobhaa. (2009). Sandhya’s Secret. Mumbai: Popular Prakashan. p. 21.
49.
De, Shobhaa. (1998). Selective Memory: Stories from my life. New Delhi: Penguin Books. p.12.
50.
Ibid., p. 484.
40