Express News Service
Independence by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni binds the reader in a spell. The narration is beguilingly informal and taut, while the storyline is immense yet immediate. It is extremely rare that an author establishes such a spontaneous rapport with an unknown reader. With this novel, Divakaruni firmly marks her territory among the foremost storytellers of this nation and of her destiny.
Independence tells the story of the birth of modern India. The demand for a separate Islamic nation by Muhammad Ali Jinnah-led Muslim League led to the Direct Action Day in August 1946. Shows of force by the two communal groups escalated into a bloodbath in Kolkata, the fires of which rapidly spread to other places. Today, this is India’s one enduring political legacy, and the horrors of Partition are so profound that no survivor utters its full description.
Divakurni’s work of fiction is set in these uneasy times. Ranipur, a small nondescript village tucked away on the banks of River Sarasi, forms the backdrop to the deep friendship between the wealthy landlord Somnath Babu and Dr Nabakumar Ganguly, whose families are forever entwined by tragedy and the pain of loss. The cast of characters is sparse yet weaves a heartbreaking tale of an entire region’s history.
What makes the narrative seep under the skin of the reader is that it is fundamentally a paean to love, in the wake of which comes a churn of human emotions—anger, rejection, jealousy––boundaries that may be broken or defeated by elation, strength, responsibility, devastation, and a reason to live despite it all. It is what binds this cast of characters and what wrecks their lives.
So many tragedies could have been averted, but the human heart longs for what it longs for, and nothing may change that. Each character, spare and yet rendered almost in flesh, is luminous. Even the villains reach out of the pages with menace.
It is the doctor’s youngest daughter, Priya, who holds centre stage with her personality and her impossible dream of medicine. Circumstances go against her and she must drop out of the hardest-ever student journey at medical school in the US, though the end offers her a glimmer of redemption. In love though, she has no option of easing the pain, left with only a lifetime of memories.
The deaths––and there are far too many of them––are brutal. Each underlines the devastation of that moment in time as also the devastation being committed to an idea or cause may bring. The inferno of Partition is not shied away from and it is extraordinary how the engaging style of writing sustains both the historic and the domestic, the catastrophic and the intimate.
Though adequate and in parts, gleaming, some linguistic choices and how lists are written without commas draw in the American style, putting the language at odds with the history. The constant impinging of Rabindra sangeet adds nothing to the textual, which many readers may find bewildering. These are minor flaws in a book that retells the most difficult era of recent history with purpose and passion.
During her worst days, Bina (Priya’s mother) embroiders blankets through which she depicts, in miniature, the glories of rural life. In this book, the author weaves her own tapestry so exquisitely that just one reading opens up in technicolour the broad sweep of Partition, its nuances and its ugly scars on the psyche of Bengal. It is a work of literature that makes you want to take a month off reading, because you want to live within its world, its tragedies and the emotions it wrought in you.
Independence
By: Chitra Banerjee Divakurni
Publisher: Harper Collins
Pages: 350
Price: Rs 699
Stay connected with us on social media platform for instant update click here to join our Twitter, & Facebook
We are now on Telegram. Click here to join our channel (@TechiUpdate) and stay updated with the latest Technology headlines.
For all the latest Life Style News Click Here
For the latest news and updates, follow us on Google News.
Denial of responsibility! NewsAzi is an automatic aggregator around the global media. All the content are available free on Internet. We have just arranged it in one platform for educational purpose only. In each content, the hyperlink to the primary source is specified. All trademarks belong to their rightful owners, all materials to their authors. If you are the owner of the content and do not want us to publish your materials on our website, please contact us by email – [email protected]. The content will be deleted within 24 hours.
