Reading Time: 6 minutes
Basudeb critiques the novels of Anita Nair, in the weekly column, exclusively in Different Truths.
Shornur at the district of Palakkad, Kerala, is Anita Nair’s birth place. She was born on 26 January 1966. She got her college education in Madras. After obtaining the B.A. degree with Major in English literature she returned to K
Leslie Stephen, the father of Virginia Woolf, the editor of The Cornhill Magazine in London, which published Thomas Hardy’s novels and short stories in installments. Stephen consciously shifted his interest and attention from the ‘Religion of God’ to the ‘Religion of Humanism’. According to Stephen, Man is to undergo a kind of transformation from egotism to altruism at the cost of the happiness in his life. This sacrifice of Man’s happiness is not discernible in Comte’s view of Man’s ethical evolution. The war between traditional views of life and the new outlook, new norms, and values generated by the wonderful inventions of science and by the illuminating theses of philosophical thinkers and writers like Charles Darwin, Herbert Spencer, and Leslie Stephen created crises and confusions in the minds of the Victorian Period in England.
Anita Nair definitely shares definitely these crises and contradictions in the society to which she belongs. A Bangalore-based writer perhaps observes with her transparent glasses the contemporary Indian society. Shifting of attention from the ‘Religion of God’ to the ‘Religion of Humanism’ was a favourite discourse that was in the air of the Victorian sky in England. But Anita Nair, being a novelist of the first quarter of
Anita Nair with her belief in man’s immense possibility of transforming himself from the evil to the good is relevant today. An imaginary village, called Kaikurussi is the locale of The Better Man. The village is in the northern part of Kerala. This is a poverty stricken area. During the Colonial period, it was called Malabar. At the age of eighteen, Mukundan flees from his village owing to certain undesirable events. Mukundan, an elderly bachelor after his retirement from the government service is circumstantially forced to return to his village, Kaikurussi, his birth place. He starts staying at his ancestral house. He is distressed by his feeling of failure in his life after he settles himself in his village. The atmosphere of the village is alien to him and he cannot cope up himself with the villagers’ way of life. After his return to his native village, he meets Bhasi who is a house painter and quack practitioner of medicine.
Anita Nair shows man’s journey from man’s misunderstanding to man’s ability to find out the path what is good in life through the character of Mukundan.
Ladies Coupe is a novel of different taste. The novel shows woman’s journey from thralldom to Independence. It is a novel that shows women’s search for their empowerment. Akhila, an unmarried woman, 45 years old, a clerk in the Income Tax department once decides to visit Kanyakumari. On her way, she meets five women in the ladies coupe of the train. They are Janaki, a pampered wife, and a loving mother, who is totally confused about what she is, Margaret Shanti, Prabha Devi, Sheela, and Marikolanthu. These women have one common story that makes them suffer in writhing pain.
Janaki now thinks that she remains under the custody of her father before her marriage. After her marriage, her custodian is her husband and in the last leg of her life, she will be under the care of her sons. The harrowing tale of Janaki reminds us one of the poems “Introduction” which Kamala Das has written. Kamala Das is one of the earliest feminist woman poets in India. The protagonist of the novel is Akhila. Her mother believes in traditional Indian woman’s values of life. The patriarchal society in India holds the opinion that woman is inferior to her husband in every respect. And Akhila’s mother tries to inculcate this view into the mind of a daughter since her childhood. Finally, Akhila tries to find her own identity.
Janaki thinks that she is the person who always under the protection of someone in her life. She is never independent. At the end of the story, she realizes that an ideal wife and a mother can also be strong and independent in life. One important aspect of woman’s role in life the novel Ladies Coupe underlines: Can a woman practice the celibacy in life? Do woman’s independence and strength lie in not getting married in life?
Anita Nair in her novels thus shows man’s evolution from the state of the wrong to the state of the right. Even in Ladies Coupe readers find the women characters undergo a kind evolution in their understanding of lives.
©Basudeb Chakraborti
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