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STUDY MATERIAL FOR B.A ENGLISH SOUTH ASIAN SEMESTER - VI, ACADEMIC YEAR 2020 - 21

UNIT CONTENT PAGE Nr

I – YASMINE GOONERATNE 02

II – NATANTARA SAHGAL 05

III SHORT – STORIES – HANIF KURESHI 07

IV - KHALED HOSSAIN 09

V – MAHASWETHA DEVI 11

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UNIT - I THIS , THIS WOMAN BY YASMINE GOONERATNE

In this poem she is lamenting over her old love forever because of your missing. You do not see her loveliness which is open and is renewing with no end because of her flexibility and kindness. If you should try to take her from me, I would not try to bring her back. The prestigious behavior of the imperial touch that gave her protection is now becoming a wasted wreck. I would send you letters on her behalf in this situation till you win my confidence. She would not leave her faithful qualities which are greater than Helen’s being truer than a mother, sister, wife, dearer than life. She is no longer an honorable lady if she has unfaithful qualities. The unfaithful, opportunist people were given up long ago. They who appeared as her protectors and who while pampering her, collected wealth are gone now. Those men are losing their energy in a distant country: they have no more strength. She is just wandering here all by herselfwithout friends. Now she has nothing else to give but her heart. So do not call her an undisciplined woman, and an outsider. You call those names because of your jealousy and it is your misuse of words. What those words now mean is secret desires. She has been a great lady. She comes from respectable generations. She is rich in her mind and has a lovely nature. Now that her unsuitable old connections are over she is full of these excellent warm qualities. She is suitable to be your bride and she is my goddess.

SUBJECT-MATTER: The ’s daughter and her broken marriage MAJOR THEME: Mutual understanding and trust are very important in married life. OTHER THEMES: Suspicion causes misery. Mother’s love does not change. TECHNIQUES Metaphor: Paper boats Empress’s daughter my Muse. Language: simple and slightly metaphorical.

PARAPHRASE In ‘This language, this woman’, Yasmin Gunaratne blames her ex -son in Law for scolding her daughter with bad language. The girl seems to belong to a high society with much wealth and respect. It seems that she spent a luxurious and playboy life which caused the end of her marriage. But ultimately she is left alone. The poet shows the valuable part of her daughter and tries to convince her son in Law that she should be excused and reunited by him. It is a confession on the one hand and a plea on the other hand. The subject- matter is a broken marriage and the theme is ‘A daughter is valuable to her mother whatever blame is put on her.’ Appropriate words and vivid descriptions are used in the poem. The language is the simple modern language.

Minority by Imtiaz Dharkar Minority is a poem about feeling displaced and rejected from society. It conveys to the reader how helpful literature can be in voicing important opinions to society. The poem communicates the idea of exclusion and the feeling of being unwanted to the reader through meaningful lexical choices and imagery.

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Dharker begins with the “I was born a foreigner.” It is impossible to be born a foreigner, as everybody is born somewhere. However, this line helps to convey to the reader straight away that the persona does not belong and faces prejudice even from the country they were born in due to being the child of an immigrant. In addition to this, throughout the poem, the persona rarely addresses other people, only sometimes referring to the reader as “you.” There is repetition of the personal pronoun “I” throughout suggests that the persona is alone as they do not have anybody else to refer to. This could also suggest how the poet feels she is alone in her thoughts about this subject.

The speaker also uses sensory imagery in order to convey their feelings of being foreign. It is stated that they are “like food cooked in milk of coconut” and there is an “unexpected aftertaste.” The use of this simile expresses to the reader that the persona is not what people expect in their country just as an “unexpected aftertaste” is not what would be expected from a cultures stereptypical meal.

The following stanza speaks about the language barriers between the persona and the people in the society around them. It is stated that “words tumble over, a cunning tripwire on the tongue.” This could be referring to how the persona’s unusual accent may be heard significantly when they say some words. The use of the word “cunning” suggests that the language that the person is trying to speak is tricking them. This use of anthropomorphism when describing the “tripwire” suggests that it is not just society that makes her feel like an outcast, but the language she must speak.

The poet then goes on to write about how writing has no judgement and will accept her. She writes that she scratches on the “growing scab of black on white.” By comparing the prejudice to a scab, she is suggesting that there is a wound that she can heal by putting pen to paper; “black on white.” She then states that “a page doesn’t fight back.” This conveys a strong message to the reader that poetry does not judge and she can convey a message more effectively through this thanspeakingduetoherplaceinsocietyasa“minority.”

Dharker also uses manichean imagery to emphasise her emotion towards the subject of the poem. She writes “so I scratch, scratch through the night.” The fact that the speaker works on this “through the night” suggests that the problem is keeping the persona awake. The use of “the night” creates a dark atmosphere and a dismal but strong tone as the reader feels as though the persona works extremely hard for their rights and wants them so much that they will stay up all night formulating their feelings into words that can convey a message.

So What If I live in a House made by Idiots by Alamgir HashmiAlamgir Hashmi’s ‘So What if I Live in a House made by Idiots?’ is a representation of the choked cry of marginalized citizens who are destined to live under unsafe roofs where horror dangles like the sword of Damocles.

The title of the poem is a question. The poem describes the situations that necessitated the poet to live in a house made by idiots. The poem is an explanation of the title of the poem. He tells that houses where he lived were made by idiots! The houses were dirty and they did not provide shelter to the inmates. The warmth cozy feelings, comfort, security that one needed were distant dreams in such houses. These houses must have built by some idiots!

The poem deals with one of the horrors haunt the common lot, where houses remain mere houses and they lack what a home has. What the poet tries to pictures is the life in slums either in or . The poem is relevant and time the poem denotes is nothing but the recent time.

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The poet satirizes the pathetic condition of the houses of marginalized people. Humor is a vehicle of expression employed in the poem. The poet questions the prejudices of the mind set of common folk who shoot secret arrows at about their humble dwellings.

The first house where he stayed was too narrow and it had ‘bomb shelters’ where people lived with much care, so planned that made the inmates ready at any time! Even the tiny holes on the wall were filled with toothpaste which made the room so air tight and even the breathing became a task. Another house where the poet now lives has wet walls and the room became sloughs every three months. The poet says that it is because of the tears- tears of the inmates or the tears of the sky! The floor of the house is always neat and tidy because monsoon blows off the room every year! The grasses in the lawns keep debiting and weeds blossom in them. To make the condition worse, municipal water pipes leaks, as a result water puddles here and there, which causes for mosquitoes multiply. These mosquitoes prick on the body of inmates every now and then only to make them aware of their different body parts.

The poet employs a few images which evoke the feelings of the marginalized, such as ‘holes of the wall filled with toothpaste’, ‘a house with wet walls and sloughs every three months’, ‘the floors are cleaned for the monsoon might blow off the roof’, municipal water give further lease’, and ‘insects introduce you a part of your body minute by minute’ are suitable and exact images for the context. The poem is written in blank and it follows no rhyme scheme. The poem evokes the feelings of the marginalized about their humble dwellings.

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UNIT - II MARTAND BY NAYANTARA SAHGAL

Nayantara sahgal’s “Martand” is essentially about love and loss at a time of intense political crisis. The protagonist, who is never named, is a woman who finds herself caught up in a triangular relationship with her husband Naresh, a civil servant, on the one hand, and a doctor, Martand, on the other. The love story is a poignant one. When the useful doctor Martand comes into the scene and gives the readers a glimpse of eternal love triangle that was soon to be formed or almost formed, it gives to the reader a feeling of apathy towards the woman protagonist.

One can understand the purity amidst which the temple was situated. The reference to the warmth that she has felt on touc hing its stones is the spiritual warmth of fulfillment that has been absent from her life only to be substituted by the crude physical love between herself and her husband. The reference to this and then the mention of Martand corresponds to show the spiritual affinity that both possses for each other, as if in accordance with the laws of nature. The relationship is not a clandestine affair but is magnified into a destined culmination, celestial and pre- ordained in nature much like the location of Martand in the purity encased landscape.

The sexual intercourse in the “Martand” shrine helps to conceive, not a baby, but a new character of the story, a living Sun God, full of ruined splendor, descending from an ancient, princely lineage. As Sahgal herself puts it, the protagonist, gets a shock of recognition and betrayal. In a few deft strokes, sahgal successfully portrays the agency of a divided heart as also the beauty of the feeling of love itself. But the singular feature for which “Martand” stands out is the way in which it retalls the Partition story from the official point of view. The focus of the story is not the millions of refugess who were displaced by Partition, but the Government officers who had to deal with them. And “Martand” very effectively conveys their helplessness when faced with this unprecedented crisis and their untold sacrifices. During the course of the story, the woman claims herself tobe childless and says that once Naresh and she had visited the temple of the Sun God, Martand in Kashmir.

Nayantara Sahgal does not allow her protagonist in “Martand” to speak out her heart. She just seems to flicker between her fidelity to her husband and an irrespressible heartache for the other man, the doctor, who is committed to alleviating pain. There was that untouched innocence about martand, a purity without which she could no longer live. There was so little time to talk about personal problems, and when they were alone, they did not talk.

The end of the story drives an almost sado-masochistic stance to qualify the wife who is left stranded in emotional void with no hope for any fulfillment in the duration of her existence. The death of Martand by the tyranny of his own makers an end to all humanism, shattering the hearts of both the wife and Martand. The fateful occurrence of such a doleful incident at a time when truth was to be fold to Naresh opens immense scope of pondering on the entire situation.

THE SINS OF THE MOTHER by Jamal Ahmad The story is set in Balochistan, evoking desert tands and harsh weather. The man and his wife are from an area called Goth Siahpad, a placewith a very small population in Pakistan’s South Western province, and it is the location that lends the story its culture. It is hard to tell whether the story stereotypes a version of the Balochi tribal life, or if it is a true account of how things actually

Page 5 of 12 STUDY MATERIAL FOR B.A ENGLISH SOUTH ASIAN LITERATURE SEMESTER - VI, ACADEMIC YEAR 2020 - 21 stand. We have soldiers and forts and old tribal traditions. We have camels and harsh winds and men who stone others to death. All of these things evoke a particular feeling, an idea of a place where people worry about things very different to the ones that readers living in huge metropolitan cities worry about. And yet, at its heart it is a story of survival, of a family struggling, against the odds, to survive. In terms of relevance, this piece of fiction can survive for ever.

Somewhere on an outposting surrounded onall sides by dirt and nothingness, a man turns up with a young woman in tow. Both are dirty, exhausted and close to dying. They hav a camel straggling alone besides them and they are barely holding themselves together. Their first request for shelter from the soldiers stationed there is refused quite bluntly, but an earnest request for refuge is finally needed. The couple retreat to a small room to the side of the fort, locking themselves away. And so, as they start emerging slowly from their rooms, the man bringing water for the slodiers on his camel and the woman weaving gift baskets from thorn shrubs, the couple slowly become a parts of the settlement.

Things change when the couple start expecting a child. In an area dominated by men and a harsh, unforgiving climate, the child is a breath of fresh air. He is fed on army rations and follow soldiers on their patrols. At night, he curls into his mother’s lap and dreams big dreams. But it is too good to last. They are a couple, who have left a dangerous past behind them, and it is bound to catch up to them. Very soon, a lovely figure on a camel arrives, heralding bad times ahead. And it is here that our story starts revealing the background, propelling the man and his family on another desperate run for their lives.

The implied romance between the couple work in subtle ways. It is worth nothing the implications of the adulterous nature of our two protagonists and how that might affect our perception of them. But the story skews our sympathies for them rather than against them. It is in this couple that we must keep our faith. Possible one of the most interesting aspects of the story is the lack of names. From the soldiers to the subedar and from the child to the sardar, there are no proper nouns used for any of the characters, except for the female protagoinst. Even her lover, the man with whom she is one the run, is introduced in relation to her. This is quite interesting in terms of gender representation in a story. A does not use particular words without a reason, than the reasoning behind such a blatant lack of names besides Gul Bibi’s becomes quite a point of curiosity.

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UNIT - III THE ASSAULT BY HANIF KUREISHI

“The Assault” brings about theconnotations like violence, corruption and abuse. This Assault is a haunting tale about an encounter between two socially neglected mothers. Kureishi sheds a dark shadow on the social conventions such as courtesy and etiquette that prevents people from leaving an unwanted situation. Kureishi normally elects to cover topics that came from a darker place, such as racism and depression. There is no surprise, however, that he revels in the morbit sense of humour throughout.

Anxiety is an echo of the ego to a supposed danger. A mental condition mixed with hope, fear and uncertainty. It may be a neurotic condition oppressing the victim all the time while thinking about some external condition. Every thought is carefully analysed by the author who depicts the life of a stereotypical mother in impassive detail. He goes through the stages of anxiety and fear experienced by the mother that she contemplates meeting her fate with the peculiar individual just to escape the situation.

The protagonist is a pessimistic mother who we can sympathise with. She is an innocent victim who is subjected to a trivial conversation that she cannot escape due to the heavyburden of politeness. She does not have equal amounts of courage to a protagonist who should have to overcome the pivotal battle against the antagonist.

We can emphathise with the antagonist. The antagonist of this simple yet effective story is none other than an overly friendly fellow mother who does not seem to know when to release her captive from the unbearably trival one-sided conversation being had by the two. Some can come to pity her as the poor woman only wants the company of another.

The mother has become claustrophobic. The patient is afraid of, and dislikes, confined or crowded environments. That is, neurosis is one of a group of psychiatric disorders, relatively less severe than psychoses. There is usually a morbid preoccupation with some aspect of life, but the personality is not usually altered. Psychological treatment cures madness hallucination, fading of the brain, loss of memory, melancholy etc

SLIENT NOISE by Jackie Kabir In Bengal, there has been very disastrous flood. As a result, a large portion of the village was flooded. There is hardly a spot of dry ground left during the rains. The water rose inch by inch. The people were estranged. Life seemed meaningless. All the furniture were immersed in a feet of water. Such was the condition to which the people were reduced that they had to be helped by the people of nearby houses in order to be saved from the utter ruin which stared them in the face. It often became impossible for them to go from one houses to another on foot.

A flood is caused mainly due to excessive rainfall. Like a fire or storm, a flood is one of the greatest of affiction that comes upon humanity. Thousands of people were rendered destitute and homeless for the flood was not confined to a small area, but extended over other places. As flood is generally due to forces over which man has no control, it is popularly believed to be the punishment of God inflicted upon man for the violation of his laws. The whole area looked like a river. Rumki’s grandmother stayed in an adjacent room. The best person in the houses was the five-year old Rumki who was simply adorable. The picture of the young children of such a household gathered

Page 7 of 12 STUDY MATERIAL FOR B.A ENGLISH SOUTH ASIAN LITERATURE SEMESTER - VI, ACADEMIC YEAR 2020 - 21 round an old grandmother of an evening. Listening to some fairy tale, the women busy cooking and providing for other comforts with a cheerful face.

Rumki’s father returned home. He saw the condition of the house. He always came home at different times but it was inevitable after dusk. Rumki was determined to stay back. Next to an earthquake , a flood is perhaps the most disastrous of all the calamities of nature. The peacefulness of this scene while the shades of the evening were drawing closer and closer was unrivalled. By a middle-class householder was meant a man of moderate means. In short, their life was so simple and peaceful that even the wealthiest of families could have no ideas of the pure joy and happiness which these people enjoyed. It is due to co-operation and selfishness of the members that harmony and peace is maintained in such families.

THE REMAINS OF THE FEAST by Gita Hariharan In the story “The Remains of the Feast” Gita Hariharan explains how women are controlled and restricted by the extreme rules and rituals of Brahmins, which stems from Hinduism. It is shown how a simple element like food and the human body can a significant role in the story to express the author’s intent. Githa Hariharan describes Rukmini’s rotting body and how Ratna, her great grand-daughter is looking over it.

The entrails remind Ratna, all the memories and pain that her great grandmother experienced but never shared with her, but Ratna knows it exists due to “the pain congealing into the cancer”. The diction used by the author describing the body with ‘entrails’ and ‘congealing’ provide a revolting image of the body, showing how the pain that Rukmini experienced, gave her a revolting body as a result of the cancer . This shows significance as later how the restricted and painful life Rukmini endured drives Ratna to gain revenge which incorporates the aspect of flood. When Ratna says revenge, she means that she will live the life that her great grandmother was denied.

The ninety-year-old cancer-struck Brahmin widow, whose entire life has been one of denial dictated by the rules of caste, class, gender and religion. She suddenly revolts and desires everything that has been prohibited for her bhelpuri from the fly infested bazaar, cakes with eggs in them, from the Christian shop with a Muslim cook, Coca-cola laced with the delicious delight that it might be alcoholic. Finally, when she dies, the grand-daughter, a medical student whowas her partner in crime, covers her body with bridal red sari as her grandmother must have desired.

Ratna’s great grandmother’s death inspires her to be free. This freedom involves eating the food that she is not allowed to eat. The description of the food she eats creates the image and feeling of evil; not one item of food is described ina good light. “Plate after plate of stale confections, in nedle-sharp green chilies , deep-fried in rancid oil”. It says how she gets”diarrhoea for a weak”. This description shows how evil the food is, highlighting why shi is restricted from it and how big a deal it is that she is breaking the taboo and eating it. This is extremely significant, as it not only gives her diarrhoea but also her freedom that she seeks.

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UNIT - IV A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS BY KHALED HOSSAIN

On the outskirts of Herat, a girl named Mariam lives with her embittered and estranged mother, Nana. Mariam's father, Jalil, is a businessman who owns a cinema and lives in Herat with his three wives and nine children, but his affair with Mariam's mother led to him sweeping her under the rug by building her a small hut outside of the city, relegating her to it. Nana resents Jalil for his mistreatment of her and deceptive attitude towards Mariam. Jalil travels to visit Mariam, his illegitimate daughter, every Thursday. On her fifteenth birthday, Mariam wants her father to take her to see Pinocchio at his movie theater, against the pleas of her mother. Jalil promises to do so. When he does not come, she travels to his house in Herat and sleeps on the street outside after Jalil's doorman refuses to let her in, claiming that Jalil is busy. Later, she storms into the house and sees her father, but Jalil's chauffeur drives her back home. Upon returning home, Mariam finds that her mother has committed suicide out of fear that her daughter had deserted her. She is taken to live in Jalil's house, but his wives push him to quickly arrange for Mariam to be married to Rasheed, a shoemaker from Kabul who is thirty years her senior. Mariam resists, but is soon pressured into the marriage, moving away with Rasheed. In Kabul, Rasheed is initially kind and waits for her to adjust. However, as Mariam becomes pregnant and miscarries multiple times, their relationship sours, and he becomes increasingly moody and abusive over her inability to bear him a son.

Meanwhile, a younger girl named Laila grows up in a neighboring house in Kabul. She is close to her father, a kind-hearted teacher, but worries over her mother, who is depressed and unresponsive following her two sons' death in the army. Laila is also close friends with Tariq, a neighbor boy, but their friendship is increasingly frowned upon by others as they grow older; in spite of this, they develop a secret romance. When Afghanistan enters the war and Kabul is bombarded by rocket attacks, Tariq's family decides to leave the city, and the emotional farewell between him and Laila culminates in them making love. Laila's family eventually also decides to leave the city, but a rocket destroys their house as they are preparing to leave, killing her parents and severely injuring Laila. She is subsequently taken in by Rasheed and Mariam.

As Laila recovers from her injuries, Rasheed expresses interest in her, to Mariam's dismay. Laila is also informed that Tariq and his family have died on their way out of the city. Upon discovering that she is pregnant with Tariq's child, Laila agrees to marry Rasheed to protect herself and the baby, giving birth to a daughter, Aziza, whom Rasheed rejects and neglects for being a girl. Jealous of Laila and Rasheed's interest in her, Mariam initially is very cold, but gradually warms Laila as she attempts to cope with both Rasheed's abuse and the baby. The two become close friends and confidants, formulating a plan to run away from Rasheed and leave Kabul, but they are soon caught. Rasheed beats them both, locking them up separately and depriving them of water, almost killing Aziza.

A few years later, the Taliban rises to power and imposes harsh rules on the Afghan population, severely curtailing women's rights. In a women's hospital that has been stripped of all supplies, Laila is forced to undergo a C-section without anesthesia to give birth to Rasheed's son, Zalmai. Laila and Mariam struggle with raising Zalmai, who Rasheed dotes on and favors greatly over Aziza. There is a drought, and living conditions in Kabul become poor. Rasheed's workshop burns down, and he is forced to take other jobs. He sends Aziza to an orphanage, and Laila endures a number of beatings from the Taliban when caught alone in attempts to visit her daughter.

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One day, Tariq appears at the house and is reunited with Laila, who realizes that Rasheed had hired the man to falsely inform her of Tariq's death so that she would agree to marry him. When Rasheed returns home from work, Zalmai tells him about the visitor. Suspicious of Laila and Tariq's relationship, Rasheed savagely beats Laila. He attempts to strangle her, but Mariam intervenes and kills him with a shovel, telling Laila and Tariq to run. Afterward, she confesses to killing Rasheed in order to draw attention away from them and is publicly executed. Laila and Tariq leave for Pakistan with Aziza and Zalmai, and spend their days working at a guest house in Murree, a summer retreat. After the fall of the Taliban, Laila and Tariq return to Afghanistan. They stop in the village where Mariam was raised and discover a package that Mariam's father left behind for her: a videotape of Pinocchio, a small sack of money, and a letter. Laila reads the letter and discovers that Jalil had regretted sending Mariam away, wishing that he had fought for her. Laila and Tariq return to Kabul and use the money to repair the orphanage Aziza had stayed in, where Laila starts working as a teacher. She becomes pregnant with her third child, and if it is a girl, vows to name her Mariam.

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UNIT - V MOTHER OF 1084 BY MAHASWETHA DEVI OVERVIEW Hajar Churashir Maa (means Mother of 1084) is story of a mother (Sujata) whose son (Brati), corpse number 1084 in the morgue, was brutally killed by the state because of his ideology of advocating the brutal killing of class enemies, collaborators with the State and counter- revolutionaries within the Party. The story starts on the eve of Brati's death anniversary when Sujata recollects her son starting from his birth. She meets Brati's close accomplice and tries to justify Brati's actions and his Hajar Churashir Maa also portrays the other faces of the human stories that emanated from the restless political adventure of the vibrant Bengali youth, which was ruthlessly cowed by the then Congress government until the Communist Party displaced them and who then again themselves ruthlessly cowed their opponents, the same Bengali youth. Characters  Sujata: Main protagonist and a modern strong mother.  Brati: Rebel and son of Sujata.  Dibyanath: Husband of Sujata and seen as same type of people against whom Brati fought.  Nandani : girlfriend of Brati

Mahasweta Devi’s best-known – Hajar Churashir Ma in the original – is a heartbreaking and yet coldly analytical story of a loving mother who is suddenly informed of her grown-up son’s death. Identified only as No. 1084 by the morgue authorities, the young man was killed in one of the many false encounters that the police used in the 1970s in Bengal to eliminate revolutionary Naxals. A year after his death, she begins to piece together the story of his involvement with the Naxal movement, getting in touch his former comrades and learning the details. The novel offers a unique perspective on the armed political movement that shook Bengal in the 1970s, claiming victims among both the urban youth and the rural peasantry, leaving its impact not just on the political and administrative landscape but also on the families of those who died.

Summary The play marks a new stage in the evolution of Sujata’s consciousness, as it enables her to re- order her fragmented and chaotic life in search o a cohesive identity. Every time she visits her own past or that of Brati, Somu’s mother or Nandini, her long-suppressed personal loss is slowly released into the ever-widening, spirals of betrayal, guilt and suffering. From a weak-willed, hopelessly dependent and a non-assertive mortal coward, Sujata is transformed into a morally assertive, politically enlightened and a socially defiant individual. Sujata primarily returns to her interior, private world of personal suffering, torture, betrayal and loneliness. Negotiating the inner time in relation to her immediate familial situation, she becomes aware of how she and Brati were not just fellow sufferers but also soul mates.

Sujata’s visit to the bank to get the jewellery from the locker is only a pretext for her to visit the house of Somu’s mother. A close associate of Brati, Somu had been killed in the same encounter. More significantly, Brati had spent his night in Somu’s house before his mysterious disappearance and death.

While Sujata goes to Somu’s mother with the specific aim of retrieving the memories of Brati’s last few hours, it turns out to be her entry and initiation into another world altogether. It is

Page 11 of 12 STUDY MATERIAL FOR B.A ENGLISH SOUTH ASIAN LITERATURE SEMESTER - VI, ACADEMIC YEAR 2020 - 21 the world of primitive squalor, filth, poverty, degradation and subhuman existence that only hovers tentatively on the margins of ‘bhadraloks’ consciousness. She enters into the little known world of slum dwellers.The sight of Somu’s ageing mother, her disgruntled daughter and that of their ramshackle tenement with a straw roof is enough to complete the rituals of initiation. In this chapter, Sujata’s conviction for transformation becomes more certain. She learns another form of reality and becomes aware of the injustice that was part of the society she lived in. She also becomes aware of the inequality that is so prevalent in this society of hers. The visit to Somu’s house enables her social and political transformation. She becomes socially conscious and learns that the world outside her own house is very different.

When Sujata visits Nandini, who apart from being Brati’s comrade-in-arms was also his beloved. It is Nandini who reconstructs for Sujata all the events leading upto Brati’s betrayal and murder. In the process, she also initiates Sujata into the little known world of the underground movement, explaining to her the logic for an organized rebellion, giving her firsthand account of state repression and its multiple failures. It’s through Nandini that Sujata is finally able to understand the reasons for Brati’s political convictions and his rejection of the bourgeoisie code. All this leaves her so completely bewildered that she openly admits to Nandini, “I didn’t really know Brati”. The new Sujata who has become self-liberated will now speak and act. But this will happen only in Dibyanath’s house. And so Sujata now leaves Nandini’s house and returns to her own-house to enact her transformation there.

Finally we meet a transformed Sujata, one who is more self-assured, morally confident and politically sensitive. She decides to leave the house in which Brati never felt at home, where he was not valued while he was alive, nor his memory respected after his death. Having found a soul-mate in Brati, she turns her back on Dibyananth and his decadent value-system. Brati had died because of loss of faith in the existing system and so she had to die. She had no other option apart from dying because she was very weak and old. Only death could help her to unite with Brati. Death was the only possible resistance that Sujata could take up.

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