Breakdown to Breakthrough: a Study on Amulya Malladi's The

Compliance Engineering Journal ISSN NO: 0898-3577

Breakdown to Breakthrough: A Study on Amulya Malladi’s The Copenhagen Affair

A.Sophia Mary,

Ph.d, Research Scholar, English, Department of English, Sri Sarada College for Women (Autonomous), Salem– 16.

Abstract

Amulya Malladi is a diasporic Indian writer in English, well known for her seven novels namely A Breath of Fresh Air (2002), The Mango Season (2003), Serving Crazy with Curry (2004), Song of the Cuckoo Bird (2005), The Sound of Language (2007), A House for Happy Mothers (2016) and The Copenhagen Affair (2017). She received her Bachelor Degree in Electronics Engineering from Osmania University, Hyderabad India and Master Degree in Journalism from the University of Memphis, Tennessee, United States. Her novels have been translated into many languages like Dutch, German, Spanish, Danish, Romanian, Serbian and Tamil.

The present paper examines Malladi’s latest novel The Copenhagen Affair (2017), in which the heroine Sanya is captivated by a swirl of infidelity, corporate intrigue, and the particular habits of Copenhagen’s café class. She undergoes a nervous breakdown in her forties due to depression and stress. According to Carl Jung’s analytical psychology theory Sanya goes through the stages of stable introvert, unstable introvert, unstable extrovert and finally becomes an ambivert. In the beginning of the novel, Sanya is a stable introvert who works smartly but even after fifteen years of experience her efforts are not recognised and the management fails to appreciate her. This makes her mentally sick. The loving, caring and optimistic Sanya gets completely collapsed. She denies doing even the simplest work at home. She sleeps all day under her duvet and becomes an unstable introvert. To cure her neuroticism her husband Harry takes her to Copenhagen, the capital city of the world’s happiest country Denmark for a year. Although the trip is professional for Harry this brings a great change in Sanya’s psyche. In Copenhagen, she moves from the state of unstable introvert to unstable extrovert. Her husband’s

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infidelity paves a way for Sanya’s breakthrough. Sanya falls in love with Anders Ravn, the owner of IT Foundry Company which Harry and his team is about to purchase because he sees Sanya in a way that Harry failed to see. The search for happiness, love, balance and meaning of life makes Sanya to get completely immerse into a deep depression and the realisation finally makes her to transform herself as an ambivert.

Keywords: optimistic- stable introvert- depression- unstable introvert- infidelity- balance-

unstable extrovert- transformation- ambivert

The present paper examines Malladi’s latest novel The Copenhagen Affair (2017), in which the heroine Sanya is captivated by a swirl of infidelity, corporate intrigue, and the particular habits of Copenhagen’s café class. People handle depression in different ways. Due to heavy loaded tension in corporate career Malladi stopped writing for a couple of years. She was depressed and desperately wanted to be happy. She felt that she wants to laugh and enjoy writing and thus came the novel The Copenhagen Affair (2017). The novel The Copenhagen Affair, deals with a middle aged heroine Sanya who uses sleep as a drug to escape from the reality. It is a comedy of manners on depression set in the capital city Copenhagen of the world’s happiest country Denmark. Her books contain the features of strong female characters in diverse and distinct settings. Malladi has exhibited her ideas, thoughts, themes and motives in extremely funny and thought-provoking manner in this work of art. The amazing thing that she did is she balanced the serious topic such as depression with a heavy dose of comedy.

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Amulya Malladi brings, “Denmark’s capitol into brilliant color in this intriguing novel about a marriage on the brink, a wife’s precarious emotional stability, and the international business deal that could either save or ruin everything. The Copenhagen Affair reminds us that we must each decide what we are willing to risk to build our fortunes and find our true happiness” (Timmer n.pag.). Through the character of Sanya, a dark- skinned Indian American in the city of blondes, Malladi takes her readers to Copenhagen, her lovable and favourite city. The novel is actually a love letter to Copenhagen where she lived for many years with her husband and children. As she acknowledges in her author’s note:

I lived in Denmark for fourteen years, and in and around Copenhagen for nearly eleven of those before moving back to the United States in 2016…I love Copenhagen and I miss the city. I miss the food, the ambience, the outdoor café culture, my friends—I miss my life there. This book is my love letter to Copenhagen. I have described various restaurants, cafes, museums, and bars that Copenhagen offers… (n.pag.)

Sanya is a perfect wife, mother and a career woman in the beginning of the novel. She skillfully manages and balances her life with her job, family and home. As Sanya is a stable introvert she neither talks much nor have many friends like others. Carl Jung in his analytical psychological theory explains this type as it is due to more internal cortical arousal. She is very sincere, loyal and truthful to her management but they fail to recognise her efforts. Usually all marketing companies focuses on sales than production and sales can be done better through extroverts or loquacious people than introverts.

When all her juniors become the partners of the firm while she remains in the same position for fifteen years she faces a nervous breakdown and Jung calls this as neuroticism, a mental disorder state. This is revealed when Sanya explains her implosion to her friend Asgar whom she meets in Copenhagen, “I got angry. That was my first reaction. I was angry. How could they? I mean, it took them fifteen years? Brian made partner six years ago, and he started three years after me. And Santosh became partner last year, and I had four years’ seniority over him. So I was angry. Really angry” (229). At this juncture Sanya switches over from the state of stable introvert to unstable introvert:

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I pointed my finger at the senior partner, a really nice guy called Miguel Herrera, and I wanted to say that even though he had hired me and I was grateful, he could shove the partnership up his ass. But I didn’t say anything. Something broke inside me, and I sat back down on the chair…and I started to cry and I couldn’t stop for hours. They had to knock me out in the hospital. I didn’t speak for a week after. They put me on suicide watch. Gave me a psychiatrist and some drugs and told me that I had just had a nervous breakdown. (230)

When Harry did not pick her call or answer her text messages, she is left helpless. It takes an hour for him to reach her office. Even after his arrival, he queries only the people around but not his wife Sanya, “I cried nonstop…He looks at me crying and then he starts to ask people if I’m hurt…Instead of asking me, he’s asking Miguel what happened, and Miguel was just shaking his head and saying Harry needed to take me to the doctor because I wasn’t feeling well. Harry then suddenly goes cockeyed and asks Miguel if I was raped” (230). Sanya knows this is ridiculous but she could not stop her tears or shower her anger on her husband.

The loving, caring and optimistic Sanya becomes completely collapsed. She lacks interest in everything and sleeps all day under her duvet, doing nothing and avoids the company of people. To cure her Harry takes her to Copenhagen, the capital city of the world’s happiest country Denmark for a year. Although the trip is professional for Harry this brings a great change in Sanya’s psyche. Her husband’s infidelity paves a way for Sanya’s breakthrough. After this, she moves from the state of unstable introvert to unstable extrovert. She goes out, travels alone, makes new friends and creates a new identity in the glamorous high society.

Tara Hansen is the legal counsellor of Harry’s business team. She is a brilliant, thirty-five years old woman who knows Scandinavian law, “Tara and Harry had a sexual relationship, on and off, for years—conducted mostly when they were traveling” (127). But when Sanya asks about Tara to Harry, “He stopped breathing. If she focused, she thought she could hear his heartbeat, because the tension emanating from him was loud, like that of a little boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar” (160). In search of happiness, love, balance and meaning of life she gets completely captivated by a swirl of infidelity, corporate intrigue, and the particular habits of Copenhagen’s café class.

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Sanya falls in love with Anders Ravn, the owner of IT Foundry Company which Harry and his team is about to purchase because he sees Sanya in a way that Harry failed for years. She uses Ravn to crawl out of her depression. Sanya acts too smart to collect all the important details of Ravn’s company. Even after knowing that Ravn is a fraud and he is trying to cheat Harry and his crew for selfish motives, Sanya stays mute, “I don’t want to lead the man I suspect I have fallen in love with to the gallows, she thought, and sighed” (178). When Ravn kidnaps her, she goes with him willingly. Harry becomes mad by seeing the new Sanya:

For the first time the fog had lifted, and all it had taken was losing Sanya. Oh, she hadn’t left him or anything as dramatic, but emotionally she had checked out of their marriage, and he couldn’t blame her. He hadn’t checked into their marriage, and they’d been married for over two decades, so he didn’t have any moral ground to stand on and question her burgeoning attraction to Ravn. (241)

When thinking about the past, he realises that, Sanya is a successful woman and also a wonderful mother in raising their daughter Sara:

She had raised a kickass daughter, and he was man enough to admit that Sanya had done the raising…Sanya had been the model wife. He had never had any complains. No nagging…none of the bullshit that his friends faced with their wives. He hadn’t had to change his lifestyle at all after he got married or after they had Sara. And what had Sanya gotten in return? (242)

Harry cannot withstand the pain and fact that he is going to lose his wife permanently and so he swiftly goes to rescue Sanya. When he sees her he confesses all his sins in front of everyone and pleads for her apology:

I’m sorry…I’m sorry I slept with Tara. There were two other affairs. They lasted about three months…Tara that’s been on and off for two years. I’m so sorry that I wasn’t there for the most part, and I get it; I get it that somewhere down the line you stopped wanting to be with me. I get that. I don’t want to harp on here about history and say we’ve had twenty years and don’t throw that away. They were not all shitty, but they weren’t all great, either. So, here’s what I will say to you. I love you. (280)

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After hearing everything Sanya accepts Harry but she does not want to live together:

And we will live in separate apartments, to start out at least…Because I want space…I want to be independent again, find out who Sanya is, outside of being your wife and Sara’s mother. And I need time to forgive you, Harry, for cheating on me; and I need to forgive myself as well for allowing it to happen, for not paying attention. We both need to heal and grow. (284)

She demands time from him to fix back the broken pieces of their marriage. Sanya, who does not know how to regulate her behavior in the beginning realises that she is able to provide balance to herself. She finally understands that by being an introvert, she has lost life’s best moments. So, she practices the habits of extroverts after coming to Copenhagen. When she finds that being an extrovert is not her nature, she readily changes her mind and tries to fix her in an ambivert psychology. By the end of the novel Sanya becomes an ambivert that she is neither an introvert nor an extrovert. Thus, Sanya stands as an example for C.G. Jung’s argument that personal transformation is possible if one has a renewed perspective on life. She attains the neutral state by knowing what she really wants. The novel The Copenhagen Affair (2017) is an added credit and a precious gem in the crown of success to Malladi as a novelist.

Works Cited

Malladi, Amulya. The Copenhagen Affair. USA: Lake Union Publishing, Seattle. 2017.

Timmer, Julie Lawson. “Praise for Amulya Malladi”. The Copenhagen Affair. USA: Lake

Union Publishing, Seattle. 2017.

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