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CHAPTER II GITA MEHTA'S FICTION: THE SOCIO-HISTORICAL CONTEXT IJ GITA MEHTA'S BIOGRAPHY:- Gita Mehta, a daughter of the great freedom fighter, Biju Patnaik was bom in Delhi in 1943. At her birth, Mehta’s grandmother demanded that she be named the Joan of Arc, as a child bom into a community of freedom fighters, who were often forced to go underground as a result of their political actions. But instead, she was named Gita (song), as in song of freedom. Only a few days after Gita’s birth, her father was imprisoned for his political activity. Growing up, she was surrounded by her parent’s active struggle for Indian liberation. At the age of three, she and her brother were sent to a boarding school while her mother followed her father from one jail to the next. Mehta was educated in India and the United Kingdom. While attending Cambridge University, she met fellow student Ajay Singh Mehta. The two married and have a son. Mehta and her husband “Sonny”, the President of Alfred A. Knopf publishing house, currently maintain residences in New York, London and Delhi, spending at least three month of every year in India. As a result of Sonny Mehta’s prominent position in New York’s publishing industry, the couple is a central figure in New York’s literary publishing world. II] HER MAJOR WORKS:- Mehta’s first book came about as a result of a publishing industry cocktail party one evening in 1979, where she attired in her usual sari. As she explained in an interview 21 with Wendy Smith, “somebody grabbed my arm and said, ‘Here’s the girl who’s going to tell ns what karma is all about.” In response, Mehta replied that “Karma isn’t what it’s cracked up to be”. Hearing her response, someone urged her to write about her ideas on the subject, and after only three weeks of work, Mehta completed Karma Cola: Marketing the Mystic East. This first book is a series of interconnected essays weaving Mehta’s own impressions of India’s mysticism with the impressions she reads through other people. Ultimately, it is a satire on the major wave of foreigners swarming into India in the 1960s in search of India’s Karmic powers. She blends humour with witty observations, constructing a book that presents her own impressions through the experiences of many. Raj, Mehta’s first novel, published in 1989 is a thorough and colourful historical story that follows the progression of a young woman bom into Indian nobility under the British Raj. Through young Jaya Singh’s story, Gita Mehta shows her readers India’s struggle for independence as it affected a slim segment of high culture society. Through her story, Mehta not only weaves together elegant language and colourful pictures of Indian culture, but also paints a picture of Indian colonial life. In the novel she presents historical facts based upon her female protagonist’s strength of character. Mehta’s second novel A River Sutra published in 1993. The novel centres on India’s holiest river, the Narmada, in the form of interconnected stories. It is about the tales of various pilgrims on the river tap, the deep veins of Indian mythology and artistic traditions while also forming a prose meditation on the country’s secular-humanist tradition. Mehta’s subject matter is as rich as the tradition she taps. Classical Sanskrit drama, Hindu mythology and Sufi poetry all find reflection and reiteration in the novel. 22 For all its substance of ancient Indian tradition and thought, A River Sutra is a modern work that acknowledges the difficulties facing modem India at the same time as it takes the reader on a skillfully realised journey into a resonant culture. Mehta wrote Snakes and Ladders, a collection of essays about India since Independence in 1997. She explained in an interview that when she wrote Snakes and Ladders, her intention was, “to make modem India accessible to westerners and to a whole generation of Indians who have no idea what happened 25 years before they were bom”1. She defines her India through insightful, intelligent and often witty eyes with a smattering of personalised anecdotes that define it not so much as a set of essays, but a collection of lives. Her lively stories illustrate her analysis of what modem India is as seen through her eyes, while she explores India with her reader. In addition to writing, Mehta has also spent some time as a journalist and directed several documentaries about India for BBC and NBC. She has made four films on the Bangladesh war, and for NBC she covered the Indo-Pakistan war that led to the creation of Bangladesh. She has also made films on elections in the former Indian Princely States. She has the unique opportunity to collect the richness of living on three continents, (New York, London, and Delhi) and it is this rarity of perspective that gives her a uniquely witty and frank ability to define her vision of India through her work. III1 GITA MEHTA’S FICTION IN SOCIO- HISTORICAL CONTEXT:- 1) RAJ IN SOCIAL CONTEXT:- Gita Mehta’s novel Raj is published in 1989. The novel focuses on the culture and tradition in royal class family. The novel evaporates some social, political, historical 23 events in the time of colonialism. It is also a story of an individual, Jaya, bom as a Princess of Balmer, married to the Sirpur Prince, becoming a Regent Maharani of Sirpur, and finally enrolling as a candidate for election to lead Siipur. In the social context, culture plays a vital role. Culture is an irrefutable part of social situation. Culture is a base and identity of society. Indian society is a patriarchal society, therefore in this society woman is always a neglected creature. Gita Mehta portrays the picture of women in royal family; but she paints the picture from modem point of view. In the ‘Prologue’ of the novel the writer tells about both the children of the Maharajah. The Prince of Blamer, Tikka, was nine-year-old with his mother’s fair skin and hard black eyes of his father. But compared to Tikka, Jaya was dark in complexion. The Maharani frequently wondered if that dark skin would create problems when the time came to arrange Jaya’s marriage. She was worried about Jaya’s temperament too. Society expects that women should cool- headed, subservient, beautiful and virtuous and a girl’s marriage is a major social issue. Society preserves culture and it includes beliefs, traditions, superstitions, customs, etc. Maharajah Jai Singh tells the Maharani that, she must break purdah for the sake of Zenana people who are suffering from famine and help the people in his absence. The news of breaking purdah makes the Maharani motionless. She is in a confused state and waits for the moment to pass and her husband to withdraw those few words which would destroy a thousand years of tradition. It is very difficult for her to break the age- old tradition; but the Maharajah says to her, “Savage times requires savage measures!’’ (P.31). He tells her that at the time of trouble they cannot think about their traditions. 24 Through his speech he proves that it is Maharajah’s as well as his family’s duty to save his subject from trouble. On the day of the spring festival the Maharajah recalls the Maharani to Balmer fort. When she enters the Temple of the Balmer Maharanis, the Baran folds her hands in supplication and tells her, “You have sat with potters and sweepers and other untouchables. The priests say you are polluted” (P.35). Through the Baran the writer expresses the views of society towards lower class people. The Maharani stares in disbelief at the Baran and says, “You know the rulers have always been above caste. We are mother and father to everyone in Balmer; we enter every home and eat at every table” (P.35). They thus do not discriminate their children on the basis of caste and class. The priests declare her ‘polluted’ and ask her to undergo the rites of purification. Even at the time of breaking purdah tradition, Maharani says in a confused state, “My predecessors would have killed themselves rather than endure such dishonour.”(P.33). Kuki-bai, the concubine then reminds Maharani that her husband’s grandfather had prohibited the women of Balmer from over burning themselves on their husbands’ funeral pyres. She further tells the Maharani that in today’s society a woman can associate and manage the state after her husband’s death. In ancient period woman was not independent but always depended on man; but nowadays she is an independent creature. Kuki-bai’s statement shows how society develops herself step by step and if the ruler allows her to regulate new rules, she can change her rules. Exactly seven years after the famine it rains in the state and the Maharani decides to re-enter purdah. In the society there are some vows for royal women so one 25 day Maharani and Jaya go to the Temple of the Balmer Maharanis. The Maharani makes Jaya to recite the ancestral litany of the Balmer Maharanis. Jaya wonders because there are so many satis and so many vows that are required for royal class woman and society too expects that they should follow them. Even though there is a purdah tradition, the Maharajah has decreed that his daughter is not to be raised in purdah. The Maharani always insists that Jaya be educated in the traditional manner of the princesses of Balmer.

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