Abstract
Shobha De a well-famed novelist created a furore in the fictional world with her saucy, racy novels. She has authored more than a dozen novels which beautifully mirror the shattering moral values, lack of spirituality and inner conflicts of women. From Socialite Evenings to Second Thoughts, De has evolved as an insightful writer and there is a definite development in her art of fiction writing. Her seventh novel, Second Thoughts is a masterpiece which underlies the story of Indian girl, Maya, victimized as silent sufferer in the clutches of matrimonial relationship in the city of India, Bombay. Within her marriage she finds herself trapped and stifled by a husband who is unromantic, callous, and completely indifferent to her desires. The paper aims to throw light on the hollowness and hypocrisy of Indian traditional marriage along with study the Indian culture by the way of contrasts presented in the novel Second Thoughts about Calcutta and Bombay.
Keywords: Matrimony, Hollowness, Hypocrisy, Extra-marital affairs, Indian Culture, Calcutta, Bombay
Shobha De, a controversial writer, has had diverse career roles ranging from model to columnist. All her published novels have been successful. Since the publication of her first novel Socialite Evenings we have witnessed her make a literary transition from writing- projects based on a rather flashy, elite society with emphasis on its extra-marital affairs, to a more mature and rather philosophical work on life and the myriad of twists and turns in relationships.
‘Second Thoughts’ (1996), Shobha De’s seventh novel is altogether different from her earlier works which have quite often been labelled as pornographic or pulpy by her detractors. The novelist throws more light on human nature and inner self of the character. This novel plunges into the inner recesses of the character and lays bare inside out. The agony and anxiety of the newly married is at the centre in this novel. Maya, a young middle class Bengali girl, is the protagonist of this novel. She is born and brought up in Calcutta and married to a Bengali boy Ranjan, settled in the city of Bombay who possesses all the glamour of an American university degree with wealthy family background. Maya has a great fascination for the city; in fact she is highly impressed by Bombay’s life, full of glamour and freedom. She thinks:
Marrying Ranjan was like marrying Bombay, and she thought she was the luckiest girl in the locality, who had bagged a foreign- educated Bombay- based groom. (p. 195)
This arranged matrimonial alliance by her parents seems like a perfect match to Maya who is eager to escape her dull, middle-class home in Calcutta and plunge into the whirl of Bombay. Maya, the young bride, is quite innocent and novice in the metropolis. The moment she lands in Bombay, she is determined to be the ideal wife. Instead, she finds herself trapped and stifled by the confines of an arranged marriage to a man who, she discovers, is rigidly conservative and completely indifferent to her desires. She begins to experince utter loneliness of a stranger in suburban Bombay.
Maya feels neglected because her husband is way too traditional and insensitive to all her feelings. Shortly after marriage, Maya wants to pursue a career in textile designing but Ranjan rejects that plan. Behind this decision lies Ranjan’s ego and he projects himself as the lord and master and Maya has to abide by his whims and fancies whether she likes it or not. He always reminds her of her duties as a married woman. He says:
…a housewife’s duty is to stay at home and make sure everything is tip-top. That is where her true happiness lies. You’ve seen my mother’s house-learn from her (p.56).
If Ranjan reaches out for Maya, “it was a gesture devoid of any passion. And impersonal friendly sort of gesture which always left me feeling like a well- trained dog being rewarded for his good behaviour”. (p.251) Maya is constantly depressed because of her neglected and lonely life. Ranjan always tries to hold on tight to purse-strings to control his wife, locks STD facility on phone for her and has full control even on the use of the air conditioner. She cannot share her feelings with anyone; even she cannot bear any child because of her husband’s lack of interest in physical- gratification and, on the top of that, she has nothing creative to do in that city. She feels:
Nobody needed me, absolutely nobody. My parents no longer thought I belong to them. My husband belonged to his mother. It was unlikely that I would bear children who would belong to me. And I did not have a single true friend to call my own. (pp. 266-267).
With her husband and house she never finds a sense of belongingness. She sadly admits, “It was never home. My home. Our home always ‘the house’—impersonal, distant, cold” (p.277). Maya as a wife of Ranjan is not able to enjoy the conjugal bliss and needs someone to love her. She turns to Nikhil a college-going neighbour, who shows his interest in all minute outlooks of Maya. With Ranjan she has learnt to curb her feelings. In turn, Nikhil encourages her, appreciates her and, above all, reminds her of existence and individuality. Thus, Maya finds solace in extra marital relations with Nikhil. Though Maya knows the restrictions of a married woman and she is left with a deep sense of guilt but as a human being she wants companionship of a man in order to satisfy her emotional and physical urge. With Nikhil, she wants to be free, alive, and reckless and go mad with joy.
Amidst all this enjoyment, she feels guilty that she is betraying Ranjan. She feels that she should have given second thoughts to her married life and not plunged into an extra-marital affair, regretfully she thinks:
Somebody should have told me that this was what being married means. It means giving up everything that you’ve known as a carefree young girl. And for what? May be I am confused. (p. 192)
In the torrent of physical-gratification she involves herself in physical relationship with Nikhil that later proves to be a mere betrayal. As a result, she falls from her wifely pride because of hollowness and hypocrisy in married life. Circumstances compel her to change her mind and in desperation she deceives Ranjan, otherwise she is not a woman of easy virtues. Due to lack of emotional and conjugal bliss from her husband, she goes against him and tries to seek happiness and fulfillment through Nikhil but Maya’s dream world shatters again. She comes to know of Nikhil’s engagement. Maya, who seeks rays of hope in Nikhil, finds her again in the dark. She has now known what she is and what she wants, and she is not sorry for what she has lost. She knows, she has no choice but to operate in the stifling atmosphere of her arranged marriage. “Two uncool people stuck together in unholy matrimony” (p.200), are left. Ultimately, she realizes how to survive the sultriness of Bombay along with sultriness of her marriage and she decides to dedicate herself for her household only at the end of the novel.
We find that Shobha De has cast most of her women characters in the same mould. But Maya is slightly different from her predecessors. She is at least aware of her limitations imposed by marriage. She rejoices in the company of Nikhil for the time being but ultimately accepts her predicament with a smile. Shobha De’s women are often torn between two-domesticity and their urge for sexuality. And in order to get satisfaction they do not hesitate in establishing illicit relationships with other men.
Apart from the basic underlying theme of hollowness and hypocrisy of Indian marriage, the novel Second Thoughts can also be treated as a Tale of Two Cities- Bombay and Calcutta. Here in this section certain passages from the novel are extracted to present minute details about people’s behaviour, thoughts, their ethnic mind set and regional peculiarities. Thus the contrasts presented in Second Thoughts about Calcutta and Bombay tend to make the novel a study of two cities—Bombay and Calcutta.
Shobha De has a special flair to describe places and so we find in 'Second Thoughts' how she projects the cultural norms and values of both cities along with the social and racial discrimination, marginalization and exploitation of females in the patriarchal society. We find this comparison between Bombay and Calcutta when Maya arrives from Calcutta to meet her future in-laws. Her first impression about the city reflects: “Bombay smells well so did Calcutta but it was a different smell. Besides she was used to that particular stench. Bombay smelt of desperation and deceit”. (p.1)
In the prologue itself Maya’s first visit from Calcutta to Bombay makes her notice the difference between the two cities. People’s attitude towards the corpse on the Bombay platform, where none of the thousands of people bothers about the dead man, compels Maya to consider the comparative attitude of the people in Calcutta.
Had it been a platform in Calcutta, it would have been difficult to even get out of the compartment. There would have been a thick, over-helpful crowd converged around the corpse with everybody talking simultaneously, excitedly and demanding immediate answers” (p.22)
Apart from the obvious differences like the food habits of people and the climate of the two cities the contrast has also been pointed out in the attitude and behaviour of the domestic servants. “It was different in Calcutta. Servants didn’t have to be shown their place, they knew it” (p.124). Most of them were from ‘bustees’ and they ‘looked like beggars.’ They would be ‘willing to work for two pathetic meals a day.’ On the other hand:
Compared to them, their Bombay counterparts were a pampered, arrogant lot. Tough, talkative, ambitious and mobile, they made it clear that the arrangement worked two ways. The employer needed them as much as they needed their salaries. No favours. No concessions (p. 124)
Moreover, the Bengalis in Bombay are treated to be different from the Bengalis from Calcutta.
‘Really, it is too much. See how the Bombay Bengalis behave—that is the difference between the two cities. It’s the mentality, if you ask me. That is why Calcutta will remain—dirty and backward. No progress here, I tell you. Look at Bombay—like London. So modern, so clean. Everybody smart and well-dressed. (p.244)
Maya had a keen desire to discover Bombay and pursue a career in textile designing. But her sense and sensibility are reduced to ashes by her fanciful, moody, suspicious, calculating refilgerator of a husband. Ranjan loathes anything she loves. He dampens her spirit by refusing her proposal to do a job:
A job? In Bombay? Maya, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Bombay is not Calcutta…. Bombay is like New York or London. Tough, Competitive. You have to be good… great…. Brilliant … to get ajob here... (p. 39)
In order to discourage Maya from unnecessary movement, Ranjan always presents a horrible picture of Bombay.
Remember, this is Bombay. B-O-M-B-A-Y. You can’t trust anybody. Nobody at all. Understand? (p. 41)
Ranjan, an authoritative kind of person doesn’t want Maya to get along with Bombay’s women and thus draws a line of cultural difference between Calcutta and Bombay by saying:
“As if, as if, as if. You know, you have a very bad habit of arguing. I am your husband. What I tell you is for your own good. How much experience do you have in such matters? You are still a baby in a lot of ways. Bombay is not Calcutta. I don’t want you to get wrong impressions or you’ll go astray.” (p.60)
A clear distinction in the following lines has been made between the two cities, Calcutta and Bombay based on the values, beliefs and cultural codes that people adhere to, here Ranjan warns Maya not to be in contact with Nikhil and gives his traditional views about the code and conduct of an Indian wife:
“You are not from Bombay. After all. Its different here. Young married women do not invite loafers into their homes when the husband is away. In Calcutta, possibly, nobody misunderstands. But here! Even without doing anything at all, people gossip.” (p.91)
The peculiarities of the two different cities along with people’s way of thinking and their cultural background develop a compatible setting for the fictional narrative. In this novel, the two big cities get internalized; one goading and inciting to join the whirl of the modern world promised by Nikhil, while the other constantly causing a drag to lead traditional community life. Bombay stands for individualised, self-absorbing, self-centered life while Calcutta represents tradition, social taboos and responsibilities. In the following lines when Maya asked Ranjan as to why he didn’t choose a girl from Bombay he talks about the cultural identity of Bombay Bengalis especially girls, who lost their values and taken up hybrid culture being influenced by the Western traditions.
“You know… these Bombay girls are used to a very fast way of life. Their morals are no good. They don’t speak proper Bengali. They don’t know the rituals connected with our pujas. They wear all sorts of funny clothes; they refuse to oil their hair. They cannot cook our preparations. They don’t know Bengali songs or dances. All they can do is eat roadside food and dream of going to bars and discos. Such girls do not make good wives. Not at all.” (p.128)
Maya’s tragedy is the result of Ranjan’s failure to grow in the new atmosphere. He fails to understand the needs of his wife who undergoes extreme isolation and despair. In Bombay Maya desires to experience freedom, joy, and passion for life promised by Nikhil. Ranjan wants to transport the cultural values and mind-set represented by Calcutta to Bombay. This spatial paradox having contrasting cultural values makes Maya misfit.
Apart from this, the contrast developed between Maya’s life in her flat and the fantastic, romantic avenues that the outside Bombay offers highlights her marginalised existence. The impersonal, indifferent and self-centred attitude of the people further adds to her alienation, “I had noticed that in Bombay people didn’t really listen closely to anything or anyone. And people were not interested in nobodies (like me)” (p.156). She was just ‘a non-person-just another housewife from Calcutta.’ All these details create a peculiar situation that entraps Maya. The impending frusration in Maya’s life is hinted at very cleverly in the ‘Prologue’ in these words, “Bombay smelt of desperation and deceit” (p.1). The nature of the deceitful city and Maya’s ultimate frustration find significant correspondence.
Thus Shobha De’s ‘Second Thoughts’ throws light on the traditional Indian marriage in which woman has to suffer a lot. Maya’s silent cry for true companionship for herself always remains unheard. Her plight results in her isolation and causes mental pain. These women’s dependence on man and their traditional thinking keep them suppressed and they seem to accept their lot without showing any resentment. Financial security is the basis for woman’s emancipation. De expresses this view in clear terms in her prose work also, “there can be no talk of independence for women, without economic self-sufficiency.” This paper explored the cultural significance in the novel and investigated how the culture is reflected through the story of Maya who is relegated to the secondary position in an arranged marriage. A probe is made into the cultural cargo of Indian society through selected passages which are the reflection of cultural difference and gender discrimination in the two Indian major cities Bombay and Calcutta.
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