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The myth of the lone wandering woman steering the jeep over the
spewed mountain rubble is woven with a penchant. But this sense
of freedom is misconstrued in the primary masculine world of
state politics and post-colonial diplomacy. Though the
ideological framework tends to resolve the conflict between the
tense male-oriented sputtering in the language and the deeds of
the woman in action, such coherence is only a compulsion to give
the novel a suave feeling of termination. Amid the series of
disclosures, the progression of Mona becomes complicated because
the logocentric male culture does not permit her easily to have
her sense of personal freedom for manipulating thoughts. For
General Singh and Harish and many others (including Americans)
she becomes an object of amusement as they try to impose on her
the gender norm of their patriarchal culture. That Mona can
outwit her male counterparts comes as a surprise for them, a
fact they have to acknowledge at one stage.
Mona, though of
liberal disposition, has to protect American interests and her
argument cannot transgress the basic assumptions of American
hegemony couched in benevolent offerings or dressed-up bribes.
One such capitalistic offering is the building of Dudhara dam—a
project of high civilisation that suddenly becomes redundant, to
the chagrin of Americans, and disappears with the death of that
visionary Harish in his medieval tower built to enjoy
specifically the brunt of savage storms.
By the time peace
returns to the valley and the hills, Mona comes to realise that
Philip, the ambassador-lover, is not her destination. He is an
efficient officer but not more than a paper-tiger when set
against Ted. Prabha comes to know that her hatred for her
brother was a painstakingly groomed fiction of her own, and
Harish admits before shooting himself when his coup against the
General fails: "I believed I knew their [gods’] plans and
that I was their chosen instrument. A foolish conceit, mm? We
Pandeys have not been good for this land."
In the beginning
of the novel Jan unwittingly imposed on her husband the fear of
castration complex by forcing Paul to proceed to America for the
removal of a tumour on his testicle. These libidinal hints are
picked up in the Harish-mother, Prabha-father, Ted-mother, and
Mona-father Oedipal pairings during the course of the novel and
are eventually introduced into the moment of final disclosure on
the Buddhist precipices where Ted rescues critically ill Mona.
For that final
resolution and uncovering Mona has to slog through father
fixation that severely hampers her response to Ted’s
treatment: "No. Papa says by myself." Ted fights back:
"Tell Papa to butt the hell out. This is my department and
I’m in charge here." Mona responds while the boundary of
language stretches schizophrenically to resist father’s no to
heterosexual fulfilment. Mona’s libido is displaced into a
potentially different mode in the symbolic order where she and
Ted turn lovers from friends. This is the last disclosure.
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ONE
may call this novel a tragi-comedy of disclosures, but only
tentatively, since the tenor of the novel does not permit such a
formulation. The elements of tragedy that are present here are too
posed, self-chosen and, therefore, too fine to be depressive, or
even purgative. And comicality is to be inferred only as it does not
break through the surface until the orgy of the final act. But the
novel is decidedly structured on a series of well-leashed
disclosures in a more or less evenly maintained assault line. Mona
Kittredge is the central piece of these disclosures. She is a young
diplomat posted in the American Embassy in a small Himalayan kingdom
of Sundar Rajya and has to negotiate the dark labyrinths: American
hegemonic diplomacy, native insurrectionary politics, and— most
crucially—her own self.
