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| Sunday, April 11, 2004 |
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| Sunday, April 11, 2004 |
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Afterwards
Maya confides in Rahul of her miserable existence in a loveless marriage with her overbearingly possessive husband, Govind. Though Govind’s business concerns would keep him away from his wife and child, he remained suspicious thinking of all the things Maya might get up to in his absence and nagged her about these at the next opportune moment they had together. Maya finds her complete loss of freedom in marriage to be torturous and she appeals to Rahul for help. Rahul decides to help Maya escape her cage, not just for herself, but because he finds himself in love with her. It comes to pass that Maya leaves Kerala with Rahul and her one-year-old daughter, Anjali, to begin her new and happy life in England. Back home, Govind is devastated by Maya’s elopement and her parents unable to put up with all the shame and loose talk that follows her hasty departure. Rahul conducts her death rites. When these rites are done for the dead, it is meant to bring peace to the soul, but when it’s done for the living, it is to do the opposite. Rahul does his best to make it all up to Maya and the three lead a happy life together, for the next two-years-and-a-half, that is. Maya is snatched away by a car accident. The book is about what happens afterwards. It gives a day-by-day account of Rahul’s grief and Anjali’s reaction to life without her mother in the tormented week following Maya’s death. Govind, by virtue of being Anjali’s biological father, is invited by the Social Services Department to make a settlement regarding her future. Fulfilling his parental responsibility, he takes his daughter back to India. Maya has not been dead a week and Rahul comes to lose Anjali, too. He finds himself facing the future alone and the way ahead looks like a barren wasteland on which he would have to wander indefinitely without purpose or hope. It seems that he has nothing left, but leftover life to kill. As the early stage of grief passes, the negative scream of protest against the cruelty and injustice of his loss is replaced by a strong desire to salve the pain and unhappiness that Maya seemed to carry about with her. A pilgrimage is made to Kerala with Maya’s ashes, not only for Maya’s sake, but also because Rahul wishes to confront her otherwise educated parents on why they had opposed her chance at getting a new life? When Rahul finally meets Maya’s mother, she is in the white of widows and seems far from everything that was familiar to Rahul. He feels foolish about venting his wrath on the unsuspecting old and frail woman living like a hermit on the side of a mountain. Rahul’s pilgrimage, however, helps him come to terns with Maya’s loss and the simple act of the immersion of her ashes in the river causes him to feel that Maya is not lost to him, but is now everywhere and everything. This is moving story, sensitively written about a difficult topic and worthy of recommending to the readers of this newspaper. |
WRITING about bereavement is never easy and Jaishree
Misra does it rather well in this book. She begins her story when her
protagonist, Rahul Tiwari, arrives in Kerala to get away from the dank
grey of an English winter, his ex-English girlfriend, to learn the mridangam
and enjoy himself as much as possible. However, his beautiful and
melancholy neighbour, Maya, throws his holiday plans out of gear.