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Home
THE production standards are excellent. The cover is evocative. It is the first offering from Random House India. There is an inbuilt gold lace-attached bookmark. The blurb says the story is about a joint family in New Delhi’s Karol Bagh, where I lived for five years. All this compels me to buy Home. Three hundred and thirty nine pages later, I feel a little cheated. The story is about the Lala Banwari Lal household where men sell clothes and bribe officials to build extra floors to their shop while women sit at home, gossip against one another and fast and pray so that they are blessed with sons. The story begins with Yashpal, elder son of Lala Banwari Lal, falling in love with Sona, who visits his cloth shop in the company of her mother. Never before in the family had any man fallen for a girl and asked for her hand. Lala Banwari Lal, who had to abandon his flourishing business at Anarkali Bazar in Lahore in the wake of Partition and had nothing more than his wife’s jewellery to begin his life afresh on Ajmal Khan Road, after a short stay in Amritsar, has no option but to make his elder son’s dream come true. Sona’s younger sister Rupa is not so lucky to marry into a rich business family. After all, she does not have such a lovely complexion as Sona’s! She is, therefore, fated to marry a lowly government official, who has a perpetual problem with his lawyer-tenant, who does not vacate his first-floor house. Lala Banwari Lal’s wife, who is identified simply as "Mai", tortures Sona with her endless barbs. Sona is accused of "enjoying, enjoying" when she alone knows that it is not for want of attempt that she does not become pregnant. Rupa, too, is childless but she diverts her attention to her pickle business. When after several "karva chauths" and visits to a godman, Sona delivers, she knows for once she has an inalienable place in the Lala Banwari Lal home. But by then, Sona’s sister-in-law Sushila had already overtaken her with two sons. Into their life comes Vicky, son of Banwari Lal’s only daughter who was married off to a drunkard in Bareilli and who dies there in suspicious circumstances. Vicky is the unwanted child "Mai" wants Sona to bring up as her own. But she sees him as a domestic help to do her biddings. Sona’s daughter Nisha is born a ‘Mangli’. When she suffers at the hands of adolescent Vicky, she is sent off to Rupa where her husband dotes on her and brings her up as a brilliant student. Ultimately, she has to come back to the family. After all, she must grow in her own house. Nisha is the first girl to go to college from the family and she is also the first to fall in love. But how can the family ever agree to her desire to marry a low-caste Paswan boy? In course of time, Vicky is forced to accept Rs10 lakh and leave the family. An unwed Nisha is mortified to see her younger brother marry a girl chosen by the family, more for money than for looks. Finally, Sona finds solace in selling suits. But nothing can replace marriage for a woman in Lala Banwari Lal family. Finally, she marries a widower when her bad planetary period is over. The story ends when she produces twins — a boy and a girl. Manju Kapur’s story is like the serial kahani ghar ghar ki shown on TV. It has no storyline. There is not a single character who stands out. Lala Banwari Lal as patriarch rightfully commands some respect. After all, he believes in certain old-world values. But when grandson Vicky asks for a favour, he conveniently "consults" his sons. His wife never rises above a petty, jealous mother-in-law. Sona as a daughter-in-law evokes sympathy but she turns out to be worse than ‘Mai’ when it comes to treating her own daughter-in-law. For all her attachment to Sona and Nisha, Rupa is the quintessential jealous sister. Her husband Prem Nath is self-effacing, gives his wife a lot of freedom and treats Nisha as his own daughter. But his pride in his sexual prowess and his dirty comment that Sona’s husband would not be as good as him in matters carnal brings him down in the reader’s esteem. Vicky as the motherless, victimised grandson deserves sympathy but he turns out to be a child molester, scaring Nisha so much that when he touches "there" she ‘shu-shus’. Nisha’s lover Suresh is no better than a college Romeo, who can only profess love. In other words, there is not a single character deserving of respect. Perhaps, that is how Manju Kapur wants the Lala Banwari Lal household to end up — just the ordinary. An element of humour that runs through her writing keeps the reader engaged. Here’s a sample: Nisha asks Rupa, "What do you think of love marriages?" "Too much adjustment", answers Rupa. The author’s narrative skills make up for the lack of a strong protagonist or a theme. It is like an Ekta Kapoor serial that has no beginning and no end. If some parts of Home remind the readers of the two sisters of Sense and Sensibility and the Tulsi family of A House for Mr Biswas, it is, perhaps, incidental.
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