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When the Waters Wail Carrying poignant title, sombre synopsis, melancholic, plaintive tone, the narrative delineates agonies of the diasporic woman protagonist Navjot, whose gritty, stubborn battle to sustain her autonomy is recurrently thrashed by the "hissing darkness" of tragedies and trials.
An assistant manager in a medicine company in Manchester, she joins a feminist organisation under the spell of her university teacher, Jecky Green. Finding marriage claustrophobic, coercive, she repudiates the "outdated" institution to try cohabitation. To get an assurance from herself, she introspects, "If women are earning more than man, then why should she tolerate his business? Why should one enter into this relationship where there is no mental association or a sense of equality between them? Should one get married just to fulfil physical desires when they can be fulfilled without marriage? One can lead a life in partnership with a like minded person so that there is no need to put a leash around your neck." Ironically, she enters into an intimate relationship with Talwinder, the boy who she had declined to marry, despite her parent’s persistent exhortations. They enjoy gratification of senses in westerly manner. Talwinder’s hypocritical judgment (he takes Navjot to be wanton) spoils their union. She conceives and leaving her in lurch, he marries a traditional Punjabi girl, obliging his parents. His infidelity impairs her confidence; at times she suspects her own decisions. "I repent on my decision and think. Why had I opted for sleeping on these nails, what was the necessity of doing all this? What was wrong in the lifestyle of my parents? Sometimes I feel this decision of mine as good and sometimes very cynical." She stills the tempest within her by reviving her relationship with the white man John Walker. But again, she is shattered by traumatic miscarriage. Her resentful mother condemns her, while Navjot’s angry outburst severs the mother-daughter bond. Adding to her sorrows, her reunion with John Walker too ends tragically. His untimely death finishes the blissful spell of togetherness marked by equality. Since their cohabitation was not registered, she is denied his dead body. Here the British system defeats her. Later, after the sudden death of her cohabiter, she forlornly bears a girl child and christens her ‘waris’, heir. To cap it all, her father dies tragically in harness. She along with her infant daughter goes to attend her father’s last rites, though unasked. Cursed as the reason of her father’s death, she is spurned by her hypocritical community, which "when the need arises become British and when not necessary become Indian". "How, " says a voice inside her, "could they pardon a person who challenged their values! Man has always been beaten at the hands of her values, mental impressions and community. That is why I have been pushed away from this house so harshly." A sense of angst, too, nags in the strained atmosphere. "Dad, I am sorry from the core of my heart. I may be the reason of your death." She bids bye to her house and resumes her struggle. Cohabitation may bring relief to man, but can it be an alternative to the "outdated" marriage, both inside and across culture, for woman? Given the fact that her sensuality is a blend of physicality and emotionality, can woman really live autonomously? These issues are addressed in novel analytically through a well-connected straightforward plot, gripping storyline, life-like characters and poetic language. Such is the spell of wailing waters, that you can’t sleep unless you finish the book; it haunts you even after!
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Contrary
to the general presumption that a feminist text is authored by a woman
writer, the noted and awarded Punjabi diasporic fiction writer Darshan
Dhir delves remarkably well into feminine psyche. The charming,
susceptible Navjot’s defiant resistance to her
family/tradition/community to live independently leaves her alienated,
under the contradictory pulls of individuality/community,
culture/modernity, East/West, ideals/desires and
carnality/emotionality.