In the heart of darkness
Reviewed by Shalini Rawat

Black Light
By Rimi B. Chatterjee
HarperCollins. Pages 272. Rs 299.

THIS dialogue between two characters in a story within the main text is more or less summative of the way the world deems it fit to perceive women. Social mores seem to be a remote control device for muting the qualities of originality, creativity, assertiveness et al of the female. Instead, she is socially programmed to be obedient, submissive and passive—in short a washed out version of the bold, decisive and active male. This, too, is the story of a female who finds her creative voice stifled and is forced to lead a double life—a woman whose pride is synonymous with her Self.

The main plot of the novel revolves around the life work of Medhasri Sen, who has apparently died in an accident. Her journalist nephew, Satya, suspects little until he finds evidence to the contrary. Her death has been an act of "premeditated" suicide of a person who can no longer synchronise and harmonise her rich inner life with the loneliness of life above the plinth level. He embarks on a journey to discover her work, the footprints of which lead him to criss-cross Eastern India. He finds that his aunt, considered an oddball in the family and deserted by her husband for being "a dreamer", is an artist forced to pursue her art in a "shadow life". This also becomes a voyage of self-revelation as he discovers layers of himself swathed under the tedium of everyday living.

The stories revealed to Satya as clues to other stories and works of Medhasri’s life hidden in obscure places make up for a fine medley of sub-plots. It is here that the author weaves a miasmic world of fiction, history and fantasy where she is in her element. The narrative here moves effortlessly and words drop into your hands like coins with a clear tinkle. The "real life" situations depicted in the novel—the journalist Satya’s office, his tracking down of abstruse clues like a seasoned detective in mofussil towns, etc., in contrast, appear to be contrived.

The novel raises questions about the creative satiation of inspired individuals. Does fulfillment lie in neatly dropping our ambitions and obligations into boxes marked "artistic" and the "normal", respectively? Can we do this and avoid sundering apart the social fabric, the institution of marriage and finally, our Self? Has man-woman partnership in the superior-subordinate order outlived its anarchous central position and needs to be debated?

True to its title, the novel implodes with the alternating vision and hopelessness of its protagonist but the narrative is overcast with gloomy elements, obtuse and inane profundities as well as too many tangential sub-narratives in many places. The end, too, seems to be a forced tying up of sub-plots left simmering. Perhaps the line outside an alternate art studio in the novel offers reprieve — "Hit backspace to delete what has been stereotyped", it reads.

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