‘The Gallery by Manju Kapur’: Dimension of women’s emotions

Manisha Gangahar

Neither vehemently rebellious nor highly censorious, but subtly feminist, the novels of Manju Kapur contour women’s mindscapes as they navigate through their very ordinary, at times even mundane, existence. ‘The Gallery’ is yet another novel in the line and this time, the womanhood is reimagined within the contrasting but interlocking frames of the affluent Minal, domestic worker Maitrye and their respective daughters, Ellora and Tashi.

In fact, the author’s continuous preoccupation with representing a woman’s life rubric — her conscious and subconscious thoughts, her actions, reactions and interactions, and her struggles to find and then articulate her identity — is in no way a didactic or eulogising attempt. Her women characters are sketched out as typical embodiments of both primitive and impulsive instincts, but nevertheless are convincing and vibrant. For Kapur, who prefers to see herself as the mirror-to-society kind of writer, the concept of an ideal woman is redundant, as in case of any human being. As the women protagonists in ‘The Gallery’ engage with their outside world, their homes and the world within, a quagmire of challenges unrolls, weaving a canvas of predicaments and ironies, pretty much relatable in its class divides and their aspirations. On the other end, the men in ‘The Gallery’ are mere pegs to the story, flat and lacking dynamism. Their existence and participation in the storyline seems to have been pushed to a deliberate oblivion.

Initially, it seems that the plot is a mere compilation of random scenes and the author is scraping the common places, but gradually, her pragmatic presentation of life begins to turn profound. The graphic narration, suffused with feminine sensibility, articulates the woman’s quest: “For years she had imagined being… oppressed by no one. The thoughts of these freedoms had unfolded within her bit by bit, till they became demands…” The shifting frames of ‘The Gallery’ between the world of a one-room life and that of one panning out in an elite drawing room, and not to miss the world of art, seamlessly illustrate a greater reality of Indian life, in all its shades and folds. Maitrye and her daughter Tashi continue to negotiate their placements in the given conditions of economic insufficiency. Minal and her daughter Ellora exert to rearrange sociological conceptualisations and diktats in order to make a space for themselves in an otherwise seemingly innoxious world that can equally prove itself brazenly as unfair, hostile and rather checkered towards them.

The mother-daughter bonding survives, and evolves, even when their day-to-day relationship is full of conflicts. As Minal wonders later in life: “About happy, I’ll see. But at least I’m giving myself a chance…” At almost 50, it was not too late to make her daughter proud of her. Her graduate daughter is now pushing her mother to live her life the way she wants. In a way, it appears that the daughter empathises with her mother and by encouraging the mother to live without caveats, she’s asserting herself and also paving a pathway to her own autonomy.

‘The Gallery’ offers not only an intimate look at the relationships that women have with men, but also a peek into the complicated emotions that they share between themselves. The author aspires to bring out a nuanced positioning of women in a background that ensures much openness and is yet sufficiently oppressive and caustic for their psyche. The juxtaposition of liberty entitled to women in a civilised society and their conditions constantly gnaw upon the very fibre of their being, leaving an innate desire for identity and acknowledgment in the lurch. “She should be on her way too. And until she was, every day would seem like a day in a railway station or an airport, a place demanding departure.”

For the Manju Kapur loyalists, the novel offers yet another dimension of women’s entanglements and emotions, a revisionist work, with class being the contouring ink. For others, it will be old wine in a new bottle.