Tags:
Journalism of Courage
That wise,old Russian who believed that each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way never had the hindsight of watching K-serials. The wise,young uns who script those back-to-back episodes would have told him that there really is one fount of misery in the world: Mummyji. And she has as many strategies of divide and rule as Smriti Irani has expressions.
Mummyji,the matriarch of an affluent Bania family in the Bombay of the 1980s,is also the primary protagonist of Namita Devidayals first novel Aftertaste (her debut was the acclaimed memoir The Music Room). She is the brain behind the mithai business that keeps the family coffers flowing. And she waddles in the centre of her unhappy family,a benevolent,flatulent witch,who knitted sweaters for everyone,could bargain like a banshee,and never ceased to remind her daughters-in-law that their husbands had sucked on her sumptuous untoned milk for many years before finding succour in their nipples.
The novel opens with Mummyji lying in a hospital,struck down by a stroke,and her children,waiting for her to die. In that long interval,Devidayal plunges us into the dreary lives of this uniformly emotionally stunted set. Perhaps it is because of the greasy food that Mummyji has fed them with the single-minded determination of an Indian mother (and the leash she has kept on the money),the children of this dysfunctional family have never really grown up. Rajan Papa,uneasy with the demands that come with being the eldest son of the family,has slipped into an emasculated acquiescence to life. His younger brother Sunny is the intemperate mommas boy. Both are indifferent fathers and inadequate husbands. The sisters are listless: Suman is a caricature of the rich wife whose hunger for solitaires takes her to moral depths that once were the fiefdom of Lalita Pawar in the movies of the 50s; Saroj is a woman sunk in an undefined gloom. The daughters-in-law disappoint: they dont challenge the matriarch and silently pocket the small change of rubies and gold bangles that she doles out every Diwali. The novel,for the most part,is a series of back stories that analyse,ad nauseum,the similar ways in which each characters potential for good has been curdled into ineffectual spite.
Aftertaste joins a slim body of novels that fetishises the amoral universe of Indias trader community the predecessors being Neelima Dalmia Adhars Merchants of Death and Himani Dalmias Life is Perfect. Devidayal takes a journalists delight in the ways of the Banias: boys who are taught multiplication tables in quarters,the paperless,office-less,invisible network of banks,the worship of the account book,the gifts wrapped in transparent cellophane perfect for those who want the world to see what is being given. But the novels final trajectory is almost that of a morality plays.
Aftertaste is concerned,as the title suggests,about the subtle blandishment of food in the daily bitterness of human relationships. Devidayal lingers lovingly on her descriptions of mithai; her characters find solace in khoya barfi and diced pistachio swimming in halwa. The prose sometimes has the awkwardness of a slapdash newspaper article: fortunes are catapulted to another level,incompetencies are highlighted,alabaster white legs variegated with pale green veins shudder involuntarily. And she can carry the food fetish too far: Rajan Papa slipped into a satiated sleep.. and woke up to the squishy sticky feeling of rasgolla syrup streaming down his legs.
You could skip this feast.
