Prof. N. Natarajan on Mothers and Virgins : A Novel

First let me tell you that the novel reads as a novel well with its narratological innovations/mix/collage whatever we call it.A  narrative/novel  is  molded/welded as a drama with its  dramaturgical  make-up: “Welcome to the Nazrani Show”, [the narrator/dramatist  introducing]  Anarkali’s matrophobic and matrophillic affiliation with her mother], Intermission, Curtain and in between, the Chapters camouflaging as Scenes which  alternate with Anarkali being third-personized and Annakili being first-personized. And in the last chapter/scene we see the contiguous merger of the doubles, Anu and Anna in the present tense and the novel /show starts and ends in Kombodinjaapplakkal /Kerala and in between we are/were in paradise ill or well /America.

 In fact the first scene/chapter starts with the present  in Kombodinjaapplakkal/Thrissur/Kerala  in the  present tense  and slides to past /paradise/America  and  we are allowed into the stream of consciousness of  Anarkali whose child/girl/marriage/divorcehoods trickle like water to wet us in the past tense. At the same time in the present tense she [an American-returned]  is ideological in her leaving America/husband and economical in her having had  left for America before that, to remain a virgin even after the so-called first night thanks  to her husband’s impotence. And to top it all before her marriage she was kept  a virgin by her mother and her brothers; standards of conduct of women in Kerala – she is/was/will be always /already caught in between the  ideology of conduct and the conduct of ideology for women – no escape and no regret either because she is already/always committed to her parents whether she likes it or not.  That is the tragedy/comedy of her life. Being a history student she exposes the claims of past history of/ across the world and wants to rewrite it and succeeds in it to some extent, she thinks.

In the second chapter/scene , the narrator/dramatist allows the second woman,  Anna to narrate/dramatize  her-story herself – the intrusion we find  earlier of the narrator is not here, she is totally free to say whatever she likes , whereas that freedom is not given to Anu , she is imprisoned in the prison-house of the narrator/dramatist. This being caged imagery is not available to Anna, so she is completely free to wallow in her thoughts.

Whatever I guessed in the beginning itself that A nu/nna  are the same per son/daughter is confirmed by the  anonymous dramatist/narrativist in the Intermission, while  talking to the reader-- western and eastern. Using the all inclusive WE, the narratist [a portmanteau from narr(ator) and (dram)atist] raises the question. “By the way, do you [ i.e., Us Readers] wonder who this busy body know it all narrator is? Who is the real teller/writer of the story? And Anarkali and Anna? Do you think they are one and the same person? That one is the creation of the other? Well …. Anyway it doesn’t matter. Nothing does. After all we [ including the writer of the teller/writer and the reader] are only what we think ourselves to be.” [pp197-8]. This “We” is distinguished from the teller/writer of the story and it is this “we” who introduces the Narrator who “introduces Anarkali” [p.9] and “lets Anna introduce herself” [p.53]. But the all inclusive “we” seems to be  the narrator of the Narrator who is the narrator/controller  of the teller/writer, Anarkali and Anna. As I said earlier Anarkali is third personized / introduced/told by the Narrator and Anarkali is under the control of the Narrator just as she is under the control of her mother  first and husband next, from both of whom  she liberates herself , living alone Single.  And again it is this Narrator who “lets Anna introduce herself and tell her story by herself thereby being first personized. And  Anarkali and Anna who first met in the boarding school also meet in the last scene to pull down the curtain. Again it is the Narrator, who created Anarkali who creates Anna also, Who is this Narrator seemed to be  created by an all inclusive We. Minus the reader from the all inclusive We and the We will become identified with the writer/teller of the Narrator who gets identified with the writer/teller of the story, Anarkali and Anna. All the eggs come from the same hen! And in that case who is this we/narrator of Narrator/Teller/Writer of teller/writer, Anarkali/Anna,  it is none other than the author of the novel, A.Bernard available/mentioned on the front jacket of the novel. And A. J. Bernard on the spine of the book. What is the sex/gender of this author, that is available on the back jacket of the novel, - “Asha Bernard lives in Champaign, IL”. So the author is not Bernard who is given the initial A [ a very formidable feminist counter  to the traditional patriarchal act of giving initial to daughters/wives after father first and husband next, only a woman has to change her initial after marriage, but not being a man, she is compelled to move from miss to Mrs [ by missing miss]  but he remains Mr always/already.] So the author of the novel is Asha Bernard , [should be in the frontispiece itself, so the author  A. Bernard is a miss-nomer], so the author   is a woman, it is  whose creation/narration is the Narrator who creates/narrates  Anarkali and Anna, who seem to be two versions of the same Person – Narrator – Asha Bernard and now I can see the invisible/inevitable links between the factual and the fictional, Asha/Anarkali/Anna. Anarkali and Anna are the two complementary versions of Asha, the Schizo –Narrator  who operates through Anu and Anna providing a stark naked FORMIDABLE GYNOCENTRIC VIEW OF THE NOVEL/WORLD, that is where the fulcrum of this di-asporic novel lies. [The first night of Anu is told from her angle but not from his angle for example/ not even his name is revealed, he is called always her husband, called a spineless man by Pearl etc]

Asha the Narratist creates the  Narrator who tells the story of Anarkali who indulges in ideological writings with her Indo-centrism and permits Anna  to tell her story as a feminist – this is how the Narrator/Narratist third-personizes  and  first personizes herself  at the same time – seeing herself as object [Anu] and as subject [Anna] – the Narratist is torn between Anu and Anna who are the two sides of the same coin. Versions of a typical diasporic [Indian] wife who lived/lives in and who leaves /not leaves America.  AND more appropriately who, simultaneously wants to leave and doesnotwant to leave America/husband. And that is the dilemma of the narratist where she seems to be a Schizo [ not the Freudian psychotic patient but  the Guattarian  Schizo -- the deterritorialized hero who can think anew without subscribing to any pressure] living in two worlds simultaneously enjoying/suffering. And this schizo angst of the Narratist is fulfilled in Anu and Anna  - both possess/ are possessed by two husbands who happen to be ironically Cardiologists., which plainly means heart-specialists!? Anu negatively leaves him and Anna positively leaves him – in either case the husbands don’t occupy totally the topographies of their minds – though physically it is different. For Anu her husband’s impotence in possessing her body in sex leads to their dispossession of each. Anu is not able to detach him from his mother, from his possible lady: Lorna who arrives later to break the tie – the same thing would have happened had they lived in Kerala too - husband’s impotence, mother-in-law’s dominance, husband’s premarital love/postmarital adultery etc. This is the one version and the counter version is found in Anna  who suffers neither husband’s impotence nor mother-in-law’s dominance nor husband’s over “potence” /other sexual escapades [ for they live in Kerala]. Result with her son Ajay she lives happily with her husband John, but she wants more, so her mind uses her husband only like a curryleaf – it is a detached attachment or an attached detachment, whatever you call it. And her story is told not from her husband’s angle but only from hers.

Anu has had her sharp  eyed boy to always munch and remunch in reality and dreams – Ashok, [ his name is given but not her husband’s, giving/asking one’s name is recognising one’s culture as Anu feels , that privilege is not given to Anu’s husband by the Narrator/Narratist]  and the same with Anna who always enjoys her  hallucinations of her brown-eyed boy Ashwin.

It thus seems Anu and Anna are the two simultaneous sides of the Narratist who suffers the necessity and the impossibility of accepting patriarchal Kerala/husband /America at the same time. Hence I called the Narratist a Schizo who lives in two worlds/possibilities without subscribing to them – a lotus in the water state.  Both live in their pasts – which haunt them like hallucinations. For a schizo should have hallucinations, personal or private, sexual or ideological etc.,.

Both Anu and Anna’s hallucinations are not only personal/sexual but also cultural/ideological. With her history background Anu foregrounds a new history after deconstructing the available histories, across the centuries, of the world – both west and east – thereby trying to recover/discover the unwritten her-story of the his-tory, it is no doubt intellectually/comparatively interesting and enlightening. Likewise Anna with her Literature background tries to deconstruct the female/gender-amnesiac cultures with her anti-virgin stories and feminist writings. Her ameliorative longing, in her feminist tract, for freeing women from the pain/pang of child bearing and rearing is original and laudable – it is here they are Guattarian in creating new concepts/theories for humanity and its comforts. Anu’s The Anger of Civilizations  parallels Anna’s The Anger of Female Body, I should say.

Last but not least I should mention  the virginity syndrome  promoted/ suffered by not only Nazrani families but also men and women from all cultures  is treated in the novel sometimes seriously/tragically, sometimes humorously/comically depending upon persons involved in it with diverse definitions etc. And in all it seems it is more  a Matter of Body  than of Mind – so both Anu / Anna remain [s] Virgins even now in their forties enjoying/suffering   their sexual dalliance with their counternuts , Ashok/Ashwin – of course not in BODY but in MIND!? –really even now I wonder, even I am amused,  at the nomenclatural links between Anu, Anna, Ashok and Ashwin  as well as at ‘A’s proliferating with A-SH-A, the author of this very interesting/illuminating gynocentric novel. And no doubt the novel also turns out to be a very recent Cultural text in its debunking classical positions/practices in religion/history/philosophy/society/family i.e. . all the dimensions of its culture. which needs further elaboration not done here.

With Lots of wishes to her to further bloom as a novelist!

Best

nn

 

Thank you very much, Dr NN , for this analysis of my novel. It has been over 10 years since I wrote this, and I am happy that you read this and took the time to write these thoughts down.

whatever happened to Asha Joseph. M?

Asha Joseph M circa 1991

Have you seen her? Missing for about 20 years. This is to those who knew her a long time ago. Some were at that time, thought to be very close friends. Never to be parted from completely. What do we know when we are at that age! For that matter, at any age! The only difference between now and then would be  that back then we thought we knew everything, as we all know. Coming back to the old friends and acquaintances,  they themselves are probably busy looking for their old selves now. And that leaves no one else -- since Asha was never famous. Still, admit it. some of us did fear, albeit slightly, that Asha Joseph M may get famous some day!

So let this Asha speculate. And wonder. May be Asha Joseph. M died. Or she lives on in some faraway land, an island perhaps. Perhaps, mishaps. Or, she may be living in a convent! Or better, walking on the moors with the Bronte sisters on cold winter days, and later huddling close to the fire, busy pretending to write the next novel about doomed lovers. 

By all this I hope she doesn't think I am making fun of her. I just write this in fun. Her sense of self-importance may take it as a blow to her great dignity and noble pride!Please do not take umbrage, Asha! Your oversensitivity is notorious! After all, Asha may very well be leading a happy, contented life somewhere. If so, that is if she is completely content, then that either makes her a simple saint or a fool. To quote Edison, ( I am afraid, like those annoying quote posts on social media), "Restlessness is discontent — and discontent is the first necessity of progress. Show me a thoroughly satisfied man — and I will show you a failure.”  Well, that is neither here nor there. Quoting some famous person   is not that different from a hypocritical overzealous sanctimonious bible-thumper quoting the scriptures. Still doesn't tell me where the heck Asha Joseph. M has got to!

 This came to me suddenly - could she be languishing in some prison cell of a dictator? No, Asha's activism was never of the suffering kind. Her ideas never left her armchair set in that rarefied atmosphere of like-minded revolutionaries. Quite safe. But then she could be in that little cottage at the edge of the woods, near a stream, with a vegetable patch in the back yard,  and with a few hens, and a dog, for company. While we are at it - she could very well be in a big city in a little room overlooking a busy street, where after work, she writes stuff that no one wants to read. Why do I always picture her alone? For all I know she could be surrounded by a half a dozen children or even grandchildren! Wherever she is living, she will go on living, and then she will have to die one day.

Let's retrace her steps from the last I had seen of her. That is how a detective usually starts, I have heard.. Where did I see her last? At her wedding? Or before that in that magazine office? What did we talk about then? Did she seem like she had any solid plans as to her future? Not really, I should say. Mind you, she looked like she knew what she wanted. Not at all the clueless person that I now know her  to be . She was a dreamer all right. Lived in the world of dreams. Some vague idea about the immediate future, probably. Ah! I know! She must have got lost in her own thoughts! And is still wandering in those lanes, alternately elated and despondent, relieved and frustrated, all the while growing older and weaker. Soon she may lose her memory, thus all her thoughts, her consciousness, and fall down, never to wake up. Natural selection at work.

Another set of questions arise now. We all know Asha Joseph. M. has disappeared. Now is there foul play here? After all, I knew that she had secret plans for world domination, no one else knew, by the way. Yep, that disinterestedness, that air of nonchalance, that was all a facade. Inside she was a scheming Dr No. Total fraud (fraaad) case. as our Jagathy would say. (If there is foul play, there is every chance that she did it. no, the B did it!) Why? How? Who? Well, the good old motive and opportunity. Who stands to gain from her disappearance? Who couldn't stand her so much that they had to delete her (so to speak)? We have to be honest here - she really was the limit, sometimes. Someone had to try to stop her. Or was it a crime of passion? Jealousy? Love? Lust? Or sheer pigheadedness? Someone just did not like the way she looked? Or was she the woman who knew too much about someone or something, and had to be silenced? For instance she may have seen some crime being committed. Or, was she a victim of diabolic revenge ? For some imagined or real slight that someone endured from her? Will we ever find out?. (Did I cover all points? Now that's me being her - with her irritating habit of , that compelling need to cover all points, every eventuality.)

Anyway what do I care where Asha is! For that matter, where I am! There is no point in knowing either, seriously. Her own child would not recognize that Asha from the past. Even her mother wouldn't be able to recall that Asha. As far as I am concerned, Asha Joseph.M could live or die or vanish into thin air. Or take a running jump at herself or off a cliff, off even one of Brontes' cliffs. She is history. Or, herstory. Just covering all points again. :)

one of her permed hair phases

asha's "twin" 

asha in the "dog days"

PS: Do let me know if you happen to find her!

Diary of a bridger of gaps

2008-05-02T06:55:06.497+05:30

Most of us are born with an ability to be bridgers of gaps. For instance when I was a toddler, I had some tricks up my sleeve to make my arguing mom and dad smile at each other again, so I am told. And those smiles made them smile at me in turn which must have been the reason I did use those tricks. Call it self preservation , or preserving the harmony of my environment to my liking.

As I grew up, my studies lead me quite naturally to this theme over and over. I quite easily connected the African American Ralph Ellison and the Indian Salman Rushdie through their books. At the end of my researches, I declared that Midnight’s Children grew up to be Invisible Men – and women.

Next, I had the chance to delve into feminist criticism and theories of narrative techniques while applying it to Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. There was a gap I was eager to bridge – the gap between the aesthetics and politics of feminism. And I did it, by adapting the theory of deconstruction to my advantage. Twisting and changing and transforming it to an extent that Derrida would squirm in his grave.

Then came the real identity crisis, as I came to live in the United States of America. All on a sudden, I was a nobody, who belonged nowhere. After a couple of courses in globalization, I found my new job in bridging. The bridging of the Hindu, the Muslim, the Parsi, the Nazrani, – into one group of Vedic people. I utilized many ideas here for my own end in the belief that end justifies the means. For instance, I took into consideration the common elements between Hinduism and Zoarashtrianism. The way the Vedic "deva" became the Zoarashtrian demon and the asura became their god. Compare Maha Asura and Ahura Mazda. And soon that lead me to a bridging of the gap between the Aryans and the Semitics.

The bridges are growing now – between the Mediterranean people and ancient Indians, between the Chinese and Indians, Africans and Indians, and Central Asians and Indians and so on.Meanwhile I did undergo a genetic test to satisfy my curiosity as to my corporeal identity. After all, we Nazranis do believe that we are descendants of Brahmins converted into Christianity by St. Thomas in 52 A.D. A beautiful myth as has been proved by many. I found that we are descendants of Jews who had settled in Kerala long before Brahmins. About the genetic test, nothing much to say except that I wasted some money in order to let someone inform me quite officially that I belong to the human race!

This need to bridge the gaps between people is of course for my own selfish reasons, as I said before. Self preservation, and a longing to preserve the harmony of my environment for myself and for future generations. So there would be no more Darfurs or Somalias or Iraqs and Kashmirs. And boys and girls will not be send away to fight windmills and allowed to die needlessly. And real bridgers of gaps like Sergio Vieira de Mello will not be sacrificed at the altar of greed and indifference.

update on the DNA test -- I got it done again recently and found that my maternal ancestor roamed around the plains of Central Asia around 60,000 years ago, and my paternal one in that area and Eastern Europe around 12,000 years ago. pretty amazing India, don't you think?


another update: the presence of Brahmins in Kerala  when St Thomas came cannot be easily dismissed as I did till now. It is possible, I realize now.

new adventures of old asha or Omphaloskepsis

there is nothing much to do. maybe because it's all been done. either by myself, or by others. actually, much more .... and more... by others. but then that is all right, since we are one.
believe it or not, i haven't really tried to pick lint off my navel. i hear it is an art worth cultivating.
sadly, even if i wanted to try it now, it won't be feasible. there is this gooseberry- sized gauze ball stuffed tight in my navel. yep. and there is a band -aid over it. i look at it longingly. curious to see what's happening underneath . but i am not supposed to pry. obviously, privacy concerns. so, the contemplation of my navel has to be put off for now.

in any case, i have other things to do. or not do. when i get off bed, i am not allowed to sit right up. no sudden jumps and all that. but i notice that i am prone to do that -- just like my dad. but then, since i do not want a lotus, or something akin to it,  to rise out of my navel, i try to remember to roll over to my side, slowly bring my feet down, and sit up. i tell all this to my relatives who havent been very impressed with me lately, and have written me off the "going places" list. Here is my chance to grab that elusive 15 seconds of fame, among them. Of course once they hear it is laparoscopic, every one of them is pretty dismissive like seasoned surgeons. But ... but there are incisions! 4 of them! on me!! come on! thats not simple! and other stuff that was done inside me!
well, anyways,

i am asked to support my tummy when i lie down. i support it so much it hurts. someone in charge here asks me, " you always have to take that one extra step, dont you?" "Do I?" , I wonder. hmm. something else to think about. maybe i do! i think of all the friendships, and would-be friendships that I had lost on the way, probably because of this overdoing business? or, that may have happened because of other stuff, like them being mountains and i being a teeny tiny ant.ants are mighty envious of mountains, btw.

ok- back to contemplation of my navel -- i touch it, does it hurt? not really. but after a while, i feel a twinge. does it feel colder than the other areas? oh NO! it feels wet! it is infected! no, no. it is fine, really. i imagined it.

all the do's and don'ts! i am fed up. i can't run, i can't do situps or crunches, i can't climb stairs, omg! how am i going to take it!! actually it is only for a couple of days. but you don't know that! my six-pack (fl)abs is going to be a thing of the past. and my dream of world domination  in the next Olympics, or at least CWG, is out the window. and, SACRILEGE! i cant have sex for 2 weeks! for 2 whole weeks! now that is a hit on my
(r)aging libido. at the end of the said 2 weeks, watch out, you studs between 23- 29! ;) to add insult to injury,  i shouldn't get pregnant for the next 5 years! that is unthinkable! how can i bear that!!!not that i have been making babies nonstop all these years. it is the principle of the thing. (after the 5th year, it's all right, since the question doesn't arise, and the Holy Ghost has gone on to newer pastures).

as i lie there, i remember that heavenly feeling or not-feeling while i was under general anaesthesia. whoever invented that has to be hugged and kissed forever. I did not feel a thing! I do not remember a thing! for 3 hours I was totally unaware! dead to the world! to me that is unbelievable. to not worry if i talked too much, or too little, to not think , or remember, to not know that i am breathing!! 3 hours of my life -- a big mystery.
back to navel-gazing. i am not supposed to look at  my navel. that would count as an almost-crunch. i give up, i have to take a peek. just let me get this band aid off first.
:)