The Wife and the Beloved by Ashapurna Devi is a compilation of short stories by the author, compiled between the years 1936-1986. Her stories are fresh with a feminine perspective.
But, owing to her mastery over the form, of being an artist who observes life and its nuances minutely, and expresses its essence, it makes her writing universal.
The translation of the work by Sanjukta Das is inconsistent: it is good in parts, but is atrocious for some stories. The main issue with some of the translation is that at certain times one is unsure of who the speaker is.
Characters and situations too, are not introduced properly. This causes disorientation in the reader to some extent. But, it is also an advantage as the reader has to concentrate harder, like filling in the missing jigsaw pieces, to place characters, events and happenings, in order to form a complete picture.
The stories revolve around the daily lives of the Bengali middle classes. Each piece builds towards a climax. There is no moral or message in most of the stories, like one finds in a fable.
The author takes the tone of an impartial observer, recreating life via the art of writing, and portrays some essence of life in the process. The stories have a lot of dialogue in them; there is more dialogue than description.
This shows that it is people, their relationships and idiosyncrasies, which are of concern to Devi. The writing is fast paced.
The author does not dwell on anything and like a stream, the prose takes its course towards its climax. The narrative does not stagnate, and in that sense it is true to life. After all, life is the ultimate redeemer and no matter what, it always stays its course.
The short story, The wife and the Beloved, which is also the title of the book, is well crafted. It starts with the memoirs of a young man which is fashioned like an internal monologue.
The protagonist enters college with his mind made up that he will find love. He laments at his inability to find romance in life, despite trying hard to get it.
He is coming of age and even becomes a postgraduate, but despite all his efforts, he finds no love.
He reads poets and writers who idealise this emotion, and he is quite taken by them. The protagonist hankers for the experience of love.
He feels that an arranged marriage would spoil any chance he ever had of experiencing true love. In fact, he finds marriage itself to be an institution that kills love.
His marriage is arranged and it happens with his desire of finding love remaining unrequited. One day, he discovers a picture of a man in his wife’s possession. He learns that this man was his wife’s lover. His wife is unapologetic about her affair with this man, and says she did not marry the man as marriage kills love. This is the protagonist's own philosophy.
The protagonist, despite having an arranged marriage, and despite his misapprehensions about the same, comes to start loving his wife, before finding the picture.
Hence, he is shattered. He later comes to know that his wife had read his journals and had planted the picture to teach him a lesson: that romance is possible even after arranged marriages.
The writing style employed in this short story is conversational, with the protagonist speaking of his experiences to the reader in first person.
The style demonstrates the skill of the writer, of her ability to go deep into the psyche of the characters she creates, and then convey the same to the reader.
The time frame of the short story spans the protagonists college days till his marriage, which is compressed into a few pages.
The story questions patriarchy in an unconventional way: a woman maybe married against her will, in a position that most feminists would consider being bound, but she seeks the pleasures of love from within such an arrangement.
This is a strong call towards freedom, for women: the freedom to have pleasure despite being bound.
The plight of widows has been a major issue in India. Stalwarts like Raja Ram Mohan Roy had fought against the discrimination against widows and for a widow’s right to remarry. Ashapurna Devi too touches on the plight of widows in many of her stories. In the story Addiction, there is a central character Shanta, who is a widow.
Shanta is jealous of the overtures made by a man named Partha, towards her niece Krishna.
Partha often drops by to meet Krishna’s family, but his actual intention is to meet Krishna. Shanta makes it awkward for Partha and Krishna to get to know each other.
The description of Shanta is an interesting metaphor towards the situation of widows in Bengal: She was as solemn, serious and still as the stone Buddha on the shelf! Only when Partha’s warm laughter filled the room did she raise her eyes for a moment.
She looked upward and gazed like some saint, as though wondering why there was so much laughter and so much talk on Earth.(108) There is no sermonising by the author about widows or suggestions of what ought to be done for their emancipation, but the very way of how she portrays the character of Shanta, piques the readers interest on widows and about their plight.
The stories in the collection are based on a number of issues like feudal decline, social biases, mental illness and the life of the aristocracy.
Many pieces are humorous. Ashapurna Devi is a versatile author. This collection spans almost the entire period of an illustrious writing career; it is a must read for anyone keen on literature.
