During my research on South Asian
Women Writers, I thought, why not ‘start at the very beginning...a very good
place to start’! So I found a copy of Kamala
and got down to it. Kamala: The Story of
a Hindu Child-Wife* has the distinction of being written by the first
Indian woman author to ever fictionalize in English. Also being one of the
first works of Indian fiction in English (with a female protagonist), it had a
lot riding on its shoulders.
And, I must say, I was pleasantly
surprised! Once I got into the book, I found it hard to put down. At one point
I even found myself tearing up, and that has to make it one exceptional book!
As a rule, I cannot cry. But truly, for this one, I did!
Anyway, moving on from my soggy
reverie, Kamala is well written and fast
paced, and given that it was written in the late 1880s, that makes it
positively speedy! However, there are portions where Krupabai Satthianadhan,
inserts descriptive observations, which slow down the plot but serve to paint a
brilliantly detailed panorama. One gets the sense that the author writes from
intimate knowledge of upper-caste traditions and given that she was born in a
Brahmin family and her own mother was a child-bride, it makes the story all the
more real.
Though Satthianadhan’s parents later
converted to Christianity and her own life was very different from Kamala’s, there
is a sense of objectivity that weaves through the story, and though every
ritual and tradition is lovingly described, the author constantly seems to step
back and allows her characters to voice various points of view. There is never
any sense of condemnation, but rather a deep empathy for the very real plight
of women in those times.
Interestingly, all the “villains”
are female. There is no “hero” who rides in to save the day, nor are any of the
male characters very strong. The entire plot is driven by the female characters
and their blind perpetration of cultural and generational traditions. In fact,
it is the women who make the life of the heroine miserable and bearable (in turns)!
Kamala as a character is flawed.
When the reader first meets her, she is a child roaming on the hillside. As a
wife, mother and widow, her innocence and goodness seem to increase her sense
of martyrdom! (Which, honestly, I found annoying!) There are glimpses of
independence, but she immediately squashes them with selflessness. There is one
point in the story, where she turns on her husband’s mistress and physically
pushes her out of the house, after yelling at her to get out. Then she shouts
at her husband for abusing her. I was SO pleased! I almost whooped and had a
big, silly grin on my face! Of course, to my everlasting sorrow, this
beautifully sensible course of action did not last for very long.
Satthianadhan was a feminist and her
views are voiced through various characters in the novel. However, in keeping
with the highly realistic portrayal of the status of upper-caste women in pre-independence India, the protagonist doesn’t break with tradition, but rather, within the
confines of the restrictions imposed, lives as best she can. The novel ends
on a sombre note and though I would have loved to see Kamala finally find some
genuine happiness for herself, that was not to be.
All in all, in spite of the martyrdom, I found it a satisfying
read!
*The book was originally titled Kamala: A Story of Hindu Life. It was
first printed in 1894 and later translated into Tamil in 1896.
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