Too much grief
A NOVEL of remorse, sorrow and loneliness. It celebrates despair. Nothing wrong. But it has a benumbing effect. The undercurrent of pathos runs right through the book, without a moment of respite, so to say. In many ways, Afterwards reverberates with the echo of her debut novel Ancient Promises. The heroine flees to England, with a single child clung to the bosom, with a conveniently acquired lover — a childhood besotted one in the first and a visiting neighbour in the latest. Both heroines leave behind skeletons of mismatched marriages, escaping through the most convenient backdoor routes. Imparting qualities to central characters that project them as escapists.
What redeems the narrative is the language, the lucid prose, more languid and elegant than what one generally comes across. The narrative is slow and meandering, especially after Maya's death — by design, or accident. As if the author wanted to make it purposefully unhurried, enjoying the pleasure the words conveyed, the meanings that expression imparted to the unfortunate pilgrim's progress from the moment of the partner's funeral, the loss of the child to the wronged biological father, and the burdening of the weight of ashes in the backwaters of Kerala. So it all ends where it began. And in between are the long passages of wallowing in self-pity, pain and impotent anger, directed as if towards the universe. There is not a single sentence in the 276-page-long narrative where the protagonist confronts his own guilt, admits the sin of living with somebody else's wife. Another factor common to the first and the third novels.
The action in the novel starts with the summer of 1996 in Kerala. Rahul Tiwari, the protagonist, arrives "just before the communists came back to power in Kerala; the summer the monsoons failed." And ends with Rahul's retreat after immersing his beloved's ashes in the river "to make its final journey to the sea." Misra's disadvantage in extending her narrative is an inherent one. She works with limited characters, and lacks both breath and vision to infuse their lives with greater meaning, a bigger worldview, and an intensity of vibrant experience. None of the characters succeed in buying the reader's sympathy. Neither Rahul, nor Maya. Not even the little Anjali. They simply drift into predetermined line of action.
And the character who succeeds in winning sympathy is Maya's mother who comes at the end of the narrative, and literally steals the show not with what she says, but what she does not even consciously try to convey. Her expressions say it all. Rukmani Amma is made to achieve the sympathy without any effort on the part of the author to give her due space. A bit of her story, her point of view, an insight into her emotions and suffering — again barely hinted at — would have lent the story a lot more teeth. And this could have been done easily by eliminating a lot that happens afterwards. Even Govind Warrier deserved a little hearing. But it seems in Misra's world husbands alone take the trophy for losing wives through loveless marriages.
SURESH KOHLI
Afterwards, Jaishree Misra, Penguin India, p.288, Rs.250.
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