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Challenges AND dilemmas
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Usha Rajagopalan's debut novel deals with the complex question of a mentally-challenged child's position in an ordinary family
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— Photo: Murali Kumar K.
Chitra, who released Amrita, flanked by author Usha Rajagopalan and mediaperson Rajan Bala.
"I DON'T like this word retarded. You are only different from others. That doesn't mean you are hopeless, to be written off. Your brain is like soft dough that's all. I will mould you into a good shape..."
That's the mother of a mentally-challenged child talking to her toddler in Usha Rajagopalan's debut novel Amrita (Rupa, Rs. 295). The mother's choice of politically-correct language here is touching because it isn't a dry intellectual position but an emotional one.
The novel — which revolves around the mentally-challenged girl Amrita and her traumatised family's struggles to cope with her condition — was released by Chitra, a young girl who shares Amrita's condition, at Oxford Bookstore in Leela Galleria. Chitra repeated after her, as Usha slowly tutored her to say "I am happy to release the book..."
Senior mediaperson Rajan Bala, who was presented the first copy of the book, described Amrita as something only a "responsible and humane person can write." When Bala first met Usha she had struck him as an "honest face" and that honesty comes through in the novel, he said.
Speaking about her work, Usha said she had not based the story on any real life person, but had culled ideas from various sources — challenged children, their parents, siblings, trainers and so on. All these perspectives get woven into the structure of the novel. Amrita's mother Kamala's efforts to handle one slow and one mercurial child, the father's apathy, the constant state of tension in the marriage as a result of this, Amrita's younger sibling's initial reluctance to accept her condition and the later bonding between the two are etched in detail in the novel.
Responding to the observation of a trainer who was in the audience, Usha agreed that there are various ways of dealing with a special child in the family. While she has met some who take it as a challenge and consider it even a joy, others want to disown the child and would go to any length to get rid of him/her. One can see shades of both these positions in the novel as the family confronts endless dilemmas on what to do with Amrita.
The final resolution of all these dilemmas is completely shocking in Amrita. And opinions seemed divided among the audience on Usha's choice of ending. While Janaki Murali, media person and author, said it made her stop and think, Bala said he found it too "cruel". A person in the audience seemed particularly upset with it and called it an "unfair shock" and something completely out of sync with the rest of the novel.
Usha said she had always had diametrically opposing reactions to the conclusion. "That's the way life is!" she smiled.
BAGESHREE S.
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