In the Murthy story, the narrator has trouble understanding the life of Venkata. The way he lives is foreign to him. In many ways we see the boring life of the middle class contrasting with the free spirited life of the poor. Although it is clear that Venkata's family has its struggles, it appears that he is happier than the narrator. He is able to escape life and live in his own world. The narrator thinks this is no way to live, but he cannot convince Venkata of this. It is as if Venkata's free spirit is a mask he puts on to hide from the bills and troubles facing him in the real world.
In the Ambai story, there is more focus on women. The narrator is clearly a feminist who believes the women she speaks with are being held in captivity. She does not understand the way they live. In her interviews she hits road blocks because the women are not used to speaking about what they want due to the thrashing that will certainly follow. Although the narrator is seen as a free, strong woman, she lacks many of the things the other women embody. She cannot cook doasais the way Anni and Chandra can. Her hair looks more worn than Anni her senior. While it is true that the narrator has escaped the bonds of womanhood, she has also managed to neglect the customs.
The Ashok Banker story again shows an old friend who shows up unchanged. When Jay encounters Mittal, he immediately begins to compare and contrast their appearance. Jay is proud that he is wearing his best suit and smoking expensive cigarettes. He is only brought down off of his high horse when Mittal explains that he saved Jay and Jay's mother from complete disgrace. The power shift that this creates is unsettling to Jay. The idea of owing Mittal, the poor, unchanged friend stops Jay in his tracks. He seems to have lost sight of the people-first concept and replaced it with money-first. He is only brought out of his stupor when he receives the check the next day.
All three of these stories show some of the problems with poverty but also the blindness of the middle class. Although they are short, the in-depth scenes highlight the clashes between the haves and the have-nots. It also appears that the poor are leading the better life in the end of these stories. If they are not leading a better life, they are at least leading a truer one.
It is interesting that so many of the stories we have read deal with this question of whether or not urbanization/modernization is something worthwhile, or rather an infestation of the purity which is found in a rural lifestyle. The interactions between the characters in the Murthy and Ambai stories leave the reader with the complex question of how to resolve this problem of urbanization as the exploitation of the rural, which seems to produce a veiled view of poverty and rural life that is somehow connected to the self-aggrandizing effect of education.
ReplyDeleteThe question of the role of modernity is a valid one. We see in Devi's story 'Arjun' urbanization displacing the Shabar tribe while putting them in the seemingly inescapable position of clearing their tribal forests themselves. In Murthy's 'A Horse for the Sun' the main character is so preoccupied with the modern, educated doubt preoccupation with culture, politics and the atom bomb that the simplicity of his childhood friend Venkata is nigh impenetrable. Modernity has obscured innocence whereas previous it destroyed it.
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