3 November 2016

Review #548: Daughters of Jorasanko by Aruna Chakravarti



My rating: 5 of 5 stars


"Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come."

----Rabindranath Tagore



Aruna Chakravarti, an award winning Indian writer, pens an enlightening story about the Tagore household's women in her new book, Daughters of Jorasanko which is the sequel to her bestselling novel, Jorasanko. This book, Daughters of Jorasanko is an intimate tale about the Tagore household portraying the women who are all bound together by the threads of marriage at a very tender age, where some are engulfed by the widowhood at a very early age whereas some are simply carrying the seeds from one generation to another and through these women's lives the readers will come to know a different side of our noble laureate Rabindranath Tagore.


Synopsis:

The Tagore household is falling apart. Rabindranath cannot shake off the disquiet in his heart after the death of his wife Mrinalini. Happiness and well-being elude him. His daughters and daughter-in-law struggle hard to cope with incompatible marriages, ill health and the stigma of childlessness. The extended family of Jorasanko is steeped in debt and there is talk of mortgaging one of the houses. Even as Rabindranath deals with his own financial problems and strives hard to keep his dream of Santiniketan alive, news reaches him that he has been awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. Will this be a turning point for the man, his family and their much-celebrated home?

Daughters of Jorasanko sequel to the bestselling novel Jorasanko explores Rabindranath Tagore’s engagement with the freedom movement and his vision for holistic education, brings alive his latter-day muses Ranu Adhikari and Victoria Ocampo and maps the histories of the Tagore women, even as it describes the twilight years in the life of one of the greatest luminaries of our times and the end of an epoch in the history of Bengal.



Jorasanko, the author's bestselling previous novel, unravels and traces the early life of the Nobel Laureate, Rabindranath Tagore through the lives of the women, Jnanadanandini, Kadambari and Mrinalini, who helped and shaped him in a way through which he can bring out his inner talents of poetry and literature and also helped him to become established. But Jorasanko ends with the tragic climax where the author's wife, Mrinalini dies thereby leaving the poet's heart agape with immense pain.

Daughters of Jorasanko immediately picks up where the previous novel ended and through this new book, the readers will come to know that even though Mrinalini is projected as an "unworthy spouse" yet the great poet of India never ever recovered from the death of his dear wife, who helped him to bring his dreams of Santiniketan alive. This tale revolves around Tagore's daughters and daughters-in-laws, and how they too impacted and contributed in Tagore's life not only as a pet but also a family man.

This book projects the life story of Tagore during the early days of Bengal's Renaissance period especially the times when the citizens are gradually rediscovering the norms and the cultural barriers as primitive and are coming forward to adapt the Westernized ideas into their lives. During this era, the women have not got much benefit out of it, especially from the stigmas like child marriage, gender indifferences, widowhood and other strict traditional norms. Although the approach and the outlook of the general humans changed drastically yet somehow they could not battle those traditional rules passed down from their ancestors.

The author's writing style is exquisite and very coherent as the readers will be able to comprehend easily with the flow of the story. Right from the very first page itself, the author's lyrical prose will beg its readers to stay glued till the very end and even though the readers are aware about the death of the bard, yet somehow the suspenseful as well as evocative narrative will keep the readers guessing till the very last page. The pacing is moderate, as the story is told from many layers that are unraveled gradually with the progress of the story. And not to mention, each and every scene is penned with utmost clarity that the readers will feel themselves witnessing the story right before their own eyes.

The author has meticulously researched for the characters who played a major role in the bard's later life and she took over three years to pen this sequel, as this novel features the stories of those women who are not much known to the world and so their contribution in the poet's life. The poet single handedly brought up his three daughters and two sons after the death of his wife at a very tender age. Even though the poet was modern in many of this literary approaches, but his mentality remained feudal and in sync with the traditions of then Bengal, as he marries off his three daughters before the age of 15. Renuka, Madhurilata and Meera, the three daughters of Tagore suffered a lot, although Renu died at a tender age because of a disease, the other two faced the wrath of marital fractures that existed in that era. And for his daughter's sufferings, the poet forever regretted his decisions and how he could not be a good father to his daughters and that left a gaping hole in his heart till his very end.

The two notable women, or rather say muses, after Kadambari, are Ranu Adhikari, a very young girl of the age of 12 and another Argentinian woman of 35 years of age, Victoria Ocampo, who yet once again inspired the poet to write some remarkable verses and poems which are thoroughly romantic. And the author strikingly brings out the personalities of these two lesser known women in to this book with lots of compassion in their demeanor. Even the other women characters are depicted with distinction in their myriad personalities, some are featured with haughtiness, some are authoritative, some are meek and gentle, some are shy, some are scheming, some are clever while some are bold. However each one of them plays a role in the pet's inner and outer development.

Ina nutshell, this journey into Tagore's life is no doubt painful and poignant, but mostly its informative, encouraging and extremely enchanting to read about the time when the author is awarded the Nobel Prize in literature earning him the knighthood title, and also the readers will learn a lot about the poet's unsuccessful approaches when it came to handling the household and ancestral finances and inheritances.

Verdict: A must read for all the worshipers of Rabindranath Tagore as the author projects him under a new light.

Courtesy: Thanks to the publishers from Harper Collins India for giving me an opportunity to read and review this book.
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Author Info:
Aruna Chakravarti is a well-known academic, creative writer and translator. Her first novel, The Inheritors, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and her third, Jorasanko, received critical acclaim and went on to become a bestseller. Her seven translated works include an anthology of songs from Rabindranath Tagore’s Gitabitaan, Saratchandra Chattopadhyay’s novel Srikanta and Sunil Gangopadhyay’s Those Days, First Light and Primal Woman: Stories. She has two academic works to her credit: a biography of Saratchandra Chattopadhyay and a critical work on Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s fiction. Among the various awards she has received are the Vaitalik Award, the Sahitya Akademi Award and the Sarat Puraskar.
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