Finding strength in choosing to unsee
Namita Gokhale’s twentieth book is a real-time narrative of India’s encounter with the coronavirus, the complete lockdowns with containment zones and interstate boundaries, and the unending “house arrest”.
At the heart of the story is Matangi-Ma, the blind matriarch, who holds together her joint family residing on four floors of the same building in such trying and unprecedented times.
Matangi-Ma registers the changing dynamics of her family during the extended lockdowns, as they begin to reexamine their life and purpose, reconcile with old secrets, and form new bonds. Her own past life comes back to her in flashes, her womanising and abusive husband, and how, one day, she chose to unsee everything, literally and figuratively. She revisits her past in her dreams and when wide awake, never sharing the burden of her memories or of existence.
None of her three children — Suryaveer, Shanta, Satish — speaks of her blindness in the house. The cuckoo clock in Matangi-Ma’s room, a gift from her daughter-in-law Ritika when she returned from her honeymoon in Switzerland, keeps her going: “Another day. One more morning, afternoon, evening to be negotiated.”
She spends her time singing old songs, listening to the chirping of birds, and watching television — of late, the depressing news of the “Chinese virus” or of desperate migrant workers stranded without food or money. Her all-time favourite serial is Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi, and she fancies herself a Ba-like matriarch and adored the character of Tulsi: “Then that girl Tulsi had to spoil it all. She went back to being Smriti Irani.”
Gokhale documents the enormous complexities of human relationships in middleclass India with flair and humour, taking in every emotion that has engulfed MatangiMa’s
joint family that is being crushed by the uncertainties of the pandemic. Though the extended family systems are largely redundant, her characters, even those trying to branch out in favour of individual growth, make their peace and find solace within the four floors of their home — an allegory for a disintegrating India: “We had been a family, once. India had been a nation. It wasn’t just a virus that was destroying us, it was the demon seed that we had spawned.”
Suryaveer, her oldest child, constantly struggling with his ideological stance swinging from “left-wing commitment to right-wing obfuscation”, seeks comfort in MatangiMa’s company, reading out poems to her.
When life comes to a standstill for Ritika, the wearer of diaphanous dresses to keep the romance in her marriage to Satish alive, Matangi- Ma’s love and wisdom win her over.
The matriarch’s kindhearted daughter Shanta runs an NGO occupying the ground floor of the house. She has a ginger cat named Trump. She is depressed over the mounting death count, and the demise of actor Irrfan Khan, whom she had a crush on; Matangi-Ma is bereft over the passing of Rishi Kapoor, although for a different reason. “She felt an enormous guilt descend upon her, the weight of being alive. Here she was, at 80, blind as a bat, of no particular use to anyone. A burden upon her loving children. And it was the young who were dying.”
Matangi-Ma handholds her grandchildren Rahul and Samir through their highs and lows. Samir is bewildered by her intuitive powers when she urges him to look for a bird in the neighbourhood park that needs help: “A green bird. I can see the bird. It is hurt. It is lying under a tree. It doesn’t know how to fly.” Samir finds the bird, and with the healing of this barbet the family, too, embarks on a journey of healing.
When coronavirus visits their building, and Matangi-Ma falls sick, the family exhibits incredible grace under pressure. Here,
Gokhale’s writing is phenomenal: “It was difficult to breathe from her nose or her mouth, and yet she was not choking... It was as though there was an insurrection going on inside her body; it had become a battleground with no interludes of peace.”
Gokhale’s twentieth novel is an unputdownable read. The reader is sad when the novel ends, wishing it went beyond page 207, wishing for the love and wisdom of Matangi-Ma.