One Indian Girl: One and a Half Love Stories

 

One Indian Girl:

One Indian Girl is Chetan Bhagat’s seventh novel, with all the earlier ones being placed in the best-selling charts in their respective publication periods. However, once again proving myself to be always late in the line, I had rather forced myself to read this one as his very first novel, partly because of his mounting popularity as a novelist with a majestic storytelling skill and especially because of Three Idiots, the true classic in the Indian Film Industry. The iconic film was the adaptation of his novel Five Point Someone (with so many changes in the film script though), which raises questions about the grading system itself. However, as of One Indian Girl, it seems to be apparent that, especially from the conversation between Radhika and her mother, she wouldn’t be happy to consider a five pointer for her life partner. “Mom, see the qualifications. BA from some random university. No. Next.”

Chetan Bhagat, the paperback King of India, has dedicated the novel, One Indian Girl to:

All the Indian Girls

especially the ones

who dare to dream

and live life on their own terms.

Living the life on one’s own terms is always a challenging job, particularly for the women in the Indian-subcontinent, with the deeply rooted ideology defining the norms of what it takes to be a girl. And the protagonist of the plot, Radhika, has been challenged by this at the very beginning of the novel. The prologue gives its readers about the chaotic uneasiness and turmoil storming the mind of the bride, who is clearly not ready yet for the grand destination wedding in Goa. And with all the odds against living her life on her own terms she was on the verge of being carried away by all those pressures of being married and settled down.

 

The Feministic Note

The dedication part, the prologue and then the first person narrative style in the voice of Radhika herself clearly point out that One Indian Girl is going to be a feministic novel. 

The feministic tones can be identified at the very beginning of the plot:

You are the girls’ side, so you have to adjust to the 30 rooms available at the hotel while the boys’ side will be allotted with the promised 50 rooms with as many guests as the girls’ side. Radhika couldn’t accept the ‘gender thing’ but was stopped by her typical mother or other family members with the deeply rooted ideology of compromising as the girls’ side in a marriage function.  

“Beta, these are norms. You don’t understand. We have to keep them comfortable. Girls’ side is expected to adjust…”

The unraveling tone of feminism keeps kicking on with the development of the plot. In making the profile for the matrimonial site, a girl shouldn’t give the true picture of her success in the job. The notion that a girl with a most wanted job can drive away a lot of prospective grooms who are not ‘man enough to handle’ the huge salary of their wives.’

“If they see a girl who is too independent-minded, too qualified, doing too well, they get scared……I am hiding my daughters achievements. So we get more boys to choose from. That’s all.”

And Radhika’s mother was not wrong anyway. The first one from their ten short-listed potential grooms was a doctor based in Boston, USA. With his third consecutive inquiry about the salary she makes, Radhika had to disclose that she made half a million USD last year, which was a damn jolt, enough to make him nearly fell down from his chair.    

“Nothing… Okay, I will tell you. This is not going to work. Your salary is too high.”

Okay, with the above-mentioned explanation made by Radhika’s mother, it’s quite clear now how the protagonist of the novel is: too independent-minded, too qualified, doing too well. Highly talented high achievers or under achievers always play a big role either as protagonists or antagonists in the novels of Chetan Bhagat. In One Indian Girl, Radhika is highly talented high achiever and here we go with her one and a half love stories.

 

The Love Story

As a pure mugger, Radhika hit about 98 percentile in CAT to make it to the IIMA and then joined Goldman Sachs, New York as a fresh recruit and which is where she wanted to leave behind her nerdy, unfashionable and virgin life behind and which is how she met Debashish Sen. The first love story apparently begins with the enthusiasm and determination for a new life style of the still virgin Radhika. With the long-cherished consummation of her dates with Debu, they started having a live-in relationship in her expensive apartment. She wanted to take it the next stage with the mounting pressure from her family to get settled with a married life, as an unmarried marriageable girl in the family - no matter how successful she is- is still a burden to the family. While the typical Aditi, her sister is a well-set example, to the pleasure of their mother, for finding herself a good match with hardly any degrees comparable to that of Radhika, with a fairer skin and an attitude.

Radhika was really serious with her first love affair with Debu, who was never in the intention of taking their relationship to the next level. He was apparently unhappy and a little jealous with the achievements of Radhika. He couldn’t imagine of her as a motherly figure to take care of his babies. Radhika was even ready to quit her job and do anything to present herself as a caring and motherly figure.

But Debu, apparently being panicked with the idea of marrying a girl he was never considering as his future wife, abandoned her, leaving her shell-shocked, enough to leave the city, so adorable to her with so many beautiful moments they shared together.   

 

The Half Love Story

With the suggestion of one Goldman Sachs partner, the devastated and heart-broken Radhika decided to move into another country operation of Goldman Sachs instead of quitting the job. She landed in Hong Kong throwing away her new iPhone set into the East River in the desperate attempt to throw away her past with Debu and met Neel Gupta, the dashing and iconic partner of Goldman Shacks. With Neel it was never meant to be a love story any way and it was the last thing in her mind to be involved in any kind of unofficial relationship with a partner. However, with the attraction of his charming personality and dashing look she was just carried away with a special and unpredicted moment in a business trip to an island resort. In a dark night on the cool lonely beach with the escaping glows of the Moon over their heads, she shared the moment of wild pleasure with the damn handsome Goldman Sachs partner- older than her by twenty years, and also with a wife and couple of kids.

But they couldn’t resist the temptation of carrying on the relationship; at first only on the business trips to make it feel less guilty in a remote city than doing it in the same city he had been living in with his wife and kids. But, with their explicit knowledge of no future, Neel, eventually started making regular visits at her apartment, mostly because of the sexual attraction they feel for each other.

However, soon, enough she started being concerned about the possible future of their relationship with a kind of guilty conscience for his wife and family, which she never felt with Debu. And sooner than later she was apparently blown out by a comment blurred out of the careless mouth of Neel:

‘It’s just I never thought of you as the maternal type. I don’t know if you were even meant to be a mother.’

Neel never felt her as the girl with a family of her own. It just didn’t come to his mind, just like the way Debu felt her to be.

The Climax of One Indian Girl

In fact, in the gendering world, a girl with the most wanted jobs and an enviable career with so many successes and lots of money is deliberately, though unconsciously, judged to be a girl solely focused on the career. She can’t possibly hold the image of a family woman with motherly affection and care.

However, at the climax of the novel, the author makes both the serious lover and the half lover begging her hands, this time not only as a partner in bed, but as a wife to start a family: one in a presidential suite in the five star Goa Marriott with a chartered flight to take her away and another one directly from New York.

Until then, she was uncertain of herself regarding her ability to attract someone as a prospective wife to begin a family with her true self. She was losing confidence with her previous one and a half relationships; one in New York and the other one in Hong Kong. As her mother would say, ‘I can’t have anything better than this one…no prince on a horse will come.’

 

The Choice of Free Will

And finally the great lesson for everyone: as long as you are not sure about marrying someone for the rest of your life, not sure enough to enter a new life with an individual you are sure about, there is always a choice left for you to step back before the marriage is done, even if costs you a lot of money, an insult to your family members by the boys’ side, and all the rebukes from the family members and relatives as well. Just forget about all those pressures, stay calm, ask your ‘mini-me’, what she really wants, go for your free will and be the decision maker in taking the most important step in your life. And move on…

Moving on in one’s own wish was the thing happened to the novelist himself. He himself was in the Goldman Shacks too with one of the most wanted jobs in the world. And then he switched to Deutsche Bank, Hong Kong. He was a vice president in its Strategic Investment Group before quitting to pursue the career as a fulltime writer, which undoubtedly demands a huge courage to fight the pressures both from inside and outside. Being well-settled is the big thing in the sub-continent, one can hardly avoid. 

And in his novel, One Indian Girl, Radhika did the same thing. She had the dream of living the life in her own terms and she couldn’t just go with the flow to be in the mess of a grand wedding she wasn’t feeling okay with. She was able to calm down her mind, pick up the pieces together and manage Brijesh Gulati, the bride from San Francisco, even in the confusion with the return of her one and half lovers. And finally she got herself out of the mess she was feeling terribly uncomfortable about. She called off the marriage which eventually created a scene that resembles more with a funeral one in the five star luxuries. But, she was out of the mess!

 

The post Credit Scene

By rejecting the proposals from her past lovers, Radhika was finally able to move aside her past with them. But she wasn’t in the present either. She was really nowhere. In a big void around her, Radhika was in desperate need of finding herself back. And the best way to pick up the pieces together is to set yourself absolutely free with no pressure to go anywhere, with no pressure to chase anything and with no pressure, either internal or external, to do anything. A long journey without any specific destination, a vacation to find yourself back, to calm down your soul, to feed your mind can be really a good choice.

Radhika was probably able to do all those things at the post-credit scene of the novel, One Indian Girl, and by the end of her long vacation from works she started seriously thinking about Brijesh Golati, the software engineer working with Facebook in San Francisco.  Brijesh, the tech guy with a vision to initiate his own start-up, didn’t blame her for the foiled marriage program. He was the one who truly understands her situation and saved both the parties from an awkward situation. But he regrets not being able to marry a girl with whom he would be able to live a crazy life with full of madness like the moments they spent together by riding on a bike without a license and testing the puffs of marijuana available in the Goa beach. Radhika finally finds the courage to meet him again in San Francisco in a settled mind.    

Bridgerton Books and the Backstage of the Regency Setting

 

Jane Austen published her classic novel, Pride and Prejudice, in 1813 and nearly 200 years later in the USA, Julia Quinn, in love with the aura of love, romance, courtship, literature and cultural renaissance prevalent in the Regency period, traveled a long long way back to that very time and discover herself in the world of the earlier one she is deeply attached to by all her soul.

Julia Quinn could have ignited herself with the revolutionary zeal as orchestrated in Shelley’s ardent appeal to bring down a change to the world:

“O Wild West Wind………

Lift me as a wave, a lyre, a cloud!

I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!.....

A heavy weight of hours has chain’d and bow’d

One too like thee: tameless, and swift and proud.”

              (Ode to the West Wind)

Or, as we have witnessed in Merry Shelley’s world shattering masterpiece, “Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus”.

With the feministic note like that of Jane Austin and the dreamy atmosphere of love and romance prevalent in the very period, Julia Quinn being so tightly touched and repositioned to the very time, starts writing the Bridgerton Romance series and brings the era back to life so lively as to make the readers wonder about the real existence of the Bridgerton family in the real Regency Setting.

Once Julia Quinn gets herself settled down on the era, it was almost irresistible to avoid the melancholic tone like that of Keats’:

“Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;

Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,

Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin and dies;

Where but to think is to be full of sorrow

And leaden-eyed despairs,

Where beauty can not keep her lustrous eyes

Or new love pine at them beyond tomorrow”

                         (Ode to a Nightingale) 

Or the transcendental echo and the pessimistic sigh of the Romantics:

“As long as skies are blue and fields are green,

Evening must usher night, night urges the morrow,

Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow.”

----(Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats, by P.B. Shelley)

Let’s forget about the poetry of the Romantics ruling over the era; it was the time that was witnessing the emergence of novels as the new ruler of the literary world. It was ushering in a new world, new belief and the much anticipated radical change to literature with the hands of novelists like Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy or Emile Bronte. It was the time when literary interest was shifting from the upper class to the common people. The protagonists from the common and ordinary class were beginning to steal the limelight in the political, social as well the religious turbulence best understandable in the majestic opening lines of A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens:

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going the other way….. ”

However, despite the disillusioned belief and a rather dilapidated socio-economic structure after the Nepoleonic war period, the Regency Period, which the Bridgerton books are based on, marks the bemused glory of literary, cultural and architectural advancement with the highly sophisticated taste of Prince Regent who later became the King George the 4^th and magnified the look of Great Britain with the Houses of Parliament, Hyde Park, Kensington Gardens, Regent’s Park, Royal Opera House, the Pantheon, Mayfair, Pall Mall, Royal Parks of London, Ranelagh Gardens along with hundreds of  other architectural and cultural time-travelers.

 So, instead of digging deep the Tale of Two Cities, Julia Quinn chooses the earlier one  vivid in the glorifying visuals of the era, and embedded with wisdom, belief, light, and the spring of hope. Apparently Family life, celestial bonding of the siblings, love, romance, courtship and marriage in the setting of the great Regency period are the things our author Julie Pottinger deliberately tends to focuses on in her seductive Bridgerton Romance Series under her pen name of Julia Quinn. Considering her fervent enthusiasm and love for Romance novels since her very childhood days with Sweet Dreams and Sweet Valley High Book series, any other subject matter for her novels would have been utterly unbecoming. She didn’t spend her time on those romance novels with just the fancy of love and courtship and at the annoyance of her father. She had a vision and she had proved it by writing such a novel of her own in three years.

As one of the most widely read novelists in the historical Romance genre, in line with Mary Balogh, Jo Beverley and Loretta Chase, Julia Quinn brings to light the respectable Bridgerton family, consisting of a loving and widowed mother and the eight tightly-knit siblings in the Regency Setting. With the love stories of every eight brothers and sisters, Julia Quinn makes an elaborated series of Bridgerton Romance series with nine books published in the following order:

1. The Duke & I (2000),
2. The Viscount Who Loved Me (2000),
3. An Offer from a Gentleman (2001),
4. Romancing Mister Bridgerton (2002),
5. To Sir Philip, With Love (2003),
6.  When He Was Wicked (2004),
7. It’s in His Kiss (2005),
8. On the Way to the Wedding (2006), and
9. The Bridgertons: Happily Ever After (2013).

In each of the first eight books, Julia Quinn makes one among the eight loving siblings find their true love against all odds of the upper English Society in the truly Regency setting. The culminating book in the series, which was published seven years after the eighth one, was the second epilogues of the earlier love stories along with the story of the Violet Bridgerton, the caring, proud and beloved mother of the eight siblings: Anthony, Benedict, Colin, Daphne, Eloise, Francesca, Gregory and Hyacinth. 

Julia Quinn’s Bridgerton Series: Seductive Stories for the Romance Lovers

 

Julie Pottinger, one of the most celebrated novelists in the genre of Romance Novel, has earned the worldwide popularity under the pen name, Julia Quinn, with her famous Historical Romances mostly based on the Regency Period of England. The books of this cherished novelist have been translated in 29 languages so far and her novels were placed in the New York Times Best Seller List for an unbelievable 19 times, crowning her as the unparalleled Maestro of Historical Romance.  

Among all the romance Series, Julia Quinn has written so far, The Bridgerton Literary Series is the most elaborated one, which has earned her an astounding reputation among the romance lovers all around the world for her magnificent and captivating skill in weaving a story with the lively presentation of the characters and the settings that readers just can’t resist to dive deep down the plots.

Set between the years from 1813 and 1827, in the period of Regency England, the Bridgerton Romance Series features the stories of the eight siblings of the Bridgerton family consisting of Violet Bridgerton, a widowed mother, and her eight loving children, closely connected to souls of one another. In each of the eight books published between 2000 and 2006, one among the children chases, finds and wins the true love in their life against the odds of the upper English society of the period.

The Bridgerton Romance Series has been published in the order as follows:

1. The Duke & I (2000),
2. The Viscount Who Loves Me (2000),
3. An Offer from a Gentleman (2001),
4. Romancing Mister Bridgerton (2002),
5. To Sir Philip, With Love (2003),
6. When He Was Wicked (2004),
7. It’s in His Kiss (2005),
8. On the Way to the Wedding (2006), and
9.  The Bridgertons: Happily Ever After (2013).

 

The very first book, entitled The Duke & I, features the love story of Daphne, the fourth daughter of the Bridgerton family, and the Duke of Hastings, Simon Basset.

The second one in the Historical Romance Series features the eldest Bridgerton, Anthony with his love interest Katherine Sheffield in the book entitling The Viscount Who Loved Me.

The third one in the Bridgerton Series is about the second son in the family, Benedict. This historical romance relates his love story with Sophia Beckett in the Romance Novel entitled, An Offer from a Gentleman.

The fourth installment in the Bridgerton Romance Series tells the story of the Third Bridgerton, Colin with Penelope Featherington in the novel entitling Romancing Mister Bridgerton.

The next Romance is based on the second daughter and the fifth child of the Bridgerton family. In this Historical Romance Novel entitled To Sir Philip, With Love, Eloise’s love story with Sir Philip Crane has been portrayed in the usual seductive story-telling style of Julia Quinn.   

The sixth book in the Bridgerton Literary Series features the romance of the third daughter Francesca with Michael Stirling in the book entitling When He Was Wicked.

The seventh book in the Romance Series tells us about the love story Hyacinth, the last child of the Bridgerton family. In this Historical Romance Novel Entitled It’s in His Kiss, Hyacinth is seen finding her true love in Gareth St. Clair.

The eighth installment in the Bridgerton Romance Series relates the love story of the seventh child and the youngest son of the Bridgerton family. The Romance entitling, On the Way to the Wedding, features the love story of Gregory and Lucinda Abernathy. This brilliantly woven love story crowns the author with The Romance Writer of America RITA Award in 2007.

And then seven years after the publication of On the Way to the Wedding in 2006, Julia Quinn rocks the universe of Romance with one more book in 2013, featuring the Bridgerton family. In the last installment of Bridgerton Literary Series entitling, The Bridgertons: Happily Ever After, the novelist writes a novella featuring Violet Bridgerton, the proud, caring and the beloved mother of the eight Bridgerton siblings, along with the second epilogues for the love stories of the eight brothers and sisters.

Based on this Historical Romance Series, Netflix has lately produced and streamed the drama series entitled, Bridgerton, and has already declared the making of the second season this year. 

The Ickabog by J.K Rowling: A Political Satire under the Guise of a Fairy Tale.

 The Ickabog by J.K Rowling:

After a long long interval since the publication of Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows in 2007, J.K Rowling enchanted the universe of the book-loving children once again with her superb word-craftsmanship and magical story-telling expertise in the fairy tale entitling “The Ickabog”. Though the tale was meant for the children aged about 9 to 12, unlike the Harry Potter series it can amaze a large number of reader groups ranging from teenagers to adults.

Apparently the plot of ‘The Ickabog’ has got everything any fairy tale would ever ask for:

1. A Loving Kingdom called Cornucopia, full with the aura of happiness and prosperity.
2. A King called King Fred the Fearless, though the adjective stands as an irony in its purest form.
3. A cunning, greedy and shrewd villain called Lord Spittleworth, the actual ruler behind the king.
4.   A beautiful capital representing the shines and glory of the Kingdom with the bunch of apparently happy citizens so proud of their status of living in the capital.
5. A ghostly Monster called Ickabog who seemed to be an imaginary threat until the culmination of the story. 

Synopsis of the Ickabog:

The plot sets on the Kingdom called Cornucopia with five cities including the capital, Chouxville. The four among them are prosperous and specialized in particular kind of foods: Chouxville for its heavenly pastries; Kurdsburg for its sumptuous cheeses; Baronstown for its exquisite sausages and beefsteaks; and Jereboam for its extraordinary wines. And then there is the Marshlands in the north end of the Kingdom, a less prosperous and neglected city, apparently implying the irony that the farther to the capital, the lesser in the status and prosperity with the graver cause of humiliation by others.

While every single person seems to play the role of the happiest person on earth with the Kindness and Magnanimity of the King Fred, the Dovetail family, particularly Daisy Dovetail was rather disillusioned with him. She rightfully held the King responsible for the death of her mother due to the overwork in stitching a coat for the king.  

Apparently apathetic to the mourning Dovetail family, the king, with a view to prove his Kindness and valor, agrees to a Marshlander’s appeal to lead a war party and save them from the mythical Ickabog. But the overhyped march of the royal guard ended in the tragic death of Major Beamish, the head of the royal guard. Lord Flapoon accidentally shot him to death and then the lies began.

Lord Spittleworth attributed the death to the mythical Ickabog and to establish the lie he keeps fabricating a series of lies on a killing spree. With the panic-struck king cocooned in his chamber, he begins his tyrannical era over the entire kingdom, establishes Ickabog Defense Brigade, imposes heavy burden of taxes over the citizens, and introduces tax collectors and censorship on free speech. The prosperous and happy citizens gradually find themselves poor and starving with severe more impacts to the people living farther to the capital.           

Eventually after years in the doomed and devastated kingdom, Daisy Dovetail, who was thrown in an orphanage following the kidnapping and imprisonment of her father, regrouped with her friend Bert, Roderich, and Martha at the orphanage, fled to the Marshland, and came close to their death in the killing cold. However, they were saved by the Ickabog, the last surviving one in the species presumed to be mythical monsters. The Ickabog took them to her cave, and nourished them with the plan to eat before her bronding (the process of giving birth to baby ickabogs) time.

Daisy manages to change the mind of the kind-hearted Ickabog and took her to the capital while supplanting the fear for the Ickabog with love in the mind of the citizens marching along them. Meanwhile Daisy’s father with the help of Bert’s mother and other prisoners of Spittleworth escapes the dungeon, leaving Fred to face the angry mob.

And finally, Lord Flapoon gets killed by a new-born ickaboogle, King Fred and Lord Spittlworth are arrested, the kingship is abolished, a new governing system by the elected people is established, the existence of the Ickabogs is ensured and the country lives happily ever after.     

The Ickabog, a Political Satire under the Guise of a Fairy Tale:

The Ickabog is obviously a well-written fairy tale woven in a magnificent plot, but under the guise of her engaging story-telling, J.K. Rowling unravels the satire targeting the entire political system in the following ways:

1. The common people are merely puppet to play the role to please the king, no matter however stupid, and cowardice or apathetic he is.
2.  Devising out imaginary threats or other things completely irreverent to the public interest, the governing system keep imposing the burden of extra taxes just to siphon out hard-earned money from the common people. For instance, the Ickabog Defense Brigade.
3. The burden of the taxes gets double to manage the tax system. For instance, the tax collectors introduced by Lord Spittleworth.  
4. The political system with a body of lies, keep making the rich richer and the poor poorer. As things turns out in the cases of the prosperous and happy citizens of Cornucupia. 
5.  Another example is the distancing of the common people along with their interests and complaints with the sugar-coated happiness of the people around the government. And if necessary political dungeons, executions and censorship over free speeches are implemented. The people of Couxville were remained unaware of the devastating picture of the other cities and even the complete communication system among people from different cities had been hijacked by the bloody hands of Spittleworth, the epitome of a corrupt political system. 

So, the plot, the setting, the king, the name of the Kingdom, and the mythical yet real monster, play their perfect individual role as a fairy tale. But as the story spans out, the series of lies establishing another lie, the changing fate of the happy and solvent citizens, the autocratic ruling of an apathetic system, the swindling of public interest, the censorship of free speeches and the application of monstrous power to force people into obeying the government—all indicates a satire targeting a corrupt and a very common political system.

 

Just a Few Lines from Tarashankar......

 

I had to sum up a huge amount of courage to translate a few lines from ‘Hansuli Banker Upakotha’ (The Tale of Hansuli Turn) by one of my most favorite novelists, Tarashankar Bandopadhyay. No other novelist has ever depicted the picturesque cohesion of nature, men, animals and other beings-natural or super natural- so beautifully, brilliantly, and vividly.  

It has nothing to do with the mother’s day. Nor has it anything to put forth the undeniable affection of a mother to her babies. Rather, it’s about the infinite and eternal cravings of a kid for its mother, portrayed in a clarified, articulated and heart-melting way. However, I’m sure you won’t even get the 10% of the passion underlined in the original text: 

 “Karali used to move around here and there in search of his mother. He would go to Mahishdari marsh; he would search along the bushes on the bank of river Kupai; under the red cotton tree; or around the idol of Baba Thakur. Some days he would keep walking halfway across Chandanpur, along the aisle piercing the crops fields. He would scream calling “mom… mom”. And then he would become forgetful of other things after finding something to play with or he would fall asleep after getting very tired. Sitting near the idol, he would watch the trail of ants in the wood apple tree under which there were the colonies of white ants. He would pluck flowers from the bluebellvine trees encircling the wood apple tree. When the Kahars made offerings to Baba Thakur, he would go there after the puja and pick up the sweetmeats offered to god as prasad and for which he had to battle against the ants. Sometimes the Kahars offered milk to the god in a pot and he would drink that later. Sitting under the red cotton tree, he would watch the playing parrots. The birds would fly swinging their tails; they would carry sheaf of rice in-between their lips. Many a times those birds had to fight against the snakes attempting to take away their chicks. Karali would help the birds; he would throw brickbats to stop the snakes. He had even a couple of snakes fallen down from the trees with his aims. Suddenly he would lose his interest in playing and start searching his mother again…..”    

 

Just a few couple of lines that can make us stand against two different realities at the same time:

1.      The bonding between human beings and nature has been lost. We are no more a part of nature; at least we pretend to be.  And to justify our pretension, we tend to rule over the nature.

2.       Things, realities, circumstances may change or stand against one another as binary opposition; but, the emotion of a little kid for its mother can never change…still today a kid aged about 5 would search for its mother the same way Karali did about a hundred year ago.

We can demolish the bond of millions of years with the nature, but the emotion of an innocent mind remains the same forever and it would always find solace in nature the same way. But whenever the Mother Nature finds it necessary, it can kick us out to make itself regenerated…We better get that; the earlier the better. 

The Sick Rose: a Simple Approach by an Ordinary Reader

 

To be simple is probably the most difficult thing on earth for the species called Homo sapiens. We expect things to appear simple; as they do so the next thing we do is to entangle the so called simplicity with complication questioning, if not find anything better, why it looks so simple. And that is exactly what I am trying to do now with, The Sick Rose, by William Blake.

Bridging between the neoclassical eras with the ever electrifying Romantic Period, William Blake did indeed a gigantic task of breaking away with the poetic rules & dictions that the poems were chained in. He ushered in the Romantic Movement applying imagination imbued with simplicity. But to what extent his works remain simple?

The Sick Rose, often considered, the most beautiful poem written by Blake, is constructed on an 8 line structure initiated with a simple line:

"O Rose, thou art sick."

We get the very first jolt having identified rose, the symbol of love, beauty etc. with ‘sick’ standing antagonistic to it. The word, rose undeniably has got an un-parallel appeal to our mind to have us all feel like singing in the tune of Robert Burns:

"My love is like a red, red rose,

That’s newly sprung in June:

My love is like the melody,

That’s sweetly played in tune."

But as we approach the last word, sick, another window opens up to look over a sick society where April turns out to be ‘the cruelest month’, ‘where invading army clashes over night’, and where the Scholar Gipsy won’t ever return to. So the first thing we come out with is that Beauty gone Sick. And what comes next is:

"The invisible worm,

That flies in the night

In the howling storm".

The physical set up is just like a horror film or more fearful to keep the reader panic- stricken, for those who feel before read. To get things orchestrated let the words, invisible, flies, night, howl & storm to be concentrated on. The blood sucking, grueling monsters fly at night, under the cover of darkness. And as we know nothing is more dangerous than the darkness both outside and inside, and nothing is more frightening than the thing we don’t see, ‘invisible’ and ‘night’ make us a point. The danger shaped in black gets stronger to eat our soul out leaving our wings of imagination fly to a virgin girl fair enough to be in a duel against protecting her chastity. To give a special effect storm is introduced by the poet in its profound ferocity as if Poseidon himself comes out of resting to lead the evil forces from Pluto’s underworld. Storm, the very word, always works well meeting the purpose of a writer in trouble delivering the mental conflict. Macbeth’s witches always appear in storm, Hamlet can never meet his father’s ghost without the very howling storm, and even King Lear fails to identify the true nature of life without the presence of a howling storm. But whatever imagery the symbolic storm touches down, whenever it finds its way through literature we can have, going down slightly the surface layer, the taste of dual nature of it, one way making an image of its dreadful appearance and the other the other way idealizing the inner self storming inside out.

Getting back to the last line of the first stanza we finally discover our Rose struggling with howling storm in a ‘Waste Land’, idealizing the sickening society which is :

“…like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain:”

(Dover Beach: Mathew Arnold)

As we approaches to the last part, we see the anti climax taking place:

“Has found out thy bed

Of crimson joy”

We don’t need to focus on a lot of words now to unearth the plot. Things set to get going as naturally April becomes the cruelest month for breeding lilacs; as naturally the typist girl of ‘The Waste Land’ ( by T.S. Eliot) gets seduced:

“..he assaulted at once ;

Exploring hands encounter no defense;

His vanity requires no response.”

But the phrase, crimson joy, is planted so artistically as not to pack up with a natural conclusion .There was joy as not to be found in the waste land. The tension which was mounting up would have been released, had the word crimson signifying dark red not been there. Red, especially when it is dark propel us to think of death in two different ways leading to death: one signifying the death of virginity and the other reminding us of the ancient mariner (The Ancient Mariner; Samuel Taylor Coleridge) , who experienced Death itself with the dark red lips & kiss of death thrust upon his fellows.

Let’s put aside ‘crimson’. However transient the joy might be, the phrase, ‘thy bed’ paves way to another possibility like the piercing beams of light at the end of a tunnel. The invisible worm stays active in the subconscious layer of psyche of our Rose.

Taking a u turn it’s time to go for the most striking segment, the concluding lines of the poem:

"And his dark secret love

Does thy life destroy?"

We come across ‘dark’ again but, going against its nature, it appears this time to illuminate the word ‘secret’, which lays a question bare open: when love should be so.

In this regard Sigmund Freud might help us with his crystallization of the psyche. All our drives including sexual desires are born in our id (the unconscious level of our mind) and try to peep out crossing the safety bulb guarding against them in our subconscious layer. And it is our society that plays the vital role in shaping the safety bulb. Providing that a drive or desire go against the social norms or conventional ideology it has to be plummeted down. It is when secrecy emerges out in the dark layer of our id. But more a passion gets stronger the more the inner conflict gets stormy, the balance among the layers go awry to turn our life a shadow of life like living corps:

“That corpse you planted last year in your garden,

Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?”

Standing in the end it worth’s remembering that killing one's passion is a crime to the romantics and whether you are romantic or not the sugar coated simplicity it all begins with ‘The Sick Rose’ leaves you on a quest: who is sick? The Rose, the society or the drive sprouts in our mind?