STUDY MATERIAL FOR B.

A ENGLISH
SOUTH ASIAN LITERATURE
SEMESTER - VI, ACADEMIC YEAR 2020 - 21

UNIT CONTENT PAGE Nr

I POETRY – YASMINE GOONERATNE 02

II PROSE – NATANTARA SAHGAL 05

III SHORT – STORIES – HANIF KURESHI 07

IV FICTION - KHALED HOSSAIN 09

V DRAMA – MAHASWETHA DEVI 11

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UNIT - I
THIS LANGUAGE, THIS WOMAN BY YASMINE GOONERATNE
In this poem she is lamenting over her old love forever because of your missing. You do not
see her loveliness which is open and is renewing with no end because of her flexibility and kindness.
If you should try to take her from me, I would not try to bring her back. The prestigious behavior of
the imperial touch that gave her protection is now becoming a wasted wreck. I would send you
letters on her behalf in this situation till you win my confidence. She would not leave her faithful
qualities which are greater than Helen’s being truer than a mother, sister, wife, dearer than life.
She is no longer an honorable lady if she has unfaithful qualities. The unfaithful, opportunist people
were given up long ago. They who appeared as her protectors and who while pampering her,
collected wealth are gone now. Those men are losing their energy in a distant country: they have no
more strength. She is just wandering here all by herselfwithout friends. Now she has nothing else to
give but her heart.
So do not call her an undisciplined woman, and an outsider. You call those names because of
your jealousy and it is your misuse of words. What those words now mean is secret desires. She has
been a great lady. She comes from respectable generations. She is rich in her mind and has a lovely
nature. Now that her unsuitable old connections are over she is full of these excellent warm
qualities. She is suitable to be your bride and she is my goddess.

SUBJECT-MATTER:
The poet’s daughter and her broken marriage
MAJOR THEME:
Mutual understanding and trust are very important in married life.
OTHER THEMES:
Suspicion causes misery. Mother’s love does not change.
TECHNIQUES
Metaphor: Paper boats Empress’s daughter my Muse.
Language: simple and slightly metaphorical.

PARAPHRASE
In ‘This language, this woman’, Yasmin Gunaratne blames her ex -son in Law for scolding her
daughter with bad language. The girl seems to belong to a high society with much wealth and
respect. It seems that she spent a luxurious and playboy life which caused the end of her marriage.
But ultimately she is left alone. The poet shows the valuable part of her daughter and tries to
convince her son in Law that she should be excused and reunited by him.
It is a confession on the one hand and a plea on the other hand. The subject- matter is a broken
marriage and the theme is ‘A daughter is valuable to her mother whatever blame is put on her.’
Appropriate words and vivid descriptions are used in the poem. The language is the simple modern
language.

Minority by Imtiaz Dharkar

Minority is a poem about feeling displaced and rejected from society. It conveys to the reader
how helpful literature can be in voicing important opinions to society. The poem communicates the
idea of exclusion and the feeling of being unwanted to the reader through meaningful lexical choices
and imagery.

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Dharker begins with the line “I was born a foreigner.” It is impossible to be born a foreigner, as
everybody is born somewhere. However, this line helps to convey to the reader straight away that
the persona does not belong and faces prejudice even from the country they were born in due to
being the child of an immigrant. In addition to this, throughout the poem, the persona rarely
addresses other people, only sometimes referring to the reader as “you.” There is repetition of the
personal pronoun “I” throughout suggests that the persona is alone as they do not have anybody
else to refer to. This could also suggest how the poet feels she is alone in her thoughts about this
subject.

The speaker also uses sensory imagery in order to convey their feelings of being foreign. It is
stated that they are “like food cooked in milk of coconut” and there is an “unexpected aftertaste.”
The use of this simile expresses to the reader that the persona is not what people expect in their
country just as an “unexpected aftertaste” is not what would be expected from a cultures
stereptypical meal.

The following stanza speaks about the language barriers between the persona and the people
in the society around them. It is stated that “words tumble over, a cunning tripwire on the tongue.”
This could be referring to how the persona’s unusual accent may be heard significantly when they
say some words. The use of the word “cunning” suggests that the language that the person is trying
to speak is tricking them. This use of anthropomorphism when describing the “tripwire” suggests
that it is not just society that makes her feel like an outcast, but the language she must speak.

The poet then goes on to write about how writing has no judgement and will accept her. She
writes that she scratches on the “growing scab of black on white.” By comparing the prejudice to a
scab, she is suggesting that there is a wound that she can heal by putting pen to paper; “black on
white.” She then states that “a page doesn’t fight back.” This conveys a strong message to the
reader that poetry does not judge and she can convey a message more effectively through this
thanspeakingduetoherplaceinsocietyasa“minority.”

Dharker also uses manichean imagery to emphasise her emotion towards the subject of the
poem. She writes “so I scratch, scratch through the night.” The fact that the speaker works on this
“through the night” suggests that the problem is keeping the persona awake. The use of “the night”
creates a dark atmosphere and a dismal but strong tone as the reader feels as though the persona
works extremely hard for their rights and wants them so much that they will stay up all night
formulating their feelings into words that can convey a message.

So What If I live in a House made by Idiots by Alamgir HashmiAlamgir Hashmi’s ‘So What if I
Live in a House made by Idiots?’ is a representation of the choked cry of marginalized citizens who
are destined to live under unsafe roofs where horror dangles like the sword of Damocles.

The title of the poem is a question. The poem describes the situations that necessitated the
poet to live in a house made by idiots. The poem is an explanation of the title of the poem. He tells
that houses where he lived were made by idiots! The houses were dirty and they did not provide
shelter to the inmates. The warmth cozy feelings, comfort, security that one needed were distant
dreams in such houses. These houses must have built by some idiots!

The poem deals with one of the horrors haunt the common lot, where houses remain mere
houses and they lack what a home has. What the poet tries to pictures is the life in slums either in
India or Pakistan. The poem is relevant and time the poem denotes is nothing but the recent time.

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The poet satirizes the pathetic condition of the houses of marginalized people. Humor is a vehicle of
expression employed in the poem. The poet questions the prejudices of the mind set of common
folk who shoot secret arrows at about their humble dwellings.

The first house where he stayed was too narrow and it had ‘bomb shelters’ where people lived
with much care, so planned that made the inmates ready at any time! Even the tiny holes on the
wall were filled with toothpaste which made the room so air tight and even the breathing became a
task. Another house where the poet now lives has wet walls and the room became sloughs every
three months. The poet says that it is because of the tears- tears of the inmates or the tears of the
sky! The floor of the house is always neat and tidy because monsoon blows off the room every year!
The grasses in the lawns keep debiting and weeds blossom in them. To make the condition worse,
municipal water pipes leaks, as a result water puddles here and there, which causes for mosquitoes
multiply. These mosquitoes prick on the body of inmates every now and then only to make them
aware of their different body parts.

The poet employs a few images which evoke the feelings of the marginalized, such as ‘holes of
the wall filled with toothpaste’, ‘a house with wet walls and sloughs every three months’, ‘the floors
are cleaned for the monsoon might blow off the roof’, municipal water give further lease’, and
‘insects introduce you a part of your body minute by minute’ are suitable and exact images for the
context. The poem is written in blank verse and it follows no rhyme scheme. The poem evokes the
feelings of the marginalized about their humble dwellings.

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UNIT - II
MARTAND BY NAYANTARA SAHGAL
Nayantara sahgal’s short story “Martand” is essentially about love and loss at a time of
intense political crisis. The protagonist, who is never named, is a woman who finds herself caught
up in a triangular relationship with her husband Naresh, a civil servant, on the one hand, and a
doctor, Martand, on the other. The love story is a poignant one. When the useful doctor Martand
comes into the scene and gives the readers a glimpse of eternal love triangle that was soon to be
formed or almost formed, it gives to the reader a feeling of apathy towards the woman protagonist.

One can understand the purity amidst which the temple was situated. The reference to the
warmth that she has felt on touc hing its stones is the spiritual warmth of fulfillment that has been
absent from her life only to be substituted by the crude physical love between herself and her
husband. The reference to this and then the mention of Martand corresponds to show the spiritual
affinity that both possses for each other, as if in accordance with the laws of nature. The
relationship is not a clandestine affair but is magnified into a destined culmination, celestial and pre-
ordained in nature much like the location of Martand in the purity encased landscape.

The sexual intercourse in the “Martand” shrine helps to conceive, not a baby, but a new
character of the story, a living Sun God, full of ruined splendor, descending from an ancient, princely
lineage. As Sahgal herself puts it, the protagonist, gets a shock of recognition and betrayal. In a few
deft strokes, sahgal successfully portrays the agency of a divided heart as also the beauty of the
feeling of love itself. But the singular feature for which “Martand” stands out is the way in which it
retalls the Partition story from the official point of view. The focus of the story is not the millions of
refugess who were displaced by Partition, but the Government officers who had to deal with them.
And “Martand” very effectively conveys their helplessness when faced with this unprecedented
crisis and their untold sacrifices. During the course of the story, the woman claims herself tobe
childless and says that once Naresh and she had visited the temple of the Sun God, Martand in
Kashmir.

Nayantara Sahgal does not allow her protagonist in “Martand” to speak out her heart. She
just seems to flicker between her fidelity to her husband and an irrespressible heartache for the
other man, the doctor, who is committed to alleviating human pain. There was that untouched
innocence about martand, a purity without which she could no longer live. There was so little time
to talk about personal problems, and when they were alone, they did not talk.

The end of the story drives an almost sado-masochistic stance to qualify the wife who is left
stranded in emotional void with no hope for any fulfillment in the duration of her existence. The
death of Martand by the tyranny of his own makers an end to all humanism, shattering the hearts of
both the wife and Martand. The fateful occurrence of such a doleful incident at a time when truth
was to be fold to Naresh opens immense scope of pondering on the entire situation.

THE SINS OF THE MOTHER by Jamal Ahmad

The story is set in Balochistan, evoking desert tands and harsh weather. The man and his
wife are from an area called Goth Siahpad, a placewith a very small population in Pakistan’s South
Western province, and it is the location that lends the story its culture. It is hard to tell whether the
story stereotypes a version of the Balochi tribal life, or if it is a true account of how things actually

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stand. We have soldiers and forts and old tribal traditions. We have camels and harsh winds and
men who stone others to death. All of these things evoke a particular feeling, an idea of a place
where people worry about things very different to the ones that readers living in huge metropolitan
cities worry about. And yet, at its heart it is a story of survival, of a family struggling, against the
odds, to survive. In terms of relevance, this piece of fiction can survive for ever.

Somewhere on an outposting surrounded onall sides by dirt and nothingness, a man turns up
with a young woman in tow. Both are dirty, exhausted and close to dying. They hav a camel
straggling alone besides them and they are barely holding themselves together. Their first request
for shelter from the soldiers stationed there is refused quite bluntly, but an earnest request for
refuge is finally needed. The couple retreat to a small room to the side of the fort, locking
themselves away. And so, as they start emerging slowly from their rooms, the man bringing water
for the slodiers on his camel and the woman weaving gift baskets from thorn shrubs, the couple
slowly become a parts of the settlement.

Things change when the couple start expecting a child. In an area dominated by men and a
harsh, unforgiving climate, the child is a breath of fresh air. He is fed on army rations and follow
soldiers on their patrols. At night, he curls into his mother’s lap and dreams big dreams. But it is too
good to last. They are a couple, who have left a dangerous past behind them, and it is bound to
catch up to them. Very soon, a lovely figure on a camel arrives, heralding bad times ahead. And it is
here that our story starts revealing the background, propelling the man and his family on another
desperate run for their lives.

The implied romance between the couple work in subtle ways. It is worth nothing the
implications of the adulterous nature of our two protagonists and how that might affect our
perception of them. But the story skews our sympathies for them rather than against them. It is in
this couple that we must keep our faith. Possible one of the most interesting aspects of the story is
the lack of names. From the soldiers to the subedar and from the child to the sardar, there are no
proper nouns used for any of the characters, except for the female protagoinst. Even her lover, the
man with whom she is one the run, is introduced in relation to her. This is quite interesting in terms
of gender representation in a story. A writer does not use particular words without a reason, than
the reasoning behind such a blatant lack of names besides Gul Bibi’s becomes quite a point of
curiosity.

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UNIT - III
THE ASSAULT BY HANIF KUREISHI

“The Assault” brings about theconnotations like violence, corruption and abuse. This Assault is
a haunting tale about an encounter between two socially neglected mothers. Kureishi sheds a dark
shadow on the social conventions such as courtesy and etiquette that prevents people from leaving
an unwanted situation. Kureishi normally elects to cover topics that came from a darker place, such
as racism and depression. There is no surprise, however, that he revels in the morbit sense of
humour throughout.

Anxiety is an echo of the ego to a supposed danger. A mental condition mixed with hope,
fear and uncertainty. It may be a neurotic condition oppressing the victim all the time while thinking
about some external condition. Every thought is carefully analysed by the author who depicts the
life of a stereotypical mother in impassive detail. He goes through the stages of anxiety and fear
experienced by the mother that she contemplates meeting her fate with the peculiar individual just
to escape the situation.

The protagonist is a pessimistic mother who we can sympathise with. She is an innocent
victim who is subjected to a trivial conversation that she cannot escape due to the heavyburden of
politeness. She does not have equal amounts of courage to a protagonist who should have to
overcome the pivotal battle against the antagonist.

We can emphathise with the antagonist. The antagonist of this simple yet effective story is
none other than an overly friendly fellow mother who does not seem to know when to release her
captive from the unbearably trival one-sided conversation being had by the two. Some can come to
pity her as the poor woman only wants the company of another.

The mother has become claustrophobic. The patient is afraid of, and dislikes, confined or
crowded environments. That is, neurosis is one of a group of psychiatric disorders, relatively less
severe than psychoses. There is usually a morbid preoccupation with some aspect of life, but the
personality is not usually altered. Psychological treatment cures madness hallucination, fading of
the brain, loss of memory, melancholy etc

SLIENT NOISE by Jackie Kabir

In Bengal, there has been very disastrous flood. As a result, a large portion of the village was
flooded. There is hardly a spot of dry ground left during the rains. The water rose inch by inch. The
people were estranged. Life seemed meaningless. All the furniture were immersed in a feet of
water. Such was the condition to which the people were reduced that they had to be helped by the
people of nearby houses in order to be saved from the utter ruin which stared them in the face. It
often became impossible for them to go from one houses to another on foot.

A flood is caused mainly due to excessive rainfall. Like a fire or storm, a flood is one of the
greatest of affiction that comes upon humanity. Thousands of people were rendered destitute and
homeless for the flood was not confined to a small area, but extended over other places. As flood is
generally due to forces over which man has no control, it is popularly believed to be the punishment
of God inflicted upon man for the violation of his laws. The whole area looked like a river. Rumki’s
grandmother stayed in an adjacent room. The best person in the houses was the five-year old
Rumki who was simply adorable. The picture of the young children of such a household gathered

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round an old grandmother of an evening. Listening to some fairy tale, the women busy cooking and
providing for other comforts with a cheerful face.

Rumki’s father returned home. He saw the condition of the house. He always came home at
different times but it was inevitable after dusk. Rumki was determined to stay back. Next to an
earthquake , a flood is perhaps the most disastrous of all the calamities of nature. The peacefulness
of this scene while the shades of the evening were drawing closer and closer was unrivalled. By a
middle-class householder was meant a man of moderate means. In short, their life was so simple
and peaceful that even the wealthiest of families could have no ideas of the pure joy and happiness
which these people enjoyed. It is due to co-operation and selfishness of the members that harmony
and peace is maintained in such families.

THE REMAINS OF THE FEAST by Gita Hariharan

In the story “The Remains of the Feast” Gita Hariharan explains how women are controlled
and restricted by the extreme rules and rituals of Brahmins, which stems from Hinduism. It is
shown how a simple element like food and the human body can play a significant role in the story to
express the author’s intent. Githa Hariharan describes Rukmini’s rotting body and how Ratna, her
great grand-daughter is looking over it.

The entrails remind Ratna, all the memories and pain that her great grandmother
experienced but never shared with her, but Ratna knows it exists due to “the pain congealing into
the cancer”. The diction used by the author describing the body with ‘entrails’ and ‘congealing’
provide a revolting image of the body, showing how the pain that Rukmini experienced, gave her a
revolting body as a result of the cancer . This shows significance as later how the restricted and
painful life Rukmini endured drives Ratna to gain revenge which incorporates the aspect of flood.
When Ratna says revenge, she means that she will live the life that her great grandmother was
denied.

The ninety-year-old cancer-struck Brahmin widow, whose entire life has been one of denial
dictated by the rules of caste, class, gender and religion. She suddenly revolts and desires
everything that has been prohibited for her bhelpuri from the fly infested bazaar, cakes with eggs in
them, from the Christian shop with a Muslim cook, Coca-cola laced with the delicious delight that it
might be alcoholic. Finally, when she dies, the grand-daughter, a medical student whowas her
partner in crime, covers her body with bridal red sari as her grandmother must have desired.

Ratna’s great grandmother’s death inspires her to be free. This freedom involves eating the
food that she is not allowed to eat. The description of the food she eats creates the image and
feeling of evil; not one item of food is described ina good light. “Plate after plate of stale
confections, in nedle-sharp green chilies , deep-fried in rancid oil”. It says how she gets”diarrhoea
for a weak”. This description shows how evil the food is, highlighting why shi is restricted from it
and how big a deal it is that she is breaking the taboo and eating it. This is extremely significant, as it
not only gives her diarrhoea but also her freedom that she seeks.

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UNIT - IV
A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS BY KHALED HOSSAIN
On the outskirts of Herat, a girl named Mariam lives with her embittered and estranged
mother, Nana. Mariam's father, Jalil, is a businessman who owns a cinema and lives in Herat with his
three wives and nine children, but his affair with Mariam's mother led to him sweeping her under
the rug by building her a small hut outside of the city, relegating her to it. Nana resents Jalil for his
mistreatment of her and deceptive attitude towards Mariam. Jalil travels to visit Mariam, his
illegitimate daughter, every Thursday. On her fifteenth birthday, Mariam wants her father to take
her to see Pinocchio at his movie theater, against the pleas of her mother. Jalil promises to do so.
When he does not come, she travels to his house in Herat and sleeps on the street outside after
Jalil's doorman refuses to let her in, claiming that Jalil is busy. Later, she storms into the house and
sees her father, but Jalil's chauffeur drives her back home. Upon returning home, Mariam finds that
her mother has committed suicide out of fear that her daughter had deserted her. She is taken to
live in Jalil's house, but his wives push him to quickly arrange for Mariam to be married to Rasheed,
a shoemaker from Kabul who is thirty years her senior. Mariam resists, but is soon pressured into
the marriage, moving away with Rasheed. In Kabul, Rasheed is initially kind and waits for her to
adjust. However, as Mariam becomes pregnant and miscarries multiple times, their relationship
sours, and he becomes increasingly moody and abusive over her inability to bear him a son.

Meanwhile, a younger girl named Laila grows up in a neighboring house in Kabul. She is close
to her father, a kind-hearted teacher, but worries over her mother, who is depressed and
unresponsive following her two sons' death in the army. Laila is also close friends with Tariq, a
neighbor boy, but their friendship is increasingly frowned upon by others as they grow older; in spite
of this, they develop a secret romance. When Afghanistan enters the war and Kabul is bombarded
by rocket attacks, Tariq's family decides to leave the city, and the emotional farewell between him
and Laila culminates in them making love. Laila's family eventually also decides to leave the city, but
a rocket destroys their house as they are preparing to leave, killing her parents and severely injuring
Laila. She is subsequently taken in by Rasheed and Mariam.

As Laila recovers from her injuries, Rasheed expresses interest in her, to Mariam's dismay.
Laila is also informed that Tariq and his family have died on their way out of the city. Upon
discovering that she is pregnant with Tariq's child, Laila agrees to marry Rasheed to protect herself
and the baby, giving birth to a daughter, Aziza, whom Rasheed rejects and neglects for being a girl.
Jealous of Laila and Rasheed's interest in her, Mariam initially is very cold, but gradually warms Laila
as she attempts to cope with both Rasheed's abuse and the baby. The two become close friends and
confidants, formulating a plan to run away from Rasheed and leave Kabul, but they are soon caught.
Rasheed beats them both, locking them up separately and depriving them of water, almost killing
Aziza.

A few years later, the Taliban rises to power and imposes harsh rules on the Afghan
population, severely curtailing women's rights. In a women's hospital that has been stripped of all
supplies, Laila is forced to undergo a C-section without anesthesia to give birth to Rasheed's son,
Zalmai. Laila and Mariam struggle with raising Zalmai, who Rasheed dotes on and favors greatly over
Aziza. There is a drought, and living conditions in Kabul become poor. Rasheed's workshop burns
down, and he is forced to take other jobs. He sends Aziza to an orphanage, and Laila endures a
number of beatings from the Taliban when caught alone in attempts to visit her daughter.

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One day, Tariq appears at the house and is reunited with Laila, who realizes that Rasheed
had hired the man to falsely inform her of Tariq's death so that she would agree to marry him. When
Rasheed returns home from work, Zalmai tells him about the visitor. Suspicious of Laila and Tariq's
relationship, Rasheed savagely beats Laila. He attempts to strangle her, but Mariam intervenes and
kills him with a shovel, telling Laila and Tariq to run. Afterward, she confesses to killing Rasheed in
order to draw attention away from them and is publicly executed. Laila and Tariq leave for Pakistan
with Aziza and Zalmai, and spend their days working at a guest house in Murree, a summer retreat.
After the fall of the Taliban, Laila and Tariq return to Afghanistan. They stop in the village where
Mariam was raised and discover a package that Mariam's father left behind for her: a videotape
of Pinocchio, a small sack of money, and a letter. Laila reads the letter and discovers that Jalil had
regretted sending Mariam away, wishing that he had fought for her. Laila and Tariq return to Kabul
and use the money to repair the orphanage Aziza had stayed in, where Laila starts working as a
teacher. She becomes pregnant with her third child, and if it is a girl, vows to name her Mariam.

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UNIT - V
MOTHER OF 1084 BY MAHASWETHA DEVI
OVERVIEW
Hajar Churashir Maa (means Mother of 1084) is story of a mother (Sujata) whose son (Brati),
corpse number 1084 in the morgue, was brutally killed by the state because of his ideology of
advocating the brutal killing of class enemies, collaborators with the State and counter-
revolutionaries within the Party. The story starts on the eve of Brati's death anniversary when Sujata
recollects her son starting from his birth. She meets Brati's close accomplice and tries to justify
Brati's actions and his Hajar Churashir Maa also portrays the other faces of the human stories that
emanated from the restless political adventure of the vibrant Bengali youth, which was ruthlessly
cowed by the then Congress government until the Communist Party displaced them and who then
again themselves ruthlessly cowed their opponents, the same Bengali youth.
Characters
 Sujata: Main protagonist and a modern strong mother.
 Brati: Rebel and son of Sujata.
 Dibyanath: Husband of Sujata and seen as same type of people against whom Brati fought.
 Nandani : girlfriend of Brati

Mahasweta Devi’s best-known novel – Hajar Churashir Ma in the original – is a heartbreaking

and yet coldly analytical story of a loving mother who is suddenly informed of her grown-up son’s
death. Identified only as No. 1084 by the morgue authorities, the young man was killed in one of the
many false encounters that the police used in the 1970s in Bengal to eliminate revolutionary Naxals.
A year after his death, she begins to piece together the story of his involvement with the Naxal
movement, getting in touch his former comrades and learning the details. The novel offers a unique
perspective on the armed political movement that shook Bengal in the 1970s, claiming victims
among both the urban youth and the rural peasantry, leaving its impact not just on the political and
administrative landscape but also on the families of those who died.

Summary
The play marks a new stage in the evolution of Sujata’s consciousness, as it enables her to re-
order her fragmented and chaotic life in search o a cohesive identity. Every time she visits her own
past or that of Brati, Somu’s mother or Nandini, her long-suppressed personal loss is slowly released
into the ever-widening, spirals of betrayal, guilt and suffering. From a weak-willed, hopelessly
dependent and a non-assertive mortal coward, Sujata is transformed into a morally assertive,
politically enlightened and a socially defiant individual.
Sujata primarily returns to her interior, private world of personal suffering, torture, betrayal
and loneliness. Negotiating the inner time in relation to her immediate familial situation, she
becomes aware of how she and Brati were not just fellow sufferers but also soul mates.

Sujata’s visit to the bank to get the jewellery from the locker is only a pretext for her to visit
the house of Somu’s mother. A close associate of Brati, Somu had been killed in the same
encounter. More significantly, Brati had spent his night in Somu’s house before his mysterious
disappearance and death.

While Sujata goes to Somu’s mother with the specific aim of retrieving the memories of
Brati’s last few hours, it turns out to be her entry and initiation into another world altogether. It is

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the world of primitive squalor, filth, poverty, degradation and subhuman existence that only hovers
tentatively on the margins of ‘bhadraloks’ consciousness. She enters into the little known world of
slum dwellers.The sight of Somu’s ageing mother, her disgruntled daughter and that of their
ramshackle tenement with a straw roof is enough to complete the rituals of initiation. In this
chapter, Sujata’s conviction for transformation becomes more certain. She learns another form of
reality and becomes aware of the injustice that was part of the society she lived in. She also
becomes aware of the inequality that is so prevalent in this society of hers. The visit to Somu’s
house enables her social and political transformation. She becomes socially conscious and learns
that the world outside her own house is very different.

When Sujata visits Nandini, who apart from being Brati’s comrade-in-arms was also his
beloved. It is Nandini who reconstructs for Sujata all the events leading upto Brati’s betrayal and
murder. In the process, she also initiates Sujata into the little known world of the underground
movement, explaining to her the logic for an organized rebellion, giving her firsthand account of
state repression and its multiple failures. It’s through Nandini that Sujata is finally able to
understand the reasons for Brati’s political convictions and his rejection of the bourgeoisie code. All
this leaves her so completely bewildered that she openly admits to Nandini, “I didn’t really know
Brati”. The new Sujata who has become self-liberated will now speak and act. But this will happen
only in Dibyanath’s house. And so Sujata now leaves Nandini’s house and returns to her own-house
to enact her transformation there.

Finally we meet a transformed Sujata, one who is more self-assured, morally confident and
politically sensitive. She decides to leave the house in which Brati never felt at home, where he was
not valued while he was alive, nor his memory respected after his death. Having found a soul-mate
in Brati, she turns her back on Dibyananth and his decadent value-system. Brati had died because of
loss of faith in the existing system and so she had to die. She had no other option apart from dying
because she was very weak and old. Only death could help her to unite with Brati. Death was the
only possible resistance that Sujata could take up.

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