Chapter IV

Isolation and Human Predicament

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 The cover page of the book titled ‘The Human Predicament: Towards an
Understanding of the Human Condition by Max Malikow addresses some circumstances,
major life events, beliefs, conditions that help define human predicament contextually
such as ‘death’, ‘evil’, ‘morality’, ‘virtue’, ‘guilt’, ‘logic’, ‘religion’, ‘justice’,
‘happiness’, ‘existence of God’, ‘pleasure’, ‘human nature’, ‘suicide’, ‘free will’,
responsibility’, ‘mind and body’, ‘beauty’, ‘humour’, ‘change’, ‘dream’, ‘charity’, ‘love’,
‘sex’, and ‘reality’. Chief factor that hasten the experience of the individual to any of the
above-mentioned life events is his state of isolation. Modernity has not only clashed with
conventions but has given birth to a ‘new man’, i.e. the advent of a rational being, who is
not easily satisfied with what he sees and hears around. He perpetually strives for
satiating thirst of his rational mind, hence unbeknownst to him striving against reality,
reality that makes him so disoriented in his first-hand experience with the events. Once
disillusioned, he finds himself suspended between his expectations and the reality of
chances. In life’s journey, his state of isolation is inescapable, inevitable. At some point
or the other in life, isolation is to be his lived experience. Some manage to find a way out
of it; while, for other, life becomes a worthless talk as Shakespeare puts in ‘Mackbeth’
(‘printed first folio, 1623’):

“…it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.” (Act V, Scene V, lines-28-30)

However, “it depends on the liver.” (William James)

Detachment from ‘Geselleschaft’. Billy (The Strange Case of Billy Biswas) and
Amulya Babu (An Atlas of Impossible Longing) are, despite seeming similarities, two
distinct personalities. Both belong to ‘big’ cities, Delhi and Calcutta respectively, and
both ‘want escape’ from too materialistic, too competitive environment. What intensifies
their predicament is their married state. Amulya leaves Calcutta miles away for
Songarh’s peace. His “yearning for isolation” (Roy, An Atlas…, p. 16) is something like
Billy’s “a great force, urcraft, a…a primitive force” (Joshi, The Strange Case…, p. 18).

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But where Amulya longs perfect (total) isolation, Billy wants community. Society and
community are distinguished on the basis of people’s relationship as,

“…a distinction between Gemeinschaft (community) and Gesellschaft

(society) relationship. Gemeinshaft relationships are based on kinship,
loyalty, friendship, and tradition. Geselleschaft relationships are based on
legal contract, public opinion, rationality, and exchange.” (Vangelish and
Perlman, p. 95)

Billy wants to isolate from the culture where he has felt being ‘existentially
alienated’, from the ‘transactional society’ where give and take is the base of association
among people. Since Billy belongs to the upper crust of society, he experiences the harsh
reality of the so-called civilized world. His father has been in the judiciary and believes
he has seen much of the world, so he insists Billy opt engineering, the academic fad of
the time. But he does not choose engineering for his study course, for a life of an
engineer propels him towards metropolitan too cultured cities, the life of which he wants
escape from. Conforming to the dictates of his conscience, he chooses anthropology and
‘finished’ Ph. D instead. But individual conscience gets dispirited in the culture that
encourages capitalism. Billy ‘is afraid of it and tries to suppress it’ because of his beliefs
and opinions that he feels unable to establish dialectic with the too civilized world where
emotions of the individual are treated as irrational and ‘commodities’ as

“Perhaps the most distinguishing characteristic of the Industrial Age was

that people were asked to act — and not to think! Indeed, they were
considered as ‘labour’ and defined in terms of ‘physical exertion’…They
dedicated themselves only to keeping life orderly, to thinking within the
lines drawn for them, to being obedient to the corporate source of their
livelihood. Above all else, there was no processing! No exploring of
human experience! No understanding of human goals! Just unthinking
action!” (Carkhuff, Ph. D, pp. 5-6)

And Billy is not the kind of person who sacrifices his ‘self-interest to be dependent’ and
‘mere appendage’ to capitalistic society. In Amulya, we see, a distinct self who does

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break free from the clutches of competitive thinking, his ‘yearning’ is not in the manner
of Billy’s longing for community, but for industrial set-up remote from Calcutta’s
competition. The idea of living in Songarh’s silence, in a state of isolation in the cradle of
his desired place has captivated his mind since his very first visit. Since then nothing has
made detaining claim on his attention. About such an isolated place,

“He had heard of Songarh in Calcutta, come on a visit, walked all over the
little town and its surrounding countryside, and the knowledge that he
would live there came to him like a benediction. Just as some people speak
to you immediately, without saying a word, and you feel a kinship as real
as the touch of a hand, Amulya felt a connection with Songarh. He knew
that if he turned away from it then, he would never be able to stop thinking
of it, that all his life would feel as though it were being spent away from
its core.” (Roy, An Atlas…, p. 12)

Unlike Billy, he cannot get mixed up with the tribal people, though “he had tried to make
himself part of local society by going to a few parties.” And even though, as ‘Songarh’s
local rich’, he is expected to be socially competent, and therefore local people have
‘hopes of him’. He gets recognition there. As an immigrant from city, he is welcomed by
the town people in the hope he as ‘dandy’ will introduce to the Santhals the taste of the
city. For this reason and of course because he has employed a majority of them in his
factory, he gets ‘eager invitations’ (p. 7). But he does not like their vulgar language, their
ways of living, thus feels socially isolated in their presence as,

“Amulya understood he was an anomaly…he had realized that perhaps his

being there was not serving any purpose. Was he really becoming a bona
fide local by attending these parties when his presence emanated
obligations?” (Roy, pp.7-8)

Billy is, by contrast, capable to establish a bond of attachment with the tribal by adopting
by adapting their loin-cloth, by marrying a tribal girl, Bilasia. He says,

“While I was doing this, I started to have this very odd sensation. I felt as
though I was a tribal myself, that I was one of the primitives to be

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 investigated and not one of the investigators…The feeling was so strong
that I almost broke into the local dialect.” (Joshi, The Strange Case, p. 94)

Thus, both characters have similarities and distinctions between each other’s purposes of
isolating from ‘big’, mad, bad cities. They differ in following their heart promptings. At
length, to study the impact of their voluntary isolation on their families or relatives, it
narrates a ‘different story’. Their isolation from ‘the glossy surfaces of our pretensions’
remains ungrappled and has ‘shattered hearts’. It goes uncomprehending in the civilized
society. The following passage can be read for both Amulya and Billy and can be
compared with ‘the commotion that followed on the heels of Billy’s disappearance’ as,

“He had done nothing he needed to run from, why then the self-imposed
exile from a great metropolis into the wilderness? Was there anything in
the world Calcutta (or Delhi, my addition) did not offer a man like him?
Submerged just beneath the surface of their talk was, the sense that his
departure was a scorning (emphasis added) of their lives, the redrawing of
a pattern that had already been perfected.” (Roy, An Atlas, p. 13)

Scorning? Yes, for them, the very civilization, their custom, order all appears hollow. The
relatives themselves feel a sense of isolation, after Amulya and Billy’s rejection of the
life in so-called ‘transactional society’. Their self isolation nevertheless takes a serious
toll on the lives of those who are emotionally dependent on them; especially on their
mother and wife’s life. They disregard ‘family responsibility, filial expectations and
societal obligations’ (Shodhganga) for ‘those dark mossy labyrinths of the soul that
languish forever, hidden from the dazzling light of the sun” (The Strange Case, p. 8), for
living in the state of self-isolation, in the wilderness, that is, in consonance with their
heart. While Billy escapes alone and disappears in the Saal forests of the Maikala hills,
inconsiderate of his wife Meena and his child at home, Amulya takes his family along
with to Songarh. But like Billy, he is also unmindful about his wife’s wishes. Matters
become worse when she is not taken to Calcutta, her native place. Her immovability
causes forced isolation for her. Amulya, “Bengali entrepreneur, builds himself an
impressive mansion with huge area in the remote hamlet of Songarh, on the edge of the
forest and beside the ruins of an old fort”, garh from which the town drives its name,

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‘with only a British couple for neighbours’. Although Kanan is always compliant with
her husband’s wish and remains silent in most cases, her patience answers, in the wake of
extremely terrible silence of the place. But for Amulya the very silence of Songarh is
‘liberating’ as,

“The silence that to Amulya meant repletion locked Kananbala within a

bell jar she felt she could not prize open for air. She disliked it from the
start: the large house with echoing, empty rooms…” (Roy, An Atlas, p.
16)

Contrary to Amulya’s secluded, silent house, she likes her native place,

“In Calcutta, in her rambling family house crowded with siblings and
aunts and uncles, there was always possibility of chat, the comforting
sounds of nearby laughter, gossip, clanging utensils, squabbling sister-in-
law, the tong-tong of rickshaw bells, the further-away din of the bazaar,
the cries of vendors…” (Roy, p.16)

But she is obliged to live with her husband, for she cannot detest the socio-traditional
norms. She is caught in a dilemma of filial affections and self-pleasure, which, unlike
Amulya and Billy, she disregards. Familial responsibilities and relationships pronounce
more on her. She embraces silence instead of sacrificing the threads of union with her
husband.

Obsession: Isolation. Life, temperament and actions of the individual are controlled
by the preoccupation of their mind, an obsession, which culminates in predicament
duality in life. Obsession interferes with not only the well-being of the individual but also
the network, personal as well as social. The following are some characters whose
predicament is rooted in their obsession such as:

Sindi’s non-involvement, Billy’s “Extraordinary passion” (back cover), Som’s hunger for
possession, Ratan’s intoxicated mind with success, Grand mater’s intoxication for
authority, Amulya’s ‘yearning for isolation’, Michael’s passion for mountains, and some

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variants of ‘obsession’ as Nomi’s quest for her roots, and early mother-child separation
(Myshkin).

But what is obsession? And how does it turn into human predicament? Colon-Rivera,
M. D., CMRO et. al. 2020 study ‘obsession’ and its mental effects that, he says, can
cause a serious disease, a disease which is incurable, for there is no treatment possible in
medical science as,

“Obsessions are recurrent and persistent thoughts, impulses, or images that

cause distressing emotions such as anxiety or disgust, many people with
OCD recognize that the thoughts, impulses, or images are a product of the
mind and are excessive or unreasonable. However, the distress caused by
these intrusive thoughts cannot be resolved by logic or reasoning.” (Rivera
et al., Article Online)

In the light of Rivera et. al. study, the above-mentioned characters of Joshi and Roy can
be studied as patients suffering from a serious disease known as obsessive-compulsive
disorder (OCD). Their obsessions are discussed in detail below as,

Surendra Oberoi, known as Sindi (The Foreigner) practices detachment (Philosophy

of the Gita) as a way of qualifying life’s grim face, all the oddities and ‘grave ironies’
that life has in store for human beings as the back cover (Orient Paperbacks) of the novel
reads,

“The protagonist’s anguish at the meaninglessness of the human condition

and the eventual release from the anxieties of life through Karmayoga, the
principle of action without attachment…”

‘The transitoriness’ of the world appears to make ‘the principle of action’, Sisyphean,
devoid of meaning and purpose. Commitment and acceptance stumble with a ‘serious
philosophical problem’ whether ‘life is worth living’. And if not, then why strive for
“dreadful, boisterous activity like a stallion yoked to a chariot of war?” (Yogananda) But
Sindi misunderstands the ‘message of the Gita’ which summarized in ‘the secret of

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action’, action which is though detached, indifferent to any goal-oriented purpose, yet
that is not inaction as the Gita teaches,

“Actionlessness is not attained simply by avoiding actions. By forsaking

work no one reaches perfection.” (Yogananda)

By contrast, Sindi practices non-involvement to ‘attain inaction’ by being detached not

by, as Gita preaches, ‘employing action’. Nor is his detachment meant “for self-finding,
self-fulfillment, for self-realization.” (Aurobindo, p. 572) Sindi does not act as ‘pure
self’, that is, “neither grieving nor rejoicing at all that afflicts and attracts the egotistic
being”. (Ibid., p. 303) Much later in his life, Sindi comes to know the true meaning of
Actionless action, which is different from ‘inaction’ as he himself affirms,

“Detachment at that time had meant inaction. Now I had begun to see the
fallacy in it. Detachment consisted of right action and not escape from it.
The gods had set a heavy price to teach me just that. (Joshi, The Foreigner,
p. 162)

His ‘reluctance’ to involve in anything is self-contradictory, for he on the one hand wants
to remain unattached, while on the other he cannot detest his sexual urge. He has been
‘involved’ in sexual intercourse with a number of American women as Anna, Kathy,
Judy and Christine, and finally with June’ (Shodhaganga) With these women, he acts as
egocentrically and to show a grim face in ‘public’, he needs a philosophy to blanket his
self-centeredness that he easily gets in ‘detachment’, ‘non-involvement’. He becomes in
himself ‘a man with’ ‘changing and contrary masks and appearances’ (Aurobindo, p.
302) The paradoxical nature of his sexual relationship with Kathy, who, ‘after a few
weeks of intense sexual experience’, ‘had to go back to her husband’ thinking ‘marriage
was sacred and had to be maintained at all costs’, conflicts with his disinterestedness. As
about this hypocritical, self-deluding nature, Yogananda writes in his commentary on the
verse 6 of the chapter ‘Karmayoga’ of the Gita,

“Many people refrain from certain acts, but not from thoughts about them!
A man may inwardly covet the beautiful wife of another, but restrain
himself from getting involved for fear of trouble. His inner inclination,

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 reinforced by constant brooding, however, is likely to lead him to
succumb to temptation.” (Yogananda, p. 341)

Consequently, Sindi agonizes over his rootlessness, failure in early love affairs with
Anna and Kathy, and even with June, which results in his isolation. Masking the ‘true
self’ takes a heavy toll not only on Sindi’s life but the lives of those also who are
somehow in the contacts of Sindi like people as Babu and June in touch with him. They
rely on his beliefs and opinions. What Sindi calls ‘only detachment’ is in fact an excess
of his agonizing and lonely thoughts. But by the time he comes to realize what his
masking has done, he has ‘driven’ two people to death. June’s death is more burdensome
for him, as he himself says imagining June ‘on the other hand’ in the latter’s room after
her death,

“…despair caught me by the throat and I started crying. I sat in the chair
with my hands on my knees and cried. But it was no good. There was no
relief.” (Joshi, p. 165)

Because, even after constant efforts of avoiding,

“…in the inner recesses of my mind the trial went on. Each day the judges
examined the witnesses. My parents, my uncle, my lovers, Babu and June,
their parents, and finally myself, one by one all were called by the
invisible judges and asked to give their evidence…I felt as if some
indefatigable surgeon was clearing up my soul with sharp edge of his
scalpel.” (Joshi)

Billy Biswas (The Strange Case) is ‘a man of extraordinary passions’ (back cover).
He is obsessed with community living. For it, he opts anthropology against his father’s
wishes and ‘finished’ Ph. D., studies ‘the tribal attitudes and customs’. For a short time,
he teaches anthropology at Delhi University and continues exploring about ‘primitive
communities in hills and forests’. The thought of living in the primitive culture
preoccupies his mind from childhood until he “disappeared from the face of the earth,
simply vanished into the Saal forests of the Maikala Hills.” (p. 60) What is for others his
disappearance is Billy’s pre-plan as he himself seems to affirm implicitly, “If I do come

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back” and ‘laughs’ at the thought of returning. Billy predicament is not his longing for
the primitive life but his ‘cry’ for it in the too civilized society of Delhi. As the quotation
on the verso page in the beginning of the novel, which reads ‘It irk’d him to be here, he
would not rest’ (Matthew Arnold) and the narrator Romi’s words in the beginning of the
text may be taken to confirm the force that drives Billy ‘out of place’,

“…the most futile cry of man is his impossible wish to be understood. The
attempt to understand is probably even more futile. If in spite of this I
propose to relate Billy’s story, it is not so much because I claim to have
understood him as it on account of a deep and unrelieved sense of wonder
that in the middle of the twentieth century, in the heart of Delhi’s smart
society, there should have lived a man of such extraordinary obsessions. I
could be wrong. Perhaps his obsessions were not so extraordinary after all,
even if the garb in which they appeared was.” (Joshi, The Strange, p. 7)

Obsessions always cause mental agony not only for the person himself, but for those also
who depend on him. Billy’s passion leaves his mother to be extremely restless; his wife,
Meena to lead her life in terrible isolation and his child to search for the answers, like
Myshkin (All the Lives…) whose mother disappears to follow the dictations of her heart.
Both leave their children with a question why did a parent do what he / she did? Like
Billy, Gayatri, too, left behind her ‘shattered’ heart in the search of ‘dark mossy
labyrinths of the soul’.

Ratan Rathor’s (The Apprentice) thoughts are obsessed with ‘success’ that leads him
to meaninglessness, and finally to a sense of guilt. Ratan proves himself as an epitome of
success ‘in this poor land’. When the majority of Indians are struggling for the meal of
the day, he has ‘a car, a flat, a concrete roof, running water’ (p. 58) and a thing of pride,
of social prestige and hence of competition of the time, a refrigerator which is a sign of
being ‘well-off’. For example, Arjun, Dinu’s father (All the Lives…), “smarting from
the unprecedented challenge of Dada having bought something as significant as a
refrigerator” (Roy, p, 198) purchases it with other expensive things only in order to show
in his neighbourhood how prosperous he is. To return to Ratan Rathor, why does not all
this give meaning to his life? Because he is a son of a patriot who is, for the cause of

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India’s freedom, badly ‘beaten’ and ‘shot’ dead before Ratan’s eyes. Though it is
childhood traumatic experience for him, it leaves a deep mark on his conscience. He
remains throughout his life conscious of his allegiance to the republic. But when he joins
the government office, he becomes a slave to his masters, to his ‘superiors’ to become
successful. A patriotic fervor turns into a ‘desire to please’ them. His docility supplants
his ‘father’s rebellion’ as,

“To be a slave and not know it is tolerable. To know of one’s bondage and
yet seek freedom, that is what gets you down, knocks the wind out of you.
As I sat in well and watched I felt chocked, oppressed; rebellious but tied
up totally in knots.” (Joshi, The Apprentice, p. 63)

Matters become worse when he happens to accept ‘bribe’ during Chinese invasion.
Although success appears intense at a time for him, he cannot avoid the image of his
father ‘staring at’ him ‘in silence’. His mental conflict turns him into a writer, ‘Mr. Crisis
of Character’ writes an article. The guilty feelings force him to puff off the crisis he is
undergoing, as in his own words he says,

“…just before the war started I took a bribe. An enormous bribe. Yes, Mr.
Crisis of character took an enormous bribe. No more, no less.” (Joshi, p.
57)

But when he accepts bribe, why does his conscience not strike him? Because of his
obsession for success, for ‘influence’. He accepts bribe in the belief that he ‘belonged
rather to the rule than the exception’ (pp. 108-9), for, as he begins to count, peons,
government officials, traffic policemen, railway conductors, doctors, magistrates,
politicians, factory inspectors, bank agents, college professors, nurses, priests, charted
accountants, all take bribe. His views are similar to Arjun Chacha who says, “War is
good for economies.” (All the lives… p. 195) He remains impersonal, unconcerned about
loyalty to the country. He acts at the expense of the future of the country. Illusion of
success churns him into the ‘business of life’. Nevertheless, when his conscience de-
addicts him, he undergoes tormenting contradictory feelings of undermining morale,
violation of ‘duty of loyalty’, in which nationalistic fervor takes precedence. He holds

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‘loyalty as a virtue’. He confronts two opposing forces within him: bribing for ‘influence’
and the discipline and virtues of his father in which he mirrors bribing his soul. For
example, his father’s patriotism is ever underneath whatever he talks about corruption, as
on being asked why he took bribe he says,

“The fact is, I do not know. Not any more than I know what made my
father take that last step towards the sergeant gun. Perhaps, these were the
two sides of the same coin, the head and the tail, linked like night and day
are linked.” (Joshi, p. 58)

The view, integrity to one’s ‘country above loyalty to persons’ which he inherits from his
father, remains intact to his values despite his situational promptings. He inherits from his
father the belief ‘to place adherence to some supposedly higher principle’ over loyalty to
the ‘bribee’ but he practices it in the office where for the other employees, ‘loyalty to the
country’ is ‘at odds with liberation’. In their views, it is an ‘outmoded virtue’. Ratan’s life
is split between two perceptions: after accepting bribe, feeling guilt ridden in the manner
of Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner and views of his colleagues. Contrary to Ratan’s beliefs
is,

“Adherence to the ethic of loyalty has the potential to negate our critical
edge, cause complacency, lead us to accept what our political leaders do
unquestioningly and to be intolerant of those who are part of our group. In
its most perverse form, loyalty can lead to bigotry and xenophobia.”
(Green, p. 156)

Som Bhaskar’s (The Last Labyrinth) mind is preoccupied with the ambitions cry for
possessing ‘an object, a business enterprise, a woman’ (back cover). But reaching the
Zenith of his success, his life turns his cry ‘I want, I want, I want’ into ‘vanity of vanities,
all is vanity’ (Ecclesiastes, p. 435). A millionaire-industrialist’ thinking of committing
suicide? Appears ludicrous, absurd. What drives him to think of putting an end to his life
does not validate the notion of absurdity; rather it turns us to think what he thinks. His
successful life leaves him to contemplate on ‘the unreasonable silence’, an outcome of
the ‘appetite and its disappointment’. His serious performance in the drama of life

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converts into a farce. The cycle of owning tires him. He has cultivated a desire of
possession. He ‘wants’ to own everything, knowledge, companies, woman.
Consequently, he remains ‘doubt-intoxicated’, what makes matters worse is Anuradha’s
refusal to come to Bombay. Refusal strikes him. His successful life of owned companies
makes him incapable of bearing the burden of such a straightforward rejection. He
manages to own even Aftab’s company but discontent for he wants to possess Anuradha
with Aftab’s company. When incapable, he feels ‘out of place’. He calls her his ‘terrible
love’ (‘Anuradha! Anuradha! My dark and terrible love’, p. 154). Her isolation intensifies
matters for Bhaskar. What is ‘dark’ and ‘terrible’ in love? Anuradha is, for Bhaskar, an
object, like a rival’s company to own. The following passage shows the negative side of
his obsessions (my emphasis is only on her ‘body’ in the passage),

“I thought I could do without her. The fact was I could not do without her
at all. Whenever I went during the day, she stayed with me. At night I
stayed up lusting after her. I tried to move my thoughts off her body, on to
other things, some bit of business or my health prospects, but it was only
her body that I could resurrect.” (Joshi, The Last Labyrinth, p. 154)

The ‘dark and terrible’ side of his obsession distracts him from his wife and children and
leaves his life with “incalculable feeling that deprives the mind of the sleep necessary to
life” (Camus, p. 7). Anuradha’s rejection wakes him up from futile dreams. But regaining
senses is too intolerable for him, for it divorces him for his illusions. There is a
conspicuous similarity between Som’s

“pull out the revolver, take a step towards the cabinet, then turns around
and put it casually to my temple” (Joshi, p. 222)

and Camus’ absurd man who “one evening he pulls the trigger or jumps” (Camus, p. 6).
Thus, the concluding phase of ‘dark’ side of the excessive thoughts ‘is prepared within
the silence of the heart’ (Ibid.).

Grand Master’s (The City and the River) dream forms an opaque glass sheet, in
which he scans himself. The base of the sheet is hierarchical and patriarchal. In the
palace, there is nothing in the palace that can tear it down. His dreams are empowered by

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the illusion of the palace, where he lives position-intoxicated. ‘Drunk with the illusion’,
he negates the contrary, in which sees the boatmen. He is aware of the fact that ‘without
them the city cannot run’, however, his stupor ‘determined to become its ‘unchallenged
king’ never lets him hear contradictory echoes of his self-affirmation., delusions of
grandeur. But illusions do not last long. A day is destined to come to unravel them. The
same happens to him. ‘A strange prophecy’ made by the astrologer anticipating the
arrival of ‘a new king’ makes him restless. He fears of losing his power over the city that
gives him a sense of meaningful existence. In the wake of the contrary, everything else
begins to appear hollow. Still, he seems to justify his ancestral right of authority on the
city as,

“Not so the Grand Master, who had always considered himself fit for
better things. After the long service that his ancestors had performed for
the city he felt the city, for its own goo, owed him total and unquestioned
allegiance. Thus the dream had merely upturned the top layers of his
consciousness and revealed to him what his heart in its secret aspirations
already felt, that he was the chosen of the lord to rule his city.” (Joshi, The
City, p. 57)

His illusory self-affirmation hastens his doom, but because of his obsessions, he is the
last to accept his end. When ‘the waters swept over’ and seem to destroy his entire
palace, the astrologer suggests him fleeing away to a safer place, but he thinks,

“Something…has upset this old man, but I am the descendant of a brave

and powerful house and I am not about to lose my nerve.” (Joshi, p. 258)

From his above quoted words it distils that family ‘narratives’ has a great impact on the
behavior and attitude of the individual. He belongs to the house where he has been
listening to the valour, strength, agility and maturity of the ancestors for childhood that
makes it uncomfortable for him to express his agitation, insecurities in the family,

“Because people are motivated to sustain their stories, even in cases where
person is willing to discuss his or her fears, other family members may
disregard them.” (Vangelisti and Perlman, p. 336)

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He fears disgrace, humiliation, and hence is bound to live a pretentious life, a life of a
false self. He thinks, acts, and behaves under social pressure.

Amulya’s (An Atlas of Impossible Longing) thoughts are obsessed with self-
isolation. When he is in Calcutta, he is always in search of such a place. Calcutta does not
give what he dreams. One day he happens to hear about his imaginative place. Without
procrastination, he visits the place in Songarh, a small town far away from the hustle of
Calcutta. Since his first visit, he has been incapable of evading dreaming of living in
Songarh. Songarh’s silence preoccupies his mind. Silence is, for Amulya, ‘meant
repletion’. His ‘yearning for isolation’ may be the force to drive him towards Songarh.
He acts in accordance with the dictations of his heart and does not feel the necessity to
expose the matter before anyone, even before his wife. There are three situations that
warn him against the negative consequences of his obsessive yearning for voluntary
isolation as, when Kanabala’s sister-in-law (visitor from Calcutta) says,

“But this place you live in, I do not know, but I couldn’t live here — in
Songarh, I mean. Yes, I know, it’s clean and empty and Calcutta is dirty
and crowded and noisy. But the crowds and noise keep me alive! It’s so
soundless here, I thought for a moment I’d gone deaf! And I don’t think
it’s doing you much good either.” (Roy, An Atlas, p. 26)

As, when he self realized that what is ‘meant repletion’ for him has, in fact, “locked
Kananbala within a bell jar” (p. 16), for, ‘for his wife it is a different story’. He “thought
he should not have taken her such a long distance from her family in Calcutta.” (p. 46)

And as, he realizes much after settling there that he himself does not feel fit in the social
environment of the town, among the Santhals, their custom as, “He had begun to
recognize that he was considered an outsider in his very own Dulganj Road.” (p. 16)

However, he continues living in Songarh. His obsessions blinds him, isolates him from
seeing what is obvious. Roy rightly remarks on the obsessive thoughts of the individual
as,

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 “People have strange obsessions that nobody else can understand. They
seem irrational, but to themselves these people make complete sense.”
(Roy, p. 285-6)

Only to connect with the tribal, Amulya ‘with persistence’ learns ‘the language of the
Santhals’ but remains isolated due to their ways of living, their ‘obscene’ language, and
the manner in which they cover their body i.e. loin-cloth. Unlike Billy, he never gets
mixed up with the tribal, never adapts himself to their ways of living, and hence remains
an ‘anomaly’ among them.

Michael (The Folded Earth) is another person who is ‘drunk’ with mountaineering.
He is a person whose profession is different from his interest. He is ‘press photographer’,
not ‘a climber’. But he tries to implement his peripheral dream of trekking mountains.
His dream with ‘overpowering’ obsessive thoughts makes him restless, sleepless ‘night
with eyes open, dreaming’, about ‘the journey to the foothills of the Himalaya’.
Michael’s ‘feet walked on flat land but flexed themselves for inclines’. He seems to have
married mountains, not Maya who gives voice to her agony thus,

“My rival in love was not a woman but a mountain range. It was very soon
after my wedding that I discerned this…Michael’s yearning made me
understand how it is that some people have the mountains in them…”
(Roy, The Folded, p. 6)

Passions drive a person even to an irrational undertaking. So does Michael. He decides

‘to go on a trek to Roopkund, a lake in the Himalaya about 16000 feet, knowing that he is
ill-equipped for such an immense task and the fact that ‘a park ranger stumbled upon the
lake in 1942’, for much of the year its water remains frozen.’ (Roy, p. 7) But passions are
passions. They do not let one rest till he ends either his journey of passions or himself.
Passions can never be compromised. They end either way. Exactly the same occurs to
passionate Michael. Before he would end his journey, his obsessions devoured him. His
dead body found with ‘unrecognizable’ face, ‘burned black by the cold’. (p. 9)

Both Nomi (Nomita Anderson of ‘Sleeping on Jupiter’) and Myshkin (All the Lives
We Never Lived) set out on a quest for their life’s unanswered questions. While for Nomi

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the quest is for identity, for Myshkin his search demands the answers for life’s questions
his mother’s disappearance has left. Nomi is a documentarian. That she persuades her
‘boss’ to make a documentary on Jarmuli instead of Kumb, as her ‘boss wanted’ reveals
the hidden in her heart. It lets one penetrate its darker side. Jarmuli is the place where is
sexually abused by the Guruji of the Ashram where she is brought after the murder of her
father and mysterious disappearance of her mother who was trying to save her girl Nomi.
(However, her brother is not taken with her) The spiritual guides in India are held in high
esteem. They have their devotees who regard and awe (in the current sense) their gurujis
with Godly traits. Much of their respect comes of their fear as Champa tells Nomi to be
silent about the Ashram, for

“Everyone rich and famous is his disciple, they all think he is a God.
They’ll never believe anything bad about him. They’ll take us straight
back there and then we’ll be dead, like Jugnu.” (Roy, Sleeping, p. 239)

‘Sexual abuse’ has disrupted ‘the progression of Nomi’s identity formation’. For
Nomi, documentary is a ready-made means for speaking redress. Since this world is, as
Nomi experiences, blind to spiritual teachers, through documentary “on religious tourism,
temple town, all of that” (documentary is based on facts) she wants to bring the fact to the
public, about the Ashram, so-called prophets of religion, spiritual guides, about herself,
about Piku, and similar others. But she reaches Jarmuli to find people inconsiderate as
everyone in Jarmuli seems to have routinised their present while living unbothered about
the past of Jarmuli as Johnny Toppo whom she, believing Jugnu of the ashram, asks
about the Guruji and the ashram. He tells her evading the specific point,

“Ashram? There are hundreds of ashrams here, this is a temple town. All
hear is the sea and bells. And fools like there every five minutes, braying
an advance booking to heavens. Temples. Ashrams. Devotees. That’s
Jarmuli…All ashrams are run by gurus, how do I know where yours is?”
(Roy, p. 158)

He does pretend not to identify Nomi and try to evade her questions, however, the ‘scar’
on his neck which he keeps ‘covered’, and the trembling of his hands when Nomi starts

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recalling aloud the same story from the Ramayana, which Jugnu used to tell her in the
ashram to draw moral for her, do give a cue that Jhonny Toppo is the same Jugnu
(however, the author has kept it unclear). Thus, Nomi’s restless quest does not end
compassionating her heart, and Piku like girls still stay unsafe.

The disturbance in Myshkin’s life is caused by his patriarchal mentality — the

outcome of his being brought up in a motherless family — which does not allow him to
justify his mother’s ways, and, therefore, the question remains intact to the image of his
mother — why did she do what she did? A child’s perception and behaviourfor whole life
is determined by his or her childhood experiences. Early parent-child, especially mother-
child, isolation may cause either positive or negative consequences: positive, in the sense
of creativity; negative, in irritation, short tempered, self-centered, etc. His mother,
Gayatri’s isolation in his early childhood has negative impacts on his attitude toward his
mother as he himself interprets the consequences,

“There was a time in my life long ago — I was thirteen and had just
started smoking — when I thought that if I had a picture of her in front of
me, I would press the glowing end of a cigarette into the circle of her
eyes…I would blind her. I would kill the spell cast by her absent
presence.” (Roy, All The Lives, p. 15)

Similarly, in the absence of parental love at early stage of their identity formation,
both Sindi (The Foreigner) and Bakul (An Atlas of Impossible Longing) develop hostile
attitude to life, to both public and personal relations, and grow detached. For example, the
questions about his roots, belongingness, family background or even parents irritate Sindi
as he says, “I hated to talk about my parents” because too long absence has widened the
emotional gap as he further says,

“For hundredth of time I related the story of those strangers whose only
reality was a couple of wrinkled and cracked photographs.” (Joshi, The
Foreigner, p. 12)

This emotional isolation thwarts closeness in Bakul-Nirmal (father-daughter) relationship

as Nirmal whose disappearance just after Bakul’s birth turns him, much like Sindi-

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parents relationship, stranger for her who has ‘reasoned to be an ‘orphan’ like Mukunda
(an orphan boy) because “her mother was dead and her father, an archeologist, was away
on digs in other parts of the country for such long years at a stretch that she forgot his
face in between.” (Roy, An Atlas, p. 101) The only cause of the child-parent detachment
lies in the absence of familial emotional regulation. The following Bakul’s words show
the conversational gap and consequential impertinence in her attitude towards her father
due to emotional dysregulation,

“Alright, alright, tell me what to do, I have to go.” (Roy, An Atlas, p. 122)

To return, Myshkin’s mother has passions for art, painting, music and dance. She
feels oppressed, strangulated in the family where her husband, though not having
downright opposition, belittles her passions as,

“Painting, singing, dancing, these are wonderful things. Everyone needs

hobbies. But there are hobbies and there are serious matters. Try and read
something other than novels — I’ve given you so many books and…what
about that history of India? (Roy, All the Lives, p. 35)

Gayatri’s isolation from such an imposing environment is inevitable. But Myshkin takes
a long-time brooding to understand feminine psychology. What does he choose to satiate
his quest? A trowel? Horticulture? The underlying idea present in ‘the diverse cultures’ is
of ‘the identification of women’ with nature and representation of ‘the land as female’
(Waugh, p. 538). So what Myshkin chooses is ‘control’ of the land, which is equivalent
to ‘take charge of your own ship’ (All the Lives…, p. 76) in Arjun Chacha’s words. Until
his father’s objection to Myshkin’s choice of being a horticulturist, he blamed his mother
for disgracing the family as he seems to speak in his following words from a man’s point
of view,

“Had my father ever denied my mother anything? Other woman veiled

their faces and served their husbands and embroidered and knitted — she
had to do none of these things. My mother had the liberty to do whatever
she wanted, go where she pleased, wear what she wished — within
reason.” (Roy, p. 141)

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But after his father’s vehement objection, he makes sense of his mother’s isolation as he
himself contradicts his earlier view,

Her view of the world is not unusual. My father too was appalled by my
choice of work when I first told about it…Perhaps the cause of his fury
was a fear that I was turning out as whimsical as my misguided mother
was thought to be.” (All the Lives, p. 306)

It is the brief confrontation with his father that puts conflicting views in his mind. But the
conflict is necessary for him to begin his journey in search of truth about his mother, in
order to access to her predicament which forces her out of the house. Or else, he would
live blind to the fact while cursing her.

Human Nature and Isolation. The nature of an individual is an overall estimation of

his or her attitude, that is, a set of emotions, beliefs, and behaviours towards person, event
or even an object. The attitude is the outcome of his first-hand experience and
upbringing, and hence changeable. What is decisive for socialization process is a feeling
of trust, attitude of the individual towards collaboration. A person with ‘strong
personality’ is one who has a ‘good attitude’, is ‘trusted by many people’, has trust in
others, and has positive attitude to problem-solving. By contrast, there are people who
have ‘self-sabotaging dynamic’, and leave the impression of their negative emotions on
others. They hold other people, their fate or circumstances of life responsible for their
negative attitude ignoring the ‘role of their own actions’, and, ‘in isolation, their attitude
gets worse. They are caught in ‘a vicious cycle’. (Green, p. 241) Because of their hostile
attitude, impertinence, inhibition, shyness, introversion, self-centeredness, temperament,
they are ‘more prone to feel suspicion, deep insecurities, resentment’ and, therefore, are
avoided by the personal or social network. They stay companionless due thieir
constricted attitude. They leave an aura of strangeness in their neighbourhood. It will not
be untrue to say that in a sense, isolation lies within them. They may seem to be
comfortable in ‘the bliss of isolation’ (Amulya) while keeping themselves engaged in
attaining goals to ‘further goals’ (Som), or remaining disinterested (Sindi), but ‘by
pushing people away’, they make their life ‘a pretext’, ‘a meaningless pantomime’. But
the effects of rolling life’s stone in this way accentuate ‘emotional dysregualtion’ in their

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family. One more character, added to the characters mentioned above, is Diwan Sahib
(The Folded Earth) whose attitude, as according to Maya,

“Diwan Sahib was brusque enough with visitors to acquire a reputation of

being outright rude, none of his acquaintances were allowed to grow into
friends.” (Roy, p. 30)

provokes ‘greediness’ in him with which he ‘demands attention’, in order to pacify his
temper, as Maya further says,

“Although he could not do without seeing me every day, he could become

cantankerous or quarrelsome in minutes.” (Roy)

But why they remain ‘intimidated into silence’ in isolation? If attitudes are
changeable, why do they feel incapable of establishing a bond of attachment with others?
The answer is, as vary individual to individual, sometime affirmative and sometime
negative, depending on the degree of adherence to their values. For example, Sindi’s
beliefs in ‘detachment’ of Karmayoga grasp a higher principle beyond his capability. He
surrenders his activities to the principle, which, in turn, makes him incapable of any
transformation from within. Similarly, Amulya and Billy are driven by the ills of
civilization, a force beyond their reach; while Som remains subject to his uncontrollable
routinization of his own passions (see heading ‘obsessions’). Thus, transformation is not
always easy. Sometimes it demands entire life. Like Diwan Sahib, Amulya, too, ‘disliked
constant company’ and ‘wanted to be alone’. Matters nevertheless differ for both.
Amulya’s conditions do not allow him to be detached and unsocial, for, for Amulya,
there is a family to look after; while, Diwan Sahib who ‘had been single all his life’ (the
Folded Earth, p. 30). The state of living Amylya practices affects his whole family: his
wife becomes insane, his sons grow emotionally isolated, his daughter-in-law is
frientened and isolated. Family is a major life event and hence cannot be avoided. None
but a self-centered can practice what Amulya does.

Man can never tolerate defiance from woman, his wife. If his wife ‘protests and
becomes defensive’, she stimulates anger him. As Kananbala leaves the house without
Amulya’s consent, it arouses Amulya’s “thought that his wife had left the house defying

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him — even in her disturbed state she knew the rules” (emphasis added). Amulya’s
reaction to her defiance reveal, in general, man’s predicament as,

He “sat in his armchair… frozen into inaction by fury and astonishment.”

(Roy, An atlas, p. 79)

Usually a person is, in the situation like Amulya’s, disturbed, speechless, thoughtless. But
Amulya is furious and astonished by the thought “that his wife had left the house, defying
him”. Is it not the patriarchal rules that she disobeys in leaving his house? He being a
male cannot bear disobedience. What a woman is expected is being ‘intimidated into
silence’.

Love. Love can be both ‘positive and negative’ (Wikipedia.org). It’s an attitude
towards another. Positive love encompasses ‘the unselfish’ ‘benevolent concern for the
good of another’, while, by contrast, negative love represents human flaw’, such as
vanity, obsession, self-centeredness, et cetra. In ancient Greek philosophy, six forms of
love are identified: Storge (familial love), philia (platonic or friendly love), eros
(romantic love), philaitia (self love), xenia (guest love), and agape (divine love). In
Mukunda and Bakul’s love, we have glimpses of platonic love, of unconditional love.
Even during the period of imposed isolation, their emotional ties do not get weakened as,

“Bakul decided she would not wash the frock in which she had spent that
last morning with Mukunda. She would keep it as it was, in a corner of her
cupboard, and the thorns would remind her of him.” (Roy, An Atlas, p.
173)

The unconditional love or friendly love is considered by Plato as the highest form of love.
Bakul does not marry and rejects her suitors. The absurdity of her life nevertheless is that
she is concerned about the futility of her love. The moments of love she wants to retain in
her memory forever is irrational and has negative effects on her life. Sindi’s views on
love unlock Bakul’s heart as he goes defining it by its nature as fleeting, transitory,
insignificant. He calls love a “debt that you had to return sooner or later. And if you
didn’t you felt very uncomfortable” (Joshi, The Foreigner, p. 54) because he

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 “knows that this can be stirring. But he is one of the very few who know
that this is not the important thing. He knows just as well that those who
turn away all personal life through a great love enrich themselves perhaps
but certainly impoverish those their love has chosen.” (Joshi, p. 54)

It is as though one’s ‘sympathetic concentration’ converts the other’s feelings into a

usable reality, which is an ‘emblem of absurd’ repeating the “struggle against the obscure
terms of our existence.” A person in love becomes a victim of uncontrollable emotions.
He becomes incapable of rationally explaining the choices of his partner. It leaves
harmful effects on both persons’ life. Bakul knows that her beloved Mukunda is now
married and that he is a father, that he has family responsibilities. Despite the fact, she
cannot resist temptations of her emotional outbursts from within as she cannot herself
understand, even if it is irrational.

“I can’t go on this way, everything seems wrong, each day of my life

seems only half lived without you…” (Roy, An Atlas, p. 304)

But that’s not life. It’s seer madness. They ‘mistake the mask for reality’. The scene, in
which Mukunda is sitting beside Bakul depicts the aura of essential irrationality in their
nature. If the mask is slipped off from his face, he perhaps realizes what determines his
sitting there is, in real, his nightmare deceiving and divorcing him from his reality of his
married state. The reality of the moments is that he is, in fact, distracted due to ‘being
obsessive’, has become self-absorbed. It is similar to Charu (The Folded Earth) whose
love for Kundan Singh, a Nepali boy, internalizes in her ‘tremendous feelings of
excitement, fascination that she, one night, leaves her house for Delhi unconcerned about
the impediments and her limitations before undertaking such a journey. Thanks to
chances that she reaches the right place at right time without experiencing much of the
so-called ‘civilized’, ‘cultured’ ‘big city’. Maya is another example of the sentimental
irrational force, so known by her materialistic father. Her elopement with Michael, a
person of different religion, is the result of her father’s ‘dreadful devotion’. Love turns a
person into an object of possession, a ‘pet’, an object of ‘perverse pride’, and a bright-
eyed, ‘adoring devotee’ (pp. 62 & 63). Maya’s father projects all his hopes, in the
absence of a male heir, on to her. She becomes ‘princes’ of the house, who has to stand

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up to the expectations of her father by becoming “the first female industrial magnate of
this country”. Her father’s obsession isolates her from her mother as she says,

“He spoke to me only in English because he considered it the language of

success, even though this excluded my Telugu-speaking mother from our
conversations. From infancy, I was made to understand I was the heir.”
(Roy, The Folded, p. 63)

But this too much of attention of her father and her being always in attendance to him
hasten her escape from her parental house. Because of his overanxious attitude toward his
daughter, he enters ‘the cycle of negativity and vicious self-castigation’ and therefore
suffers anxiety disorder. Maya feels to be smothered in his ‘extreme emotions’, in his
‘over-care’, ‘overzealous’ feelings. His imagined ‘drastic scenario’ is too constricted to
let her enter the space of self-care. He wants to do all he can to ‘restrict’ her life and
confine her to her parental house. He objects his wife when the latter reminds him about
Maya’s inevitable separation after her marriage thus,

“She will live here and run the business and I’ll arrange a husband for her
who lives with us.” (Roy)

Thus, Maya’s father is able to disguise his ‘anxious attitude and need to dominate’ his
daughter through his ‘apparent love’, ‘transforming’ her into a ‘helpless invalid’ that
Maya herself realizes later,

“I can see now that my father sensed even then that he was losing me, and
everything he did was an attempt somehow to corral me, to reclaim our
lost days of easy happiness when I was a willing disciple and he my
unquestioned master.” (Roy)

What Maya’s heart cries for is self-love — self-love must not be confused with
narcissistic attitude, as both are different,

“It is ironic that narcissism has come to mean self-love, when it in fact the
case that the worst narcissistic have no cohesive self to love, which is the
source of their problem.” (Green, p. 58)

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She feels lack of self-esteem, self confidence under her father’s overpowering
dominance. She wants an environment for “feeling myself restored limb by limb, muscle
by muscle”. (Roy, The Folded, p. 64) Expecting her beloved Michael will understand her,
she elopes with him defying her family, socio-religious norms, but all to find, “His need
for the mountains was as powerful as his need for me.” (The Folded, p. 7) Inexperienced
Michael’s obsessions for mountains take him away from her ‘for forever’. His death is
unbearable and means ‘loss of common knowledge’, for he was the only comfort of her
distressed heart. It results in the onset of her isolation because ‘involvement and
affection’ for the bereaved, after the death of a loved one, do not disappear but belong ‘to
the private domain’ of the surviving people such a death a blow of their loved one. They
have to adjust to the demands of the ‘organized society’. They have to delve into the
‘calculating attitude’ instead of expressing their emotions, for,

“Although the support and sympathy of relatives and friends is helpful to

bereaved persons, coming to terms with the loss of a loved person who
was very close to one can only partially be shared. The process is
essentially private, because it is so much concerned with intimacies which
were not, and could not be, shared with others when the deceased partner
was alive.” (Storr, p. 31)

The process takes place in the ‘solitary recesses of the individual mind’. These feelings of
‘subjective isolation’ mostly ‘manifest itself in fear, restlessness, and emptiness’.
(Hortulanus, p. 33) In the light of Storr’s and Hortulanus’ words, one incident from
Maya’s life immediately after Michael’s death can be taken for instance, in which Maya
‘pushed’ a woman’s hand away who comes to sympathize with her. (The Folded, p. 10)

However, Maya and June (The Foreigner) have a need for “a father figure”. For this
reason, Maya feels closer to Diwan Sahib. June, whose father left his family forever, in
order to overcome her insecurities, wants to fulfill that need by internalizing the voice of
her father by marrying Sindi Oberoi. She wants to supplement that gap; therefore, she
keeps imploring him, “Let’s get married, Sindi. For God’s sake, let’s get married. I am so
scared we might break up and all that we have would be lost.” (Joshi, p. 107)

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 To put an end to the sense of insecurity, June wants to turn her ‘meaningless’ love
affair into a consequential significant union of souls, a marriage which gives a sense of
permanence, stability. She is afraid of losing Sindi; he is, of involvement. June’s thought
of any kind of union with Sindi is hence absurd, self-contradictory. The union she is
yearning for anticipates existential predicament. How incompatible their marriage can be
can be drawn from the following Sindi’s detached views and beliefs,

“Marriage wouldn’t help, June. We are alone, both you and I. That is the
problem. And our alonessmust be resolved from within. You can’t send
two persons through a ceremony and expect that their aloneness will
disappear.” (Joshi, The Foreigner, p. 107)

And as earlier he told June,

“…marriage was more often a lust for possession than anything else.
People got married just as they bought new cars. And then they gobbled
each other up.” (Joshi, p. 60)

Nor do Sindi’s views on love let June draw meaning in her life, for his pessimistic
perspective on love does not bolster confidence in their inter-relationship. Sindi
contradicts love that ends up in marriage as,

“…love that wanted to possess was more painful than no love at all…one
should be able to love without wanting to possess. Otherwise you end up
by doing a lot more harm than good. One should be able to detach oneself
from the object of one’s love.” (Joshi)

Even though Sindi does not seem, in these words, attached to June, Sindi does feel to be
caught in a predicament of duality of contradiction in his own beliefs. He wants to
practice indifference, detachment, wants to remain isolated from emotional ties, but at the
same time does not want to lose June to Babu. It happens just because of the vicious
cycle of his so-called philosophical statements. He becomes discomforted at ‘little
Japanese woman’s words about Babu and June in love with each other.” Sindi says, “She
said something which shook me out of my stupor.” (p. 89) He was ‘taken aback’ by

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Babu’s falling in love with June. The following extract expresses how difficult it is for
Sindi to accept losing June,

“I began to wonder what I would do if what the little woman said was true.
I thought of a number of alternatives but finally I decided that there was
very little that I could do. It was bound to happen sooner or later. If not
Babu, it would have been someone else; it was bound to happen. One
simply had to prepare as one prepared for death. In a way it was like a
small death. (Joshi, he Foreigner, p. 90)

Sindi’s dilemma lies between ‘losing’ and ‘completely’ losing June. Since he wants to
free himself from emotional entanglements, he wants to free her be; but at the same time,
does not want to lose her. He once responded saying ‘nothing wrong’ to June’s question,
“What is wrong with possessing or being possessed?” Yet, what makes him
uncomfortable is the same that is, being an object of someone’s desires, smiles and looks.
He dreads taking the pain of such union. While Sindi’s predicament lies in being dreadful
of being possessed, involved in someone’s likes and dislikes, Som’s is in going to great
lengths to possess Anuradha. Anuradha’s ‘stubborn refusal’ to come to Bombay,
especially for him, is something that his ‘faculties found it impossible to grapple with’.
(Joshi, The Last, p. 142) He becomes ‘angry’ and stares out in ‘bewilderment’. For
Anuradha, as she becomes an object of competition that he wants to win from Aftab, he
puts his ‘shares’ at stake. He sacrifices ‘profit and practicality to soothe his ego’. Mr.
Thapar who has worked for thirty five years in his company, and ‘ten years with’ him,
warns him on ‘being unbusinesslike’ in making an unrealistic business decision, but he
does not listen and wants to go to any extent to possess Anuradha from Aftab. He is
determined ‘to go through with this to the end’. (Joshi, p. 148) Successive success of
owning companies has made it difficult for him to accept defeat. Anuradha has become,
due to his obsessive mind, like a business enterprise for him. He is afraid of losing her.
The thought of failure has begun to annoy him, it has ‘exponentially increased’ as,

“In my heart, I knew my fears had nothing to do with my body or with my

nerves. I was afraid, I knew, because Anuradha had left me.” (Joshi, 149)

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He devises ‘every possible stratagem’, first to win her, and if he doesn’t, ‘to destroy her’.
(Ibid, p. 153)

Suicide. (Babu, Bhaskar, Myshkin, Lippi, Gayatri). Suicide is ‘one truly serious
philosophical problem’ (Camus, p. 5). An individual wants to put an end to his/ her life
due ‘intolerable circumstances’, ‘negative emotions’, feelings of humiliation, disgrace,
etc., but certainly not due to ‘mental disorder’, though for ages suicide has been dealt as
‘a social phenomenon’. In all the past centuries, what has been overlooked is ‘the
relationship between individual thought and suicide’. If Camus’ hypothesis is held a
‘rarely is suicide committed through reflection’ (Ibid., p. 6), suicide is an ‘impulsive act’
in the face of life’s experience. Therefore, what were held the ‘most obvious’ ‘causes for
a suicide’ cannot verify the crisis in general for the subtle step of the individual. A man’s
reaching the point where is death the only solution cannot be set with a priori before the
act itself. Only his monologue sets the ‘gestures commanded by existence’. He reaches
the precise point in his life, on which he no longer wants to ‘be misled by the confusions,
divorces, and inconsistencies’, and wants to withdraw from the contradictions. His
thoughts no longer hesitate to anticipate utter meaninglessness, hopelessness, and the
‘fatal evasion’ that a man’s life has in store. The thought to put an end to life is settled in
his mind, which eludes all the trickeries accentuated by the attachment to life. What is
once speculated cannot be easily betrayed.

Josh’s character Babu Khemka (The Foreigner) with impulsion ‘hit’ his car to ‘an
overpass at high speed’ (p. 138) and thus, puts an end to his distress, caused by the
seeming June’s disloyalty and betrayal, as Babu’s letter to his sister Sheila in India reads.
What extrinsically causes Babu to committing suicide is the disclosure of June and
Sindi’s intimate affair. Though it is indisputable that the disclosure at that precise instant
heightened his heart-rending anguish, yet what is implicit in his suicide is that he wanted
something more intensive than mere sexual jealousy to become conclusively intoxicated
to bid adieu to the world. There are several psycho-existential effects that challenge Babu
before he reaches the conclusion of attempting suicide such as his incompetence. He fears
humiliation; his father’s expectations; he fears losing inheritance; above all, he
experiences a sense of isolation in June and Sindi’s company. Babu is incapable of being

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self-reliant. In America, he remains dependent on Sindi, for he thinks Sindi understand
him, for Sindi does not disparage him. But Babu in his last letter to Sheila mentions two
things that can interpret matters he feels caught in: one, he has a sneaking “suspicion that
she (June, my addition) might be carrying on with another man”, and the other, he senses
that Sindi, too, belittles him as he (Babu) writes about Sindi, “If only he would, for once,
not laugh at me and give advice.” Before writing this letter to Sheila, he seems to have
uttered all his distress in silent monologue, a monologue in which he tries to analyse his
thoughts, a monologue of single combat which is the outcome of internalizing Sindi’s
words such as,

“Why don’t you grow up for a change? Why do you have to come in here
every few weeks and cry like a child over your studies? If you don’t have
the guts to do anything about it you might as well face the facts. You are
not in the fairy land where you get what you want just by wishing it. It is
high time you ceased to be an innocent little rich-father’s-boy and got
down doing something…I don’t care a damn of what happens to you or to
him…Go home and hide your face in your pillow. Don’t come to me for
advice…You mean anything to me.” (Joshi, The Foreigner, pp. 130-1)

Sindi’s words block the way for Babu for any future support from him. It could be
reconciled; there was place for reconciliation in their hearts, which could help Babu
restore himself, which would alleviate matters. But what heightens instead is Sindi being
too engaged in oral examinations for Ph. D. For Babu, the chance has played its role.
With the passage of time, his defense mechanisms become weaker. Confusions, mental
conflict, anger, irritation, suspicion, and then, June’s candid disclosure (on Babu’s
insistence),

“that as matter of fact she had been sleeping with me and, what’s more,
she had been doing that for a year before she met him.” (Joshi, p. 147)

It was enough to drive him ‘to the point of madness’. No more doubts, only surety, surety
as if he had been waiting for long, (reference to the letter) “If I could only be sure, Sheila,
if I could only be sure.” (Joshi, p. 50) Thus, the letter gives hint to Babu’s suicide. Babu

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becomes disillusioned and comes to realize that it can only be absurd to stay in love with
June when her heart does not beat for him, her love is out of pity, and he can never
supplant Sindi’s place in her eyes. Sindi ‘enjoy the sensation he creates’ in June and
Babu’s relationship. A number of times he gives thought to the incompatibility of their
relationship. For instance, Sindi knew,

“That Babu would not get from June what he wanted, and the realization
would come so late that he would be helpless to do anything about it.”
(Joshi, The Foreigner, p. 98)

And,

“I trembled to think what June would do if she suddenly discovered one

day that she had married a kid.” (Joshi, p. 131)

If it really disturbs (‘trembled’) him to see June-Babu predicament, what disturbed him
when June was asking for getting married with him? Sindi is suspended between the two
poles of duality of his mind. To return to Babu, although reasons multiply, what hastens
Babu’s mental breakdown is the “exploration of the destructive power of sexual jealousy
in the disintegrating marriage of” (Birch, p. 473) June and Babu. With the exploration, he
does not see ‘profound reason for living’; he grows ‘pale’, ‘falters for a while as if he
were going to have a fit’, leaves ‘the flat’ and drives off ‘blindly in his car’, and just a
lapse of few hours, Babu is found dead (though the textual silence on exactness of
manner of his death) there is ample Police-Sindi discussion that evidences his death as
suicide.

However, suicide is not necessarily confined to the cases of undermining ego, lack of
confidence or being contactless. In such cases, the individual takes shelter isolated
existence. A sense of meaninglessness, especially if haunting the mind of a successful
‘millionaire-industrialist’ Bhaskar-like-men (The Last Labyrinth), compels one to scan
life in general. One is, at a precise instant of life, bound to scrutinize one’s feelings of
unpleasantness and uneasiness, consequent upon routinized ways of living. Bhaskar never
pauses to analyse the negative consequences of his ‘undefined hunger for possession’.
Perpetuation isolates him from his self. He says,

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 “At thirty five, I was a worn out weary man incapable of spontaneous
feelings.” (Joshi, The Last, p. 12)

His hunger for possession isolates him from his family, dislocates his own self, and
leaves him disturbed, restless. Som’s addiction for cornering companies ‘raises some
pertinent questions about life’ and its meaning. He does want to overcome his sense of
discontent and emptiness. For this, He becomes ‘possessive, of business and a woman’.
But the fact is worth reflecting on that abundance instills a sense of absurdity. He forgets
to see himself as a ‘free agent’, and through oscillation from business to women and
women to business, comes to feel himself as ‘machine-like drones’. He gets fed up with
the incessant inclination for ‘I want, I want’. All his ‘actions, desires, and reasons’ give
the impression of being futile, hopeless, absurdity. Life begins, after a crucial stage, to
appear as mysterious as a ‘labyrinth’. He feels trapped and finds no way out of this maze
of life. Since he is skeptical — skepticism he has inherited from his father — social
institutions such as religion, family cannot support him in his predicament. Among his
own people, he feels perceived isolation. ‘The orchestra of discontent’ (p. 10) in business
isolates him from reality. The moment he gets chance to be in the world, to be in the
company of the ordinary people other than the business minded, he says it tranquilizes,
soothes his mind as,

“The open air, the chit-chat of tourists, the twilight quietened my nerves.”
(Joshi, p. 10)

Som has exchanged his soul to business ‘enterprise’. His ceaseless preoccupation has
negative effects on his mind all the same. Business activities begin to bore and irritate
him. His total submission has made him in the real world, ‘grotesque, naked, distorted’
(p. 22). What purpose does he set in his life by this inhuman-destructive –cry for owning?
Bhaskar says about the drive that makes him so possessive,

“Fame! That bewitching siren song, I knew, had wrecked better ships than
mine. Yet, I intended to pursue her. Better be damned than not to be
mentioned at all. Fame was factual, quantitative. Almost quantitative. You
knew you were first or tenth or sixteenth. There were the photographs in

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 the newspapers and excerpts from what you said and the awed, envying,
looks as men moved aside to let you pass. All this was fame.” (Joshi, The
Last L, p. 70)

Notwithstanding his awareness of the negative consequences of the power behind his
restlessness, he wants to ‘pursue’ fame. Rockwell rightly remarks upon how ‘fame
addiction’ isolates one,

“Fame is a dangerous drug” and it “can closely mirror substance abuse

symptomology — and over time, results in actual substance abuse,
isolation, mistrust, dysfunctional adaptation to fame, and then, too often
untimely death.” (Rockwell Online)

It alters the person’s being-in-the world’. It splits the character of the individual into
‘public self’ (a false self) and his authentic self. It makes a person “lonely, not
secure…and familiarity that breeds inappropriate closeness.” (Rockwell) For that reason,
the psychiatrists tell Som that he is ‘insecure’. (p. 71) And if fame does not hasten natural
death, it certainly if not tackled, forces one to confine one within walls or to commit
suicide. So, for Som, meaninglessness in life, pointless fame, his sense of powerlessness
at the failure of not winning over Anuradha all reach a climax of suicidal crisis. Despite
dissimilarities, what puts Som and Babu on the parallel lines is that their mental
breakdown is intensified by a woman whether she is June or Anuradha; that they want to
possess a woman (Babu also wants to possess June, for he never thinks her equal to his
status. He condescends to June about their marriage union as the latter later tells Sindi
“that I should consider myself fortunate to be marrying into his house.” (Joshi, p. 138));
that both are of patriarchal mindset that can never let them see a woman other than a
thing; that both underestimate themselves before reaching the climax of contemplating
suicide; and that both undergo ‘active suicidal ideation’, which is distinct from Sindi’s
‘passive suicidal ideation’. For example, Sindi once told his uncle that he ‘was
contemplating since’ he ‘was tired of living’ (Joshi, p. 141), and Sindi’s uncle laughs at
the thought. Passive ideation is one, in which a person has merely a death wish; while in
active ideation a person not only thinks about attempting suicide but has ‘the intent to
commit suicide’. Anuradha also attempts suicide twice. Anuradha is a woman who has

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seen in her life unbearable suffering and misery. It’s utterly shocking for Bhaskar to
know about Anuradha from Dr. K as,

“Illegitimate child, insane mother, no home. Molested as a child. Wintness

to murders, suicides, every conceivable evil of the world. Can you imagine
what a childhood she must have had?” (Joshi, The Last L, p. 188)

She experiences ‘such desperate loneliness’ until her aunt puts ‘her on the screen’.
Camera becomes, for her, a way to deal with her perceived isolation. She directs her
attention towards camera in order to infuse meaning in life. She begins to be loved, and
adored by the audience. Through camera, “she turned outward instead of inward.”
(Green, p. 147) And then, Aftab and Green enter her life. She enjoys ‘happiness for a
couple of years’ before being prepared for unforeseen evantualities, death of Aftab’s
nervous breakdown, fading of Anuradha’s looks. This was enough for her eyes to see,
enough to endure, she attempts to ‘kill herself’ (The Last L, p. 189). Though she hides
her sorrows, they come on her face. Som keeps saying she is ‘different’. She, as says,
‘looked thoughtful and tired’ (p. 58). The following extract from the novel reveals much
to read the symptoms as,

“In the Blue room, on the low divan, staring into the vacancy of the
crepuscular darkness, sat Anuradha.” (Joshi, p. 38)

Particularly, when she has already attempted suicide, her sitting alone in a dark room all
alone ‘staring into vacancy’ is significant to hold one’s attention. But Aftab who knows
about her past, does not become alert. He seems to normalize her ways of living. Aftab
remains either unmindful or deliberately silent about the symptoms by her state of
isolation. Why does he remain unmindful ‘that remains mystery’. (Joshi, p. 84) Her
second attempt to ‘kill herself’, in which she ‘cuts her wrists’ (Ibid.) is also mysterious,
for Aftab except telling Som on phone about her serious illness does not tell anything
else, and her aunt in whose house Anuradha has been staying, is also unaware. By Aftab
and her aunt’s inattentiveness and avoidance, it is apparent ‘that Anuradha is in the
desperate need of emotional support’. Hortulanus makes the right observation of the
condition, in which she is thus,

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 “People who do not maintain stable and meaningful relationships with
each other and have no one to turn to in case of an emergency end up
pretty much on their own. This often leads to serious personal problems
such as depression, low self-esteem, social problems, and physical
symptoms.” (Hortulanus, p. 25)

Thus, they develop not only physical but mental symptoms as well. They feel ‘cut off’
from their own life. Her ‘loneliness’ is due to emotional isolation, not due to social
isolation; while Som’s is due to social isolation, and because he does not maintain ties
with anyone, social isolation, in turn, results in emotional detachment, and perceived
isolation.

Roy’s two characters, Myshkin and Lipi (All the Lives We Never Lived), too, lacks
instrumental as well as emotional attachment. The former is subject to childhood event;
the latter, to major life event i.e. death of the partner. Lipi has to make an ‘adjustment’ to
the ‘demands of organized society’, the demands that forced Gayatri to escape. In the
hope of providing a family to herself and her daughter Ila, and reliving an honourable life
after the death of her husband, Lipi remarries Nek Chand, but only to re-experience her
past life from the point of view of a woman, to be humiliated and avoided. Even with
Myshkin, she has to be meek and submissive, let alone before Nek as her husband in
contrast to assertive Gayatri. There is an incident when Ila disturbs and spoils Nek’s
papers and typewriter, to understand how remarries makes a woman, to her disbelief, “a
glorified maid” as,

“Lipi looked at my father as if she were scared and yet furious, her eyes
ablaze. ‘What shall I do?’ She repeated. ‘I had only left her there for a
minute.’” (Roy, p. 190)

And, the following excerpt shows how rudely he treats Lipi and how she has to repress
her feelings,

“Surely you have some sense. Ila will ruin the concert. She cries so often,
Arjun will hate that. You wait at home with her.” (Roy)

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And as he says,

“It’s a nice thought, but you see, she wears only handspun saris. Didn’t the
two of us vow to live our lives with simplicity, purity — Lipi? All this…
He gestured at the necklace and the sari. All this is not for us.” (Roy, All
the Lives, p. 186)

Contrary to her expectations, she suffers imposed isolation in Nek’s house. Nek is self-
assured and does not respect her emotions. He gives silent treatment and constantly talks
over her. She is in his house, ‘a glorified maid’, like Meera in Nirmal’s house. Lonely,
depressed, emotionally isolated. She thinks of putting an end to her affliction by
committing suicide. She sets fire to herself, but was saved. (All the Lives, p. 203) In
Muntazir in Nek’s house, she,

“…spoke less and less, watchful, timid, retreating into her own inner
world as if she were afraid that words, once out of her mouth, would come
back sharpened, to stab her. She and Ila were close right till her last illness
and at times the two of them gave the impression of being a pair of brown
sparrows together in whispers, stopping abruptly if anyone else, especially
my father, entered the room.” (Roy, p. 189)

She remains mindful of words that they may not hurt anyone. She remains tight-lipped.
She knows that Nek’s relationship with her is out of pity, not of love or of attachment. No
bond of emotional attachment ensues.

Myshkin Rozerio speculates death, instead of ideating about himself. As it obviates

the fact that a boy child feels more attached to his mother than father, Myshkin is ‘given
to fits of melancholy as a child’ at his mother’s disappearance’ by the magician. Life and
death both are facts, though we develop aversion to death. We want to prevent it by all
that is in our control even to the extent of ‘great costs’ that are,

“…attached to that evasion and even that and even that evasion
perpetuates our misery. We are very conscious of our life, and for that
reason death leaves us perplexed. The thought of impending death instills

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 in us a sense of absurdity, even though we are aware that death releases us
‘from the horrors of continued existence’. (Benatar, p. 93)

Yet, the thought of death itself makes it a human predicament. If death is a fact, why does
Myshkin agonize over it thus?

“I was given to fits of melancholy as a child…I would be in tears,

agonized by the thought that my mother, my father, my grandfather and
Dinu were all going to die some day, leaving me alone (my emphasis).
How the concept had entered my head I do not know, but ever since then I
have wondered when it is that a child becomes aware of death. Is it at
some precise moment? Does the idea enter our consciousness along with
life itself, at the time of conception? Do we learn about it from watching
ants and grasshoppers die? Or from losing someone else?” (Roy, All the
Lives, p. 43)

Indeed, death has no negative effect on ‘the person who dies’, but indisputably it leaves
unendurable pain for the bereaved, who has to suffer the non-sharable loss of the
departed person’. The negative feelings associated with death manifest in anticipation
about it. The horror comes from the unforeseen manner of death. Death is always our
first-hand-experience, and what we anticipate is out of our borrowed experience. It is
‘bad’ because it deprives one of one’s intrinsic goods such as desires, for one considers
the fulfillments of those desires one’s intrinsic goods. Myshkin’s agony is two-fold: at
times his mother’s letters hinting at her aliveness and his patriarchal mind-set that does
not let him reach her until he is in his sixties.

Old Age and Isolation. In India, it’s a matter of proud belief that, compared to
European countries, the grownups are ‘treated in a much better manner’: respected and
cared. However, generalizing does not often give a true picture of the condition. Usually,
sampling is done on non-probability method as (the reason behind the faulty
‘representation’ is that)

“Our primary criteria for selecting cases are that they are easy to reach ,
convenient or readily available…when we select cases based on conveni-

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 ence, our sample can seriously misrepresent features in the entire
population…do not represent everyone…tend to pick people who look
‘normal’…and avoid people who are unattractive, disabled, impoverish,
elderly (my emphasis), or inarticulate.” (Newman, p. 248)

Mehdi Momin, too, similarly puts in study on the ‘Plight and Predicament’ thus,

“Unfortunately, for all our talk-about ‘respecting age, we regard and

wrinkles and grey hair with a measure of horror. When we talk of our
demographic challenge, it is inevitably about ageing. Who will bear the
cost of longevity? Do we have the institutional structures in place? What is
the burden of caring for the elderly?” (Momin, The Independent. Com)

In the same study, Momin details a number of reasons for the ‘miserable conditions of
many older persons’ such as: ‘lack of cross-generation interaction, ‘prevalence of nuclear
families’, ‘age discrimination’, western impact, younger generation ‘losing the age-old-
custom’, ‘puberty’, unemployment, ‘lack of education’, ‘isolation’, etc.; while the serious
repercussions, of inattentiveness towards them is in ‘the key areas’ such as ‘physical and
mental health: community care, housing’, inaccessibility to ‘services’, etc. Therefore, in
the light of Momin’s study on Bangladesh, Joshi’s and Roy’s fictional elderly can be
studied, compared and the plight can be highlighted for taking preemptory steps.

The young generation remains unconcerned about their elderly. They do not respect and
think they are advanced, more knowledgeable, more experienced than the old generation.
They believe what Khalil Gibran poeticizes about ‘children’ in his collection ‘The
Prophet’,

“You (the elderly, my addition) may strive to be like them (the youth,
addition), but seek not to make them like you.” (Gibran, p. 23)

Their intervention in family altercation between their son and daughter-in-law only
intensifies matters rather than appeasing. They feel it’s not favourable for them to
interfere. Before their married sons, they have to be tight-lipped in their own house. They
become a prey to perceived isolation. Such a person is Myshkin’s Dada (All the Lives…)

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who is forced to be silent by his son Nek Chand’s attitude. Before his eyes, his family
falls apart, but feels helpless. He fears losing his own honour. There are three situations,
in which he remains silent, as mute as a teddy bear. But if he braved his heart enough to
interfere, he would confront dishonor as during the dinner time altercation between Nek
and Gayatri, as Myshkin observes, Dr. Rozario does not speak a single word, for fear of
being retorted, My grandfather shifted uneasily in his chair and made as if to get up”, (p.
103) but the moment he sees Nek smiling, “Dada heaved a sigh of relief…” (P. 104)
Whenever there is an argument in the house, he behaved like his grandson, avoiding
involvement and showing signs of confusions on his countenance as far as he has to stay
with them as Myshkin observe, “Dada felt as much at a loss as I did when my parents
fought this way at the dining table.” (p. 103) He does not understand his mysterious son.
Nek remarries after Gayatri’s escape and introduces to the house Lipi and Ila (her
daughter) as his new family. Believing that Lipi may be feeling isolated in a new family,
and there has been a substantial reason behind his ideation, for neither Nek nor Myshkin,
Dada observes, behaving well, he buys her a gift to make her happy but remains unaware
of his son’s disapproval. The following excerpt from ‘All the Lives We Never Lived’
shows how Dada’s submissiveness in Nek’s presence when the latter objects,

“It occurred to me that nobody had given her a wedding gift”, Dada said.
“A father-in-law is supposed to bless his daughter-in-law, with a big gift.”
(Roy, p. 186)

Dada has been silent when Nek’s disapprobation to dance music and painting precipitates
Gayatri’s isolation; Dada remains silent when Lipi sets fire to herself; dada watches
silently when Nek comes dragging Lipi’s daughter ‘Ila by one arm, her legs half of the
ground’ (Roy, p. 188) just because she has spoiled with milk his ‘books, cheque-books,
papers’. He does not scold Nek that makes Lipi look ‘at my grandfather as if she were
scared and yet furious, her eyes ablaze’ (Roy, p. 190). Dada is watching everything as
silently as Kananbala. Nek behaves with Lipi exactly like Nirmal when the latter’tried to
punish his daughter by descending to the level of the child’. (Roy, An Atlas, p. 135) With
the passage of time, Gayatri and Lipi become subject to his own arbitrariness. The family
environment becomes tense, the happiness of the house are lost in eclipse, for Nek

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‘rapidly turned into a censorious headmaster at home driving Dada to stay at the clinic for
ever longing hours…’ (Roy) Dada’s silence proves to be more upsetting to the family
then Gayatri’s isolation. It drives Lipi to committing suicide, but Dada needn’t act like
Mr. Khemka or Maya’s father. Their restrictions too shatter family because while Maya
has a sense of negation of her true self before her father, Babu destroys himself under the
pressure of his father’s morality. Babu remains innocent for the pragmatism life actually
demands as Sindi says to Mr. Khemka,

“Your morality was nice for India. It didn’t work in America. That’s why I
say you gave him a wrong set of memories.” (Joshi, The Foreigner, p.
119)

He knew that his poor performance in his studies, as he has failed ‘all the courses’, is
going to incur his father’s reproachful looks or even his father ‘might never want to see’
him again. He is too scared to express his feelings before his father as he writes to Sheila,

“Besides the exam there are many other things. I can’t even talk to you
about them. Everywhere I turn I am faced with my deficiencies. When I
consider how much you all expect of me, my heart sinks when Father
writes to me every week. He expects so much of me. Oh, Didi, I don’t
think I can ever fulfil his expectations…Don’t show this letter to father.”
(Joshi, p. 48)

Mr. Khemka, Mr. Biswas, and Maya’s father all impose their expectations on their sons
and daughter respectively. But unbeknownst to them, their expectations transform into
‘demand’ which has negative impact on the personality of Babu, Billy and Maya. They
experience negative emotions such as “anger, anxiety, or depression. It is sometimes
called emotional instability.” (Taslima, p. 3) Mr. Biswas wants Billy to opt for
engineering, for he (Mr. Biswas) “thinks man is governed by only engineering and law
and nothing else, rather a disgraceful point of view for a justice” (Joshi, p. 25). Like Mr.
Khemka and Mr. Biswas, Maya’s father also practices control over her, which results in
their controlling their ‘inner world’. It can be termed in psychology as ‘perceived
psychological control’ that has serious repercussions on the child behavior such as

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irritation, annoyance, aggression, ‘anti-social behavior, anxiety, depression, isolation,
self-esteem. Despair, etc.’ (Dentinkya, 2019) which, in turn, end up, their children’s sepa-

ration, leaving them surviving on their own. Maya’s ‘stubborn refusal’, Billy’s ‘hatred’,
and Babu’s ‘fear’ have their roots in the parental regulation of ‘control’.

Isolation: not Always a Societal Problem. A person’s longing for self-isolation can
also be problematic for him/her in the old age. For example, Amulya Babu and Bikas
Babu ‘choose to live a withdrawn life’ (Hortulanus, p. 247). They, unbeknownst to
themselves, keep ‘a negative and fearful attitude toward life’, which becomes their ‘self-
imposed prison’ (Green, p. 234). Both build their mansions in the ‘wilderness’ far away
from the city’s crowd and noise, hence remote from the ‘instrumental support’. Their
‘yearning for isolation’ makes them so obstinate that they do not move from their houses,
even though their persistence has adverse effects on their dependents. Bikas Babu builds
his house in the close proximity of the river and during one heavy rainfall; he has to
confront his own ‘yearning’, obstinacy. He becomes conscious of the impending doom,
of his conceit, and of his unyielding belief,

“The river will make this house its own. What are these grand houses but
arrogance? My grandfather would boast of the Italian marble. That marble
will be the river’s bed now…the arrogance, the arrogance.” (Roy, An
Atlas, p. 74)

However, he continues living there drawing hopes even during calamity and for Shanti’s
concerns he normalizes thus,

“There is nothing to think about. Every monsoon we go through this

nonsense. As did my father and grandfather. In a week or two the rain will
lessen and then the water will go down. Just a few dry days in between the
rains will be enough.” (Roy, p. 71)

‘This nonsense’ as a matter of fact devours Shanti. Having given birth to a daughter to be
Bakul later, she dies due to lack of maternity care. Even after his daughter’s death, he
does not move from the sinister place. He feels too attached to leave the house. He spends

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his old age in the same house all alone, confined to one room, in which Bikas Babu ‘lies
due to his old age and sickness’. All his life Bikas Babu holds his house as an object of
pride, as Potol Babu remarks, “a fine house that future generation will see and admire”.
For the construction, he ‘hired and English firm for his problem’ (p. 68), an ‘engineer’
who ‘got his degree in Scotland’, Except Ashwin Mullick’s house, it remains a rare
beauty in Manoharpur. But it’s well said that from time’s sickle nothing can escape, be it
‘massive’ architectures or ‘grand iron’ gates. It is time’s working wonders that the house,
once an object of admiration, turns into ‘the worst’ of ‘many old, ill-maintained houses’
while its creator, equal to ‘disabled furniture’ as Aangti Babu briefly puts when he is
ready to purchase the house,

“We’ll take the house, but we want it empty. Please get rid of the furniture
— and the old man, of course. Let me know when he goes. I can’t wait
long. Don’t want money locked up.” (Roy, An Atlas, p. 212)

It is such a constitution of the world that young generation turns cold shoulder to the
aged. They even dehumanize rather than provide support to those who have been
incapacitated by old age. Aangti has seen Bikas Babu’s senile condition, he has seen his
sickness. He wants only to confirm from the seller,

“The old man is in the bed room, isn’t he? He is sick, isn’t he? I insist! I
must see!” (Roy, p. 211)

But his confirmation and insistence have nothing to do with Bikas Babu’s senility; he just
does not want to get involved in a muddle. He needs a deal above board, for he suspects
the seller’s vested interest behind selling the house secretly. So he wants to see the actual
owner of the house in person. But Aangti never considers it fit to talk to Bikas Babu
directly. What detains him from personally talking to him is the latter’s senility; he has
taken cognizance of the seller’s plotting, as Mukunda later says,

“It turned out that the house belonged to a very old gentleman, apparently
heirless, and now very ill. We were speaking to a local man who had made
himself indispensable to the ailing owner as a kind of nurse and manager
rolled down into one during the past year or so. Now that the old man was

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 so unwell, his nurse wanted to sell the house before some inconvenient
heir appeared. It was rumoured there was a possible candidate” (Roy)

The above-mentioned excerpt delineates people truthfully. The reason behind man’s love
and care of the aged and senile Bikas Babu is that he concerned that he may lose the
liability for the property if he does not make a great show of affection. The entire
Manoharpur knows that he has no heir from his immediate family and if they know about
his daughter’s daughter, they could never suppose her — from her point of view as a
female — to be claiming for the property rights, for daughters claiming a share in
parental property was inconceivable even till mid-1930s. (for more detail, see chapter III
‘Women and Isolation’) Bikas Babu’s ‘senility’ and being heirless attracts rapacious
pretenders to become claimants. They justify their greed for the house by ostentatious
nurture and love for him. Nirmal, Bikas Babu’s son-in-law, comes to know how, in
different ways, people try to establish connection with him (Bikas Babu) and his house.
He writes a letter to Mukunda asking his favour,

“What I hear is that some others have collected at the house to lay claim to
it — land and houses seem to bring out the rapacious in everyone. There is
an old retainer who says the house is morally his, a neighbor who claims it
as repayment for loans my father-in-law has apparently taken from him
over the years, and a property dealer from Calcutta who has sent his men
because apparently he paid some money for it in a fraudulent deal some
years ago.” (Roy, An Atlas, p. 286)

But, to some extent, Bikas Babu is also responsible for his state of isolation and
loneliness ‘in his old age’. Isolation is, even though ‘voluntary’, ‘associated with a higher
risk of death in older people’ (BBC Online), for they cannot look after themselves so
well, and for ageing limits their mobility, isolation can exacerbate health conditions, and
hence attracts ‘early death’. As the BBC report mentions, it may not necessarily be
perceived isolation, that is, one feeling loneliness and depression. Bikas Babu’s state can
be categorized as social isolation. His neighbours are greedy for his house. Though it is
the fact that he does not have his immediate family, yet he does not move to his distant
relatives. What makes his mobility ‘tough’ for him is his ‘attached sentiments’ to his

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house, ‘comforts’ and property holdings, and a fairly happy life, and he thinks, he will
never be adjusting ‘to new environs in the cities’. (The Hindu Online) So he continues

living in Manoharpur in the face of unfavourable conditions of the environment that

hastens his death as Nirmal says,

“My father-in-law passed away, perhaps ten days or so ago, I cannot be

sure — he died alone, away from family, but that’s how he wished it, and I
cannot pretend at this stage of my life that I was particularly attached to
him. I had always blamed him, justly or not, for my wife’s death.” (Roy,
An Atlas, p. 286)

While Bikas Babu dies because he does not have any surviving member from his
immediate family, which can be termed as social isolation, Kananbala’s death is because
of emotional isolation. By contrast, her death leaves a disturbing effect on the mind, for
she dies one night without her inattentive sons and daughter-in-law’s awareness: Kamal
(eldest son), Manjula (daughter-in-law), and Nirmal (younger). She has been confined to
one room since her husband Amulya was alive due to her fits of insanity, which results
from lack of spousal care and share. Amulya’s preoccupation with his factory severs
mutual caring ties between him and his wife. What exacerbates is his ‘yearning for
isolation’ and ‘silence that to Amulya meant repletion’ locks ‘Kananbala within a bell jar
she felt she could not prise open for air’ (p. 16), and, therefore, she keeps complaining,
“Why didn’t you ever ask me before we moved to this town’ (Songarh) (p. 19). But when
she internalizes her husband’s intractability, with a shrug of resignation, she isolates
herself to confront ‘silence’ of the house by adapting herself to introversion that, in turn,
has adverse mental effects. With the passing of time, she develops a mental illness,
known in medical science as ‘intermittent explosive disorder’ (IED), by which she
becomes incapable of controlling her ‘outburst’ of abusive language as she stuns Amulya
for the first time,

“You dandy, who’re you fucking these days? Is it a Brahmo lady in a

georgette sari?” (Roy, p. 40)

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Since she loses control during her ‘outbursts’, she speaks abusive language to whoever is
present before her. The other person was Shanti, a newly married girl and new to the
house. She says to her, “What a voice, you whore, why don’t you get a job on the street?”
Similarly, she says to Manjula the following day,

“Milk-white skin, hm, just like a marble cow. Nobody vainer than this
simpering slut in all of Songarh!” (Roy, An Atlas, p. 43)

They do not understand it as a matter of her illness; instead, they begin to feel bad,
backbite, and avoid her. Consequently, she is left to survive on her own; her daughter-in-
law, Manjula, who can provide emotional care, personal assistance, suffers from her own
affliction, affliction from being childless. Although she daren’t raise her head before
Amulya and Kananbala, she ‘speaks’ with ‘customary venom’, in their absence, to Shanti
whom she has taken in her confidence,

“Look, now the old woman’s got it made. She has us to serve her night
and day, and her husband’s discovered romance in his old age.” (Roy, p.
53)

Shanti who is newly married, hardly has time to analyze matters, to be close to her
mother-in-law, and so becomes victim to Manjula’s animus, her exciting dissension, and
her ‘customary venom’. Shanti begins to take Kanan’s words to her heart that not only
ends in the former’s detachment but it also distances Nirmal, the latter’s son. When
Nirmal worries his mother’s condition and wants to talk to Shanti about his mother as,

“I forget about her, that she’s imprisoned. I feel trapped if I’m stuck in the
house for a day and I forget she can never go out and meet other people or
see other things.” (Roy, p. 49)

she is too drunk with Manjula’s ‘venom’ to listen to his words about his mother. She “felt
fingers of annoyance twist her insides at Nirmal’s sudden change from her to his
mother.” By backbiting, Shanti has become too emotionally isolated to listen to Nirmal’s
warm feelings for his mother. She wants to ‘change the subject’. Kanan’s derogatory
remarks do not let others come close to her. She dies one night while her sons and

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daughter-in-law stay unaware of her death because they have become irregular even in
visiting her room, let alone sharing her feelings. How she has struggled the night and
called them for help, Bakul’s words below describe the situation,

“She died,” Bakul said before I could ask. “Just a couple of years after you
went away. One morning we found her — by her bed — on the floor. She
must have called in the night but nobody…I slept in the next room and I
didn’t hear anything. If I had, maybe…” (Roy, An Atlas, p. 228)

After Amulya’s death, she is neglected in her own house. Only Bakul is attached to
her. For her sons, she remains as the other. It is a fact that grandchildren are closer to
their grandparents It is not like that that Kanan does not speak offensive words to Bakul,
she just does not mind them. Her playfulness helps her creating a bond of attachment.
(For emotional effect, see Bollywood movie ‘Baghban’ written by B. R. Chopra et. al.,
and directed by Ravi Chopra) Kanan’s only emotional support was Amulya whose death
is precipitated by the disappearance of his son Nirmal after the death of the latter’s wife
Shanti. He lost his interest in what once used to give meaning. Consequently, he stopped
going out, even to the factory. Everything began to disappoint him, irritated him.
Negative thoughts worried him all the time. After Nirmal’s disappearance from Bikas
Babu’s house, his parents kept ‘staring down at’ Dulganj Road, ‘as if Nirmal would
materialize on it’, and though he tried to normalize in order to let other members of the
family not to be unhappy as,

“Amulya attempted to mimic normality: he went to his factory every day

as usual but sat his desk forgetting what had meant to do. He took out his
old Roxburgh and Hooker volumes and looked up illustrations of plants,
but the page stayed open on the spot for hours. It was as if a cold, dead
was squeezing him inside, making it difficult for him to breathe. He began
to dread leaving the house, and eventually stopped going to the factory.”
(Roy, P. 89)

With the troubled heart he leaves the world of sorrows. Nirmal does brave his heart to be
capable to accept his wife’s death and returns but only to mourn his father’s death. For

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Nirmal, it can be said that his father’s death is not perhaps sufficient to make a difference
in his life, for he still remains unconcerned about his mother’s condition, remains
emotionally distant from her. It is much later after losing his both parents and his old age
that he becomes conscious of contriteness and remorse-stricken. He tries to follow his
father’s footsteps, as he himself asserts,

“When I was young, I wasn’t interested in gardens either. My father was

so disappointed that nobody in the family was interested in the garden. We
just pretended we were, to make him happy.” (Roy, An Atlas, p. 229)

But after his death, Nirmal does truthfully what would make his father happy, as Bakul
tells Mukunda about Nirmal’s routine that has completely transformed as,

“Baba sits there every evening and talk to his trees. He says he has no time
for beds of annuls, its trees, vegetables, and fragrant creepers he wants.”
(Roy, pp. 228-9)

Both Amulya and Diwan Sahib (The Folded Earth) suffer the feelings of loneliness in
their old age also because they ‘wanted to be alone’ as in the state of self-willed isolation.
Aloneness, for them, means differently. What they want is not total isolation; instead, a
world of privacy, as in Diwan Sahib’s case, ‘a fiercely private’ (p. 30), surrounded by
someone to look after them, if there be need. For example, Amulya has his family to
support him emotionally, and similarly Diwan Sahib who, though remains unmarried
throughout his life, and is “not the kind of person who could share his life with anyone
else” (Ibid.), once introduces Maya to Veer as “the love of my life” (p. 25) and how his
words, as he further tell him further, are full fatherly care for her is noteworthy in the
followings,

“I could certainly shoot both her and myself if she so much as threatened
to leave my house for someone else’s.” (Roy, The Folded, p. 25)

Because, as Maya says,

“I was the only person he ever allowed close: to argue with, confide in,
joke with, or scold.” (Roy, p. 30)

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In old age, a person needs company not only for instrumental support but for emotional
attachment also, which women are more likely to provide than men (Aliyar Ahmadi, p.5).
It is also evidenced by Francis Bacon’s observation, “Wives are young men’s mistresses,
companions for middle age; and old men’s nurses.” (‘Of Marriage and Single Life’, lines:
46-7) Diwan Sahib feels more attached to Maya than anyone else. He feels more
comfortable with her than Veer, his own son, in sharing his confidential matters. He does
not give his letters and will to anyone else but her only. He wants to let Veer know about
his relationship with him through Maya only. He does not trust anyone else as he gives
rights to Maya to possess his confidential letters,

“My tenant, Ms Maya Secuira, is to inherit the papers pertaining to

Edward James Corbett. She is also to have the enclosed letters of Edwina
Mountbatten and J. L. Nehru.” (Roy, The Folded, p. 255)

These are the same much-sought-after-letters that he keeps concealed from every coveted
plagiarizer’s eyes. He trusts Maya more than those who have been already living with
him. It’s because of her sympathetic awareness and tolerance that she wins his trust. He
is, as aged, in the desperate need of company and she realizes her role, which results in
mutual understanding.

To return, do Kananbala and Amulya’s search and waiting for Nirmal not bracket Mr.
and Mrs. Biswas’s waiting and search? Dr. Billy’s sudden disappearance, like Nirmal’s,
leaves Mr. and Mrs. Biswas disturbed, despondent, and low-spirited. It’s always mother,
for whom the loss of her child is ‘a profound and psychological distress’. Son’s missing
or disappearance makes her stress more intense than the death of the child. They
experience “separation distress symptoms” such as intrusive thoughts about the lost. They
feel as if a part of themselves has died. They lose interest in everything and have a sense
of excessive irritability, bitterness, ‘inability to concentrate’, ‘obsessive thinking’, ‘hyper-
vigilance’.

Billy, Nirmal, and Maya all being unconcerned cut off their ties of affection with their
aged parents. What Billy and Maya want is no intervention in their private affairs from
their parents while Nirmal, dejected and disconsolate due to his wife Shanti’s death,

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disappear. They leave their parents grieving for the loss when they need them (Children
are the only support for the elderly) most. In old age, people project their expectations on

to their sons and daughters. Children are the fountain of happiness. They don’t even think
for once before leaving. What their mothers receive for motherly love and care is
unendurable affliction and anxiety. The following excerpt expresses the pathetic ‘cry’ of
the heart of Mrs. Biswas, Kananbala, and Maya’s mother at the ‘stubborn refusal’ of their
sons and daughter respectively to return and it also shows how their isolation hastens
their death (save Kanan who is also at the edge of insanity-cum-death), as Billy’s mother,

“Mother was too stunned even to speak. All I ever heard her say was what
happened to my Billy? Oh God, what have they done to my Bimal? When
I ever went to inquire after them, or report on any new developments, she
sat and listened with unblinking eyes, the intelligence of her face wiped
off overnight and replaced by idiotic stupor. She ate very little, and was
known to place her room for twenty-four hours at a stretch, she lost weight
steadily, until one Sunday morning early in winter, soon after the police
closed Billy’s case, she passed away.” (Joshi, The Strange Case, p. 63)

All that Billy leaves for her is troubled mind, thoughtlessness, despondency, and to some
extent, Kanan’s madness, Kanan who is more concerned about her son, Nirmal, than her
husband’s medical checkup. Kanan, who has ‘staring down at the empty road’ since she
has listened to Bikas Babu’s letter about Nirmal’s ‘disturbed’ state of mind and
subsequent disappearance, pays no heed to the doctor’s declaration of Amulya being
dead, and remains preoccupied with Nirmal’s memory. She “looked out” once again “of
the window and exclaimed with a happy laugh, “Isn’t that Nirmal coming down the
road?” (Roy, An Atlas, p. 89) Nirmal does come but after “seven months and sixteen
days”. His return is too late to see his father alive and mother who though already
struggling with her ‘outbursts’, in his absence develops her occasional fits into mental
disorder (IED, see above). Even after having been aware of the condition of his mother,
he does not stay at home, he return ‘briefly’ and then only ‘for short holidays’ (Roy). He
knows, but does not, like his father, take her to any hospital in Calcutta, if there is no
hospital in Songarh. He knows that his mother does not speak derogatory words

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deliberately; she loses ‘control’ over her mind, as once he says to Shanti, “It’s also
painful for me to see my mother not in control of herself.” (Roy, p. 65)

Maya is, like Billy, too obstinate to feel pity on her mother’s helpless condition. She
does not return even for her mother who despite being ‘intimidated’ her husband steals
“out for occasional trysts with me at a temple” (Roy, p. 11) and “brought me a piece of
jewellery from her box and thrust it into my hands, without a word” (Roy, p. 65).
Therefore, the concluding lines of the following extract leaves heart-rending even to a
stony heart,

“My mother died two years after Michael, uncomprehending to the end
about my stubborn refusal. In one of her reproachful letters she accused of
me of being as unforgiving as my father: how could a girl punish her
parents and reject her home this way.” (Roy, The Folded, p. 20)

A mother’s affectionate heart is always open to embrace her offspring; but they always
leave her bereft. The edge of Maya’s anger is never blunted to even reply the letter her
mother sent, let alone her returning. Even Maya’s such thoughts as mentioned below do
not compel her to return; she does recall that her mother is the woman who,

“…had given it (sari) to me the night I ran away from home. She had not
said a word, but kissed my hair and then my face, staring at it as if she
might never see it again. She took of her emerald earrings and twisted
them into my earlobes. She draped a corner of her treasured Sari over my
head to see how I would I look in it. Form a minute she stared at my half-
veiled face, then put a finger to the kohl in her eyes and smudged its
blackness onto my forehead to protect me from evil spirits.” (Roy, p. 13)

Maya’s stubbornness blinds her; it darkens her memory. She never questions her past.
Like Billy, she remains undisturbed, unconscious of her mother’s happiness; she is not
‘interested’ (Joshi, The Strange, p. 79) in what the letter says. A ‘momentary flash of
distress’ (Ibid.) and then self-soothing ensues by normalizing as Billy’s utterance ‘don’t
be silly’ or Maya’s ‘but I was at home…and my landlord Diwan Sahib as my family now.
I could no longer imagine living anywhere else.’ (Roy, The Folded, p. 21) Certainly, why

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‘imagine’ mothers’ ‘tears’ (See Marie’s poem Mother’s Agony), flowing from ‘womb to
tomb’ (the titular poem by the same author), when Diwan Sahib or Bilasia supplants
mother’s heart for them. They are capable of circumventing their fretful feelings. They
are too callous to be moved by even death of their mother. They are so headstrong to
remain isolated that, if forced to ‘return’, it may bring utter destruction in the same way
as it caused to Billy i.e. ‘ending in a series of violent sobs’ (Joshi, The Strange, p. 164)
Thanks to the emotionally isolated Maya’s father who is not so attached to her as Billy’s
father, and only because of this emotional detachment that bestows her life.

Dependence in Old Age. ‘Learned helplessness’ (NCBI) and financial and emotional
requirements in old age make them dependent on others. They are compelled to follow a
lifestyle that they do not like and this compulsion results in boredom. The ‘three women’
of ‘Sleeping on Jupiter’, just to deal with the ennui of everyday life, make a plan to ‘visit’
the Vishnu temple in Jarmuli. They plan an independent journey that takes away from the
‘drudgery’ of life. Old age and independence? Yes, what secures their self-reliance is
their retirement plan that proved to be ‘functional’ in the face of old age. By contrast,
Charu’s grandmother (The Folded Earth) feels ‘insecure’. Her son is drunkard and
instead of supporting the family and his old mother he himself becomes reliant on the
intergenerational accumulated wealth and money source of the family. Consequently,
family conditions deteriorate. She is even in her old age compelled to work in order to
run her family, to send Charu to ‘a convent’ thinking she “will be taught good English”
(p. 18), and to save enough to afford dowry to “find a Gormint babu for Charu to marry
and then we’ll kill a hen to eat every day.” (Roy) But to manage all this “her skin raisined
by years of hard labour in the sun” (Ibid.) and “her eyes, already creased from years of
battling Sun and wind and cold.” (Ibid.) What intensifies her destitution is that there was
no pension plan schematized by the government for the elderly (as the backdrop of the
novel is though post-independence yet the action indications are in India soon after the
independence). Until 2004, there was no ‘national pension scheme’ for ‘providing
financial security amongst the elderly’. It ‘was introduced by the ministry of Rural
Development of India’. It included not only ‘senior citizen pension’, but also ‘widow
pension and pension for disabled people’. (Seniority.com) Although the scheme initiated
in India was much later than that in America, June’s mother, Mrs. Blythe also does not

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become a beneficiary of such scheme. She moves after her wage earning daughter’s death
to some unknown relative as “by the 1932, only 102,000 persons were receiving pension”
in USA. (VCU Online) This is the reason “every time prices rose’” Charu’s grandmother
says, “Does gormint care if we live or die?” (Roy, The Folded, p. 19) However, what
makes possible the ‘first outing together’ for the three old women, Gouri, Vidya and
Latika is their employment as they are retired employees whose pension plan make them
financially self-reliant. They are nevertheless in dire need of their children’s company for
emotional support. As in old age their mobility decreases, they find themselves more
dependent on their children. The only solace in old age is the interaction with their sons
and daughters. Old Mr. Biswas is an example of lack of such interaction and hence of
perceived isolation. It explains why he is ready to get back Billy no matter what extent he
goes from imploring before Romesh to complaining to the chief secretary of Bhopal. It’s
for Billy’ sake that ‘bedraggled Mr. Biswas’ a retired judge, implores Romesh (Billy’s
college mate, now an IAS) thus,

“I am like your father. You must try to help me. I must see my son. I will
die on your doorstep if you don’t let me see my son.” (Joshi, The Strange;
p. 149)

And what the narrator noted on Mr. Biswas’ face,

“He looked up at me. His mouth, the thin withered mouth of a very old
man, trembled, and there were tears in his eyes. Mr. Biswas did not lightly
use such language. I knew he wasn’t faking.” (Joshi)

A person’s mind remains disturbed until each member of the family is safe and in
comfort. That is all Mr. Biswas is concerned about, that is all Amulya Babu wanted to
know before his death: they sacrifice all their life waiting to know it. But none of Mr.
Biswas, professor’s parents (The City and The River), Amulya Babu, Kananbala, Mrs.
Blythe, Nirmal (in old age), and Maya’s parents see their children safe and secure, stable
and blessed with happiness.

Psychological Impact of Retirement. Contrary to the assumptions that a person’s

network size decreases as soon as he/she retires from the service — they experience

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depression, loneliness, a sense of worthless, due to ‘profoundly isolating effects of
retirement’ (Garg online); and the closer their retirement, the more ‘vulnerable’ they
become to the risk of isolation — Wethington and Pillemer 2000 study in a review of the
literature on ‘Social integration and ageing’ (Coplan and Bowker, p. 242) that ‘certain
subgroups, “the majority of older adults in the twenty-first century will not be threatened
by its disintegration or social isolation” (Coplan and Bowker, p. 242), for, as they exhaust
the subject matter of their study further, “more adult will be living alone as they reach
retirement age.” (Ibid., p. 251) In these subgroups, to clarify, they included, “the non-
married, childless, and geographically isolated” (Ibid.) as well as financially weaker
section.

Mr. Biswas suffers a sense of lack of recognition in his own family consisted of only
three members, parents and their only son, who is too self-willed and independent. What
is instinctual for Billy is impulsive for Mr. Biswas. And it is Billy’s impulse, as Mr
Biswas supposes, that estranges father-son relationship. He feels belittled because of
Billy’s self-willed acts, within no time, “Mr. Biswas…, according to Billy, led a quiet
existence that swung regularly between irritability and extreme irritability.” (Joshi, The
Strange Case, p. 50) Familial concerns disconcert him, hasten his aging, and isolate him
from his own family. The centre of these familial concerns is Billy himself. Admittedly,
what agitates Diwan Sahib’s mind is retirement but the fact of his state of being
unmarried cannot be overlooked. Even though he never gives words to his sense of
isolation due to his unmarried state, and conceals it in the cause of isolation, his words to
Maya obviate and that is what she tells the reader. The following two excerpts pierce in
Diwan Sahib’s feelings of agitation, isolation, and absurdity as, in his own words,

Nothing makes you as irrelevant as retirement, Maya. There was a time

when Nehru and Patel trusted me with secrets. All these bloody generals
in Ranikhet used to beg for invitation to this house. And now?” (Roy, The
Folded, p. 112)

Yes, retirement, perforce, instills a sense of worthlessness, and hence depression; but
what he underrates is his passivity in socialization, lack of emotional support, and self-

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conceit. After the confinement of ‘more than a month’ in a hospital, Diwan Sahib feels a
desperate need for emotional support which is though implicit in his words as Maya feels,

“Diwan Sahib wanted us near him all the time as if he could not afford to
lose a minute.” As he says to Maya, “Why do you go home to that cottage
of yours? Just colonize one of the bed rooms in this house.” (Roy, The
Folded, p. 219)

It is by chance that Maya happens to stay with him, or else Veer is obliged to answer
Diwan Sahib’s emotional support as well as physical needs. But he leaves him to survive
on his own. He prioritizes his ‘love for mountains’. He is a professional mountaineer and
has his set-ups in the hills. Staying away from the house is inevitable though he can
maintain connections from home, especially during Diwan Sahib’s illnesses. It is easier
for him because he is living in the world of internet; he has laptop and other devices
necessary for establishing network connections. But, according to ‘Ama’, “he only turns
up when it is all finished, to see what he can get.” (Roy, p. 240) Ama’s belief is supported
by Veer’s ransacking ‘the whole house’ (Ibid.) immediately after Diwan Sahib being
hospitalized. He does not, even for once, visit the hospital ward. Having “ransacked the
whole house…like a man possessed”, he leaves “in his jeep without explaining anything
to anyone.” (Roy) About the children’s occasional visits, what Diwan Sahib does not
complain, Latika (Sleeping on Jupiter) certainly does. Latika complains about her
daughter living far away from her, in Florence. She keeps waiting for her daughter’s
visits. Her daughter’s visits are more infrequent than Veer’s. Like Veer, she also comes
when everything is over. When the aged are in desperate need of their children’s help and
long for their company, what all that they get from them is merely ‘swearing love and
care…but who looked after’. Her daughter does visit, as Latika says,

“But if she knew how many grey hairs each visit gives me! You know I’m
not the greatest house keeper in the world. Of course, I love seeing my
grandchildren — and my son-in-law…” (Roy, p. 26)

Grandchildren, though, have positive significant roles for providing emotional

attachment, are the great source of ‘life satisfaction for the elderly; yet, Yadollah

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Momtaz’s study in the twenty first century shows “estrangement in ‘grandparent-
grandchildren relationship’ due to ‘differences in socio-cultural contexts of different
countries’, ‘huge industrialization’, ‘modernization’ as the findings of the study show,
(GGR – Grandparent-grandchildren relationship),

“According to modernization theories, GGR is weaker in more modern

societies. Rapid and drastic changes, in modern and industrial countries
make older adults’ knowledge and expertise unworthy and even
outmoded. In such countries, younger people may have greater knowledge
than older people.” (Momtaz, Research Gate Online, p. 4)

For this reason, Latika who does ‘love seeing’ her grandchildren, “but” feels emotionally
detached, for they are brought up ‘in Florence’, their ‘visit’ in India makes them feel as a
sense of strangeness. It is due to cultural clash advanced technology, and modernization
that they feel isolated in their Indian grandparent’s presence. Their life standard under
foreign influence does not let the tight-knit relationship establish between themselves and
their Indian relatives. In Latika’s following words semi-auxiliary ‘have to’ is noteworthy
for her sense of ‘obligation’ and situational ‘necessity’ as the uses of ‘have to’ are given
by Quirk et. al. p. 145, and absence of spontaneity of the grandparent-grandchildren
relationship as,

“Of course, I love seeing my grandchildren — and my son-in-law — but the

amount of mineral water I have to stock up! Sausages, pasta! And cheese! The
children eat nothing else.” (Roy, Sleeping, p. 26)

However, the other side of old age, putting household concerns ‘under erasure’, is
liberating and releasing from the worldly concerns. It should be respected. In India, aged
people are respected and their experience matters for the younger generation. In this age
the people are said to have wider objectives instead of narrow personal familial concerns.
Their objectives may include spirituality, Nationality or universal concerns such as entire
humanity, environment, education, and etcetera. Patanjali and Grandfather of ‘The City
and the River’ are aged characters, as Patanjali is 93-year-old. Their righteous and nation-
concerned life makes them courageous even in the face alarming or threatening situations

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as during internment in the country. They in such a war like devastating situation not only
stay fearless, calm, and helpful, but also prepared to suffer with a person who devotes his
life for the welfare of the country. The two excerpts from the text, hereto the argument,
are mentioned below, of which the first the first one reads Patanjali’s words, the second
refers to the Grandfather,

“Then let them send me to jail. One day they will be less busy and then
someone will ask why this old man is in jail and they will have second
thoughts and then they can decide…what is involved here in the future of
the city.” (Joshi, pp. 26-7)

“…Grandfather had chained his left hand to Bhoma’s right with a chain.
The colonel stared at the chained hands and wondered how to proceed.
Grandfather had not only tied the chain in a particularly clever knot, he
had also put a lock, at the end of it.” (Joshi, p. 244) And, “In the same
instant they saw the rifle butt smash into Grandfather’s own face.” (Joshi,
p. 245) But “seeing the rifle hitting him, brigadier said, ‘Are you mad?’
pulling back the commando by the scruff of his neck.” (Joshi)

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