This is Aruna Chakravarti’s 15th book; two of her earlier novels, Jorasanko and Daughters of Jorasanko, were bestsellers, acclaimed by critics and readers alike. I mention these two because in writing them, Chakravarti could rely on facts for authenticity. In writing Suralakshmi Villa , however, she has no such protective milieu which she can turn to; she has had to create a milieu for herself and use it to sustain her narrative.
As one reads the book, it becomes clear that this is a chronicle rather than a story of one or two people; Chakravarti uses a style and structure that she has used for her previous novels as well. But the task Chakravarti has set for herself here is harder because the chronicle she develops is set in two different worlds.
One is the world of an affluent Calcutta family of the late 1920s — the family of Rai Bahadur Indranath Choudhury, an ICS officer who holds an important post in the colonial bureaucracy of British India. The other is of the impoverished but not destitute family of Moin-ud-din, a small farmer in the village of Hasanpur, in Bengal’s Malda district.
Third daughters
Chakravarti lets the social and economic worlds the families occupy develop and reveal themselves as integral parts of her
narrative rather than outline them impersonally. She carefully picks out protagonists from both families: Suralakshmi is Indranath Choudhury’s third daughter, who is given the freedom to study medicine by her parents. She specialises in gynaecology and obstetrics, later practising in Delhi, where the family has moved as the Rai Bahadur’s job requires him to be in the capital. Over time, he has acquired some land in the outskirts of Delhi, where he has built five houses, one for each of his daughters.
Moin-ud-din rules his family with a degree of brutality that is perhaps usual for the times: he exercises rigid, cruel control over his brood of children, especially his daughters. Here too Chakravarti’s focus is on the third daughter, Eid-ul-wara, or Eidun, as she is called by everyone in her family and the village.
Vivid detail
These two women are linked through a series of events, even though one might not think there would be anything to link a well-known married doctor with a little son to a slip of a girl, much younger and barely literate. But linked they are by circumstances, and that is one of the major threads in the novel that Chakravarti develops so skilfully.
The author brings the different social worlds to life in vivid detail. Creating a world of entitlement, affluence and rigid social norms set in the 1920s and later might have been easy enough since so much archival material is available on this milieu. But what about that obscure corner of the earth, Hasanpur? The merciless exploitation of women there coupled with rare moments of childish happiness the women win for themselves is captured well.
If one has to carp, I would say that while Suralakshmi’s character is strongly drawn, her reasons for acting as she does are not entirely convincing. But this too can be accepted. The character I found difficult to comprehend is Eidun. She says little about herself to her mother or to Suralakshmi, whom she adores. Perhaps Chakravarti deliberately wants to give her an air of mystery.
Like Chakravarti’s earlier novels, this one too is a riveting read.
The writer is a former civil servant and author.
Suralakshmi Villa; Aruna Chakravarti, Picador India, ₹650
