Lessons
in Forgetting lays bare the life of a typical page 3 Socialite Meera with a
successful, corporate husband, a well educated daughter in a booming field, and
an obedient, lovable son. She has her own assets like an ancient house which would
fetch a bomb in the market and her own thriving career as a well-known cook
book writer. Of course, the house comes with a mother and a grand mother. She
makes all the right moves of a social butterfly: dresses chic, flirts a bit and
makes smart but inane conversation. That particular day; when the story opens, is
a shocker where her whole world turns topsy turvey. Her husband is missing from
the party. She has to somehow reach home by taking a lift from a stranger Jak. From
then on her whole life twists and never stops spinning. Her life and that of
the stranger who gave her a lift, who is a cyclone expert from US get
intertwined. She ends up working for him to support her family as her husband never
reappears in her life and every link to him is lost. She has to transform from
a social butterfly to busy bee gathering nectar for her family. Of course, she
gathers information as a research assistant for Jak, the cyclone expert.
Jak has a vastly different tragedy
in his life. He is a divorced male with a teenage daughter who is in a state of
coma due to a mysterious sexual assault that happened years ago, who lives out
a vegetative state. Jak sets out to unravel the mystery to assuage his pain and
guilt of not having been able to protect her. Nair again displays her mastery
in depicting people and events in depth by connecting to the very core of their
being. Her portraits of people come to life as with a realistic brush she
touches up the minutest details which give it life and authenticity; so that
the characters get finely etched and identifiable. She derives her strength
from her understanding of the inner drives of the characters. Her ease of
flitting from female psyche to male psyche; the appropriate idiom that roll out
easily and connect with the characters is her unique trait. She effortlessly
gets her readers's intense emotional and intellectual engagement with her story
as she once again proves to be a master story teller. Her intense scrutiny of
relationships such as marriage or family is well wrought out. She brings in the
element of destiny very convincingly by connecting it with the cyclical nature
of events in one’s life. The part of poetic justice or redemption is very hard
to digest as not every one faces its harsh punishment.
The two protagonists Meera and Jak
meet each other when their life is falling apart and they are in the eye of the
storm; Jak looking for truth behind the ghastly act inflicted on his daughter
and Meera looking for her lost (?) husband whom she cannot even begin to search
for. Nair finds an apt metaphor of Cyclone for the devastation engulfing both
Meera and Jak. Nair’s insight delves into the essential natures of hot and cold
of the two elements of Cyclone- Jak and Meera respectively; the depiction of
them in the heart of it; the aftermath of Cyclone, as in the picking up of the
pieces of their lives after the devastation of their perfect world.
Nair’s first novel, based in
Bangalore, lovingly features an old bungalow as if a living character named “the
Lilac House.” It has been a historical
piece belonging to her family since half a century. Her husband would have
loved to lay his hands on it and the mystery of his disappearance seems to
suggest that there was heart burn between them regarding it. Both the
characters: Meera and Jak, continually revisit their past to make sense of
their present while the metaphor of cyclone propels their story forward. Lesson in Forgetting is all about
recovery and new beginnings. It is about forgiveness and second chances for
everyone. It is about trust and caring of one another in the world. It is about
men and women needing and supporting each other.
Nair as usual thumbing her nose at
convention and the well-trodden path has her own take on midlife crisis,
teenage mis-identity, female infanticide, sin and redemption through the well
etched characters of Smriti, Rishi, Nikhil or Chinnathayi. Her greatest skill
is her ability to give voice to one’s common fears, desires; one’s everyday
thoughts and actions. Her scrutiny of a woman’s life with its passage of
girlhood, friendship, marriage, parenthood seems to suggest an important
ingredient of forgiveness and adaptability to make its course smoother.
Nair is not a feminist but a
realist. Her characters attain stature according to the roles they play. It is
incidental that apart from Jak and Meera, four other characters: her mother-grandmother
duo, Smriti and Kala Chiti stand out in their integrity and strength of
character. They linger longer in our mind. It never makes a cultural difference
as of the four characters, the young Smriti is from abroad, Meera’s family is from
urban India and Kala Chiti depicts the rural side of complex India. It is to Anita’s
credit that she fits in the minor characters as convincingly into the theme and
pattern of her story. Her language is simple and hard hitting; her tempo of story
telling building up from a slow pace to finally exploding around us as does the
lives of the protagonists. Yet the story ends with a note of positivity and
hope and with a valuable lesson to forget and forgive; to move on with courage
and conviction.
No comments:
Post a Comment