Fragile Times

In the West we believe the Modern brings freedom. Over recent decades this notion has been both extended - liberty equals licence - and narrowed down; liberty’s clothes offered only to those who’ve rarely worn the robes of public office; women, especially, invited to surrender their beautiful house coats for the suits of Corporate HQ. Inevitably a complex history is reduced to cliché; while certain kinds of power are ignored, even denied. But what if a woman’s former impuissance is a myth; that, if read right, modernity tells a very different tale, of loss more than gain? In To Whom She Will Ruth Prawer Jhabvala tells just such a story. Influence is lost in the place it’s needed most: the home.

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Caste shades into class, yet the old codes and inhibitions still bound behaviour. His family, on hearing that Hari wants to marry an upper class girl, readily agree it is a bad idea; and so force, against all the restraints of traditional ritual, a quick marriage to a more suitable match, Sushila Anand, a beautiful girl of impeccably petit bourgeois credentials. It’ll be the happiest day of Hari’s life, as he succumbs to her voluptuous feminine embrace. Saved from disaster by the good sense of his relatives. For imagine married to a woman who’d treat him as the embodiment of Old India; a poor kind of pet and plaything.

She always liked to watch him eat over his meals; he ate with such relish and with such unselfconscious enjoyment. He handled a knife and fork rather awkwardly, which was another thing she found charming about him. He was simple and unspoilt, and his ways the traditional, truly Indian ways which had been lost in her family. She now rather despised her family’s sophisticated, highly westernised way of living and thought of it as being false and unreal and quite unsuitable. Some time ago, shortly after she had first met Hari, she had tried to revolt against this way of living and had started to eat with her fingers at home. But her mother had become so indignant, and Krishna Sen Gupta so amused, that she had had to give it up. Once, also, she had asked Hari, why he did not always eat with his hands when he was with her, as he was accustomed to do; but this too had not been a success. Hari had been shocked and rather hurt; to him it had seemed as if she were suggesting he did not know how a gentleman should behave.

There is a caste of the mind, not easily laid aside. Amrita, thinking like a Brahmin, populates the world with ideas that appear alien to those beyond her milieu; those who, accustomed to keeping an idea close to their lives - concepts like tents must be pegged to the earth - cannot grasp that such flights of fancy are taken seriously. Hari likes girls because they are attractive; Amrita adding the frisson of an untouchable elite and the adornment of these strange and otherworldly beliefs. Strong physical desires and dreaming characterise this young man; the charm of dreams, like Amrita’s beliefs, that they never come true. Amrita’s ideas tend toward the metaphysical, although - it’s the upper class way - she tries to ground them in reality; to anchor the conceptual boat to the harbour of domestic life. Crunch! Inevitably there’s confusion. Thinking their words the same, when in fact they’re speaking different languages, with no translator at ear, a fraught future of mutual incomprehension awaits them. Luckily the differences are wide. Hari already feels uncomfortable, as he self-consciously picks at his low class traits; he knows he cannot rise to the heights of Amrita’s ideals. Amrita is self-conscious too, but in a different way, one intimate with her upbringing and education; encouraged to question herself, she has been taught to project an image of that self onto the world. Fated to divide….

There are ironies aplenty in this subtle account of a country in transition; where the old customs are changing but its mentalities remain largely intact. Caste tips into class, but new codes have yet to be created to cope with the consequences; the increased social mixing and those radical ideas that result. When young people meet in the offices of the new industries what’s to stop a Brahmin marrying an Untouchable? In principle nothing…though this to elide the psychological strife, that almost inevitable consequence. Do Western societies really survive on principle alone? A myth to which millions have been sacrificed. Alas, it is a myth the young are only too ready to believe; a serious problem for developing cultures, whose brightest students, dazzled by the surface brilliance, their utopian veneer, are apt to take them on trust. Mistaking concept for fact they want to use concepts like concrete and tarmac to reshape this world. It is the West seen through a television set. A soap opera where the actual relationship between an idea and its social background is overlooked. Everything may appear functional here - even our philosophers are Utilitarians - but ideas tend largely to rhetoric and metaphysics not logic and science. In the West ideas are worn like a nun’s habit; to advertise our virtue, to elevate us above the hoi polloi; though the asceticism is quickly discarded for mini-skirt and leggings when any real business is at hand.

Radha hasn’t learnt this lesson. A daughter of a progressive Indian, who educated in England, imbibed the liberal ethos of its professional class, Radha retains the mentality of Old India, where ideas are believed models for living. She lacks the insight to see that ideas being weaker than habits, the old sensibilities will retain their power over the long run; Amrita’s and Hari’s love to die of its own accord as their ingrained incompatibilities becomes testingly obvious. Each day they grow more distant. Only Radha’s passion to separate them keeping them close. Stuck between two worlds, our heroine suffers all the fragility of modern life, its doubt and insecurity, now that the old ideas alone are not strong enough - they have ceased to be habitual - to control her home. Amrita will decide for herself! Just like her mother…a western irony; for Radha, enjoying the tolerance of her father and believing too literally in his liberal ideas, made a foolishly idealistic marriage; while Mira and Tarla, though espousing his values, allowed the females of the family to quietly arrange their marriages. It’s the old English trick of forgetting one’s ideas when it comes to the practicalities of life. Radha not cynical or modern enough for such shenanigans. She made a love match, which she now believes a mistake; for married to an idealist, who died young, she has not enjoyed the material comforts of her wealthier sisters. Amrita must not make the same error.

Amrita has gone further than mama. Nirad Chakravarty was a clever and cultured man. Hari, of much poorer quality, belongs to the outer suburbs of respectability. But there’s a twist: Amrita’s character resembles her grandfather’s, whose ideas are more toys than tools. If left alone her innate good sense will win out, Amrita to gravitate towards someone of her own class and culture. Hari is just a phase. Another feature of the educated West, that Rebel Youth before the Big Settle Down; a period in our lives when we believe ideas the most important thing in the world; a highly artificial time, whose freedom rests on the solid foundations of a parent’s support. Once the hard choices are to be made, when confronted with the actualities of independence, the idea quickly recedes into the background, the social proprieties reasserting themselves. Amrita, though she appears more radical than her mother, is in fact less so; because her ideas - they are too extreme - float free of her life. Give it time Radha! As freedom palls so will the love; the differences in temperament, so closely tied to caste, making themselves felt. But Radha won’t leave alone; going on and on and on, she is turning her daughter obstinate. Emotionally the affair has run its course, but under such pressure Amrita transforms love into a concept. Worse! Forced to self-consciously attach herself to this idea it becomes a mental habit, an assertion of her will, a resistance to The Matriarch. The ironies hurt. It is Radha who’ll marry these two. 

You’ll have to be more subtle than that, my dear.

Radha, unlike her sisters, hasn’t learned the lesson of an English education: ideas are not be taken too seriously, while you rely on a child’s conditioning to do the right thing. At most we work quietly behind the scenes to ensure the desired outcome. And if this doesn't work, the child too stubborn or wayward, don’t dishonour yourself by making a scene: sometimes we have to let go. Radha is not an educated person. Her mind in the emotions, her lips are not a barrier but a conduit for those feelings; a risk in a culture that depends on understatement, and where a mother’s control is slackening. With liberal regimes it is the tyrant who is toppled. Poor Radha! Such outbursts do her harm.

In the new India of the liberal classes mothers are losing their hold over their children. This change percolates down the castes, though in odd and intricate ways. To end the affair Radha takes the unprecedented step of visiting Hari’s mother. The presence of this rich and imposing woman - Radha wears her best clothes to emphasise the social distance - convinces Mrs Anand to speed up the marriage she has already arranged for her son. Another feature of modernity: liberal ideas are the playthings of the upper classes only. Lower down tradition keeps its superstitious hold. It is why Mrs Anand’s reaction is more extreme than Radha’s. Also a year of agreeable work and vast influence - marriage is woman’s work - is to be wasted. This cannot be! She will marry Hari to Sushila in a couple of weeks. It is an assertion of power, though something of Radha’s anxiety has infected Mrs Anand, her enjoyment seeping out of these arrangements. Liberalism, in taking away their control, makes a woman suffer.

‘Your sister is given to government.’

‘Given to government, Joe?’ I was startled, for I had some shadowy idea (and I am afraid I must add, hope) that Joe had divorced her in favour of the Lords of the Admiralty, or Treasury.

‘Given to government,’ said Joe, ‘Which I meantersay the government of you and myself.’

‘Oh!’

‘And she an’t over partial to having scholars on the premises,’ Joe continued, ‘and in particular would not be over partial to my being a scholar, for fear as I might rise. Like a sort of rebel, don’t you see?’1

The strongest male character is Rai Bahadur, our liberal patriarch; though he is losing his grip through age: even Radha now argues with him. The other males, with the exception of Krishna Sen Gupta, another educated and liberal Indian, are poor types, either lacking character - little more than children - or are libertines or both. Vazir Dayal, who openly flaunts his insolence, cannot stand up to his wife in a straight fight. When Tarla finds out that he intends to pay for Amrita and Hari to go to England he retreats to the hills; too weak to handle her threats and commands. At home these women rule; a man free only outside. 

In the new India men are starting to influence what goes on inside the house. For women like Tarla this is welcome. Tellingly, Radha calls her a man; this lack of femininity reinforced by an absence of children; suggesting the barrenness of a foreign import, which squeezes out the emotional wealth and idiosyncratic power of wives and mothers.

Mother India puts many obstacles in the way of this conquest. Tarla herself intervenes to stop Amrita running away with Hari. Under all the conceptual glitter these characters still wear the old clothes; though now there are odd combinations: Radha must rely on the lower orders to get her girl out of trouble. In Hari’s family the wedding arrangements go on apace; Mrs Anand not to be disturbed by calf love; for to cancel a marriage is to disappoint dozens of relatives who rely on these festivities to be fed and entertained. Such communal pressure, its cause economic necessity, forces Hari to break with Amrita; though he can’t make this decision; typical of his weak character he drifts into marrying Sushila. Useless boy! Also an ordinary boy; his mental craft piloted by feelings that take away his will, he relies on mother to steer him to the shore; who after Radha’s visit leaves nothing to chance, the wedding quickly arranged. Confronted with the immediate prospect of the voluptuous Sushila, the charms of personality dissolving before the body’s desires, Hari’s thoughts float away from Amrita, to drift across Sushila’s generous thighs to land on her enormous breasts. It is a clever contrast, redolent of caste. Ideas are Amrita’s world; her mind more powerful than her senses. Hari is a simple chap, who’s lust easily overcomes thought, itself of poor quality; he is a dreamy teenager without the passion of love, of will and of intellect; passions that force us to grate and grind against the real. The laziness of the second-rate. Unable to do anything worthwhile they retreat to the comfort of the moan.

Hari nodded: ‘I do not know how I shall live without her.’

But Krishna knew how: Hari would come here to the coffee-house in the mornings and in the evenings, drink coffee, talk with his friends, from time to time sigh deeply upon women, upon love, have another sigh and then confide to whoever was nearest to him about Amrita, how he loved her and how her family had cruelly sent her away because of him. It would be an altogether pleasant life.

Again and again we are struck by the indifference. Hari may think he’s in love, but in truth they are nothing more than friends. His love has the quality of enchantment, that belongs to fairy tale; which keeps its attraction by staying in fairy-land; more dream than reality, it is the dream that thrills. A marriage to this woman would be hard work, as every day he must live up to Amrita’s ideas; home less a house than a mental gymnasium. Add the discomfort of knowing your mediocre. No wonder Hari, not the sort of chap to lead the strenuous life, is losing interest. Amrita is too superior; a mountain he cannot climb. Like many upper caste progressives, blind to personalities radically different from themselves, while idealising those from below, she ignores the psychic harm of such a class clash; where contact with the best can make us feel third-rate. Ideas and goodwill alone are not enough to remove painful misunderstandings. So naive! As if we’re transparent to ourselves. Let’s listen to an Amrita soliloquy: I am good person, yes? I am sensitive, you agree? I have intelligence, is this not so? Our heroine can now pride herself on sorting out the situation. But these qualities are just the problem, my dear! Your Hari never to compete with your sophistication. That refinement, the social grace, its delicate intellect, to constantly reveal his coarseness: a beautiful porcelain vase is put into clumsy hands. For both these young people there’s something unreal about their love. Hari’s is pure fantasy, which must stay fanciful to retain its appeal. Amrita’s belongs to the realms of philosophy and religion; a mental landscape where ideas strive to be reality. Amrita is too smart, too idea soaked, to understand these differences; for how can her world - this world of ideas - be fake? She lives in it everyday! One has to be very sophisticated indeed to grasp that exactly the same words can have directly opposite meanings.

‘Yes,’ he said vaguely and without hope. Decide, always nowadays from all sides it was decide; always there was that feeling of unease, preventing him form being happy and comfortable. When all he asked was, to sit with his friends in the coffee-house, to go to the cinema, to lie on his sharpie in the courtyard at home, staring up into the sky and thinking about being in love with Amrita. But… ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘we must decide.’

Young men from the lower classes rely too much on their mothers to manage their lives. Emotionally immature, impractical about social life, finding decisions difficult, especially of a life-changing kind, as feeling floods the mental capacities, they drift through their late-adolescence. Inertia the result. Let me alone! Allow me to dream. Why you bugging me man…. Anything’s better than to decide the big questions of their future, to do the hard work of actually being a man. Amrita, in forcing Hari out of his emotional somnambulism,  causes him pain. He wants the easy life. Don’t give me difficult choices…that’s a woman’s job to sort out. Ha! So low bred.

In the upper classes, where the men are expected to run the show, they are trained out of this disability; the mind hardened and the emotions tempered, they acquire the character to rule both themselves and others. This gulf between the classes is unbridgeable. Born into an elite you expect to change things, which requires an active, decisive intellect. Even more so with Amrita, who belongs to that very special class, the professional haute bourgeoisie, with their emphasis on intelligence, will and purpose. Poor Hari! Amrita is about the worst girl he could have chosen: too lively for such a passive personality.

Krishna Sen Gupta is her man. Belonging to same milieu, they share a sensibility and a way of acting in the world. For a while now she has felt his magnetic pull; if only Radha….

But thank god for Radha! If she hadn’t gone to Hari’s home, so forcing his marriage, her overbearingness might have lost Amrita to a silly match. For feelings are giving way to fanaticism; the idea of marriage morphing into a symbol of rebellion against parental control, and its old fashioned ways. Marriage a sign of the modern! An example of how any idea, when lived up to it, becomes a test of virtue, a beacon of idealism. All the facts are against this young woman; the families don’t approve; there’s no money to run away on, her man is weak and vacillating; but ideas are given strength by such impossibilities, the resistance they create, the prospects engendered. Never root an idea in young, intelligent minds, for the consequences are unforeseeable. Only when the idea pales, and they are attracted to more interesting, exciting things - Sushila’s voluptuous body; Krishna Sen Gupta’s charm, left in the air like perfume, thickening with his absence - can they be brought back to the common ground of life.

God these women are strong! 

Yet they experience an odd kind of impotence. Their lives are moulded around marriage, which the men, enjoying the comforts of a mother’s domain, are reluctant to take up, fearing the loss of their liberty. A paradox here. The women want marriage, whose preparations give them enormous power; yet within the married state they may feel powerless, if the  husband won’t submit to their will, or if the longed-for intimacy fails to materialise (there is Prema; for whom a female partner might have been more suitable). These men are often bores, losers, or libertines. A woman’s strength - so dominant in the wedding’s vicinity - becomes a weakness when living with chaps who fall below her ideals. Or at least that is what they believe. The facts are more complex. In the home wives dominate. Their impotence arises from the bounded nature of this rule; the men in control of an outside world that sets limits to their power, putting them at the mercy of forces beyond their reach; especially if the husband is reckless or incompetent. Then life is changing, especially for the elite. Home is losing out to the public realm; the corporations and government deciding how society should be run. It is these institutions that gave Rai Bahadur power, of which only a remnant remains in his retirement. Yet when active, his wife had to live with the effects of his liberal education, which reduced her influence, especially over the children. As a professional man, believing in progress, Rai Bahadur brought both the precepts and the atmosphere of public life into the family compound, which in losing its independence is no longer a queendom. Thankfully he is old now, and the women have regained their dominance. Tarla ignores him. Radha goes behind his back. Amrita defies him. India is changing - Lady Ram Prasad’s son marries an American! - but somehow these matriarchs can keep their grip on their families. The ancient power of Woman hangs on, those jewelled fingers will not let go….

Review: To Whom She Will

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Notes

1. Charles Dickens, Great Expectations. This novel the great study of class migration and its destabilising effects.