"What's it to me? It wasn't for my own sake that I kept purdah - it was because you and your family wanted it. And it means nothing now: we have nothing to preserve and nothing to lose." (248)
When Neel's wife Malati and his son come to meet him in jail, Neel is shocked that his wife isn't covering her head with her sari. It is surprising that Malati says she only kept her pure lifestyle because Neel wanted it. Neel is supposedly so liberal, and he earlier in the book expressed annoyance that his wife was so prudish. But he clearly thinks of women in only a few ways: wife, mother, or mistress. He doesn't like the roles to get mixed up. For example, from his wife he expects absolute loyalty, but it didn't surprise him when Elokeshi sold him out because to him she's mostly just a body. Malati seems much smarter than Neel in this scene because she immediately realizes that keeping "pure" is ridiculous when her family's social station has been revealed as arbitrary. All social positions are revealed as arbitrary and mutable in this novel: Neel's royalty, Paulette's status as "European", Zachary's race, Nob Kissin's gender.
In a book like this the philosophy is that the characters are what they do. So if Neel's actions run contrary to his ideals he is simply a fraud. That might be why Ghosh has him immediately take care of Ah Fatt so the reader regains sympathy for him. If the mechanisms of capitalism are so monolithic as to sweep all the characters away independent of their will, can they really be judged solely on their actions? This novel doesn't seem to have as strong an idea of human agency like in Naipaul, Rushdie, or Roy. Characters are judged on their actions, and they can make their own fortune sometimes, but they are also often pushed along by external forces. It often seems that more of life is allowance than will.
No comments:
Post a Comment