GIRL IN WHITE COTTON



Avni Doshi

HARPER COLLINS

PP 277 Rs.399

Published as BURNT SUGAR by Hamish Hamilton; shortlisted for Man Booker Prize 2020




What’s common between a Girl in White Cotton and Burnt Sugar?

Well, they are two titles of a single book – the former for the Indian edition in 2019 and the latter for the rest of the world, in 2020. Considered together they throw additional light on the story as much as on its author.

Antara is the disturbed protagonist; Tara is her mother – elusive and intriguing in her behaviour and her relationships. “Antara” has many meanings, for example: interior (as in antar-atma, inner soul); or deviation/difference/distance or gap/interval; or switchover. Antara is also a term in Hindustani classical music, forming a sort of secondary theme in a vocal performance... but that might be stretching the note a bit too far. On rare occasions, it can mean “the opposite” as in antonym. Is Antara (un-tara) the opposite of Tara? Was Antara then the un-making of Tara? Antara has a daughter who is named “Anikka”. And all three of them qualify for a claim to the title: Girl. In. White. Cotton.

Burnt Sugar, on the other hand, is caramel … or is it, actually, sugar burnt beyond redemption? The sugar burnt, unattended, and far from the possibilities of landing on a caramelised dessert turned into something bitter, indigestible, deserted. Perhaps.

Antara is born in a conservative family where her mother was required to wait at the door for her husband’s arrival in the evening, and then he would sit at his mother’s knee. By the time Antara was five, her parents had divorced, and Tara had gone over to an ashram where she became the mistress of the god-man. The mistress who was thus replaced becomes a mother to Antara – leaving Antara emotionally tied to her (Kali Mata) more than to Tara, creating a deep lack somewhere within her … and when the god-man finds another plaything, Tara moves out of the ashram with Antara and begs at its gates. Eventually, her parents take her home.

Antara, now married, speaks of her mother’s decline into dementia and the book revolves around how the troubled daughter cares for her deteriorating mother. There is physical evidence of dementia and no medical evidence. But the novel is not about this specific relationship in spite of the first line of the novel: "I would be lying if I said my mother's misery has never given me pleasure”. One wonders if this is a jibe at Antara herself, the loving care-giver who has her reservations like most indulgent daughters. Most women would, I’m sure, identify with that first sentence, which will keep them going till the last pages; until that final, nerve-shattering, realisation, the surreal depiction of the relationship between Tara and Antara. There is a feeling of déjà vu – of how we take our familial relations for granted, how much they are a part of us, how much they make us but, more so, how much they unmake us.

On the way, we find Antara holding on to the tenuous bond she has with her father – who remarries and has a son; she gets into a relationship with one of her mother’s lovers (shades of Electra?!) but human relationships are not easily labelled outside Freudian texts. But what is remarkable is that all the men in the novel are flat characters (E.M. Forster: Aspects of The Novel: 1927). They tend to exist as uneasy props in the narrative, like prince-consorts, dutifully self-effacing and, when called upon to appear, making their appearances as unobtrusively as possible. Deepak, Antara’s husband, is a sounding board for her frustrations and doubts, he is a ‘linear, disciplined’ thinker; his world ‘contained, finite’; Antara’s father enters tentatively, whenever he is summoned by the demands of the narrative; Reza, the shared lover, is in the background somewhere as a likely cause of tension between Antara and Deepak. Between Antara and Tara – a careless painting that could surface at awkward moments. Then there is her half-brother who is there only for dramatic relief. The fifth male character is the doctor, who behaves like a doctor should! He comes alive in a way when he tells Antara that she should get some help … caretakers are also known to lose their hold on reality.

The novel could easily be labelled as "somewhat feminist” …dwelling, as it does in certain parts, on the price women have to pay for taking their own life-decisions, and the social expectations about women. That would probably trivialise the depth of the novel. Womanhood and motherhood are certainly at the centre of the story but as necessary conveyors of a greater, deeper truth: Where, in a relationship so conventional, so taken-for-granted, as between a mother and daughter, does love begin? Is it possible for a mother to harbour jealousy towards her daughter? Or vice versa? Could a mother plot against her daughter in the matter of love, attention, fulfilment? Or vice versa? How do you hate someone and yet refrain from villainising her? “Maybe our mothers create a lack in us, and our children continue to fulfil the prophecy…”

There is a definite love-hate relationship between the Tara and Antara. Antara plans to kill her diabetic mother with sweets; Tara threatens to destroy her daughter’s marriage by telling Deepak about Reza. There is motherhood, nonchalant and avantgarde between Tara and Antara; there is tenderness (“…my aural reach can pick up the movement of my daughter’s breath across the city”) between Antara and Anikka. And there is love between Antara and her mother … believe it or not.

The frontispiece (a quote from The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch: Canongate Books Ltd: 2019), asks a disturbing question: Does the wound of daughter turn into something else if left unattended? The cover of the Indian edition shows the name of novel on pieces of torn paper. A girl torn apart between her trust … and reality; between the wound that she tried to tend and the scab that flew in her face.

 

GIRL A  Abigail Dean  HARPER COLLINS 2021 PAGES: 328   ₹ 399

When Oscar Wilde said that the one charm about the past is that it is past (through the ready witticism of the neo-Hedonistic Lord Henry Wotton) he was referring to women who clung on even “when the curtain has fallen” – and not to the past per se which clings, creeping into the present, preordaining the future. Jawaharlal Nehru, on the other hand, (Discovery of India) was wont to observe that “…the past is ever with us and all that we are and that we have comes from the past. We are its products and we live immersed in it.… To combine it with the present and extend it to the future, to break from it where it cannot be so united, to make of all this the pulsating and vibrating material for thought and action – that is life.” In a less dramatic way, “Girl A” is about life as it is lived after a severe, traumatic, psychologically damaged past.

That “Life” is what Alexandra Gracie (Girl A / Lex) and her siblings (there are Boys A to D and Girls A to C) try to understand as they recall their chained, starved, humiliated and sexually abused childhood. And yet, the novel does not concentrate on those terrible years: it is more about “life” as it is required to be lived after all that; more about the attempt to “break from [the past] where it cannot be united”. It is also a story of children who manage to escape or be rescued physically from that extreme trauma but cannot really escape from the “past”.

The narrative flits from the past to the present, from conversations professional and deeply psychological, and from fruitless attempts (among the siblings) to reach out to one another and the need to build a façade of being ok-in-the-present-despite-the-past. That past. There’s Lex who after adoption by an ex-policeman, has become a successful lawyer in New York; one of the siblings died before the escape, one died soon after; one cashes in on his past through articles about the horrors, while another is exploited by his adoptive parents for his story and his repeated “murderous rages”. Each chapter, as it focuses on each of the siblings, draws out their individual development (or lack of it), their unique ways of coping – as much as their relationships with the other siblings. The jumping between various time-slots is irritating in the beginning but it tends to keep the reader alert to the various events in the present and in the past – and then you realise, only at the end, the it is but a portrayal of an apparent “attention deficiency” on the part of the protagonist.

The book starts with the family posing for a photograph when one of the siblings looks up and Lex begins to smile: “we paid for it later” she says, setting the tone for all that follows.

What follows is the death of their mother in prison around 15 years later (note the jump in the time-slot) and the appointment of Lex as the executor of her will. The “House of Horrors” is bequeathed to the siblings, along with ₤ 20,000. In a show of being normal and logical and down-to-earth, Lex intends to get her siblings to convert the property into a kind of Community Centre for children and art. To achieve this, she has to meet each sibling, which she does with the wariness of cat walking through the dark undergrowth of their past, and their ill-kept secrets. The process, understandably, is bleak but you keep reading it to discover what kept them going, what prompted them towards the life they are living now, how much better (if at all) was the life with the adoptive parents … how the past remains with them in one form or another, for one reason or another.

I would not describe it as an unputdownable sort of novel. The constant change of scene and the number of characters that keep popping up does make it tedious and you need to take a break now and then. It’s a story plainly told, a serious psychological delving, without rousing much emotion about what happened back then. The present-day narration relates to the times long past in a kind of dread, a fear of opening something you won’t be able to close. The strewing of emotions as the story unfolds in all of your making, of how much you can take and digest … and still read on. Once you get into it, it is compelling reading. Lex goes on with her tale of talking to her siblings, showing her apparently balanced mental condition – until the revelation of terrible imbalance within throws you over – and keep you “thrown” for quite a long time after you’ve read the last line of the book.

The other book that kept running through my mind while reading ““Girl A”” was “The Nickel Boys” by Colson Whitehead, (published by Hachette in 2019) which I had reviewed earlier and published on writersark.com on 04.10.2020, titled “A School of Horror”. Having said that the book is not for the fainthearted, I had mentioned that it was based on The Arthur G Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, Florida (a reformatory) which was shut down in 2011 for its excesses: with its “training” for conversion of delinquents into “honourable and honest men” … and the secret graveyard; and a “White House” where laws were made and implemented through steel-reinforced leather whips – the welts went beyond the skin.

“Girl A” is apparently based on the 2018 case of the Turpin family in California where 13 children were kept in conditions similar to the Gracie household. Abigail Dean, obviously moved by this and other stories, says (in an interview) that she was drawn to the “power of teenage girls to escape and be incredibly strong”. And yet, it bears repetition, the book is not about the terrible times back home, but of the resilience and strength shown by the siblings in living a life different from what they had emerged, while retaining all the scars and blemishes of that time.

Some interesting questions do arise: when a sibling group comes out of an abusive situation, do they tend to remain together in a kind of bonding – macabre as it may sound? In the present case, besides the fact that these children were adopted by different families, there is a kind of secretiveness among them, a sad sort of one-upmanship. And the sadness grows when you find that the competitiveness is just a cover for the deep scars that each one carries but would not like the others to know about.

Towards the end of the novel, Ethan invites all his siblings to his wedding. Lex’s adoptive father earnestly advises her not to go. By this time, the reader is so involved that you add to his pleas: Don’t go! These meetings are doing you no good. But she goes. There is hope throughout the narrative, that Lex, at least, would be “fixed”, that she would return to her life in New York as a “normal” person. In fact, her easy and loving relationship with her adoptive father feeds that hope. But Abigail Dean leaves that hunger unsatisfied…. The reader is disappointed while crying: what a beautiful story!

ASIDE:

While reading the book I was reminded of Macbeth's arrogant yet earnest demand of the doctor to cure Lady Macbeth of her illness: the after-effects of having murdered Duncan... where she feared that the "damned spot" of Duncan's blood on her palm would never be washed away, but would rather “incarnadine” all of Neptune's oceans in the washing.

See Act 5 Scene 3:

MACBETH: Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,

Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,

Raze out the written troubles of the brain,

And with some sweet oblivious antidote

Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff

Which weighs upon the heart?

DOCTOR:… … Therein the patient

Must minister to himself.

MACBETH: ... ... ... If thou couldst, doctor, cast

The water of my land, find her disease,

And purge it to a sound and pristine health,

I would applaud thee to the very echo,

That should applaud again.

Shuggie Bain - Douglas Stewart (Book Review)

SHUGGIE BAIN
by
DOUGLAS STUART



Published

US: Grove Press (hardcover) Feb 2020

UK: Picador (hardcover) Aug 2020.

India: Picador 2020



Rs.499 Pages 448

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"Maggie! Maggie! Maggie! Dead! Dead! Dead!" Scots chanting on the 8th of April, 2013 when Margaret Thatcher died. There was a celebration.


Earlier, on 12th October, 1984, when an explosion rocked the hotel she was in, and she escaped death, the Glaswegian dialect left no doubt about their frustrated fury: "Shit disnae burn, Maggie won't."

The Scots believed that Thatcher was responsible for the devastating economic collapse of Glasgow; her adherence to “Monetarism”, whatever it may have meant to professional Economists, only spelt stark and massive unemployment for working-class Scotland; it precipitated the decade-old downward trend of the economy. Then she brought in Poll Tax (aka Community Charge) in Scotland – reviving the hated, revolt-inducing cess of the 14th century, which was based on the rentable value of one’s house, and not on one’s ability to pay.


What has all this got to do with Shuggie Bain, the book under review?


First, the novel is set in Glasgow – which bore the brunt of Thatcher’s policies. Second, the story begins in 1981 when Shuggie (Scottish for Hugh) is around 5 years old, and ends in 1992, when he asserts that he is above 16 – roughly coinciding with the Thatcher’s tenure as PM in the UK.


So, when the blurb (quoting the Observer) says: “Heartbreakingly good” you set yourself up to a grim tale about a mother’s soul-bruising deterioration as an alcoholic, and the dog-like, unquestioning devotion of Shuggie, her youngest son turned caregiver at the tender age of 13. And the whole narrative is “complicated” by Shuggie’s teenage struggle to come to terms with his ambiguous sexuality – his attempts at understanding his “difference” runs apace with his mother’s progressive loss of any sense of the world around her. It is a story of love beyond hope, of hope beyond trust, and trust beyond a love that increasingly ceased to have any meaning to anyone except Shuggie.


Agnes Bain, a mother of three, is alcohol-dependent. Her husband, Shug declares: “I can’t stay with you. All your wanting. All that drinking,” and he walks out; Stuart describes the scene so vividly (“like a party dress that had been dropped on the floor”) that the image lingers in your mind for a long time.


Her drinking worsens … the eldest daughter “escapes” to South Africa, the elder son moves out, hoping to make a career for himself. Shuggie stays on. When she decides to give up alcohol, for a brief period the whole house and its surroundings brighten up; there is also a hope that a new found love will get her through – but one fatal relapse, and she’s downhill again.


In the mean time Shuggie gets into school – gets ridiculed for his “difference”, his “proper” behaviour and his language, sadly reminiscent of Blanch DuBois from Tennessee Williams’ A Street Car Named Desire; and to some extent of Dickens’ Christmas Carol. But regardless of what life throws at him, Shuggie’s devotion to his mother is absolute: no matter that he has to stand in line for the weekly dole where his mother should have been; no matter that he had to pry coins out of the gas meter for his daily meals.


What is also striking is the dark landscape where the skyline is marked by dunes of coal dust, and abandoned mines. It is as if Glasgow tries to stand proud among its many ruins just as Agnes stands through her poverty and misery. And then there is the almost-colourful depiction of the wise-cracking women who carry on with their lives with their broken husbands (emasculated by unemployment but not averse to a fling now and then). Alcohol opens her to sexual abuse too – while Shuggie hopes to “save” her … and he clings to this hope till the end ... in spite of all the selfishness he sees around him.

There’s sadness all around, and misery. There’s pervasive poverty and hopelessness. Perhaps arising from a very personal exposure to the complexities described in the story. Perhaps not. But there’s resilient hope and there’s uncompromising love. And that takes the book out of the ordinary.


Marvellously Gloomy. Depressingly Heart-warming. Another of those “sweetest songs” á la Shelley, “that tell of saddest thought”.

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The book has won the Man Booker Prize (announced on 20th November, 2020); it has also been shortlisted by the Centre for Fiction – First Novel Prize; it appears in the Longlist of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction (2021), and is a Finalist in the National Book Award for Fiction and the Kirkus Prize for Fiction.

BIRDS OF PARADISE

Is that Eve up there, a-sulking ‘cause her man can’t see the logic?

Wasn’t she Out there beneath The Tree in a mood so damned romantic?



Starry-eyed and light of heart, returned she from that cad

and talked of talking serpents smart, when he shouted Are you mad?!



Then fish would fly and gold would grow on trees

and the breeze

would carry messages through raindrops and on leaves;

Believe I will, all that and more but this is poppycock

I won’t Believe these extra-mural tales that animals talk!



Look at her as she showers praise upon the slithering devil

the couple hotly do debate on the fruit o’ the Tree of Evil

The dumb to speak have started

I felt so much outsmarted



She screamed at him: How can that reach our level!?



Indeed ‘tis Eve, she oped our eyes to question our beliefs

and then the inner core to hide she offered us fig leaves.




ALTERNATELY:


Is that Eve

that showers praise

upon the slithering devil

in paradise where

Adam & Eve

Did debate

Upon a fruit

that got the dumb

to speak

and should have made us

god-like more

and smarter

than animals

that didn't need

fig leaves.

DAISIES COVERING THE EARTH LIKE SO MUCH SNOW ...

 

Reminded am I, of ol' Langston Hughes,

And the poem he wrote called "Dreams";

Always awed with the depth of his views,

I became a dreamer of dreams.

And, dreams have since then kept me going,

It's dreams that keep dotage at bay;

And flowers are always a-growing

In dreams, on a cold winter's day.

In dreams I can steadily gaze

At the wonders of Nature benign,

And more: through the dark wintry haze, 

I discern all my blessings divine.

MUSINGS DURING COVID-19 LOCKDOWNS

 

Two little finches in a snuggle

Tell me life is worth the struggle;

Ne'er is it in vain we labour, 

Ample returns await our valour.

Two 

"Things" can never be the same

If you and I join in the game,

And, through the field of muck or mire,

Get our spirits up, afire.

And when the battle's done and won,

Oh! With the rising of the sun,

We'll soar yet again like the mighty eagle

And dare again to hug ... and snuggle.

AN ORCHID MYSTERY

Is this a mysterious orchid  

Or just an intriguing sea squid? 

Have a look at its tentacles, 

On of many Nature's spectacles, 

Or is it that Nature just flipped?  

Flipped, as on its own law it tripped

A fishy little thing on a plant?!

AN ODE TO METAL BIRDS

For metal birds I’d have never thought,

That proper words would e'er be sought

for poetic composition!

But on an urn did John Keats cry

And Blake, on "fearful symmetry",

Quest'ning with Powerful passion! 

Can we too ask if, when or whether, 

With birds of steel, so stiff of feather, 

A poem could e’er be urged?

They watch unseeing, the electric wire, 

which no words, e'en fleeting, inspire.

On the morning’s wistful shadows though, words splurge! 

 

Are these roses? For that's what I'd love

To smell along life's stints;

Oh, targets and aims, ambitions I have

With bruises, and fractures and splints,

But of this I am sure

When I shuffle off this tour …

 He'll ask if I smelt 'em or didn't!!

I would be wary

Calling that a canary

Cos I'm not so friendly with birds!

But if boards they would carry

Saying "Tom", "Dick" or "Harry"

I would certainly cry, "How absurd!"

For unknown they’d all like to be,

And care nought for or-n’-tho-lo-gy

They'll greet you each morning

With their chirping at dawning

Regardless of Doc Salim Ali!!

THE HALF-SMILE OF A LITTLE GIRL

The promise of a fine day dawning,

Hidden in a grey-haze morning,

And the half-smile of a little girl!

The memories of yesteryear,

The laughter, the occasional tear,

Flit off the half-smile of a little girl.

A half-smile is perhaps a token

Of pleasure or pain, mostly, unspoken,

But, mark you, it sets your mind awhirl. 

THE DAWN OF MY SOUL

 

Ah, somewhere a glorious dawn doth break

And someone’s breath away doth take!

As ever, the brilliant sun shall rise

While night crawls to its corner, and dies.

Sometime then, my darkened soul, to light awake.

To light awake!

ALL THAT GLITTERS...

 We see a hen with feathers of gold

And remember that fabled goose of old!

But what we ignore

Though well we all know

That goose wasn’t much to behold.

 

If you could judge a book by its cover

Or a man by his polished demeanour

Or a woman by virtue

Of what she tells you

Your “spirit” sure is yet t

o mature!  

LIFE MUST GO ON

 

He stands upon the ears of grain,

For birds of prey his eyes do strain;

Twixt "fight or flight"

It's only slight:

His chance of standing here again.

 

But life goes on from day to day,

As flitting around for wisps of hay

He builds the nest

And keeps the rest

In His Good Hands, ... and whistles away.

OH WILL THE BIRDS STILL SING?

                                                       Musings on Victory-in-Europe DAY, 2020

I woke up this morning,

And found myself humming

The strains of a World War II song;

Which dreamt of birds over

The white cliffs of Dover,

“Tomorrow…” when peace came along,

With joy and with laughter,

And peace ever after…

“Tomorrow…”, sighed this wistful song.

 

‘Twas then German Fascists,

Those self-declared racists,

Who’ brought the free world to its knee;

Now a germ, a new virus,

Unseen and insidious, 

Spreads quickly with fe-ro-city.

Sans rifle or cannon

This unbridled dragon

Does kill with such impunity.    

 

Are we in the mood then,

To dream of a time when

We’ll wake to a challenging day?

Or shall we just dream on

Of blue birds, a bright dawn,

And live through another “locked” day?

THE SILENT SOLDIERS -- a few verses for the nurses

  

Tennyson wrote of the Light Brigade

That charged amid cannons a-thundering;

‘Twas an ode to obedient but valiant six hundred,

Valiant that fell still a-wondering.

 

All those who march in battle formation,

Carrying arms for offence or defence,

With the glamourous aim of “Saving the Nation!”

Aren’t the only great soldiers, my friends.

 

Thousands there are in their sanitised robes

In corridors of care, and of angst,

Flitting amongst a million microbes. 

You don’t know what you’re up against.

 

And when the dark virus from China dropped in 

And little about it was known,

These soldiers took arms, dug the trenches, jumped in,

And like Tennyson’s soldiers, fought on.

 

Ill-informed they were, there was no ‘marking time’

Ill-equipped, they went gingerly on,

Oblivious of breathers or mealtimes or shift-time 

To the Line of Control, they held on.

 

They entered the battle with ne'er a sound,

Abhimanyu was better prepared;

Little was known of the real battleground

And everyone did as they dared.

 

The chakra-vyuha they entered, unfazed,

Not knowing what happens thereafter,

But bleary of eye and sallow of face,

They fought on, averted disaster.

 

The virus has opened our eyes, no doubt,

To so much we had taken for granted;

And obviously ‘cause these soldiers don’t shout

Their valour is never accounted.

 

No praises nor prizes could be adequate

And words are just never enough.

No money, no gifts could e’er compensate

For their deeds when the going got tough.

 

So, here’s to the nurses, the doctors, and all

Who fight all those undeclared wars,

Just be sure that you appreciate them all  

And give them a round of applause!

 

Applause! Applause!!

 

Let it be a resounding applause!

GHAR VAPSI -- an ode to the hordes on the roads in April 2020

 

The migrant workers headed "home" to save their dignity,

Regardless of the miles they'd roam, to flee iniquity,

Despairing for a “life” of sorts amongst their very own, 

Albeit have-nots, there's surety: they will not die alone.

 

At each step, though, the mind's awhirl: Should I go on or not?

If someone calls ‘em back again, perhaps they’d say: Why not!

But on they trod in th’ burning sun, with fever too, 'tis told,

And plod on through the dark of night despite the bitter cold.

 

The single aim of reaching “there” is all that's on their mind

The government's aid did come so late, it almost seems unkind.

The colourful hopes of home so dear that in their hearts they carry

On and on as zombies would; they’ll be there if only they hurry!

 

But all their dreams of getting home will surely be washed out

When they approach their borders, (their energy all ebbed out),

They see the camp that'll be their home until declare-d clean

Not knowing if the "home" ahead has likely lost its sheen.

 

In weary fourteen days and nights of check n check again,

Their hopes and dreams of home, should not, shall not have been in vain.

For years they toiled in silv’r-edg’d dreams while steeped in muck and grime;

They look back now and sadly say: That was a sordid time.

 

The land now beckons, the family reckons that now they won’t reject them.

But, post this purgatorial spell, no metro can attract them,

Knowing that no “Minimum Wage” nor “E.S.I.” protect them.

The joys of “working-for-your-home”, how sadly we neglect them.

CAN I GO HOME? ....PLEASE?

 

The first of my patients came in last month,

A sturdy young man he was;

His face was a picture of friendship and warmth;

Don’t ask what his prognosis was.

 

By evening a bit of the wave could be seen

The next day went by in a haze

We just had no time to sink all this in

As the hours of watch turned to days

 

We were promised some time off for self-quarantine

Post the frenetic and dire multi-tasking, 

Now while we’re putting our lives on the line,

An ‘off’? We’re not even asking.

 

The protective cover they first gave us

Was taken from “HIV”;

There was no time for question or fuss

Our lives would in God’s hands be.

 

I have an ailing spouse at home,

A child who needs my care;

But by the time I’m allowed to go

I’ll be the worse for wear.

 

For one thing I know, I won’t sleep at all

Whenever I do get out;

The constant buzz of the patients’ call

Will ring in my head, throughout.

 

I recall as yet that first young man

Who walked in a month ago

Or was it two …or a longer time span?

Let me get home. I don’t want to know.

 

 

 

STANLEY COUTINHO

composed in April 2020 soon after the panic started.