In contemporary times, there is nothing revolutionary about a woman vacationing alone in the Maldives, living on her own in London, backpacking in Thailand or walking out of a loveless marriage. But things were different in India of the past century, when the country was reeling under poverty, colonial subjugation and chaos. Women were tethered to the small world of domesticity, expected to desire nothing more than a home, a husband and children. What else would a woman need and why? Gayatri, the protagonist in Anuradha Roy’s fourth novel, All the Lives We Never Lived, asks herself this question, albeit differently: “Why am I not happy with my home, husband and child”? Gayatri’s question, in the wake of World War II and the Indian freedom movement is revolutionary and subversive at many levels.The story of Gayatri’s subversive quest is narrated by her son, Myshkin, who, in the present of the novel, is in his sixties. Gayatri leaves the household when Myshkin is just nine-years-old. Myshkin’s memory of his childhood is thus one without his mother, of exchanging letters and expecting she would return one day. It is not an ideal childhood at all: when children his age go home to find their mothers waiting for them, Myshkin waits relentlessly, longing for his mother’s letters from a faraway land.All The Lives We Never Lived,Anuradha Roy,Hachette India, 2018.Myshkin’s is a dysfunctional family from the beginning: his parents are incompatible with each other in every respect. His father is a patriot, a disciplined college lecturer who considers himself progressive but also thinks that progressiveness should be within its limits. Gayatri denounces everything her husband believes in – from his superficial patriotism to his narrow views on women’s freedom. Conversely, Gayatri is someone who indulges in dancing, painting and day-dreaming when she is expected to feed her child or cook for her family. The idea of freedom that Gayatri embodies is personal; she is suspicious of the freedom of the nation when women are held captive in the name of marriage and family.Although Gayatri re-affirms her love for painting and dancing, an early marriage devastates her dreams, confining her mostly within the household. The turning point in Gayatri’s married life comes when Walter Spies, her old friend in Indonesia, returns to India looking for her. She elopes with Spies to escape her confinement, choosing a gypsy life on the islands of Indonesia, where she has the freedom to pursue her passion. The elopement itself breaks the normative understanding of conjugality, for Walter Spies is homosexual and has no romantic inclinations towards Gayatri. The fact that Gayatri chooses to elope with Walter, with full knowledge of the lack of conjugal love but with the promise of freedom to be who she wants to be and to do what she likes to do, is a subversive act in itself.Conversely, Myshkin’s predicament – harping as he does on the memories of his motherless life and embarks on a journey to Indonesia late in life to know the whereabouts of his mother – is symptomatic of post-Independent India’s reluctance to let its past go and inability to find a way out for present. Ironically – rather unfortunately – even after over 70 years of India’s Independence, Gayatri’s concerns regarding hyper-nationalism, women’s freedom, acceptance of homosexuality and conviction in arts remain unresolved. India by and large remains captive of its colonial hangover, although the recent legalisation of homosexuality is an exceptional way forward. Narratives of sexual harassment that are being unearthed as part of the #MeToo movement and the rise of religious bigotry in India show that the concerns of democracy and freedom Gayatri had in the first half of the 20th century remain unaddressed even today.Also read: No More ‘Calmly Sailing By’, Not After What Happened in Kathua by Anuradha RoyMyshkin’s quest to find his mother, to find the truth about history and the elusive search for the ‘real’ independence of India, is interspersed with fiction and history. The presence of Rabindranath Tagore, the German curator Walter Spies and the singer Begum Akhtar in the story makes the story located in historical time even as the setting of the story in a fictional town of Muntazir, in the northern part of India near the Himalayan foothills, appears natural.Anuradha RoyMuntazir in Urdu means “someone who is waiting impatiently”. In Myshkin’s wait for his mother is also the wait for truth and for purpose behind wars, religious fundamentalism and hyper-nationalism. The 1984 killing of Sikhs in Delhi and other cities in India, the 2002 Gujarat riots, the 2013 Muzzaffarnagar riots are but a few testimonies to India’s insulation towards learning from history and repeating the same mistakes time and again. Justice itself becomes a casualty as victims of such incidents impatiently wait for justice.The Gayatris of current times are still waiting to be released from conventional ideas on marriage and social propriety, waiting for acceptance of art as a serious endeavour not just a part time hobby a woman can take up during her leisure time. As a literature student, even till date, I find it tedious to explain the purpose of pursuing a degree in the arts and humanities. As Roy’s protagonist Myshkin embarks on the same journey that his mother undertook decades earlier, we await for a time to come when the world realises the futility of wars and trusts the power of art, a time when women don’t have to leave home to find a home just like Gayatri did. All of us are waiting, for waiting is the only constant.Roy, whose earlier novel Sleeping on Jupiter was longlisted for the 2015 Booker Prize and won the 2016 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, has, through her latest novel, proved herself once again as a formidable storyteller. Her prose as lucid as her interspersing of history with fiction is outstanding, which is why when the JCB Prize for Literature was being announced last week, I was vouching for All the Lives We Never Lived. Irrespective of the fact that this extraordinary novel has figured on many short or long ‘lists’ this season of literary prizes, it must be read, if nothing else, for its artistic value.Fathima M is a PhD student at the Centre for English Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. She was a Fulbright fellow at the University of Texas at Austin in 2017-2018.
