Extremely readable

a woman madly in love by Boman Desai. Published in 2004 by The Lotus Collection, an imprint of Roli Books Private Limited, M-75, G. K. II Market, New Delhi 110048. Pp: 419. Price: Rs 350.

If one approaches Boman Desai’s latest novel a woman madly in love, with any preconceived notions based on his earlier work, one is bound to be surprised. In this novel there is no attempt to re-possess the past, to return to his roots and examine the exodus of the Parsis from Persia as he did in The Memory of Elephants; nor is there the critical and perceptive evaluation of contemporary American society which one finds in Asylum, USA. He is not concerned with the preoccupation of a community or of a nation and has chosen a much narrower canvas — the story of Farida Cooper, the woman madly in love, told in a simple and engaging manner.

Desai: change in style

The novel opens in the offices of a market research branch of The Manda­lay Market in Chicago where Percy Faber is interview­ing Farida for the post of an assistant analyst. She is no spring chicken. In her fifties she has just lost her job with Telesur­veys Inc. In spite of the leisurely pace of the novel, Desai does not waste any time and plunges us straight into one of the major themes of the novel: What is more important, qualifications or experience? Though Farida possesses the requisite experience after her employment with Telesurveys, she is not a graduate from an Ivy League University; in fact, she does not even possess the basic MBA degree, which the management of The Mandalay Market considers crucial for any aspiring marketing analyst.

As a parallel to this, is the long-standing feud Farida is engaged in with Greta Frumpkin, director of Graduate Studies at the Lincoln State University. Farida had enrolled for a Masters in creative writing 10 years ago and had never been able to meet the requirement that all applicants complete their course work in four years. She has constantly dropped out to write her own novels. Though these have never been published, the authorities refuse to even accept these as proof of her writing skills and as a consequence she is required to start the course work yet another time. Desai presents this entire feud between Farida, Greta (who is as stonewalling and cranky as her name suggests) and later David Constable, head, Department of English (who adopts a more conciliatory approach) in the form of letters. Both these strands of the novel lead to the same question: would "someone who has been to bartending school make a better barten­der than someone who has actually bartended?”

Farida does eventually get the job and the novel moves back in time. Desai presents his main theme, love, which is evident from the title. In an interview with The Hindu, Desai said, "The primary theme in a woman madly in love is love in its various disguises, what it means, how it’s abused, parents fostering their prejudices in children in the name of love, married couples enforcing it like a contract, lovers rationalizing selfishness, and so on.” Farida has returned to her ancestral home in Bombay after a disastrous marriage with Horace Finksch. She has always been deprived of love. Her father is too busy making amorous advances to women; her mother, as a result, is cold and incapable of loving her daughter. Farida clings on to her kaki (paternal aunt) for maternal affection, which further alienates her from her mother who resents this relationship.

In Farida, Desai presents a character who is lively, fun loving and possessing a combination of brains and beauty. She is richly talented — she is a novelist and an artist. Yet, she is no paragon of virtues and possesses the faults of the idle rich in that she is impulsive, headstrong and has neither the patience nor the tenacity to work out her problems. She has retreated to the comforts provided by her kaki after she has been greatly wounded by her husband’s treachery. She refuses to admit she has been affected by what has transpired with Horace and tries to convince herself that she can carry on as if she were fine and nothing has happened. On the rebound, she falls in love with a 17-year-old boy Darius who becomes totally infatuated with her. Desai portrays the relationship with great understanding and tenderness. Though he has much sympathy for his heroine, Desai does not allow her to go scot-free and the genuine agony she suffers when she is faced with her thoughtless and rather selfish actions is presented with great compassion.

Linking the two themes of love, on the one hand, and the debate between theory and practice on the other is Farida’s ex-husband, a professor of English, a great suppor­ter of James Joyce’s Ulysses and like most modern academics thoroughly steeped in the latest critical jargon of the day. He is a disciple of Derrida and for the reader who is not familiar with the critical Theory of Decons­truction, Desai includes an amusing dialog between Farida and her friend, Rohini, to whom she cogently expounds the Theory of Deconstruction. Desai gently pokes fun at individuals who are so engrossed in critical theory that both literature and clear and concise writing have taken a back seat. The fallacy of applying the Theory of Decons­truction to life is critically presented when Horace uses this theory to explain away his infidelity and to justify both his affair with his ex-wife Ginger as well as the child which has resulted from this union. If marriage means "Love, honor, trust, respect, loyalty, fidelity...,” Farida has marginalized infidelity which Horace feels is vital to a fuller understanding of marriage.

The novel is not without inconsistencies. One wonders why Desai chose to have Farida and Darius use a flat in the same building in which Darius has his parental home to conduct their illicit love affair. The relationship with Percy could have been given greater coverage. It is neither as convincingly nor as exhaustively portrayed as Farida’s earlier relationships with Darius or her husband. Perhaps the end is a bit too neatly tied up with Farida finally achieving her Masters in creative writing, a stable relationship with Percy as well as the publication of her novel, The Long Sunset.

What is most remarkable in the novel is Desai’s complete and sudden volte-face in terms of technique and style. One wonders whether Desai has consciously avoided writing in his earlier style to counter the critical attention The Memory of Elephants and Asylum, USA have garnered. In a woman madly in love, he demonstrates that he can write an almost conventional novel in the tradition of George Eliot and Leo Tolstoy and still engage the reader’s attention by portraying characters which are realis­tic and convincing. Though a woman madly in love does move back­ward and forward in time, shuttling between Bombay and Chicago and spanning the years from World War I to the 1980s, it has none of the post-modernist’s techniques of his earlier work. The novel is extremely readable and adds another dimension to the author’s fictional skill. That he can present a convincing and engaging portrait of a woman in love and communicate the same to the reader in a simple and effective manner without the tricks and the subterfuges which writers often use to complicate and obfuscate their work is an achievement in itself.

FIRDAUS GANDEVIA