We never have a chance to fully cognize its impact and fallout. Problems inexplicably get resolved ‘off-stage’; for instance, a character who is preparing to abduct her own son from the home of her hostile in-laws and philandering husband—arguably a very high-stakes situation—has her son suddenly and voluntarily handed over to her by said in-laws and husband.
The novel begins with his encounter with a sex worker, Ayesha, and ends with the birth of his girl child, Maya. The presence of the sex worker becomes the catalyst for the protagonist to deliberate upon his relationships with other women: his earlier affair with an older married woman, his failed relationship with his first wife who eventually commits suicide, and the strained relations with his present wife, which lying about his past precipitates. Interestingly, the protagonist resists the charms of Ayesha throughout the novel, only to exchange a kiss towards the end.
For many contemporary Hindi readers, me included, this ‘high’ style can feel alienating, and relief comes only in the dialogues, where the idiom is more fluid and accessible. Against this backdrop, the translator’s fear that his English version might sound ‘too academic’ (p. 241) feels ironic, since reading the Hindi original is no less a challenge for the reader. Khemani’s preference for this elevated register may not be accidental. Her ancestors migrated to Kolkata in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when the bhadralok elite valued Sanskritized Hindi and formal diction as marks of refinement.
Who burnt the studio and the film has been kept hazy, but the thrust of the novel suggests that she herself would have set it on fire. Writer-critic Prakash Deshpande-Kejkar writes, ‘The heroine of Hat Ghalnari Bai mortgages her body for giving shape to the movie of her dreams; this freedom of body is a noble culmination of women’s freedom.
The agreements themselves were drawn up in English and translated into Hindi or Urdu. Despite being detailed, the agreements meant very little to the workers, most of whom were illiterate and had no real way of knowing what they were agreeing to. Most agreements had four main clauses: both parties were to sign before a British Government officer; the period of indenture was five years, extendable by another five; on completion, the labourer was to be returned to Calcutta; and the ship carrying them was required to provide food, sanitation and a doctor. The machinery that fed this system was no less corrupt than the contracts it produced. Jha traces the role of the arkaati, the local recruiting agents who frequented the villages of Bihar and Awadh, luring poor and desperate men and women with tall promises of jobs and prosperity.
One of the strengths of the novella is the compassion with which Kalia portrays each character, without making anyone the villain. The parents’ sorrow is real and recognizable. They are not demanding people. They are simply unable to reconcile themselves to a world in which children no longer see their future in the same place as their parents.