Makes You Ponder over your own relationships!!!!. Review on A Married Woman - Manju Kapoor

After reading & enjoying ‘Home ‘ from Manju Kapoor I went out searching for more books from the author and picked up ‘Difficult Daughters’ (read it, yet to review) & ‘A Married Woman’ (picked it up in a sale). The reason to buy the later book was the review of same in MS. Though the review there was bit discouraging I thought lets see what my take would be.

This is the Story & Journey of ‘Astha’ a normal middle class girl. Like any average Indian Parents even her parents are worried about her marriage (as soon as she enters her teens). Her mother has always been pestering her to be mentally prepared for marriage and has accordingly been preparing her. She has been brought up in a manner that she has to get married ASAP and satisfy her husband. Her father though is more interested in educating her.

The initial pages of the book depict the pre marriage life of Astha. She falls in love gets dumped off (thanks to her mother), she explores the physical side of relationships (though she shares only few innocent kisses she scares off the boy with the thoughts of marriage).

The author devotes these pages to depict the life & struggles of a middle class man (her father). The way she describes their struggle in buying a house is very close to reality. Astha’s parents like any average middle class parents dream to get her married to a nice household and to buy there own house in Delhi.

She is eventually married to Hemant, an US returned MBA graduate. Her parents are happy with the alliance because she is being married off in a very good family (read, they have the means to buy their own house in an affluent society).  Astha enters the marital phase of her life like any female, not knowing what to expect. She dutifully molds herself to the needs of her husband and family. On her parental side, her father expires leaving her mother alone who eventually under the influence of a swami shifts to Rishikesh (BTW she thinks very highly of her son in law and trusts him more than her own daughter). Astha’s gives birth to a baby girl & then when she is pregnant again she marks a difference in her life. Her liberal husband suddenly wants a baby boy only and she has to go through various rituals, as suggested by her mom to be successful in this mission (yes, it’s a mission for her). After fruitfully bearing a son for the family, her life comes to a stand still. Her once contemporary and always ready to help husband suddenly becomes a not so involved father. Astha has all this while taught in a school to pass her time. Its here that she meets Aijaz, a drama teacher. In him she sees vibrancy and life.  However he is killed in Ayodhya.

From here on Astha’s life gets a meaning.  She takes up painting so that the money collected by selling it goes to a charity in Aijaz’s name. She is now actively involved in street protests. All this is in the background of Babri Masjid conflict. She even visits Ayodhya on the anniversary of Aijaz’s death. Here she meets Peeplika, Aijaz’s widow (though Astha knows about that quite later). They both get along quite well and continue their friendship even after coming back to Delhi. They both feel a strong bond between them and they eventually get into a physical relationship (I’ll analyze the reasons for same later). The intimacy and comfort she receives from this affair, contrasts strongly with the distance she feels in her rigidly defined role as wife and mother. Though, eventually she has to take a decision to be either with her love or to stay within the safe bonds of family. The books depicts all her struggles to stand up on her own….to do what she wants…what she eventually chooses or gets is something I’ll leave untouched so that you can go back and enjoy the book….

Now I would like to discuss about the characters and what makes this book click (at least for me….)

Astha’s character has been modeled on an average Indian Girl. From the time she remembers she has been trained to be married. Marriage brings in few shocks for her. The physical side between her & husband have been described in the book and according to me it had a purpose. Though she is a strong character but she is someway or the other suppressed by her family. Though when she finally takes a stand and moves out of the boundaries of her home I felt like cheering “Yo! Girl!!!”

Hemant,a quintessential Indian husband. When newly wed all liberal towards the wife but as life moves ahead, all the liberal thoughts are gone!!! He gives the feeling that his wife serves few purposes for him…taking care of his children, parents, home and satisfy his manly needs.

Peeplika, she works in an NGO & seems to be highly dissatisfied with life.Being widowed she is trying to explore new avenues in life.  She wants get into a relationship which gives her minimum heart pain and where her partner doesn’t come with a package. That’s the very reason that she tries to explore a relationship with Astha.

Astha gets into this relationship because in Peeplika she finds a partner who lets her grow, who lets her find herself. She is happy with this relationship because *she has found and nurtured it herself, it has not been found by her parents. *She is in that stage of her life where she starts feeling that may be her husband is not holier than thou, and may be he has been cheating her also. So when she gets into the physical part of this relastionship she enjoys it, basically because 1st she thinks that despite the fact that she is hiding something from her husband she is not actually cheating him (as she is not a relationship with a man). And according this reason is so very thought provoking.... 2ndly whatever is happening in this relationship is her own doing and she is not being guided by anyone.

For Peeplika this relationship works because she knows that at least Astha won’t betray her the way her husband betrayed her (she always knew that Aijaz cheated on her & by dying he did the biggest betrayal of all). Peeplika is a stronger character than Astha and she basically is the driving force in their relastionship.

The author has tackled some common marital problems in this book though I won’t say that the solution which she has selected for Astha is the correct one.

There are some loopholes in the plot, like Astha’s sudden makeover into a political animal, by virtue of her meeting a political activist, Aijaz Khan, who alerts her to the growing religious fundamentalism in India, is quite sudden and unconvincing. Even the destruction of the Babri Masjid as the backdrop to the novel is ineffective, because it is inconsequential. It is just a backdrop and nothing else….

But still I would recommend this book because of the effective writing of the author. The way she has depicted Astha’s married life & the game her mind plays would be identified by many. It might even makes us ponder over our relationships..

Its strictly for the Female Population….