Books: Manju Kapur back on Home turf

Home

Manju Kapur

Publisher: Random House India

Price: Rs 395/-

Difficult Daughters made Manju Kapur practically a household name, especially after it won the Commonwealth Award (for the Eurasian region). Now, Kapur is back, with her soon-to-be launched third novel Home.

I was apprehensive as I started it, thinking maybe that it wouldn’t live up to expectations but the story flowed rather nicely, I must say! I wouldn’t normally have thought that the travails of a joint family in Karol Bagh, Delhi would make for gripping reading, but there’s something intense about the individual strands of the story. Especially Nisha, the youngest protagonist.

A particularly funny scene of a bunch of college teachers sitting around aghast that Nisha has gotten a First Division in English Literature despite not knowing any grammar - methinks the author (a professor of English at Miranda House) has had her fair share of moments like these.

Long live DU tutes - borrowed, stolen, recycled but mainly just mugged up. That’s the unspoken, but not so shocking truth - the university’s under-belly, but it’s the under-belly of society that’s open to soft probing here in this book.

A lower-middle class family of shopkeepers, their travails, hopes, ambitions, the pressure to have children to feel worthwhile, the unbearable emphasis on looks, fair skin - it’s like a sociological treasure trove, just in story form. It reads like real life and flows pretty smoothly at that.

The author writes without being overtly judgmental — instead of the stereotypical unfeeling patriarch, you have a father deeply concerned about his daughter’s happiness and willing to compromise with family “tradition” for the cause. Despite her doing the unthinkable - falling in love with a boy (who’s obviously not “good enough” for her). I’m glad the usual stereotypes aren’t followed here…He turns out to be quite a wuss, while Nisha’s love-struck pining gets under your skin.

The way the family closes ranks but deals with sexual abuse/incest without even discussing it openly, I think, captures the essence of the great Indian joint family. For an outsider, it’s quite an eye-opener.