My dear Avantika,
As I have told you time and again, I love almost everything you write, but here you have achieved something very special. To wit, a remarkably perceptive peek into the darker, but still predictable recesses of the human psyche.
While the whole chapter reads very well, I was struck, and captivated, by the way in which you have captured the reactions of Sakshi's and her uncle's neighbours. It is unpleasant to our liberal, painfully fair mindset, but it is spot on in its take on the most likely reaction in that environment and under those circumstances. It is an excellent piece of scripting, for you tell us each time that is filmy, so I am calling it a script!
When assessing and criticizing the meanness of the neighbours, one has to take 3 aspects into consideration, and I am sure you have done this.
-Hill people, and that goes for every one from the Assam tribesmen to the residents of high places in, say, Mussorie or Kumaon, distrust all those coming from the plains, especially those from the big metros like Delhi and Mumbai. That is, they distrust them when they settle down in the hills, are do not form part of the welcome tourist hordes. These migrants are classified as crooked, exploitative city slickers, and in very many cases this is true. It takes a long, long time for city slickers to be accepted in the hills!
So the latent distrust among the Professor's neighbours, which was kept underground by the respect all had for him, has now surfaced given the new developments. Whence the repeated assertion that neither Sakshi nor even the highly respected Professor belong here, and who knows what she is really like?
The point raised about her going often to the post office, normally so innocuous, fits into this context as an allegedly fishy exercise of keeping in touch with strange outside elements. It is surprising that no one has spotted her talking secretly on her mobile in the garden. That would have nailed it!
-In any small place, to be arrested by the police is a public disgrace, not to be taken lightly. It is automatically assumed that this does not happen without due cause, and the arrested person is tarred, in the minds of the mohallahwallahs, with the guilt of having actually committed what he/she is accused of. This is what happens to Sakshi, she is pronounced a priori guilty in the court of local public opinion.
Nor is this kind of instant prejudice limited to Indian village or small town populations. Think of an American husband framed by his wife, in a nasty divorce case, and accused of having abused their children. He is, for all practical purposes, finished. No one, but no one, will ever believe that he could be innocent.
So, while some of your dramatis personae, such as the leering young riff raff, are plain nasty, the rest are merely responding to the pre-programmed patterns of behaviour.
-There is also the misogynistic streak among the men, and even more so among the women in this conservative town-village. They do not like spirited, independent young women like Sakshi, who go about in jeans and seem capable of doing everything a man can do and better. Now that she looks down and out, dressed very oddly in a man's shirt, and accompanied by a police officer in his inner vest, all this suppressed dislike comes pouring out. It was only to be expected.
In this context, I have one serious objection to the way things have been shown happening. Arjun does not lack for brains and imagination, and then there is Lisa as well to add her inputs. Did the two of them not know what sort of impression would be produced on the neighbours if Sakshi, the day after she was arrested by the police, turned up with very visible bruises on her face and a badly injured knee, and clad in a man's shirt, besides being accompanied by a man in his inner vest?
Why did Arjun not go home and get dressed while Sakshi was still in the clinic, and why did he not commission Shree to check out about what had been the impact of the news of her arrest on her uncle ? If he had had that done, he would have known that the uncle had been hospitalized, and this unpleasant encounter with the neighbours would have been avoided till matters were more under control.
Plus, he could; have arranged for Lisa to procure some clothing for Sakshi, so that she did not present such a dubious appearance and play right into the hands of the malicious gossips.
This said, my dear Avantika, your latest baby is coming along beautifully.
Shyamala Aunty
Posted: 31 May 2014 at 3:28pm
Chapter EIGHT
Cricket
Current Affairs
Anupamaa
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