#mamta banerjee husband name | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

littledreamcsy · 4 years

Text

Someone Else’s Garden

Someone Else’s Garden by Dipika Rai portrays the social settings in India as it depicts the injustices faced by the women. The novel is a story about the lives of peasants who suffer from poverty. It focuses on the life of female characters who are treated like lifeless objects in the society where they are not respected and only seen as vessels of reproduction. Their thoughts and feelings are not given importance in the family and society and daughters are considered as burdens to the family. Therefore, they are not fed well. Meanwhile, sons are favoured because in the Hindu belief, daughters do not belong to the family and they are considered as burdens.

Someone Else’s Garden revolves around Mamta, the eldest of seven children. She is born into a low caste family and a patriarchal society in rural India named Gopalpur. Mamta considers marriage as the key to escape from sorrows and problems in life. She always fantasizes a happy marriage with beautiful children. However, Mamta is given in marriage to a man so evil that he sells her kidney to fund his gambling and prostitute at the age of twenty. Her husband turns out to be a man with volatile temper as well as a drunkard. Mamta had been abused by her husband which makes her regret thinking that marriage can gives her freedom and started to miss her family even more. Therefore, one day she ran off from her husband and flees to her village where her father and brother helped her to escape to a city.

In the city, Mamta starts to find money there by working as a maid and send it back home to her mother. The story also narrates about Lokend, the younger son of Zamindar in Mamta’s village. He is a gentle guy who talks about the best and kindest of Hindu Gods and a well-known speaker in the city. One day, he arrives in the city to run for the office and were attacked by his rivals and Mamta steps in to take care of him afterwards. From there, both of them fall in love. They decided to get married and started a new life where they returned to the families in village and also built a new house for Mamta’s mother, Lata Bai.

From my observation, the female characters in this novel are oppressed through marriage. Lata Bai married Seeta Ram at the age of twelve but on the first night of their wedding, Lata Bai was raped by her father-in-law because according to Seeta Ram’s family tradition, he gets the first taste; “Sorry,” her husband said to her, “he gets the first taste. That’s our custom.” (p.17). Besides that, Lata Bai also gives advice to her daughter Mamta that they should always obey their husband no matter what; “Don’t say anything till addressed, don’t make a sound, don’t do anything to make him beat you, because you’ll only have yourself to blame for it.” (p.71). Then, Mamta also suffered oppression after her marriage when she was beaten by her husband until she lost her tooth; “Mamta’s mouth is bleeding. One of her teeth has come loose.” (p.126).

Next, Someone Else’s Garden also portrayed the patriarchal society in India. Before Mamta getting married, Lata Bai reminded her that she needs to obey her husband and always serve her husband well when she said “Now you listen to me, Mamta: it’s our place to accept, and accept…be demure.” (p.71). This line indicates that women are inferior to men as they are not allowed to speak up against them. Furthermore, the male characters in the novel are involved in politics while the women just stay at home and take care of their children. For instance, Lokend came to the city to give a speech in front of a crowd when suddenly he is attacked by the opposite party; “Lokend emerges from the Party van to take his position behind the mic.” (p.291).

Another injustice faced by the female character in the novel is that daughters are considered as burden to the family and are treated poorly. To illustrate, Seeta Ram had to take a loan from the Big House so that he can afford Mamta’s dowry for her wedding; “Mamta’s father has taken a loan from the Big House for her dowry,” the mother drops her voice to, “we had to, otherwise we would never have managed to get a proposal for her.” (p.31). Next, we can see that Seeta Ram despise his youngest child only because the infant is a girl; “He is not beguiled. Not another girl,” he says, (p.12). Not only that, Lata Bai is also disappointed when she found out that she has given birth to another baby girl; “Another girl. With so much blood and pain, what did she get?” (p.6).

As we all know, oppression in India is a well-known issue among people since the country strictly holds onto their culture and religion. However, cultural tradition is not an excuse to oppress women. Women also have their own right to decide who and when they wanted to get married as well as to choose their own path in life. They have been fighting for their own freedom for quite a long time and there are several female freedom fighters in India that should not be forgotten such as Begum Royeka, Sarojini Naidu, Kittur Rani Chennamma and Jhalkari Bai and a few more as listed by Sheroes.com.

Works Cited:

Banerjee Pal, Sainy. “15 Female Freedom Fighters Of India (Fearless But Now Forgotten!)” Sheroes, 27 June 2019 https://sheroes.com/articles/indian-women-freedom-fighters/NzYzNg==. Accessed 23 November 2019

#litgen #drflo

0 notes