RIGHTS OF AN INDIVIDUAL AS PORTRAYED IN SASHI DESHPANDE’S THE DARK HOLDS NO TERROR
RIGHTS OF AN INDIVIDUAL AS PORTRAYED IN
SASHI DESHPANDE’S THE DARK HOLDS NO TERROR
Dr.
P. Saraswathi,M.A.,M.Phil., B.Ed., Ph.D.,
Associate
Professor and Head
Department
of English,
J.K.K.Nataraja
College of Arts and Science
Individuals
possessing different integral personalities and will power are united in
marriage. They are expected to form a single entity but it is important that
each person should retain his /her own identity. By fulfilling his/her role,
he/she contributes to the happiness of a home. In India, the object of this
sacramental contract is to realize the love of Supreme Being through the
secular experience of love.
Sashi
Deshpande’s novel The Dark Holds No Terror documents a process of
emancipation by ordeal. In Deshpande’s novel, the heroine-Saritha (Saru) a
doctor marries a person of her choice and settles in Bombay. The love showered
by Manu makes her experience bliss. As she ascends the stairs of life, her fame
and income makes him feel inferior to her. Spurred by the question of an
interviewer, he asserts his supremacy by assaulting her physically during
nights. Her life becomes miserable and she lives a dual life - a life of hope,
activities and aspirations in the day time and that of a trapped, frightened
animal in the night. Unable to bear this painful agony, she regrets her
decision for having married him against the wish of her parents. “The
fisherman’s daughter was wiser; she sent the king to her father and it was the
father who bargained with him.” (66)
The
awareness of her position, in a male dominated, tradition bound India pains her
and the anguish is revealed when she addresses the students as follows:
A wife must always be a few feet behind
her husband. If he’s an M.A you should be a B.A. If he’s 5’4’ tall you shouldn’t
be more than 5’3’ tall. If he’s earning five hundred rupees, you should never
earn more than four hundred and ninety nine rupees. That’s the only rule to
follow if you want a happy marriage… No partnership can ever be equal. It will
always be unequal, but take care it is unequal in the favor of the husband. If
the scales tilt in your favor, God help you, both of you (137)
The
painful experiences in her life make her realize that her life with Manu is
meaningless and hence she decides to leave her house. Disillusionment in her
life makes her analyze her marital relationship and she recalls:
“…but now I know it was there it began
this terrible thing that has destroyed our marriage…And so the esteem with
which I was surrounded made me inches taller. But perhaps, the same thing that
made me Inches taller made him inches shorter. He had been young man and I his
bride. Now I was the lady doctor and he was my husband.” (42)
Under
the pretext of her mother’s death, she returns to her parent’s home. The bitter
fact that her home was not a home for her pains her miserably. ”It [Manu’s
home] was not home; nor was this [father’s home] home. How odd to live for so
long and discover that you have no home at all” (192).
The
realization that she has been her own enemy makes her overcome the timidity in
her. She has left her home, searching for an identity and she realizes that her
identity lies in her role as a doctor serving humanity, as a wife, and as a
mother. She decides not to endure any more humiliation because of Manu’s
failure and her success. She decides to assert herself and fight her own
battle. She realizes that her life is her own which she will have to shape as
well as face the events of her life. The stay at her parents home has made her
realize that she can “lift ourselves out of ignorance; we can find ourselves as
creatures of excellence, intelligence and skill” (Richard Bach 27). She has
understood that she has every right to live her life as she prefers.
She
has understood that through her identity as a doctor she can render noble
service to humanity and that she can find refuge in her own self. With this
decision, she confronts her husband and goes back to Bombay. Her professional
success has strengthened herself and through this self assessment she acquires
her identity
Her love for her
children and dedication for her profession, added to her self realization,
enables her return. As she says: “If we can’t believe in ourselves, we’re sunk”
(220).. She becomes aware of the fact that we have to live “in our mind and
existence is an attempt to bring that life into physical reality- to state it
in gesture and form” (Ayn Rand.518).
Saru
learns a valuable lesson in the end that loneliness could be destroyed by love
and human interdependence, which can be described as
the Enhancement of human life, a
certain divine rage and enthusiasm… [which] unites him [an individual] to his
race, pledges him to the domestic and civic relations, carries him with new
sympathy into nature, enhances the power of the senses, opens the imagination…
(161)
Could
Saru abandon her children and husband thus? For this question that rises in our
mind, the author has provided answers. Saru has a faithful nurse. Yet, at
times, she recalls that her son refuses to go to bed unless she covers him with
his blanket and her daughter too will not go to School, if her mother does not
stand at the door and say ‘Bye’.
The readers are forced
to agree with her decision and feel that “one school is finished and the time
has come for another to begin.” (Richard Bach, 38)
Saru’s
decision to return home may be considered as the impact of her culture- the
typical Indian motherly attitude to sacrifice herself for the success of her
children. Saru’s exit paves way for her entry.
The
Dark Holds No Terror conveys many valuable lessons. Definitely, the dark
holds no terror. It is the negative energy of the creative mind that induces
imaginary shapes in the dark and thereby induces fear in us. It is in our hands
to control, restrict, subdue and conquer fear. Deshpande’s message is
clear-‘Never give up your position in your life’. The story advocates another
valuable message.” No one can stop you from doing what you really want to
do.”(152)
Theme
of loneliness too finds its place in this novel. The words of Saru’s mother “We
are alone and we have to be alone” (176), makes us recall the words of Paul
Elmer More:Your life shall indeed be solitary until death, the great solitude,
absorbs it at last. …this is, the burden and the penalty laid upon us, by the
external decrees for the sin we have done, and the sins of our fathers before
us. (123)
We
are also reminded of Thomas Wolfe’s views that “Loneliness is the central and
inevitable fact of human existence” (155). Through love and service to
humanity, she has derived a new meaning in her life. Saru has understood the
predicament of her life. She can neither be considered as the representative of
liberated modern woman nor as an orthodox one. The sudden awakening in her may
be considered as the result of her education and that of her professional
success. Though it is unconvincing, yet we, the readers are well aware of the
fact that the bitterest hours of life are the most uplifting because the
painful agonizing distorted moments teach valuable lessons in life.
WORKS CITED
PRIMARY SOURCES:
Desphande, Shashi, The
Dark Holds No Terrors. New Delhi: Penguin books, 1990. (Further references
to the play are from this edition and will be included parenthetically within
the parenthesis)
SECONDARY SOURCES:
Bach, Richard. Jonathan
Livingston Seagull. London: Pan Books Ltd., 1973.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo.
“Love”. The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson
Essays. (First
Series). Ed. Sully and Kleinteich. New York: N.P.: 1883.
Literary Criticism:
A Reader. Ed. David Lodge. London: Longman Group Ltd., 1972.
More, Paul Elmer. “The
Solitude of Nathaniel Hawthorne”. An
Anthology of American
Literature.1890—1965. New Delhi: Eur Asia Publishing House, 1967.
Rand, Ayn. The
Fountain Head. (New York: The Bobbs Merrille Co., 1971
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