It so happens that whenever I have read stories about women seeking love outside of marriage they have been recounted by an omniscient male narrator — who sets his heroine up against a backdrop of change. Anna Karenina crumbles under the stifling choices offered to women in feudal Russian society and Emma Bovary, the bored wife of a doctor, amuses herself to escape from the monotony of provincial life. Hester Prynne’s story, as told by a sympathetic Hawthorne, reveals the hypocrisy of the Puritan community. These women and others are celebrated, vilified, exposed and explained, their choices dissected and defended in lyrical prose.

So when I picked up Ratika Kapur’s The Private Life of Mrs Sharma I found its simplicity and disarming honesty incredibly refreshing, precisely because it resisted patterns I have come to expect. Instead, an extended insight was given into the thoughts and aspirations of an Indian wife, mother and working woman. Her observations constitute a complex trellis of motivations which form Kapur’s narrative. If character is story then her protagonist, Mrs Renuka Sharma, provides us with one that is neither apologetic, nor bitter, nor defensive — and therefore all the more compelling.

The primary strength of this novel lies in Kapur’s use of voice — the entire story is an extended interior monologue where the cadences of speech and patterns of thought reveal Renuka’s psyche, a “respectable married lady” who wants so much more out of life. Neologisms and phrases interspersed throughout the prose make it an almost staged dramatic performance — one can hear the firmness and irritation in her voice when we are told that she will not tolerate an “answerback” and will not indulge in activities which are a “timewaste”. In many ways, the language is a comment on the lack of poetry in Renuka’s life. She even berates herself for her fanciful tendencies after describing the scattered pieces of a torn up form as “falling like snow”. “Such pretty words, Renuka. Your son is threatening to leave school and this is how you talk?”

Ratika Kapur’s lead character is an unconscious commentator on the relationship between contentment and prosperity, lending multiple nuances to The Private Life of Mrs Sharma

The monologue also strips away the need for an external commentator who consciously strives to silhouette a character against the ethos and landscape of a new age. Yet Renuka, through her own discontent, manages to operate at a symbolic level nevertheless, albeit in a way which is uncontrived. As a receptionist in a doctor’s office, she stands poised at the boundaries; observing the contrast of her own situation with the lives of the rich — the poshest of the posh, masking their deep unhappiness behind fancy houses and parties. She becomes an unconscious commentator on the relationship between contentment and prosperity; acknowledging that one doesn’t necessarily entail the other, but also stubbornly believing that, in her case, it will.

Because Renuka speaks directly to the reader, we see a vibrant woman living life both as participant and witness, riddled with contradictions. During the day, there are justifications; during the night, guilt and longing for sex and companionship. Memories of an absent mother inform her actions when the sun comes up, and she becomes faintly heroic in her stubborn championing of her petulant son, Bobby, for whom she wants to provide a life she was denied whether he wants it or not.

“Yesterday was a little bit difficult, I can’t lie about that, but today has been much better. Except when I had a small fight on the phone with the mechanic who has still not come to fix the washing machine, and I have been calling him up daily for two weeks now, except for those two or three minutes in the morning, I have felt peaceful. Everything will be fine. I know it. Actually, I have always known it. Yesterday I behaved a little bit oddly, but it was only because I had temporarily forgotten this important fact. I think that you can forgive me. From time to time even people who are normally quite strong can feel that they have been beaten a little bit. Still, as I just said, it will all be fine. In less than two weeks my in-laws will leave for Canada for the birth of their grandchild, and they will only come back in October, which will give me enough time alone with Bobby to fix his life. — Excerpt from the book

Little details show where her proclivities lie. The way she admires pristine sheets on the beds of the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel reveal her desire for order and perfection as a housewife and aspiring businesswoman. One cannot help wondering if her relationship with her lover, Vineet, is dictated less by sexual passion (we do hear her talk about the woman’s libido and its negation in traditional culture), and more from the desire to live a life of opportunity and enterprise through someone who is unencumbered by the trappings of in-laws, expatriate husbands and discontent sons. She lives life vicariously through Vineet — talking at length about the apartments in Greater Noida which he is thinking of buying. She is content walking along India Gate, but is bowled over by the modern culture of the Barista cafe or the slick architectural design of Terminal 3. She is desperate to be a part of the “new Indian dream”, symbolised by laptops and apartments with 24-hour electricity backups and endless water supply.

It’s also interesting to see how easily Renuka lies — or seems to lie — to herself; so blasé are her revelations that the reader is left wondering if she really can’t see her own hypocrisy. She is keen to avoid taking “a wrong step” but sees no problem in seeking a cut from the office stationery supplier to provide her son with some luxury. She seeks out Vineet’s company, all the while assuring herself that she’s not a “cheap woman”. These contradictions make her less of a character on a page and more of a woman; pulsating with life and ambition, sitting next to us, discussing real estate and future business plans. She is sometimes so infuriating that we want to reach into the pages and give her a good shake, or a huge bear hug. To elicit such an emotional response through the simplest of prose is the mark of an accomplished writer, who is able to efface herself in the characters she writes and allows them to speak for themselves.

It is this last point which I find most powerful about The Private Life of Mrs Sharma. It could be very easy to be condescending towards a character like Renuka. One thinks of Brick Lane by Monica Ali, and the stilted, almost child-like dialogue through which the heroine discloses her ignorance and low social class. Renuka’s dignity lies in the fact that she never apologises for herself. Even when her story takes a dramatic turn at the end — too sudden and abrupt to be believable, not to mention a tad convenient — we see a woman of dignity, waiting for a fate she has no illusions about.

This novel has integrity in its prose and depiction of characters. It is a worthy read and, to my mind, one of the most complex and accomplished works of fiction to come out of the Indian subcontinent this year.

The reviewer is the author of How It Happened, published by Penguin Books, India, in 2012.

The Private Life of Mrs Sharma
(NOVEL)
By Ratika Kapur
Bloomsbury Publishing, UK
ISBN: 978-1408873649
192pp.

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, June 26th, 2016