Mridula Garg wrote “Anitya” set against the backdrop of Indian freedom movement 30 years ago in Hindi. An interplay of personal and political choices, the novel weaves in the ‘violent' form of the freedom struggle put forth by leaders such as Bhagat Singh and Chandrasekhar Azad and the non-violent movement led by Mahatma Gandhi with the lives of the protagonists.
“It is more relevant today,” the author says. Mridula was at Reliance Timeout, recently to launch her book “Anitya- Halfway to nowhere”, translated from Hindi by Seema Segal and brought out by the Oxford University Press (Rs. 395).
“It is not a historical novel and there is no dramatisation of historical events, it is about personal lives set against the freedom struggle,” Mridula says. There is angst, anger and frustration, as the characters feel responsible for the self-destructive choices they make. A kind of transition from “why not I” to “Why me?”
“When I started writing about my central protagonist Avijit, he had to be a political being, because his personal life is co-ordinated with the political developments,” adds the feisty writer, known for her ‘audacious and lively' themes.
The author read a passage, a conversation between two important characters Anitya (Avijit's alter ego, his brother, who is disillusioned with life) and the vivacious and adamant Kajal. The introduction begins with “Ten steps forward…ten steps back. Forward…back again”, which the author says is a motif which signifies the craft and content of the novel. Anitya, the disillusioned man underlies the concept of the novel. “Even when we got freedom, we reached nowhere. Over the years, we have realised freedom is not the independence of the mind,” Mridula says.
Her choice is not with the Gandhian movement and the kind of independence we brokered in. “We are our choices. Personal choices determine the political history and political choices determine the lives of people. People are living the decision of the political leaders. Look at the violence after Independence. We were really not non-violent. It needs to be given a direction and turned into a positive energy. You live in a dilemma doing things you didn't believe in,” she says.
About research on the historical content, the author says she relied on her memory. “I have a long memory. It is extremely painful but it's the raw material for my work,” she smiles. “My father was in the movement and from when I was a nine-year-old, our dinner conversations were always political,” the author recalls. In addition, she read about 200 books, including diaries of people who participated in the freedom movement, and interacted with people who were witness to history.
Mridula, who wrote her first short story in 1972, has 27 books in Hindi, three in English and a number of short stories and plays to her credit. Her new novel “Mil Jul mann”, part fiction and part biography about her sister was released last year.
The author who has been into writing for 40 years drew non-literary attention for her expression of feminist concerns in novels such as Chitcobra , Uske Hisse Ki Dhoop and Kathi Gulab. “My writing is not feminist. One of the metaphors of womanhood is guilt, be it in sexual matters, in working woman or non-working. My women felt no guilt ever. It ruffled feathers. We have the cerebral part and the womb, which encompasses and empowers you but at the same time also tightens you. My kind of feminism is that each woman can be different.”
