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In 'The Age of Shiva,' the burden of women in India
Novel shows difficulty in living happily, on one's own terms.
By Vikas Turakhia, Special to the Times
Published March 16, 2008
The Age of Shiva
By Manil Suri
W.W. Norton, 448 pages, $24.95 - - - Manil Suri takes significant risks in his second novel, The Age of Shiva. Though his award-winning debut, The Death of Vishnu, was a satire set in a Bombay apartment building, Shiva won't make readers smile; its scope is wider and its subject heavier. The only similarities between the two stories may be their setting in India and Suri's skillful storytelling. Narrated by Meera Sawhney, Shiva spans three decades, beginning in 1955 when Meera first meets Dev, her sister's secret boyfriend. Meera seizes a chance to claim Dev as hers, but when he accepts her overtures, he alters the direction of their lives. They are spotted together in a position damning enough to ruin Meera and her family's reputation, a situation only remedied by a drastic wedding. The rest of the novel follows Meera through marriage and motherhood, offering a condemning picture of life for Indian women. In a newly independent country teeming with rhetoric about hope, Meera wonders, "What were my opportunities, dangling ripe and heavy within reach, waiting to be plucked?" Meera attempts to find happiness on her terms, but her position as a second-class citizen is so deeply entrenched that other women will hold her to it. Even her father, despite his ideas about gender equality, manipulates his daughters. Married life doesn't change Meera's position. At first, she and her dowry are "on display" for neighbors stopping by to see the new refrigerator, gramophone and daughter-in-law. More disconcerting is the family's attitude toward their other daughter-in-law, Sandhya, who receives violent beatings for her "constipated" womb. Meera's story is filled with examples of the way women are held down, and Suri manages to convey her anger. He pulls off writing in a female voice that doesn't sound like a woman channeled though a man. That he has constructed another fascinating and frustrating portrait of Indian society, however, is his novel's greater success. Vikas Turakhia teaches English in Copley, Ohio.
[Last modified March 12, 2008, 17:14:10]
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