Ritika Sharma
One of the theories about the art of the novel is a hold-all text that attempts to include as many possible ideas and themes in a singular work. It may reflect a glorious ambition, but can also result in spectacular failure in the absence of novelistic insight and craft.
Rupleena Bose’s Summer of Then tries to encapsulate all the possible ideas of the author’s era in one book— homosexuality, gender discrimination, feminism, fidelity, friendships, failed marriages, air hazard and communal disharmony. Bose narrates the themes through the chronicle of her young protagonist, a teacher of English literature in Delhi (incidentally, the novelist, says the bio, teaches at Delhi University), and unravels the myriad of emotions women navigate throughout their lives. The novel sails chiefly through two cities—Kolkata and Delhi—the geography that witnesses almost every action that takes place in the young narrator-protagonist’s life, which is revealed through her multiple friends, lovers, spouse, peers and parents. Both metro cities, with their charms and toxicity, become the vectors that spread the emotional decay to their citizens.
The novel wears its politics up its sleeves. It begins with underlying merits of homosexuality when a character remarks that heterosexual men are “complacent, blind to their own faults… and totally driven by neglect”, even as the gay struggle to find a ‘respite’ from the world. The overtone is as clear as it gets.
Early into the novel we are introduced to the protagonist’s love (and also the childhood friend of her then boyfriend) Zap, who wears a T-shirt ‘Who Killed Democracy’. Amid the constant change of cities and continents, the protagonist only yearns for the presence of Zap in her life.
The novel seems to strive hard to deliver the impression that in the embrace of her husband’s friend Zap, she eventually receives the solace she’d been looking for throughout her life. Is the sentiment lasting, though? Does it help her redeem an unhappy marriage, an institution that, according to the novel, seems to be the fountainhead of all the evils that may befall a woman? One dare not ask it. Neither does the novel attempt to address the unsettling question.
The novel is peppered with references of a “right wing government in majority”, “fascist uncle”, “happy days for men”, the riots in Gujarat and the killing of minorities in Delhi. All are legitimate episodes but somehow they are not actualised fully and hence remain half-baked and don’t really stir the reader.
Relationships are at the core of the novel. But, be assured, it’s not the loyalty or commitment, but the convenience, a mutually satisfying equation that holds people together. Marx’s “money is the core of it all” seems to be the only glue for close friendships. Love, the novel seems to suggest, is a warped emotion. And, marriages, an outdated relic of the past. In the cosmos the novel inhabits mothers raising their sons to be their facsimile images, disdainful of others and with a rage that nobody can tolerate except their own biological parents. For a novel that treads the territory of iconoclasm, ironically, women are mostly playing the cliched roles—wives host parties, and dutiful mothers bear the worst of their sons.
The novel does occasionally hit the reader at right spots. The retelling of the traumatic abuse of a young girl underlines the warped logic in society that ends up questioning and ultimately silencing the very women who speak up against the offence.
While most people who populate the novel may betray being stock characters, it’s Dharamdev, a driver by profession and the all-purpose man Friday of the protagonist’s ultra rich friends, who brings out the most poignant part of the book. He represents a part of Delhi that still seems untouched by the murk around. What does it say about a work that charts the life of the elites, that it assigns the duty to bring together various disjointed knots in the narrative to the people of the ‘margins’? Try answering the question, and the novel’s politics will unravel.
(Ritika Sharma is an independent scholar)
