Author: Aruna Chakravarti
Publisher: Penguin
Year: 2004
Language: English
Pages: 340
ISBN/UPC (if available): 014303216X
Description
There’s insanity in our family, It runs in our blood-the blood of the Vaidic Brahmins, one or two of us go mad in every generation.
From the ritual-bound household of an orthodox scholar in a small village in Bengal in 1897 to Germany and Mumbai at the turn of the new millennium, the Inheritors follows the shifting life patterns of a family through a mélange of narratives, memories and characters.
The unrelenting Puritanism of Nyayaratna Bishnupada Deb Sharma drives his daughter Radharani to insanity and throws into sharp relief his grandson Shibkali’s feeble attempt to break free, ultimately foiled by the weight of generations of adherence to tradition. Giribala voices her resentment against her circumstances through a lifetime of silence, her husband’s sexual perversions. And Pramatha’s depraved radicalism is set against Shashishekhar’s progressive outlook which symbolizes the most significant departure from the stifling constrains of his community. Even as it inherits the dead wood of the pat, each generation strives to liberate itself, setting the stage for the eternal conflict between tradition and change, between a legacy and its inheritors.
Aruna Chakravarti draws upon history and myth, religion and folklore, rituals and culinary practices to create a vivid portrait of a community of Vaidic Kulin Brahmins. The narrative, oscillating back and forth in time, weaves a vibrant tapestry of life-differing ideologies and sensibilities, suicides and desertions, marriages and infidelities, bigotry and liberalism-set in the larger context of a nation’s inexorable march towards independence and a society caught on the cusp of conservatism and modernity.
Contents
Author’s Note
Prologue-1996
Excerpts From Alo’s Diary
Radharani-1897
Shibkali-1897-98
Excerpts From Alo’s Diary
Shashishekhar’s Daughters-1939
Mrinalini -1918
Excerpts From Alo’s Diary
Noni’s Recollections-1940
Excerpts From Alo’s Diary
Epilogue-2000