The theme of Marital Disintegration in Ruth Prawer

THE THEME OF MARITAL DISINTEGRATION IN
RUTH PRAWER JHABVALA’S NOVEL
GET READY FOR BATTLE

M. A.WAHEED

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, the winner of the Booker Award for her novel, Heat and Dust for the year 1975, is not exactly a for­eigner in our midst. K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar says that, “Jhabvala having married to an Indian Parsee architect, she is an Indian. Living in Delhi in the years after Indepen­dence, Jhabvala has had opportunities of exercising her powers of close observation on the milieu that changes chameleon like from local to cosmopolitan, from traditional to conventional, from naive to sophisti­cated”(1). Having lived in India for 24 years, she assimilated all the Indian experi­ences in terms of Indian customs, Indian cultures, Indian languages, Indian social habits, Indian joint family systems, Indian dresses and Indian dishes.

Jhabvala’s first phase of writing cov­ers five novels. To Whom She Will, The Nature of Passion, Esmond in India, The householder and Get Ready for Battle. All these novels are concerned with Indian domestic and social problems. Her fifth novel, Get Ready for Battle was published in 1962. It is felt that this novel arose from her personal and observed experiences. “Jhabvala is successful eminently in projecting the personal dilemmas, individual and familial predicaments of this society in post-independence urban India” (2).

In the novel, Get Ready for Battle (1962), Jhabvala deals with a number of intrigues - sexual, familial, social and the theme of marital disintegration in the upper middle class, and the money-minded urban society. All the characters in the novel are connected with the broken and disintegrated marriage of a Delhi-based Punjabi business­man, Mr. Gulzari Lal. The sense of misun­derstanding and incompatibility takes a serious turn in the novel owing to the mis-matched feelings and ideological differ­ences between Gulzari Lal and his wife, Sarala Devi. Gulzari Lal is a brash busi­nessman who throws big parties to dazzle petty Government officials. In contrast, Sarala Devi strongly believes in austerity and high moral principles. She wants to act ac­cording to her conscience. These differ­ences wreck their marriage. She abandons the world for a life of religious contempla­tion. Besides this, she is very much worried about the miserable life of the poor people of Bundi Busti (Slum Locality) in Delhi, she regards her separation from her husband and her family as a form of self-indulgence as she wants to work more for the people of Bundi Busti. Thus, the married life of the Lals is completely disrupted and disinte­grated.

Sarala Devi leaves her house once for all with no intention to come again even for the sake of her son, Vishnu. Generally, in the Indian situation, whenever there is a quarrel or a conflict between wife and hus­band, the wife in an angry and emotional mood goes out of the house and settles down at her parent’s place. After some months or so, when she cools down, she realises her responsibility to bring up the children and goes to her husband’s place. Here, Sarala Devi, since she is quite adamant in nature and woman of saintly qualities, decides not to go to her husband’s house. Instead, she takes shelter at her bachelor brother, Mr. Brij Mohan’s. Her decision to leave her husband’s house doesn’t surprise Brij Mohan as he knows her temperament. He says that she is a saint, “for herself she wants nothing, only for others, always for others. If someone comes to her and says give me your jewels, the house you live in, she would give without one thought, she would strip herself all.” (3)

Speaking about Gulzari Lal, Jhabvala says that he is an insensitive, unscrupulous and morally degraded person. He has a mistress called Kusum, an Army Officer’s widow. Kusum spends most of her time with Gulzari Lal and rules his household. She has free access in the house in the pres­ence of Gulzari Lal’s son Vishnu, daughter-­in-law, Mala, and the grand daughter, Prithi. They all live in the same house. Gulzari Lal doesn’t feel that there is anything wrong in having mistress in the house. He thinks that after he returns from office, he needs some­one like Kusum who meets his requirements. Kusum takes care of his health, his food, his drinks, his clothes, his servants, etc. She also massages his legs. She entertains him with all sorts of gossip and stories. She also shares his bed; she satisfies a man who has been living without a wife for the last 10 years. Kusum has become a substitute for a wife in his private life. She wants Gulzari Lal to divorce his wife so that she herself may marry him. For the time being, Gulzari Lal doesn’t feel like divorcing Sarala Devi as this step would bring disrepute to him and it may spoil his business prospects.

There in Delhi, in the name of reha­bilitation schemes, the municipal authorities want to evict the people from the Bundi Busti where they have been living for the last 15 years. Their plan was to sell the land secretly to Gulzari Lal, so that the construc­tion of flats may be taken up. Sarala Devi, though she lives separately from her husband, for the sake of the slum dwellers, implores him to use his good offices so that the people of Bundi Busti will not be evicted. But to her surprise, Gulzari Lal manages matters at the Government level and purchases the land and bribes the labour leader, Ramchandran. In this way, Sarala Devi loses her fight against her unscrupulous hus­band. But because of the code by which she lives, she doesn’t give up and continues to care for the down-trodden people.

Sarala Devi unfortunately loses the battle on the home front too. Her son, Vishnu, and her daughter-in-law, Mala, sup­port her husband. Kusum, Gulzari Lal’s mistress, behaves with Vishnu and Mala in such a way that they never dislike her. They rather needed her presence in the house. Kusum, sometimes comments on the topics which need to be followed by married women. She feels that the woman without a husband is a helpless one. She says to Mala “A Woman’s happiness can be only where her husband and children are” (4). Her ambition is to become Gulzari Lal’s le­gal wife.

Basically, Sarala Devi is a woman of high principles, selfless in behaviour, and courageous enough to take up the social problems. Besides this, she is also impressed very much with the teachings of Lord Krishna. Lord Krishna on the battlefield of Kurukshetra urges Arjuna to fight against his Kinsmen without hesitation. Krishna suggests him to treat alike, “Pleasure and pain, gain and loss, victory and defeat, then get ready for battle in order to achieve vic­tory” (5). Sarala Devi, in the true spirit of Lord Krishna’s teachings is ready for the battle against the corrupt social forces of the society, but unfortunately she fails in her attempts. The disintegration takes place in her life not only in relation to her husband but also with her son, Vishnu and brother Brij Mohan. Vishnu is like his father. He is impressed with his father’s materialistic behaviour. He dislikes his mother as she left the house and always talks about the people of Bundi Busti. Her brother, Brij Mohan, is a degenerate aristocrat who spends his time and money in the company of prostitutes. He is nothing but a more vulgarised version of Gulzari Lal. Brij Mohan’s affairs with a prostitute, Tara, are known to everybody. Even his sister, Sarala Devi, sympathises with Tara when he beats her and sends her away.

Here in the novel, the question of dis­cord and incompatibility between Gulzari Lal and Sarala Devi is a major theme. The dis­integration of ideas between Sarala Devi and Brij Mohan, between Vishnu and Sarala Devi, between Sarala Devi and Mala cre­ates a big gulf since except Sarala Devi ev­erybody is either after money or needs, de­sires and wants.

The reason for a slight misunderstand­ing between Mala and Vishnu is Mala’s de­sire to go away from Delhi and to have a separate business establishment. She wants to be the queen of her house. But, Vishnu, a neat lethargic depends upon his father’s business. For this reason, they quarrel very often. Since Kusum is the mediator to solve their problems, they like her more.

Sarala Devi has left the house a long time ago. So, they don’t have any attach­ment to her. Kusum gains a soft corner in the mind of Mala as she recommends Mala’s proposal to Gulzari Lal for a separate busi­ness. At her instance, Gulzari Lal permits his son to have a factory making fountain pens at Chandinipet with the collaboration of his friends, Mr. Joginder Singh.

Brij Mohan, who was sympathetic towards his sister earlier, is now under the influence of Gulzari Lal. Brij Mohan gets tired of the unworldly behaviour of his sis­ter. Gulzari Lal at one stage didn’t think of legal divorce, but now as he is influenced more by Kusum, with support from Brij Mohan, and a no-objection certificate from Vishnu he decides to approach Sarala Devi for legal divorce and obtains her signature on the documents. She gives her consent since she wants permanent separation from her husband. The clever and worldly woman, Kusum, finally succeeds in her scheme of becoming a legal wife.

Jhabvala’s Sarala Devi is a social re­former but her extreme reformist fervour and blindness to social reality with reference to the modem age indicated her inability to func­tion successfully in any capacity. On the other hand, Gulzari Lal is an extreme example of a degenerate businessman who suits the modem age. The temperaments of the two extremes play a vital role in creating the disintegration between wife and husband. Sarala Devi’s extreme reality does not bear the desired fruits but Gulzari Lal’s extreme degenerative quality finds a place in the modem society as the society is filled with degenerative attitudes.

The novel ends with Sarala Devi’s decision to go to the red-light district to find her brother’s prostitute, Tara, and extend to her sympathy as Brij Mohan had already driven her away from the house. Thus; we find that Sarala Devi is disintegrated from her married life for the “other worldliness”, whereas Gulzari Lal gets disintegrated from her for “this worldliness”.

References:

1) K. R. Srinivas Iyengar, “Indian writing in English” (sterling, New Delhi, 1984), pp. 450-451.
2) V. A. Shahane, “Ruth Prawer Jhabvala” (Arnold Heinemann, 1983), p-99.
3) Get Ready for Battle, (penguin, 1987), p-125.
4) Ibid, p-13.
5) Ibid, p-105.