War and No Peace: A Study on Arun Joshi’s “The

WAR AND NO PEACE: A STUDY
ON ARUN JOSHI’S “THE HOMECOMING”

“O, let my looks be then the eloquence
And dumb presagers of my speaking breast”.
- William Shakespeare

A few writers only could capture life in its complexity and totality like Arun Joshi. His sudden demise, in 1993, would cause an irreparable loss to the field of Indian writing in English. Though much has been said on his novels and novelistic techniques, most of his short stories have remained undiscussed. In this paper an attempt is made to appreciate the artistry of Arun Joshi as a short story writer as revealed in his short story, The Homecoming¹.

Like his major fiction, Arun Joshi’s short fiction too reverberates with existential connotations. But Joshi was mature enough not to be a mere votary of a particular school of thought or philosophy. He chose to present life in all its facets which include the seamy side. Though his forte is psychological realism, his works are not mere objective and dry psychological analyses. Arun Joshi himself explained what he was after in his fictional endeavour: “I seek a belief and a faith beyond psychology ²”.

Arun Joshi excels in short story writing as well as in his major fiction writing. His short stories are not a mere account of anecdotage. Likewise, they are not purely to glory in sharp or surprise ending. Arun Joshi’s short stories conform to what Manjeri Isvaran expected in a good short story: it (the story) must catch the eternal in the casual, invest a moment with the immensity of time³”.

Arun Joshi’s The Homecoming, included in his anthology, Survivor, is his typical short story. As has been said by M. K. Naik, it is “a totally unsentimental” and “the best story⁴” in the collection. The protagonist, a war survivor, cannot erase the impact of war ravages (on his psyche) which he has encountered as a young lieutenant in the Indian Army. Joshi realistically portrays how the protagonist’s psyche has splintered off as a result of his excruciating experiences in a war. The war debilitates him psychologically. Consequently, he remains alienated from his family members, the society around him and from his own past life. On his returning from the war he finds himself “a changed man, in the changed world⁵”.

The cool narration at times in understating manner rightly captures the alienated and depressed mood of the protagonist. He recalls the first dreadful experience he has met with in the war; “he did not quite knew what was rough and what was not. It was true, though, that half his men had been killed during the first two weeks. Nine had died on the very first night.” (1.11)

The nameless protagonist is not himself since his return from the war that has ended on Eastern Front in Dinajpur. By not naming the protagonist, the writer, poignantly proves that no sensitive youth; placed in the given situation, can feel differently from the protagonist. M. K. Naik aptly highlights the significance of this aspect: “.......the fact that the protagonist has no name tends to make him a representative figure⁶”.

The protagonist’s homecoming is not a homecoming as he is not at peace with himself. The war memories are still green in his mind, and they keep raw his wounded psyche. His family members and his fiancee’s welcoming him home at the railway station fails to cheer him up. Somehow, this ‘reunion’ cannot ‘reunite’ him with his family members.

It is no wonder, if his fiancee’s worrying about her “staying coopedindoors”, and thereby her “eating too much” and as a remedial measure her contemplating “doing dieting” force him to recall the chronically famished situation on the war front: “Now, where he had come from for days on, and, he had not met a man, woman, or child, who had not been hungry; constantly hungry. ....after the ceasefire he had supervised a relief station. People used to line up two hours in advance although there was nothing to do except sit and watch the cooks and sniff the air”. (p. 98) The protagonist cannot help juxtaposing the ugly reality of the war and a sophisticated woman’s health concerns.

He is benumbed with his war experiences. The ever-haunting dreadful pictures of the war make him ponder over the relevance and meaning of his getting married and lead a normal life as if nothing has ever happened. In brief, irrationality and futility of life turn him into a recluse in his native environs.

Basically Joshi’s protagonists seem to grope for meaning and purpose of life. Loaded with this heavy burden, they often look strange. They may not totally succeed in realising their ambition in their life time but they make their existence worthwhile by making a ceaseless effort to reach the goal. In a way, it is “hunger of the spirit” that drives these loners, strangers and recluses.

If only there is an empathetic soul around him, the protagonist might have got some respite from his unending agony. His dear and near are too engrossed in ‘their little worlds’ to come near his heart. As they have turned ‘strangers’, the protagonist can no longer feel ‘oneness’ with them. The protagonist helplessly admits his getting distanced from his sister: “Now she had changed.....she wore strange clothes and shiny chains and goggles. She wore goggles even at night.” (p. 99).

It is not merely his sister going arty-­arty. But it is a situation of young people getting desensitized, and turning into a sort of dandies and robots that wear fashionable dresses and mouth high sounding platitudes in the name of ‘modernization’.

Joshi subtly suggests that the sorrow of the nation is its morally bankrupt, and unconscientious youth.

To his utter dismay, the protagonist could see through the hollowness and hypocrisy of his ‘one time’ friends. Their nonchalant and half-knowledgeable talk on warfare thoroughly puzzles-him. During a get-together, one of his friends, ‘obviously’ a poet, comes up with a ‘spontaneous’ poem to pay ‘homage’ to the dead soldiers. The poet vows to avenge the untimely deaths: “.....the poet concluded, no matter, comrades you shall not be forgotten nor your death go unavenged.” (p.101) The enthusiastic poet fighting a war on paper looks sad and ridiculous to the protagonist. In the face of ‘parody’ of heroism and patriotism, the soldier, in the protagonist gets further silenced despite the brimming agony in his heart, the protagonist struggles hard to put on a face of stoicism.

He remembers, for example:
“Pushing a boat off a bank, under the light of stars, into a pitch-black stream whose names he did not know. They had been detailed to demolish a bridge. When he pushed them off the bank, he knew they would not come . So did they. Then there was the school full of girls that had been the brothel for a battalion. (p. 101-102).

Harsh reality of war and its attendant inhumanity trouble him endlessly, and he gets bogged down in them. Being entrapped in the depths of agony, the protagonist learns that he has been awarded the Vir Chakra for his proven valour.

The news does not make him happy. Instead, the occasion forces him to recall a nightmarish incident of the war when a Subedar has laid down his life to save his life.

The protagonist’s subsequent visit to the bereaved family of the Subedar to console them leaves him sad. He wonders at the fate of the Subedar’s window; “He wondered what a girl did when she got widowed at twenty and could not marry again.” (p. 104)

Quite unmindful of ‘the ceaseless war’ that goes on inside the mind of the protagonist, the world around him is as ever bent upon carrying on with its engrossing existence, being ‘static’ in their respective worlds, both, the protagonist and ‘the outside world’ do not know how to get reconciled with each other.

There was his sister with her new car, the chains around her waist jangling every time she moved. There were the poets who had not seen a gun and arty-arty girls, and charity fetes and speeches on the radio. He did not know how to fit it all together.... (p. 104)

Joshi has revealed his consummate artistic skill by not facilely resolving the psychological crisis of the protagonist. The ‘indeterminate ending’ of the story highlights the seriousness of the problem which may have no satisfactory solution. Moreover the open ending of the story motivates the readers to ponder over many an existential problem. The crisis of the protagonist has universal ramifications also, as at any time, one may find oneself stuck with a situation akin to the protagonist’s, and thereby languish for ever.

NOTES

¹ Arun Joshi, The Survivor (New Delhi: Sterling, 1975). Subsequent references are to this text, and are parenthetically incorporated.
² Sujatha Mathai, Interview, ‘I am a stranger to my books, The Times of India, July 10, 1987.
³ Cited in M. K. Naik, A History of Indian English Literature (New Delhi: Sahitya akademi, 1989) p. 179.
⁴ ibid., p. 250.
⁵ Loc. Cit
⁶ M. K. Naik, Ed., The Indian Short Stories: A Representative Anthology (New Delhi: Arnold-Hienemann, 1984) pp.23-24.
7 Sujatha Mathai, Interview, “I am a stranger to my books”, The Times of India, July 10, 1987.