The personal enmeshed with the political

Mitra Phukan's The Collector's Wife is the first collaboration between Penguin India and Zubaan, a branch of Kali for Women, India's first feminist publishing house.

The plot revolves around Rukmini Bezboruah, the District Collector's wife in a small town in Assam. She is English-medium-educated and teaches literature at the local college not because she enjoys teaching but because that is the only befitting career option left to her in her short stints as the DC's wife in small towns. Rather condescendingly, she faces the small town pettiness with dignity and feigned acceptance as she avoids unpleasantness unbecoming of her exalted position. She is beset with the usual feminine concerns--a pressure to conform and be the ideal wife. On the personal front, however, her life does not present a picture of marital bliss. Unable to bear children, her life has become a calculated maneuver in the attempts to a successful conception where doctors and mother-in-law get involved. As she feels others' pitying and sometimes deprecating (depending on the age of the beholder), gazes upon her, Rukmini is ‘always burdened with the feeling that she had been unable to fulfill her part of a social contract. That she had not kept a bargain. That she had reneged on a promise of vital importance’ (54). Her relation with her husband, thus, becomes fraught with tension. The neglect results in loneliness and leads her to succumb to a relationship which promises to bring her some happiness. But just as she might be sorting out the tangles that her life has gotten into, it is shaken to the core.

The novel reveals how the private space can be appropriated by the public as we discover the personal enmeshing into the political with tragic consequences. The time frame is the late 70s and early 80s with the volatile political climate of student protests, outlawed groups' demands for Assam's freedom from foreign infiltrators and street peoples' agitation until it becomes difficult to distinguish the innocent bystander from the perpetrators of violent chaos. They all contribute to the destruction of property and lives. But Phukan never takes the high hand in condemning any one particular group. Although the underground group MOFEH is responsible for many killings and ultimately in the destruction of her own life, Rukmini provides a human face to the organization through her discovery of a sympathetic member. Members of MOFEH, misguided youths hardly into adulthood, are never demonized á la Bharati Mukherjee in Tiger's Daughter, where she belittles Naxalites as goondas and hooligans or as the left-most of the leftist politicians. Neither does she romanticize or condone their actions.

Despite belonging to the other side of the divide as the wife of the highest-ranking administrator in the region, Rukmini is not judgmental of her students' involvement in politics. When she questions two of her students about the sagacity of their involvement considering their background of poverty and parental dependence, she is given a caustic reply as to what had compelled these young people to risk all.

Yet this is more a personal story of Rukmini than a political one in that the background intrudes only slightly and considering that the novel is told from Rukmini's sheltered perspective, that is understandable. Concerns that are more important to her are dealing with a virtually absent husband and her resentment at her inability at achieving something worthwhile as she remains constrained within the decorum of being a DC's wife. Such an identity also forces her into a symbolically cocooned existence as she stays protected on a hill-top residence while the "common" crowd is relegated down below.

Also, worked into the novel are pertinent issues we can ponder upon. Rukmini bemoans not only the students' complete apathy towards English literature but also their inability to comprehend the spontaneity of Romantic poetry or reach the depths of the Metaphysicals. She questions the relevance of teaching college-level English literature to students who lead vernacular lives far removed from its privileges. Students who are unfamiliar with a skylark or have never seen a daffodil can not be ideal candidates for the perusing of a Shelley or a Wordsworth. In Meena Alexander's Nampally Road, Mira Kannadical, a similarly beleaguered poet of Romantic poetry, ponders the usefulness of her teaching. Indoctrinated with the ideals of British Romanticism, a dismayed Mira discovers that Wordsworthian philosophy is ineffectual in the confusion and unrest around her. She finally comprehends that her teaching could make no difference. But whereas Mira herself participates in protests as her concept of nationalism is distorted by the neo-colonial elites' exploitation of the poor and misuse of invested political power, Rukmini is conspicuously devoid of agency. It is, then, somewhat incongruous for a person so passive, and at times demure, to embark on an intimate excursion with a person she comes to know for only a day, or to sit undaunted in the face of armed personnel from whom her other identity would have protected her.

Phukan has earlier published articles in newspapers and magazines and has written children's books. As a first novel, The Collector's Wife is well-crafted. I certainly look forward to more ventures from these two publishing houses as they promise ‘the pioneering energy of Zubaan and its commitment to women's literature, and Penguin's national and international distribution reach.’

Rebecca Sultana teaches English at East-West University, Dhaka.