THE FALLEN WOMAN

(SAIKAT MAJUMDAR’S RIVETTING NOVEL THE FIREBIRD IS NOT JUST ABOUT CRIMINALISATION OF A YOUNG BOY, BUT ALSO ABOUT A WOMAN DEMONISED FOR PURSUING HER ARTISTIC PASSION)

The boy who was the future. His mother didn’t matter. She could go if she wanted to. Nobody cared. But she could not take the boy away. He wasn’t hers. Saikat Majumdar’s exceptional novel that dwells partly on the darker aspect of human psyche has not only opened up the means that force a child of a well-educated aristocratic family to turn into a criminal, but has undoubtedly reflected the helplessness of a married woman who wanted to pursue her passion…theatre. As I glided across the wonderful play of words and emotions intricately woven by the deft author, I as a working woman and mother of a teenaged son could feel the pain of Garima Basu.

If Ori is the protagonist of The Firebird, Garima Basu is the befitting underdog. Everyone in the family, in school, in the para were concerned with the boy’s future, so much so they were ready to ostracise the mother who had produced him. Nobody just cared whether Garima Basu ever felt the pain of leaving her son back home to attend rehearsals, or while staging meaningful plays. She was after all a woman. Had her husband been a stage actor, none would have questioned his late night attendance at home. After all man is the provider. A woman is not. She is easily and automatically moulded as the fallen woman.

Hounded by the society, abandoned by a husband who had once been proud of her acting prowess, Garima dies a miserable woman who lost both the worlds that she so dearly loved – family and theatre. The novel definitely brings out how very guilty a mother is made to feel when she cannot give enough attention and care to the child she produced due to other priorities and compulsions. Though Ori had his grandmother, pishi and other female members at home who took over the responsibility of rearing him probably because he was the only male heir to the family, Garima did feel the pangs of helplessness that every working mother feels even today. 

That helplessness rises to a crescendo when Ori runs away to his aunt’s house in Hooghly without informing his mother who was right then due to perform on stage. Garima’s self-accusing sigh: “Right then I wished I could do something to myself, hurt myself so bad that they couldn’t push me out of stage.” Her relief that the stage got burnt and she wouldn’t have to go with the play anymore, instead could look for her son, despite viewing the destruction of a production that she so seriously and passionately endorsed, she was relieved. And when she loses the custody battle at court, tagged as a destructive woman and struggling stage actress, she loses the last straw, her child, her 13-year-old Ori whose uniforms she pressed every morning and caringly packed his lunch boxes.  

And how very devastating it must have been for a woman who realises in the end that her son had done things deliberately, taken out his angst for the lack of a mother’s daily care through the dark lanes of acts that the society brand as criminal. Garima vanishes. She was a playhouse with silver streaked hair and skin beginning to wrinkle. A playhouse ready to vanish.  And with her vanishes a woman who could have been a famous actor had she been a man.

Thank you Saikat Majumdar for exposing the pain of a woman subtly who wanted to pursue her passion and her dreams. We have many Garima Basus among us for sure.