A Matter of Time

by Shashi Deshpande

One morning, with no warning, Gopal, respected professor, devoted husband, and caring father, walks out on his family for reasons even he cannot articulate. His wife, Sumi, returns with their three daughters to the shelter of the Big House, where her parents live in oppressive they have not spoken to each other in thirty-five years. As the mystery of this long silence is unraveled, a horrifying story of loss and pain is laid bare - a story that seems to be repeating itself in Sumi's life.
Set in present-day Karnataka, A Matter of Time explores the intricate relationships within an extended family, encompassing three generations. Images from Hindu religion, myth, and local history intertwine delicately with images of contemporary India as the women of this family face and accept the changes that have suddenly become part of their lives.

Genres: India, Fiction, Novels, Womens, Indian Literature, Gender

272 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Novelist and short story writer, Shashi Deshpande began her career with short stories and has by now authored nine short story collections, twelve novels and four books for children. Three of her novels have received awards, including the Sahitya Akademi award for `That Long Silence'. Some of her other novels are `The Dark Holds No Terrors', `A Matter of Time', `Small Remedies', `Moving On', `In The Country of Deceit' and `Ships that Pass'. Her latest novel is `Shadow Play'.Many of her short stories and novels have been translated into a number of Indian as well as European languages. She has translated two plays by her father, Adya Rangacharya, (Shriranga), as well as his memoirs, from Kannada into English, and a novel by Gauri Deshpande from Marathi into English.
Apart from fiction, she has written a number of articles on various subjects - literature, language, Indian writing in English, feminism and women's writing - which have now been put together in a collection `Writing from the Margin.' She has been invited to participate in various literary conferences and festivals, as well as to lecture in Universities, both in India and abroad.

She was awarded the Padma Shri in 2008.

List of books by Shashi Deshpande

Dark Holds No Terrors (1982)
That Long Silence (1989)
A Matter of Time
Moving On
Small Remedies
Shadow Play (2013)
The Narayanpur Incident
If I Die Today
In the Country of Deceit
The Binding Vine
Ships That Pass (2012)
The Intrusion And Other Stories
3 Novels : A Summer Adventure, The Hidden Treasure, The Only Witness
Come Up & Be Dead
Collected Stories (Volume - 1)
Collected Stories (Volume - 2)
Writing from the Margin: And Other Essays

Reviews

[Versha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yet again I've started my year with an Indian Author and one of my most favourites too, and it was a great start no doubt! As usual, I am smitten by Shashi Deshpande’s writing. Even if I finish all her books I don’t mind re-reading all of them again and again. For me, her novels are not just books with stories, few characters, a beginning and an ending but it goes beyond that. Her characters, especially for me, are very real it feels as if I've met each one of them at some point in my life or at least will be meeting them in the near future or maybe I am one of them!

‘The Matter Of Time’ is an insightful book which deals with ‘life’ or more appropriately ‘the changes in life’ and how people cope up with it. Gopal, head of the family don’t think twice when he walks out on his wife Sumi and 3 teenage daughters Aru, Charu and Seema. Why? he himself is not sure or maybe he doesn’t know how to pinpoint exactly what went wrong. Now Sumi with no mistake of hers’ has to accept this change which she least expected at that stage of her life and she does it very gracefully even though she doesn’t want to go back to her parent's house she goes for the sake of her daughters. Not only she gets advice from her near ones but even her daughters pester her with their questions on her silence but nothing influences her from taking few decisions for herself and she does everything keeping her composure intact and I admire her for that. She feels sorry for Aru her eldest daughter who is now insecure about everything in her life but still, Sumi wants her to love life not to think of it as a burden. At times I felt helpless for each and every character in this book even for Gopal. Maybe sometimes it's difficult to find a reason or rather a life is more than just reasons and situations it's more about living for the moment, that is all, at least that's what I felt in the end. I think somewhere this book has made me emotionally stronger and I am looking forward to reading the sequel, very curious about how Aru’s life has turned out.

https://varshasbookshelf.blogspot.com/

[Nasra]

i cannot recommend this book enough it was incredible

[Ahtims · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book deals with the lives of 4 women - a mother and her 3 daughters who are deserted by their husband/father. Gopal and Sumi were a happily married couple, when one day, Gopal suddenly leaves his wife and 3 teenage daughters with no due cause. The children are stunned and try to cope with their loss in various ways, while the mother is curiously apathic. Then the story slowly unfolds, showing us glimpses of past, present and occasionally the future. The deserted family comes to their maternal home to resume their lives, and they rebond with their various relatives. The females of this novel are shown as strong souls who may bend, but never break, and the males too are not very villaneous. I even pitied the father who abruptly left the family. This was a good read, but somehow I found it less satisfying than the previous Deshpande books I read.

[Ritu · Rating 4 out of 5]

A matter of time is an honest, emotionally retrospective & complex book, mostly because it explores human relationships. It feels like you are standing in the middle of a room full of people.. with this web of interwoven connections, & you're still just a spectator.. an island in all that chaos & complexity. The reason why relationships work or don't is hard enough to pin down, but you relate to it.. the constant questioning, the guilt, the soul searching.. it's all so believable & just human. A simple narrative with diverse characters & beautiful emotions..!

[Claire S · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really liked this.. Even though it was very dense reading, with each paragraph almost having multiple references to other characters or other events that had happened and so on. And there were a lot of characters involved in the story. So much so, I had to make a chart of who was who. And then start again with a better chart structure, as the first one didn't have enough capacity for it all. That second one worked though, I was able to find the characters mentioned and re-orient myself as necessary.
And the content was, at its base, very sad. And struggle-ful. But through it all, there was a thread of continuity, a feeling that things will go on for the characters, there will be a sustainable way forward. And that was the case for most by the end.
Writing this makes me want to re-read it again!

[Drew's Book and Tea Reviews · Rating 3 out of 5]

The sheer number of characters can be overwhelming and the plot drags a little, but A Matter of Time has a lot to offer. It promotes a feminist message but manages to humanize the absentee father, all the while packing an emotional punch.

[abby quade · Rating 4 out of 5]

initially, i was going to write about the heartwarming grandmother-mother-daughter relationships in the book, and how it was so wholesome, a gentle and powerful lesson on how loss doesn't mean the end of things. but i just read the ending and im in tears. the first part still rings true, im just much more sad now. such a beautiful story about women, and honestly, about men too. much applause, shashi deshpande.

[Bookworm · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such an intense novel with a zillion themes dealt with. I started getting weary somewhere in the middle but I trudged on. The ending shocked me so much that tears spilled out without any warning. I thought I would not love this book but how it all ended and the last 40 pages have once again shown me what an excellent writer Shashi Deshpande is.

[Anuradha Mohankumar · Rating 4 out of 5]

An impressive account of human relations. This is the first to,e I read a book written by Shashi Deshpande but this is definitely not the last. Highly recommended.

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 4 out of 5]

#Second Post-Grad Era [2005] – My time with Deshpande:

Set in modern-day Karnataka, the novel exemplifies the predicament of three women belonging to three generations of the same family. An urban, middle-class couple — Gopal and Sumi — have three daughters — Aru, Charu and Seema.

When Gopal pronounces to Sumi that he is leaving the house for good, she is stunned into silence but tries to keep things normal for her daughters. They are brought to the “Big House” of Shripati, Sumi’s father, after Copal deserts them. For Kalyani, Sumi’s mother it is not only catastrophic but also a matter of embarrassment and disgrace.

While Sumi’s daughters seem to have picked up the threads of their life in the Big House, Sumi remains confused and lost in her parental home; and she is unable to find her bearings after Gopal has walked out on her. She stoically accepts the disgrace and humiliation of a deserted wife; she lapses into a stone like silence.

“With Gopal’s going, it was as if the swift-flowing stream for her being had grown thick and viscous — her movement, her thoughts, her very pulse and heartbeats seemed to have slowed down.”

Sumi’s marriage to Gopal was a love marriage. Their first physical communion was fulfilling and gratifying to both. “And I knew that it was for this, this losing yourself in another human being that men give up their dreams of freedom.”

Gopal has resigned his job in college after having been humiliated by his students. He has had an abnormal childhood; he is unable to come to terms with the fact that he was born of the union of his father and his father’s brother’s wife and that he and his sister Sudha don’t share the same father. “That was a betrayal,” he reflects, “that cut away at the foundations of my life.”

However, it is the Kalyani-Shripati marriage that is the center of this tome. Kalyani’s mother Manorama had failed to produce a male heir to the property and she feared that her husband would marry again. She got Kalyani married to her brother Shripati so that the property remained within the family. Sumi, Prem and Madhav were born to them.

Madhav, a stunted child, was lost at the railway station when he was four as Kalyani was to board the train to Bangalore. Shripati did not talk to his wife for the next thirty years because of this mishap.

He sent her back to her parents’ home with their two daughters. He was reunited with his family only after Manorama, who was at her deathbed, urged him to do so. But Shripati and Kalyani continued to live under the same roof as two strangers, Sumi feels that it is a “sound arrangement where husband and wife are living together under the same roof even if there is only silence between them.”

Sumi is shocked to learn that her grandfather’s property, which should have gone to her mother Kalyani, has been bequeathed to her father Shripati. Her daughter Aru is aghast that women find no mention in the family tree in spite of their tireless hard work and devotion to the family. She is surprised when her lawyer-friend Surekha tells her: “Manu doesn’t mention any duty to maintain a daughter ... The duty is towards a wife, parents and sons.”

What is more atrocious is that female sexuality is looked down upon and women are conditioned to feel ashamed of it.

What happens eventually to Sumi? Read this most wonderful novel, which has a classic, picture-perfect ending and leaves you with moist eyes.

[Akshay Dasgupta · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is my first book by Shashi Deshpande. To be honest, I had never head of the author before and I accidentally came up the book while browsing through someone's to-read list and was drawn instantly to the story line. After finishing this book I am a little disappointed to be honest. Not because it was boring or badly written but like most books by Indian authors it was very depressing. The characters find themselves in the bleakest of circumstances with hardly any hope of coming out triumphant.

Nevertheless, the book is wonderfully written. It is extremely deep in meaning with ample of pearls of wisdom from the author. Another drawback about the book was the constant change in narration from first person to third person which was very confusing at times.

[Misa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book hooked from the start and killed me at the end. It is a book/ a story that you can't forget about.

[Aarohi · Rating 5 out of 5]

literally obsessed with this

[Pavithra · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is an intense interiority to Deshpande's books as Ritu Menon puts it. There is no marketable quality or any magical round up to a story which in my opinion is applaudable. She is clearly not writing for an audience but she is writing realistically, genuinely. She surpasses many writers I have read in the recent past in terms of her profound insight into "regular" "normal" characters lives. Most profound of all is her ability to capture the essence of relationships and dive so deep into it almost as if she has been every character herself; The depth of ones thoughts and feelings which is more often than not, quite tough to express. She does this in such a graceful manner that it gives you goosebumps. Whether you like it or not you end up learning so much more about life, attitude, one's judgment, handling the existence or lack of relationships and so on. I do no justice in trying to express how good this book is- one should read it, have no expectations from it but just let themselves be wrapped in and woven tight in every page. To me it was nicely localised in Karnataka where I have lived the first 14 years of my life. The English is much superior to many contemporary writers of our time. My thoughts keep going back to various aspects of this book and I feel the urge to write and write pages about it myself.

[Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good. I found most of the characters to be highly relatable (though I did have to draw a family tree of all the relationships). And the way the plot weaved in and out of the past was so well-done: it overshadowed the book's "present," which was fine.
My only problem was the final two chapters. I didn't particularly mind Shripati's death, it made some contextual sense. But Sumi's...it feels too much like "The Awakening" or "Hedda Gabler." Or a few other books I've read where a woman gains her independence, then kills herself. So that's why this gets 4 stars, not five. Brilliant exploration of the human condition for the majority of the book, then massive letdown in the final two chapters.

[Sandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

OH my--yes--I liked this book. I think Ritu's review says it all. I would highly recommend this book and really think it deserves 4.5 stars! I felt at moments my emotions were stretched to the limits--so many profound thoughts/statements were gleaned--absolutely a book I could relate to.

This is my first experience with Shashi Deshpande and my library had to search the entire State to locate a copy at the University library for me to borrow. I would like to check out a couple of her children's books and perhaps another novel or two by this author.

In the beginning, I kept thinking this book is unlike anything I have currently been reading, but I am so glad I kept going to the surprising ending. I know some folks like reading the end first, but I am glad I waited.

[Anupama Sarkar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Full points to Shashi Deshpande for an engaging beginning, a marvelous story, thoughtful characters and brilliant language!

However, sadly, I can not say the same about narration. There is nothing wrong with diction, syntax or style. It is brilliant in parts, in fact loaded with pearls of wisdom and would have been a rare jewel, only if Deshpande had handled the switch from third person to first person a little more dexterously.

[HadiDee · Rating 5 out of 5]

DNF I am a bit distracted these days so I may give this another go when I'm in a better frame of mind.

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

multigenerational misery