Binding Vine

by Shashi Deshpande

The narrator in The Binding Vine is the clever, sharp-tongued Urmi, grieving over the death of her baby daughter and surrounded by, but rebuffing, the care of her mother and her childhood friend, Vanaa.

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

203 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

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

[Sidharth Vardhan · Rating 4 out of 5]

what were use of my creation, if I were entirely contained here?

The quote from Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights appear at the begining of the book and is probably best describes the story.

The narrator Urmilla or Urmi is a sharp tongued woman with a very strong sense of justice. It shows mostly in form of her musings on gender injustice, because well that is where most of injustice is to be found. She has just lost an infant daughter. Although she has dealt with that well enough.

I make the chappaties and we start on our meal. And suddenly I remember Anu, her little sparrow mouth open to receive the spoon, banging her own spoon on the table, turning her head to follow Kartik as he dances about the room to amuse her, the spoon sccrapping her cheek...

Her sense of feminist values is so strong that,for example, she wont use the money her husband sends him but must earn her own. She even walks out on her husband (a gentle man) on the day of their marriage to show her independence -only to come back next day, having made her statemnet. She even came as far as to question whether women were brainwashed into the motherhood thing (by making it all that emotional and mysterious) when one of her friend, another working woman, tells her that her children think that she do not pay enough attention to them. Same thing that doesn't make them angry on their father. This reminnded me of what Pepsico's CEO Indira Nooyi had once
said about working women.

The Poet trapped in Women's body

She comes to discover Meera's poetry. Meera is her long dead mother-in-law, the two never met. Latter didn't want to marry and probably was raped by her husband after her marriage:

But tell me, friend, did Laxmi too,
twist brocade tassels round her fingers
and tremble, fearing the coming
of the dark-clouded, engulfing night?

Meera felt trapped, alone in her new family. she has no metaphorical 'rooom of her own' (both Woolf and her essay are mentioned in passing), she must steal moments late in night when everybody is asleep to write. Although there is a physical room which she has all to herself for three full days of month so that she may no pollute others.

"I rememeber the day the astrologer came home, He read all our horoscopes, told us our futures and we listened as if they were stories about other people. Only my mother's horoscope was not read. "Don't you want to know your future?" I asked her. And she replied this - 'Whats there in my life apart from all of you? If I know all of you are well and happy, I'm happy too.' Did she really mean that? Will I become that way too, indifferent to my own life, thinking it nothing? I don't want to. I won't. I think so now, but maybe my mother thought like when she ws my age. It frightens me. No, it doesn't, I'll never think my life, myself nothing, never."

Beaten by life, Meera taunts her mother in her poems :

"To make myself in your image
was never the goal I sought.

No, Meera couldn't help it. Her mother thought she was acting in her best interest in marrying her:

"Green sari draped about me
green bangles encircle my wrists,
fill your eyes with the sight, mother,
look at me, fruitful and green.

Silver toe rings twinkle on my toes
silver anklets tinkle as I walk
but, oh mother, I stumble, I fall
my arms sink heavily by my sides.

Meera only found happiness again during her second pregnancy:

Tiny fish swiming in the ocean of my womb
my body thrills to you
.
.
Bridging the two worlds, you awaken in me
a desire for life

Ironically, she would die during child birth, perhaps willlingly:

Smiling and joyful, Karna tore off his armour,
his boody trailed blood.
Will that coruage be mine when, denuded,
I stand naked and bare?

Moreover:

I feel the quickening in my womb,
he moves - why do I call the child he?


No, she has no gender preferences. She just doesn't want the child to suffer similar fate.

Woman must know fear.

The statement comes from mother of a rape victim who comes to be in the touch with Urmi. The mother complains that her daughter invited the rape by decorating herself. Urmi protests knowing it to be a case of victim blaming. The daughter shouldn't ideally have anything to fear; she argues and yet, but Urmi believes she was probably afraid:

I know how fearfully I look back, my heart thudding in panic, when I hear footsteps behind me on a dark desserted street.

The victim-blaming isn't limited to the mother. Outsiders think that her behavior was 'objectionable' or that she was prostitute (because that would justify the rape!). Police registers it as a case of an accident because a rape case is too much trouble for everybody - police, doctors, family, victim etc. The mother herself doen't want the case registered, because it will make lives of other children troublesome too. Media does get involved later and there is all that drama - politicians, pseudo-sociologists etc. which most Indians can imagine from their recent memories. No, the book was written way back in 1993. What must have author have felt when Delhi rape case happened!

Dharma, Dharma, Dharma, Dharma, the Mahabharta endlessly, tirelessly repeats. Yet at the end, the poet cries out in despair, I raise my arms and I shout, but no one listens.'

[Anuradha Gupta · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Binding Vine by Shashi Deshpande is a hard hitting novel about the concepts that surround women. Set in a patriarchal world, it is a narration of the protagonist, Urmila and the women in her life, some of whom she happens to encounter by chance. They come from various strata of the society and bind themselves together with the narrator.

Showing the multi-faceted-ness of the central character, the story begins with a miserable Urmi, mourning the death of her beloved infant daughter Anu. Caught in an unhappy marriage where her husband is away on the sea most of the times, Urmi finds it difficult to cope with this loss. She struggles to accept the reality, both relating to her marriage with Kishore and Anu’s death. She starts feeling emotionally detached to Kishore and also shuns her mother Inni’s and friend-cum-sister-in-law Vanaa’s attempts to help her, which makes it harder for her to deal with life at the moment. She also knows she ought to give attention to her son, realizing her accountability towards him who longs for her love and affection. Urmi, herself in her childhood, was sent away to live with her grandmother Baiaji to whom she was closer to than her own mother while her brother continued to live with their parents. She knows she shouldn’t be keeping her son away the way her mother did to her.
While overcoming her grief, Urmi crosses path with three women; Mira, her dead mother-in-law, Kalpana, a brutal rape survivor and her impoverished mother, Shakutai. As their story unfolds, so does their strength and courage blossoms.
Urmi comes across Mira’s journals locked away in a dusty trunk when she visits her Biaji’s home when she dies. Curiosity gets the better of her and she opens it to find Mira’s hand written notes, her poetries, most of which spoke about her torturous arranged marriage to Kishore’s father and the life she desired. Married off to a man who fell in love with her beauty at a social function, Mira becomes a victim of domestic violence and marital rape. She conceived as a result and died during the delivery of her son and was ultimately emancipated from her miseries. But before that, being a gifted writer she was, penned down her beautiful poems, which years later capture Urmi’s attention who finds an escape in them. Urmi makes it her aim to get the poems published in the honor of the woman, who was forcefully made a wife and the mother, who wanted to love her child but couldn’t, irrespective of the way in which he was put into her.
Urmi meets Shakutai at a local hospital where she has come with her friend Bhaskar. On seeing the woman upset and crying, she enquires and finds that her daughter Kalpana has been raped and is fighting for her life. Urmi sympathizes with her and to some extent identifies, since both the women are at a loss of their respective daughters. Urmi forms a mutual comfort with Shakutai, visits her room in the chawl where she tells her how her Kalpana would fight with her; her young, fierce energy oozing confidence. Urmi suggests lodging police but Shakutai refuses because she fears that no one would marry her girl. In-fact she should be worrying about her lying in a hospital bed, unconscious, instead she regrets not forcing her to marry her lecherous uncle, the husband of her childless sister Sulu, who preferred Kalpana over some other woman to bear her husband a child. Blaming Kalpana for her situation, Shakutai curses her for being so forward, thinking that she could be spared of the fate that awaits a woman. It is eventually found by Sulu that it was her husband who had revenged Kalpana as a punishment for refusing to marry him. Sulu, in shame commits suicide but not before exposing her criminal husband. While Shakutai still couldn’t deal with her daughter’s loss, she is pushed into mourning her sister as well.

The central characters of this novel are women, some weak, some strong, all bound by a vine called Urmi, reaping it with love, concern, comfort and courage to each other. Each one of them has their own challenges and are trying best to deal with them. The author uses the themes of death, marriage, rape, loneliness and loss to highlight the plight of these women.
All the women have/had challenging marriages, Mira was exploited by her husband, Inni and Vanaa supposedly were too submissive to their respective partners, sisters Shakutai and Sulu were abandoned, one literally, the other emotionally and Urmi had second thoughts about her relationship with Kishore. They are lonely despite having (had) a life partner each. Is it so important for a woman to get married?
Rape is another violation that brings them closer, Mira and Kalpana both were victims, a generation apart, one married and another unmarried. Yet it is the women who get the blame for being a catalyst for her own horrific plight. Is it really the victim’s disgrace and not the criminal’s?
Death is a truth of life that none will ever understand. It is eminent yet we are unable to accept it. Women of this novel are compelled to face it, both Urmi and Shakutai grieve the deaths of their beloved daughters. While Urmi also grieves her grandmother, Shakutai has Sulu to blame who leaves her in her time of need. Will we ever understand that death spares no one, timely or untimely?
All the women are looking for their place in the patriarchal world. Being defined by her father or husband is not her only identity. She can be independent of them and make her own place if she manages to gather enough courage. When a woman can bring a new life into the world, she definitely can take care of herself. It is a question of being true to oneself. Urmi decides to publish Mira’s poems while Shakutai decides to go public with Kalpana’s violator. This sense of being liberated from a cage, to get their voices heard, truly is their victory.

[Sridevi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read Shashi Deshpande’s “The Binding Vine” late into last night and was left with a dark, disturbing feeling . For the first time , I was reading someone who did not romanticize or glorify grief and pain . Urmi , the narrator stubbornly embraces her grief and pain after losing her one year old daughter to death . She refuses to be condoled and instead gets pulled into the sad tale of a comatose Kalpana , who apparently had been raped brutally , but whose mother adamantly refuses to file a case because she has two more daughters to marry and she does not want the daughters’ ‘ honor’ to be sabotaged .
As the days progress and Kalpana is forcibly shifted to another far away hospital much against her mother’s wish , her mother is forced to revise her views and gives a statement to a journalist of how her daughter was raped and how injustice had been meted out to her all along . The statement hastens justice , yet at a personal level , it opens a can of worms and Kalpana’s mother is forced to see some ugly truths . By the end , she sees light and in calm undertones tells Urmi that her Kalpana is “not at all like that . she is a nice girl” .

In between her grief and Kalpana’s case , Urmi manages to unearth the sordid past of her long dead mother in law Meera, who had been a victim of marital rape . Meera’s poetry speaks directly to Urmi and to the reader in the four lines painstakingly penned in a moment of utter despair .

Don’t tread paths barred to you
Obey , never utter a ‘no’
Submit and your life will be
A paradise , she said and blessed m

These four lines sum up the essence of what every young girl is taught the moment she is betrothed to a man .
And these lines Meera pens when renamed as Nirmala

A glittering ring gliding on the rice
Carefully traced a name ‘Nirmala’
Who is this? None but I,
My name hence, bestowed upon me .

Nirmala, they call, I stand satue-still.
Do you build the new without razing the old ?
A tablet of rice, a pencil of gold .
Can they make me Nirmala ? I am Mira

Even as Urmi struggles to bring justice to the dead Mira , by trying to get her poems published , she knows she has to fight many personal battles . The book though primarily about feminism is also about the mechanics of grief and loss.
I almost closed this book after the second chapter , because the terms were too colloquial ( the names of different characters and their relationship with each other in the beginning would have helped ) , the shift in the setting and scene was abrupt and sudden . But I am glad I stuck, otherwise I would have missed the compassion and love with which Ms Deshpande weaves her tale.
A book fervently recommended to every feminist and humanist out there , I happily award 4 stars to this book .

[Lester · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another beautiful book by Ms. Deshpande. The book is essentially about loss - the deep sense of loss which comes with losing a young child. We are drawn into the intensity or Urmi's world; her recollections, her hopes and dreams, and the start of her healing. On the journey, we are taken into the loss of a confused mother whose child is lying in a coma after she has been raped, the loss of a dead relative who used poetry as an outlet during her loveless marriage.....and more.

I realise whilst writing this review that the book is essentially rather depressing, though real and intense. Do not read it unless you want to delve into those feelings....

[Anupama Singh · Rating 5 out of 5]

This story captures how just biological and physical difference in one's body can be the basis for the difference in treatment and expectations from one. It gives you an insight of a woman's life, Also the fact that it was written in 1990s but is still relevant, somehow makes me sad. This book talks about rape inside and outside of a marriage, the guilt which working mother carries, for leaving their children at home to work. Nonetheless, It's a story of loss, grief and still managing to survive not because you want to, but because you have to.

[Sachin · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book underlining tales of females in India and their Status.
they are shown to be completely dominated and instructed by their counterparts-the patriarchy and are blamed for things which are actually plotted by the males.
A must read in order to get sensitized towards women.
A book concernning feminist issues though its writer vehemently opposes the tag of being called a FEMININST.(STRANGE)
A good Book overall.

[Reading_ Tamishly · Rating 3 out of 5]

I do feel that it is a very important book and I really loved the author’s short stories. However, her novels aren’t as easy to read and they seem to really stretch even though they are really short.

Trigger warnings for this book: losing a child, sexual assault

I just couldn’t finish reading this book as I seemed to get distracted again and again while reading 70 percent of it. I knew this book would be a forgettable one for me.

[Bhumija | Ms.Teacupntale · Rating 4 out of 5]

"To make myself in your image was never the goal I sought" - Shahi Despande, The Binding Vine⠀
⠀
I started this book being dejected by the events happening, I finished it feeling same way. The characters in the book are mostly women with very different stories yet the same. Each one of them trying to fight with their problems & find a place in the patriarchal society. All these characters are bound by a vine, the protagonist, Urmi. A strong, sharp-tongued woman who’s grieving over the death of her infant daughter. While being desolated with her own problems, she crosses path with stories of other women. Urmi finds out the poems & diaries of her late mother-in-law, Mira, who was a victim of marital rape & finds herself drawn towards her obsessively. She stumbles upon Shakutai who is grieving over her daughter, another victim of rape.⠀
All the women in the book have had challenging marriages. Unknowingly Urmi discovers a world very different from hers, of two sisters Shakutai & Sulu fighting their own marital battles. She discovers how the women around her, her mother Inni, grandma Baiaji, her now mother-in-law Akka & friend-cum-sister-in-law Vanaa have wilfully submitted themselves to the ways of their husbands, a path she’s afraid to take. She feels distant from her husband Kishore & questions their marriage when Bhaskar confesses his love for her. ⠀
I loved how the characters have their own identity and the story yet revolves around Urmi⠀
The author uses its characters to depict the issue of death, rape, loneliness, marriage to narrate the plight of women in different layers of society. It's a depressing yet realistic story, read only of you have the strength to. ⠀
⠀

[Aishika Mitra · Rating 5 out of 5]

I never heard of Shashi Deshpande through anyone before I picked this book up from amazon and I am grateful to amazon for that. An amazing read, every Indian woman should read it. The language is quite easy and the book is just 203 pages long.
The book starts with sadness and it ends with sadness but there is a difference in the sadnesses. It doesn't have a miracle but what it does have is harsh reality and the unravelling of characters and their lives. We get a hint of people in upper class as well of those in poor condition. We get rape, marriage, motherhood, loss and maturity in a tight story. We get the past as well as the present. I loved how the writer doesn't make a miracle at the end where she could have easily done like mainstream writers, but she rather chose a heartbreaking reality to finish the story.
I would definitely go back to the writer and the next will be the book for which she got the Sahitya Academy prize.

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the most moving book I've ever read which describes loss - breath-taking...

[Prriyankaa Singh | the.bookish.epicure · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love came visiting, a tantalizing emotion; curling my toes in anticipation, making the heart flutter in sweet dreams. It came with the promise to set me free, let me soar high. The binding vine grows tighter around me while the eagle sweeps down, love keeping me paralyzed in place.

What is it about love that makes you falter in step, cloud judgment and take actions your oxytocin doused brain would otherwise never have? Is it love that makes a woman subjugate before her husband? Is it love that says a woman lives only through her children and husband? Is it love that says suffer is marital relations are far from happy?

I've seen women take the world and that same woman wait for her love to rescue her. A woman raped has her morality questioned - a pariah for all living days. A sick child is the uncaring mother's fault. A widow forgoes colors and flavours of life because her drunk husband was careless. A married woman is a guest in the house she was born in and a guest in her married house because she wasn't born there.

Where is the justice?

The patriarchy is the vine that binds, love the word of disguise, weaving it's threads deep conditioning one's mind till it's intrinsic as your sinew.

The Binding Vine is a narrative by Urmi and the women who surround her and women she chances upon, from different walks for life; whose hands and tongues tied for the sake of their family, children and honor under the guise of love.

Shashi Deshpande addresses all kinds - the strong, the weak - each going through challenges and dealing with losses of their own - loss of identity, career, children, "face in society", loneliness, place in this wide world.... The centre of the wheel is Urmi who is trying to wade through her grief by supporting each of them with words of love, encouragement, concern and trying to heal herself.

There is nothing light about this book. It's challenging from the first page. Shashi has used plethora of topics like death, rape, abandonment etc to highlight the plights of these characters. There's nothing gossamer wrapped about this book. It's as realistic as it gets which makes it even more tough to read.

If you have the stomach, read it. Today, tomorrow, whenever. Read it. A book you'll derive strength from and lend to others. It's only my second book by her and I'll always be in awe of Shashi's insights.

[Harsh Gopal · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my first book of Shashi Deshpande. I had bought this book a few years ago and it remained on my shelf forgotten until I picked it up a week back. The story is about loss, pain and grief but she has decided not to glorify that pain or romanticise it either. It is a hard-hitting story set in a patriarchal world. Well, our very society is still very much patriarchal.

The story mainly revolves around women. Some strong and some weak. The central character, Urmila discovers poems written by her dead mother-in-law who was a victim of marital rape. The characters are strong and you realise as you proceed through the story that each of the characters have a justified reason to be that way. Though each of them have their own space to grow along with the story, the author beautifully centres the whole story around Urmi.

Shashi Deshpande is an underrated writer and she deserves more recognition than she currently has.

"To make myself in your image was never the goal I sought"⠀

[Parvathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's more a 3.5, really. Shashi Deshpande is a strangely underrated writer, one who describes the quiet despair and deep strength of the middle class Indian woman in a way very few other writers have done. This one is the story of a grief-stricken school teacher, Urmila, who, while trying to cope with the loss of her daughter, discovers stories of women enduring worse, both within her family and outside. Through these women, Deshpande explores some intense questions: What does it take to be an independent-minded woman in a deeply patriarchal society? What is the nature of grief and coping? What is it that ultimately gives you reason to go on, in the face of an unbearable world? It's a fierce and vivid tale, even if some of the characters remain sketchy - Mira, Akka, Inna, each could have an entire book to herself. This is an author who needs to be explored further.

[Riya ❤️]

I understand why these texts are brilliant and essential, but as Brecht and many other authors and thinkers hold: art must also delight, and this book fails to achieve that. I read primarily for pleasure. I'm not suggesting that all books must incorporate—better yet, force—pop culture themes in order to appeal to readers, but the writing style itself can be enjoyable. The narration in the book falls flat, while the short poems were enjoyable to read. I wished that the author could incorporate some poetic diction in the overall work.

[shaula · Rating 5 out of 5]

this, this book made me feel so many tingles and emotions; heart wrenching yet so relatable, seen in my own life or of women around me.

this book really needs to be talked about more whenever a discussion is raised about feminist literature because this deserves it!

[Melanie Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

Shashi Deshpande writes insightfully about grief and loss. However, I struggled to follow the relationships between the many characters and, at some points, it was unclear who was speaking.

[Kesu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Have you seen how a vine plant grows? Imagine Sweet Pea for this matter, how that plant starts growing from ground level, twisting around support to bloom and produce sweet peas.

Considering our Indian society and mindset of people, we are often dependent upon others to grow, some never feel to grow alone. In the abyss of twisting dependency, we start focusing on human relationships rather one's self-consciousness.

Some say the Binding vine is a domestic fiction and feminist literature, rather you should call it a true story considering Indian society, where the binding of few characters are dependent upon each other or a single person. Where prime protagonists are three grief-stricken women; Urmi, Mira, and Shakutai.

In this feminist literature Men's existence is more or less absent from a protagonist's POV, where they are portrayed as the cause of their grief.

The endless loop of loneliness and Grief knitted together with Anu's death, Mira's poetry, and Kalpana's suffering. Urmi's discovery of Mira's Poetry and Shakutai's urge for her daughter's death opens a door of immense suffocation and way of life after what she has gone through all this time.

What is Grief?

Ask Urmi, who lost her daughter Anu.

Ask Shakutai, who is on the verge of losing her daughter Kalpana who gets raped by a known person, and her sister who killed herself after knowing the fact that her husband is behind this horror.

Ask late Urmi, a victim of marital rape, who starts penning down her grief in form of poetry.

Ask Vanaa, who won't come across a bit of her mother's life if the poetry never came into existence.

Ask every character, who is the victim of societal judgment, bully, and barbarism.

What is loneliness?

In the crowd the familiar faces where people start feeling lonely.

Ask Urmi and Mira, how they started suffocating themselves by the societal norms, after getting raped, after her girl's premature death. When they needed emotional intimacy more all they get physical unwanted intimacies.

Urmi, being the sole narrator and the pivotal character with a dynamic personality, who is engrossed in the present and experiencing the past absorbed all character's consciousness, becomes the only consciousness of the entire story, becomes 'The Binding Vine'.
.
.
Divided into 4 chapters, The binding Vine points the light on Relationships, Loneliness, Grief, and Consciousness of the human race. It tells the tragic lives of few women, the emptiness, molding of one's character, and the objectification. Finally, the binding vine is not just a novel, it's a ground reality, it's a way of life. Happy Reading.

[Siddhi · Rating 4 out of 5]

So hauntingly beautiful

[Versha · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can never get enough of Shashi Deshpande’s tantalizing writing no matter how dark, how depressing her stories are , I always feel at home when I read them. Her characters are real the circumstances she creates in the story are realistic.

Yes, this book too is, dark, gloomy but very realistic!

“Only one, a son…the word keeps hammering in my mind. How could I, oh God, how could I? That was betrayal, treachery, how could I deny my Anu?” says Urmila


Urmila the main protagonist is grieving over her baby daughter Anu’s death. Though her mother, her friend constantly tries to take her out of this depression but she is not willing to come out of it, not yet. She wants to make sure this grieve of hers stays alive and wants it to become a part of her life, just so that at any given situation she would never forget her baby, her Anu.

Consequently, Urmila’s grieve draws her to be a part of her long dead mother-in-law - Mira’s melancholic poems only to discover a hidden secret of Mira’s forceful marriage and its norms that she followed unwillingly. Which is revealed so clearly in her poems…

"Don’t tread paths barred to you
Obey, never utter a ‘no’,
Submit and your life will be
a paradise, she said and blessed me.

***
No, growing painfully within
Like a monster child was born.
"

Urmila also entangles herself in yet another issue of Shakutai and her daughter Kalpana (a rape victim) she visits them regularly in the hospital. Tries to tell Shakutai to give a police complaint so that they can take further action but Shakutai refuses to do so, as she is scared of the society and the mindset of the people around her.

Caught between these two situations - Mira’s poems (which Urmila wants to publish badly yet she cannot) and Shakutai & Kalpana’s agony, Urmi finds herself confused and helpless. But does she find any answer for these questions or does she not? The below line says it all..

“And so we go on. ‘I don’t want any more, I’ve had enough, I’ve had enough,’ Shakutai cried out. But in the morning I found her getting on with her chores. You can never opt out; you can never lay it down, the burden of belonging to the human race. There’s only one way out of this Chakravyuha. Abhimanyu had to die; there was no other way he could have got out."

[Ahtims · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my second book by Shashi Deshpande and loved this one too. She is a scintillating author - dark, reflective, female oriented. All her characters are strong, but with flaws. I love the way she depicts people in varying shades fo gray. No one is perfect (as in real life) and though some of the incidents are dramatized I feel keen sympathy and empathy towards most characters. This was a dark book dealing with the life of a woman after the death of her one year old daughter.

[Wari Singh · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read very few Indian authors. To me she is the best amongst the few that I have read; standing right next to Tagore, the master storyteller. Shashi's writing style is so simple and natural. It speaks to you without any effort. She has managed to maintain a flow throughout the novel. She beautifully ties up all the subplots and has beautifully captured the issues faced by men and women under an oppressive patriarchal society.

[Namrirru · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book. It had an interesting storyline, interesting characters and character relations. Alas. It left me a little cold.

[Dewi Novirianti · Rating 4 out of 5]

Foggy...

[Shervin · Rating 2 out of 5]

quite nice but depressing

[Roshni · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is one of my all time favourite books. Shashi Deshpande has a way to reach directly to your heart...

[Simeen · Rating 2 out of 5]

makes you hair stand at ends but you cant agree more with the book... Shashi deshpande is a good narrator..

[Piyush · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think this is one depressing sad story.