SOMETIMES too much grief is exasperating, even a bit embarrassing, for those not at the heart of it. Jaishree Misra herself obliquely acknowledges it when the protagonist in her new novel Afterwards says: ‘‘I knew it was hard for everybody else; in some ways, harder than it was for me because I was sort of entitled to wallow in my grief, while everybody else was expected to put up with my wallowing.’’ The reader feels a bit like the everybody. Afterwards is a sort of companion novel to Misra’s first one, Ancient Promises, in which a woman flees a loveless marriage and makes home in England with her mentally retarded daughter and her childhood sweetheart. In Misra’s latest novel, Rahul Tiwari comes to Kerala from London to learn the mridangam, is enamoured of his beautiful neighbour Maya who lives with her husband and daughter. The theme of flight continues. Maya seeks Rahul’s help to run away from her possessive husband. Mother and daughter accompany Rahul first to Delhi and then to London where they set up home. Maya becomes partner and Rahul becomes papa from unka (uncle) to Anjali. So far, so good. Then there is the Afterwards. Not an ever after with its happy hint but an ominous afterwards. Two and a half years later, Maya dies in a car accident and even as Rahul tries bleakly to get his life back on track, he gets a second blow. The social services department steps in, Anjali is removed to a children’s home and, since Rahul has no legal rights, he loses her to her biological father. It is then that he decides to make his final pilgrimage to Kerala to immerse Maya’s ashes and also to confront her parents who had not only disowned her but had performed a final act of farewell: her death rites while she was living. But Rahul’s rage journey ends once he finds Maya’s father has died and her mother is living a frugal life in a temple complex. Instead of the stern, resolute figure of his imagination he finds a frail old lady who misses her daughter. Afterwards brings out how difficult it is to cope with grief alone in a busy city. How friends have become the people you hang out at a pub or a game with but who you wouldn’t want to unburden your soul to. And ironically, the people who comfort you are the very ones you’ve spent a lifetime avoiding — large, loud aunts, inquisitive family friends. So Rahul finds some relief from the presence of his college mate Kevin and his girlfriend and more at a dinner party at the house of his mother’s friend from Jalandhar. But in Afterwards, small details, or the lack them, nag. For instance, would someone ask a stranger for help and flee with a child without arranging for a job or some way of surviving? Granted that even more bizarre things are known to happen, then is it that easy to emigrate to another country? This too might be quibbling with technicalities. So, then we come to the Afterwards where the sorrow after losing one’s partner and then the custody of a child one has brought up as one’s own is understandable. But there Misra lets the reader down by not letting it grow. There is real grief with a real reason but it fails to transcend into something larger than one person’s personal wallowing.
