Journey146;s End

THE possibilities are immense. After all, it8217;s the story of Shakuntala. Not the heroine of Kalidasa8217;s epic but Namita Gokhale146...

THE possibilities are immense. After all, it8217;s the story of Shakuntala. Not the heroine of Kalidasa8217;s epic but Namita Gokhale8217;s 8216;8216;cussed and stubborn8217;8217; version who, like her namesake, is fated to suffer the 8216;8216;samskaras of abandonment8217;8217;.

Like many of her books, her fifth novel8212;released in Hindi as well8212;is about journeys on many levels, but perhaps the only one that rings true is the Mills and Boonish escapade of the heroine who gets a brief glimpse of the world, when she flees her husband8217;s home with a Greek very ungodlike hero.

Sadly, there isn8217;t a bridge between imagination and reality. The beginning is promising, but, sigh, there seems to be great confusion in what the novel wants to portray. Is it a tragic love story about a woman who, fettered by circumstances and the age she lives in, cannot live on her own terms? Or should we read more into it, just because she happens to have a legendary name? First, the story.

Like the Shakuntala of the classic, she too lives in mountain country, leading a harsh life of very few comforts. Yet as she grows up unsheltered in the rugged hills, the daughter of a doctor of medicinal plants who died when she was five, she steals her joys. Her mother will sound a warning8212;8216;8216;Remember, Shakuntala, birds return to their nests at dusk, but clouds must weep their tears unseen in distant lands8217;8217;8212;but that won8217;t be enough to keep her out of trouble.

And a 8216;8216;rock-demonness8217;8217; sows the seeds of self-destruction in Shakuntala by telling her: 8216;8216;Remember that in every one of her forms the Goddess is Swamini, mistress of herself8217;8217;.

Her wanderlust will lead her to Kashi, where death lives forever. Sha-kuntala will run away from home8212;and ultimately, life8212;but can she really be free? Or will the debris of one life8212;and memory8212;pursue her through birth and rebirth?

As she lies dying in the ghats, she wonders why her namesake will not leave her: 8216;8216;I carry her pain, and the burden of loves I still do not understand.8217;8217;

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Somehow, it8217;s difficult to believe that Shakuntala, who surrenders so completely to a world of pleasure, is spouting these words just because she is in 8216;8216;holy Kashi8217;8217;. Too much of exotica and erotica was never enough to retrieve an idea, however good.