Study of Mother – Daughter Relationships in Manju Kapur’s Difficult Daughters

1. INTRODUCTION

Manju Kapur was born in Amritsar, a town in the northern Indian province of Punjab in 1948. She finished her Bachelor of Arts from Miranda house University College for women. She earned her M.A. from Dalhousie University in Canada and she further did M. Phil from Delhi University. She is at present a teacher of English in Miranda House, an Arts and Science College for Women under University of Delhi. Her novels are about women carrying on with an actual existence of minimalness. The subject of marriage holds an extraordinary interest for Manju Kapur. The subject of conjugal dissension in Manju Kapur's novels uncovers her quintessential artisanship. She truly agonizes over the destiny and fate of present day women particularly in male-haughty society and her demolition at the special raised area of marriage. The novelist, nevertheless, does not challenge the uselessness of marriage as a foundation yet discloses the internal mind of the characters through their relations. Her first novel Difficult Daughters is around three ages in a solitary family. The novel is about a quest for identity in an alternate environment as Sudha Shree battles, "Manju Kapur manages the topic of travails and self-identity versus socio-cultural identity in Difficult daughters". Difficult Daughters is the tale of a woman got in the middle of the sentimental circumstances of her family and her yearning for instruction, fondness, and opportunity. There are alternate points of view between the female characters about their energizing society and standards. Whenever Kasthuri, the mother of the hero, Virmati, urges her little girl to acknowledge the marriage as a conventional standard, Virmati will not acknowledge it; rather she looks for learning. The storyteller of the novel, Ida, is Virmati's little girl. Through her voice, the novelist recognizes the women from three generations. Manju Kapur takes Virmati as a weapon of her compositions and through her, she features of marginalization endured by women who are primarily worried about their individuality and dignity. exploitation of woman is a verifiable truth even perceived by History. Einstein interprets the term feminism as," In my understanding the term 'feminist' at that point I see an element of visionary futurist musings. This envelops a concept of social change that as a feature of the inevitable freedom of women with improve every human relationship. Albeit halfway about women, their experience and condition. Feminism is additionally fundamentally about men and about social change.‖ Suma Chitnis has depicted the particular element of feminist movement in India. The most particular element of this movement is that man started it. It Ws just towards the century's end the women joined the brawl. The rundown of who champion the reason for women is long-Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Ishwarachandra Vidyasagar, Keshav Chandra Sen, Matahari Phule, Agarkar, Ranade, Karve to mention a couple. They record of the change they attempted to accomplish is noteworthy. It uncovers that their endeavors crossed activity to nullify the act of Sati, the custom of kid marriage, custom of recognizing widows, the restriction on remarriage of the upper standing Hindu Widows and a heaps of other malice practices that influenced women. Feminism in its different forms has enlisted a checked nearness in later basic hypothesis and abstract practice all through the world. Consequently, the contemporary Indian women essayists in English have additionally displayed a distinct fascination for portraying various parts of women's involvement. The noticeable feelings of these journalists and their particular position opposite women deliver their feminist tendencies. Manju Kapur's Difficult Daughters (1998) follows the various phases of women's development in a particular socio-verifiable setting that denotes the significance of Indocentric feminist point of view. In the Indian setting, feminism is frequently viewed as a heritage of fairness of genders acquired from the sacred privileges of women, social reformational movements and spread of education. The commonplace idea of cultural customs, verifiable foundation and the assortment present in Indian life itself does not acknowledge a uniform arrangement of idea. The particular idea of the customary cultural ethos and its long history in India does not fit in with the western model of feminism. Subsequently, in the vast majority of the novels by the contemporary Indian women writing in English we find that, ''They don't declare their thoughts of progress through sex hostility yet through social rearrangements that cut crosswise over class and sex lines,'' for the, ''Indo-centric methodology can't utilize the western feminist base of binary male female sexual orientation hostility'. Kasturi is Virmati's mother. She is more than once reminded that she is born to work and satisfy her in–laws. Since her school days, … it was always remembered that marriage was her fate. After she graduated, her education proceeded at home. Her mother attempted to guarantee her future bliss by faultless nature of her little girl's capabilities. She would please her in-laws (Kapur 58). She has been portrayed in the novel as a mother whose duty is to bring forth children the greatest number of as she can. At the point when Kasturi gets hitched, she turns into the casualty of this unlimited birth. She is hitched in a traditional family. She brings forth six daughters and five children against her desires, "There had been eleven of them. The young ladies: Virmati, Indumati, Gunvati, Hemavati, Vidyavati and Parvati. The Boys: Kailashnath, Gopinath, Krishanath, Prakasnath, and Hiranath" (Kapur 4). When she is going to bring forth eleventh tyke; her pregnancy symptoms resembled an iron deficient, mal-nutritional and eager women, "For the eleventh time it had begun, the weight in her tummy, morning and night sickness, bile in her throat while eating, hair dropping out in bunches, happiness when she got up all of a sudden. How trapped could nature make a woman" She all the time goes to god to abort this tyke and tries not to get pregnant ever in her life, "Her sandhya began and finished with this supplication that by one way or another she should drop the kid she was conveying and never imagine again". During her gestation period she is not free from her other children and because of strenuous timetable, she feels constantly depleted, "Kasturi couldn't recollect when she was not tired, when her feet and legs did not throb". At the point when Kasturi conveyed her eleventh child, she was not permitted to take legitimate rest. In this way, Kashturi life is completely ramshackle with the rift in her marriage.

Virmati life is not greatly improved than her mother, Kasturi. Virmati's folks are additionally rushed for her marriage like her mother. She remarks, "They don't need anything from me however an agreement to wed". Women in that time were made to consider nothing else except for marriage and that is the reason marriage turns into an issue in her life moreover. Her mother is constantly stressed over her marriage and she does not comprehend her mental turmoil. Her mother neglects to comprehend that Virmati is a true young woman since her youth who has her sense of siblings . She is the genuine mother for her kin whom she takes care when her mother gets beside her obligations in the wake of giving them birth. It is just Virmati who tends them. Virmati was the oldest of Kasturi's everything

something all the ideal opportunity for her kin and this propensity for her mother enraged her. She at such occasion gives a level refusal to her mother. She is a young woman of high aspirations. When she is thirteen years of age and her mother was sick at Dalhousie, she comes to know the autonomous existence of her cousin Shakuntla and she is then inspired to carry on with another life for her like Shakuntala. After that, she makes great future arrangements for her life, "First FA, at that point BT what is more. Indeed, even after her marriage, she went for a M.A. to Government College, Lahore; you know-generally excellent, dislike now daily. The Oxford of the Earth they call it". Therefore, Virmati demonstrates a difficult little girl in this novel, as she does not pursue her parent's recommendation and attempts to locate an alternate road for her, "It is just Virmati who is the difficult girl in the prosperous trader family of Lala Diwan Chand. While in the age of Kasturi, woman's role was restricted to childbearing and kitchen work, the age of Virmati splits from the convention bound breaking points of Indian women. When she needs to go to Lahore like her cousin Shakuntla, at this Shakuntla says, 'Arre', shouting her cousin congratulating her, 'times are changing, and women are moving out of the house, why not you". Virmati discloses to her mother that she needs to go to Lahore for higher investigations; at that point, her mother Kasturi censures her maxim, "When I was your age, young ladies possibly went out when they wedded. Also, past a particular age… In Amritsar, a Professor of English comes to live as an inhabitant at her auntie's home with his significant other. The professor has been hitched with his uneducated spouse in his childhood. When she sets off for college, this professor begins to look all starry eyed at her, and he steadily keeps a full control on her heart and brain. Virmati, notwithstanding realizing that he is as of now hitched, neglects to deny him as Sudha Shree Contends, "She responds the fascination and love of the Charming Professor, for she, who was, tunned to neediness, reciprocated to the professor's need" Virmati turns down the marriage proposal of Inderjit, a Canal Engineer. Nevertheless, she sets out not tell it to her mother, Virmati's contact with the English professor named Harish Chandra brings a defining moment in her life. Virmati listens his addresses with riveted attention. She defies her family to get her affection. Virmati is profoundly infatuated with Professor and will not wed Inderjit. She tries to take her life by drowning. At last, she moves to Lahore. In any case, this professor is an incredible controller. He is not happy with his past spouse as she is not educated like him. Something else is that their contemplations do not coordinate. He does not a new line of work in a young women‘s school as a headmistress kept running by an enlightened maharaja. This is the happiest period in Virmati's life. Virmati hates this sort of life and takes decline in Shanti Niketan to spare herself from professor's torments. Be that as it may, professor comprehends the interest of time and he hurriedly weds her. At that point Virmati turns into his lady of the hour and now discovers some comfort as she sees herself as a piece of society by wearing red bangles like different young ladies when they get hitched, "The main thing she said she needed were the red ivory bangles that the women of her family wore when they wedded" (Kapur 186). Be that as it may, this marriage leaves her increasingly disturbed, disposed, dissatisfied and perplexed. "Despite the fact that wedded, she was seized. Well so be it. She would walk tight-lipped, quiet, on the way her predetermination had cut out for her". Virmati feels that it would have been exceptional on the off chance that she had not hitched Harish, "I should never had hitched you". She is acknowledged now neither in her own home nor in her significant other's home. The progression spouse/co-wife does not permit her into the kitchen or to do family occupations of conveying for family individuals. The mother pummels her and misuses her, when she endeavors to get back home and visits her kin". She is viewed as a woman of no place: she is acknowledged neither in her significant other's home nor in her parental home. Indeed, even at the season of death of her dad, she is not permitted to cross the edge of the house while the child in-law is heartily invited. In this way she is pardoned by none and she needs to endure a ton by her very own mistake, "She realizes she isn't excused by the maternal and paternal family for the mistake of attempting to put her own needs first over others' need" Virmati's and Kapuri's fruitless hitched life can be contrasted with Astha Vadera who has done M. A. in English. The novel is identified with her life and she gets an adoring and minding spouse and better surroundings to live in Delhi. Her significant other is a representative who sells South Korean TV sets. She starts instructing in a school to pursue her home only her marriage and she needs to rise promptly toward the beginning of the day. She needs to finish her official obligations just as local obligations. She creates cerebral pain and needs to experience an activity. She is hospitalized for four days. Her better half is dissatisfied from his life and his manager. He regularly comes homes late and Astha continues holding back to invest some energy with him., Not just this her better half, Hemant expects a kid from her and he reveals to her that he would not stop until he gets a kid as his child, "However Hemant's man". "At the point when Astha's child was at long last born she was felt an appreciation as significant as it was disgraced… Her status rose… She was fulfilled . The two of them are so occupied in their lives that each grumbles to other not to possess energy for him/her and in this way live a dissatisfied and like-fragmented life. In the novel the women are found at marginality level in the society. This novel does not approach the women of a family or a single state of Punjab; rather it has wide dimensions. Kasturi, Virmati, Astha or Ida are victimized of the rotten- rules of the patriarchal society. Kasturi‘s role of a procreation tool and Virmati‘s position of a dispossessed emerges the key theme of this novel and Ida‘s role strengthens the mother-daughters relationships though outwardly she does not want to follow her footsteps. While reading the novel one gets the impression that a woman‘s life is like the life of a nation which is passing through various Trials and tribulations. ―Thus Difficult Daughters represents the turmoil of a woman who tries to overcome her cultural identity and forges ‗a self-identity‘, an attempt which leaves a woman hard- hearted and dissolute. The protagonists of Kapur go into marriage with the expectation that the marriage would give them regard security and status in the general public, lamentably, they get frustrated and in this way disappointed. Yet, toward the finish of every novel, Kapur prepares her protagonists to confront the truth. Her women neither look for separation nor end it all regardless of their injury and predicament of their wedded life. In any case, in this novel, Virmati and Ida develop at last as resilient women who guarantee and accomplish independence. They figure out how to live amicably in the public arena ignoring neither the family relations nor the cutting edge aspirations for self-governing self.

India has a rich convention of old stories and stories. The accounts delight as well as reflect about the way of life that won. Aside from excitements, experiences, and feelings, they likewise lecture virtues and reasoning, wealthy in importance. The novel gives us an investigate of mother-little girl relationship, following it through three progressive generations. Through the touchy depiction of three generations of women and their issues, Manju Kapur has given us a remarkable image of the advancement of the Indian woman's mind additional time, beginning from the pre-independence period through the independence time upto the season of the post – independence. We see feminist leanings at the beginning in the depiction of Shakuntala and Virmati who settle on their own decisions throughout everyday life. The later developments appear to explain that women who conflict with custom are certain to be singled out and mistreated by society,

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M.A., M.Phil., Bed, NET, Lecturer in English, GGSSS Dighal, Haryana