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Poignant Monologues
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While in Bangalore, she befriends Preetha, a neighbour, who has a child with Down's syndrome, Tarun, and "she looks after him with a frightening determination but she directs that aggression to the outside." When Kaberi tells her friend about her absent husband, Preetha says with her voice hard that "the child deserves to have a father…He deserves that name and that protection,' in spite of having grown up with a father who cheated on his wife by having a second family. Rebirth is about Kaberi "talking" to her unborn child, detailing her life and its trials as they happen, but also reflecting upon the past : her friendships, especially with Joya who was my friend. No, that is not adequate at all; she was so much more. I would like to say she was my sister but when we were created of different flesh so let me call her alter ego, for it was difficult sometimes to distinguish where Joya ended and I began, where we flowed into one another, a pair of underground streams. It has been three years since Joya was killed when the bus in which she was travelling with other doctors was ambushed, but Joya's absence still haunts Kaberi. To add to these personal preoccupations are the politics of Assam that transformed its landscape in the 1980s, which formed a backdrop to Kaberi's childhood and adolescence, but continue to influence her present existence. She is constantly reflecting upon her life, so much so, Sonia, wife of Rahul, a colleague of Ron's says, "You are pretty intimidating, with your deep, deep thoughts locked up behind your tranquil face." Sonia is consoling Kaberi upon discovering Ron with his girlfriend, Lakshmi. She works in the Human Resources Department and according to Sonia, she is always looking for someone to help; to get lunch for, to go shopping for, to help babysit someone's kids. In the office, Rahul says she is always helping others out-at the cost of her own work…And she speaks with a tongue so sweet it can only be forked.
In Rebirth, Jahnavi Barua has used the technique of interior monologue beautifully. She shifts easily from different points of view; from talking tenderly, in an almost soothing tone to her baby to a reflective and contemplative mood while trying to analysing her strained relationships with Ron and her mother or her growing fondness for the women in her immediate circle—Preetha, Sonia and even Mary, her maid. What is truly extraordinary in this novel is that the author has been able to distance herself from the experience of being pregnant while recalling details meticulously, otherwise it all gets reduced to a blur.
Of late, there is a growing trend in literary fiction that deal with the spaces women negotiate for themselves on a daily basis. The tone in Rebirth is inevitably of Kaberi having a quiet confidence of having made peace with the choices women make on a daily basis. Some portions of the novel may lack the power of Anjana Appachana's short stories, but Jahnavi Barua's writing has a dignified poise in its style, similar to that of Chitra Bannerjee Divakurni and Mitra Phukan, that will hopefully influence other women writers.
Jaya Bhattacharji Rose is a publishing consultant and critic