like in her previous novels, in this book too, author Manjushree Thapa seamlessly brings together the personal and the political with representation from every world she has seen, known and experienced, writes MEHA PANDE
All Of Us In Our Own lives is a simple story which essays the lives of three women Ava Berriden, Indira Sharma and Sapana to address complex issues of feminism, feminist ideologies and the female condition in Nepal. Ava is a Canadian-Nepali adopted by a rich philanthropic Canadian dentist couple. Sapana inhabits the interiors of a Nepali village with dreams of change and revolution. Indira, placed between the ‘Canadian’ and the village girl is the ‘modern’ woman the deputy co-director of WDS-Nepal.
The novel opens with Ava deliberating over her life as a lawyer in Canada, Indira’s disappointment in living with ‘no joy, no refinement’… ‘merely eating the needful done’ and Sapana’s insistence on making sure her brother Gyanu comes home for the last rites of their father. It advances by employing the ripple effect philosophy where the actions of one individual are never her own. It is thus not merely what an individual progresses with but also what they discard, ‘the path not taken’ which bears consequences on the lives of others. Sapana wonders if ‘all lives are a part of a whole’.
The effects and possibilities connected with individual actions, depicted by Thapa, bear resemblance to what Jeanette Winterson’s postmodern novel Sexing the Cherry affirms: ‘Every journey conceals another journey: The path not taken and the forgotten angle’. The journey which Ava embarks on brings her to Nepal. It brings Indira in touch with Ava and Sapana not only becomes the beneficiary of what Indira and Ava work towards through the NGOs and CBOs but also an agent of change by working at the micro level to improve the condition of women in her village. The plot ends just how it begins, with each of these women in their own lives again but transformed by the moment where their lives coincide and they collaborate.
In Thapa’s novel, all three waves of feminism find representation. Women suffrage, equal sexual and reproductive rights and traditionally established phallocentrism, heteronormativity and sexual liberty are addressed through Ava, Indira, Maleah, Chandra, Surya and Sapana. All the women in Thapa’s novel, irrespective of their intellectual, economic and social stature feel they are ‘just women’. One might assume that girls from the lower rung of the social fabric like Sapana or Durga are the ones most exploited, but even Indira as a women occupying a position of power is oppressed by the ‘rules’ set out for the ‘daughter-in-law of a Nepali household’y Muwa. Ava acts as a counterfoil, a possibility of both what could have been Ava’s life and what should be the lives of Indira and Sapana. Indira’s model of feminism could be problematic for some readers especially in instances where she tells her daughter how men will be waiting to marry her one day, or how she gets Durga married when Durga utters that she a life. Through Indira’s character, Thapa does drive home the point of living in a phallocentric universe but Indira’s success being dependent on failing a man, fails the struggle of her character to be free. However, put into the context of Nepal, with its ‘constitution’s privileging of the male bloodline over the female’, one does empathise with Indira and her anguish against men becomes understandable.
The novel incorporates both the beauty and filth of Nepal. There are the Himalayas which invoke a sense of awe in Ava and then there is Sapana’s village where the life and condition of the inhabitants leave her crestfallen. The earthquake and its impact on human life and condition strain the heart of the reader. The social and economic exclusion and backwardness are gut wrenching and the earthquake only catalyses the already crumbling lives and homes of people crushing their houses, quite literally. The inner workings of the aid work in Nepal are insightful with the NGOs, their funding and the corruption involved in training and utilising the aid granted for philanthropic purposes brought to the forefront by Thapa. The demand for a democratic constitution and its adoption amid much protest and rebellion in September 2015 linger at the back of the novel.
What drives Thapa’s text is its female characters, but the male characters too are varied. Gyanu (Sapana’s brother), Thulo Ba (the Chairman and village patriarch), luke (Ava’s brother), Indira’s husband (Uday Sharma) and her bosses are characters well crafted and extremely pertinent to the representation of multifarious associations between men and women which is essential to intricacies of the plot.
Thapa gives her readers a lucid, comprehensive and thoroughly researched novel. Those not familiar with the technicalities and jargon of the corporate world might find the first few pages somewhat tedious. It moves rather slowly, where boards meetings and corporate dealings are concerned but paces up by the time one reaches its first half.
Settled in Canada, originally form Nepal, Thapa’s novel is rich and refreshing to read in the day and age where South Asian diasporic writing is moving towards a certain form which tends to be formulaic tales of nostalgia, loss and a crisis of identity for the immigrants settled abroad. like in her previous novels, Thapa seamlessly brings together the personal and the political with representation from every world she has seen, known and experienced. With its insights into the condition of Nepal, the condition of women and the functioning of institutions it indeed is a short but insightful read about Nepal one that entertains and also educates.
Pande teaches English literature at Aryabhatta College, DU