Dr. Girish Kousadikar
Assistant
Professor
Department of English
Department of English
B. Raghunath College
Parbhani, Maharashtra, India
Abstract:
The term ‘Globalization’ is no more a term in association
with trade, economy or business policy only. Globalization opened up many
avenues to progress for the first world countries. The effects of liberal economy transcends the
thresholds of family customs, traditions and overall the socio cultural fabric
of the entire society. The sensible and creative novelists like Sudha Murty
minutely observed and traced out such effects through their literary works. Sudha
Murty’s fiction ‘House of Cards’ manifests eroding effects of money
power on family relations. The crosscurrents underneath the surface of actions
in the novel are explored here.
Key words:
Globalization,
Sudha Murty, crosscurrents, flat, round characters
Introduction:
Novel, the literary genre has been witnessing ceaseless
evolution in themes and treatment from century to century fulfilling the then
demands of reader community. Today’s
novelists also address contemporary issues, burning topics prevailing in the
society either to expose and/or to mend human tendencies. The busy life of recent period gave priority
to novel reading against drama due to convenience of place and time. So the novel form got immense popularity at
the present juncture.
W.H. Hudson’s following remark can be aptly applied on
enormous publication of novels or novellas and rat race of fame to become a
novelist,
“Anyone can write a
novel who has pens, ink and paper at command, and a certain amount of leisure
and patience.”
(Prasad,
2001, 194)
However, Sudha
Murty stands apart and high among these overcrowding novelists justifying their
own requirements of self exposures only. Sudha Murty emerged as a promising
Indian writer in English due to her consistent writing and uniqueness in handling
the familiar milieu in unfamiliar way.
Her first novel ‘Dollar Bahu’ came in to limelight in 2005. Her
literary career over a decade and half placed her to esteemed position in the
Indian literary scenario. Apart from a prestigious designation as CEO of IT
Company like INFOSYS, she has been widely discussed rather applauded for her
writing skill and multifarious social and literary aspects of her
personality. As a result, Murty became
the recipient of various social and literary prestigious awards including R. K.
Narayan Award for literature in 2006. Murty has voluminous literary output
including 04 novels 02 novellas and 04 collections of short stories.
The present paper
intends to focus on crosscurrents at internal as well as external level in Sudha
Murty’s novel ‘Houses of Card’.
Crosscurrents:
Crosscurrent or
conflict is an undeniable and integral part of literary work. Sometimes it is
surfaced and become visible whereas in other cases it is deeply rooted into
fathoms of character’s mind. There are two types of crosscurrents practiced or
delineated in literature, one is external crosscurrent and other is internal
crosscurrent.
External crosscurrents:
External
crosscurrents are easy to understand for being either physical or visible. Almost every literary work manifests the
conflict between protagonist and antagonist representing bright and dark side
of the matter respectively. The author
plants two opposite values confronting each other to develop a literary
piece. Every epic irrespective of
religion, language, geographical orientation is a long tale of strife between
virtues and vices in human embodiments i.e. characters. The struggle may be a result of ambition for
power, wealth, beauty and so on.
External
crosscurrents may be situation, system, social customs and tradition which
compel, allures an individual to think and act in a particular way. The fate or
destiny disguised in the form of incident or event impacts the life of
characters.
Internal crosscurrents:
Fiction is a narrative
literary form. The novelist has to
delineate each and every minute transition and transaction of his/ her
characters verbally. In the literary
form like dram, the playwright utilizes soliloquies and asides to pave way to
internal crosscurrents within a character’s mind. But in novel, the creator has to be more
cautious to pen down the exact words with appropriate intensity of feelings
aroused in the mind of that fictitious character.
Internal
crosscurrents are arbitrary rather intangible for ordinary readers. Only a skillful literary practitioner can
handle this challenging task of making invisible and concealed thought process
of a character a viable, external exposure.
Otherwise a novel can be misread or interpret in a different way against
the novelist’s intention or expectation from reader’s point of view.
House of Cards:
‘House of Cards’ is an account of a couple and their
materialistic progress from the middle class to upper class economy at the cost
of regress from happy, content couple to a couple at the verge of divorce and
disagreement.
Sudha Murty
minutely and sensibly observed the effects of globalization on economy, family
values, psychology of the Indian society in general and the middle class in
specific. The protagonists Sanjay and
Mridula got married to reward their love and honest feeling for each
other. She supported their family income
by accepting a teaching job. Mridula
upholds ethical values and family responsibilities during the struggling period
of Sanjay. She staunchly supported Sanjay in traumatic situations and injustice
done to Sanjay by the hospital management.
In other words, Mridula became the backbone of Sanjay’s life and
career.
The later phase of
this fiction records radical changes at internal and external levels of
characters. The novelist traced the
devastating effects of money and materialism on the family values. The materialistic progress of Sanjay
ruthlessly crushed down sentiments, ethical values, mutual love and caring
attitude towards family. This trauma ends in separation of Mridula from
Sanjay.
As the title ‘House
of Cards’ implies vanity and temporality of materialistic progress by
sacrificing family life. The palatial house which is a symbol of Sanjay’s
enormous wealth becomes the ‘House of Cards’ on the segregation of
Mridula.
Sudha Murty is
widely read in the Indian reader community for her characterization close to
Indian society, familiar settings and lucid indianised English language
expression. Familiarity has its own appeal is very much true in case of her
works. The present novel is discussed at
length in the marital relation between Sanjay and Mridula but the crosscurrents
underneath are ignored. The researcher would like to focus on the following
crosscurrents experienced in the fiction ‘House of Cards’.
Ethical V/S Non Ethical:
In modern India,
money became the yardstick to measure one’s success. Money became the parameter
for a person’s social reputation. Once
up on a time, devoted Sanjay was glad to follow his father’s word by serving
the patients as they are gods. He has no
complaint against taxing duty hours which he spent during the government
hospital at Bangalore. He was restless only due to corruption and evil practice
in medical profession. The same protagonist underwent drastic changes in the
later part of the fiction. He became a
money making machine through all possible ways.
Sanjay’s capitalist
philosophy suppressed allegations made by Mridula against his unethical
practice; he upholds his view by saying,
“Nothing is black
or white in this world. The cow gives
milk for its calf. But we drink that milk. Isn’t that wrong? Mosquitoes and
bugs are also creatures. Don’t we kill them because they trouble us? Big fish
always eats the small fish. Is that wrong?”
(Murty, 2013, 182)
This crosscurrent
can be traced at internal as well as external level. At internal level, the psyche of Sanjay
became the battlefield for the strife between ethical and non ethical. At the
external level, the novel sheds light on unethical external forces like bribe
offered in different forms by drug companies to doctors, forced c-operations,
selfish and money oriented, business minded hospital management system.
Money v/s Family:
Money took over the
control of Sanjay’s life and actions.
Sanjay totally ignored his family for the sake of his greed for
money. His caring attitude towards
Mridula and son Shishir in the initial stage became rare now. Even Sanjay did not take of his own parents
located far away in Aladhali. Sanjay
advised Shishir to run infertility centre only for rich patients who can afford
to pay handsomely.
Shishir represented
dry and fragmented attitude of the next generation towards family. His respect for his father and disrespect for
mother is merely based on the parameter of success in terms of money. Shishir ridicules her,
“My mother is like
a broken record. She keeps repeating the same things over and over again.”
(Murty, 2013, 161)
Past v/s Present:
The initial part of
fiction informs that Sanjay came from a lower middle class family located in
semi urban area and used to render his medical services in the government
hospital. ‘Work is worship’ was the
motto of his devoted medical practice. Sanjay resisted the offers of corruption
and injustice done to him by the hospital management. The same Sanjay feels no grudge to accumulate
wealth by unlawful and unethical ways later on.
Sanjay has no time
to talk with Mridula to whom he used to share personal and professional
matters. Now he found her unfit and impractical in today’s world. Sanjay hid
his unethical practices and asset generated through it from Mridula. She felt
in love of truthfulness, innocence and ethical values of Sanjay before
marriage. Gradually all these virtues stepped out from Sanjay’s life at the
arrival of hypocrisy, fame and enormous flow of money. The hospital is no more a temple and patient
as a god to Sanjay.
Sanjay discarded
Mridula’s plea of ethical, charitable practice by saying,
“This is not a
temple. We have to give our patients whatever they need. After all they are paying us. Please don’t
try to teach me moral science.”
(Murty, 2013, 156)
Sanjay somewhere
resembles to Christopher Marlow’s Dr. Faustus who signed the treaty with his
blood for unlimited power of 24 years against his soul subjected to hell
forever thereafter. Sanjay became successful from materialistic point of view
against his blissful family life.
Mridula was once
the backbone of Sanjay’s life and career, now turned drastically to a dustbin
in the life of prosperous Sanjay. He made fun of her monthly salary by
forgetting its role in his period of struggle. Mridula raised three lakh rupees
to set up his hospital. Mridula has no place in this materialistic world of
Sanjay.
Flat v/s Round Character:
The fictitious work
comprises two types of characters. One is flat character who remains static and
not influenced by external situations.
Mridula is such a flat character as she clings to her social
responsibility, significance of moral practice.
She successfully defends her morality and self respect from severe blows
of hostile behavior of Sanjay and harsh comments of her son Shishir. Mridula
never gets victimized by tempting materialistic gains.
Sanjay
is an epitome of round character.
Initial Sanjay marred by inferiority complex, poor, innocent but honest
and devoted doctor turned out to be a person with ego, superiority complex,
prosperous, stubborn and commercial doctor running after money.
Conclusion:
To conclude, Sudha
Murty focused the eroding effects of globalization on the fabric of our
traditional, social and familial relations. The supremacy of materialistic
progress shattered the blissful house into the ‘House of Cards’.
Works Cited
Ashcroft, B.
Griffiths, G. Tiffin, H. The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in
Postcolonial Literatures. London, Routledge. 1989.
Chaudhari, M. Feminine Sudha Murty
in India, Zed. 2005.
Das, Bijay Kumar. Essays on Post
Colonial Literature, New Delhi, Atlantic, 2007.
Prasad B., A Background to the
Study of English Literature, Macmillan India Ltd.,2001.
Murty, Sudha. The House of Cards.
New Delhi, Penguin Books India, 2013.