Title: Jorasanko
Author: Aruna Chakravarti
Publisher: HarperCollins India
Genu stood where she was as though rooted to the ground. Her eyes were fixed on the masses of gold and gems that hung from Sarada’s neck and trailed down her vast bosom. Her ears were filled with the jingling from the rows of bangles that encased her mother-in law’s fat arms as she put the finishing touches to her daughter’s toilette. Then the girl turned and walked away.
As soon as she reached the door she started running. Stuffing the end of her sari into her mouth, willing the lump to stay stuck in her throat, she ran like a wild thing down the gallery towards her room. Suddenly, she heard a cry and her feet stopped. She stood nonplussed for a moment. Where had the cry come from? From within her? Had the pain she had tried so hard to suppress burst out of her chest in a wail so bitter? So piteous? Then she pulled herself together. Of course not. It was her mother-in-law’s newborn baby crying. A boy two months and twenty days old…
Following the direction of the sound, she came to a tiny room adjoining the birthing chamber. The room was dark and the child lay, all alone, on a narrow bed. There was no sign of the wet nurse or of anyone else. Everyone was busy enjoying the wedding. Lifting the baby in her arms, she felt something flow out of him, something that warmed and comforted her. They were of a kind, she thought. Both alone. Both unloved. She remembered what Subhankari had told her some days after the child was born. Though she had given birth to a boy, Sarada, she had said, was rather disappointed.
‘He’s ugly.’ Sarada had muttered, looking askance at her newborn.
‘He’s not ugly at all’ Subhankari had retaliated indignantly. ‘You’re too fussy, Saro.’
‘Well he’s certainly darker than my other children. And look at his cars. How big they are! And how they stick out!’ Instructing the midwife to bathe him in milk, she had turned over on her side and gone to sleep.
But what neither Subhankari nor Genu knew was that Debendranath had sent for Anandachandra Vidyabagish soon after the birth and asked him to prepare the little one’s horoscope as he had done for all the other children. And, a few days later, Anandachandra had burst into the baar mahal, his mouth stretched in an exultant grin. ‘An outstanding conjunction of planets! he had cried. ‘A birth like this happens once in hundreds of years. This child’s sun is so strong – he will dazzle the world with the light of his genius.’
Debendra had smiled. ‘A good thing,’ he had said. ‘One of my tasks has been simplified. I’ve been racking my brains to find a suitable name for the boy. Since he was born on a Monday, it could have been Somendranath but that, as you know, has already been taken. Now that you say his sun is so strong, I shall name him Rabindranath. But your calculations had better be correct, Ananda. I don’t want you coming to me with a long face, confessing you bungled them.’
(Excerpted from Jorasanko by Aruna Chakravarti, published by HarperCollins India)
About the Book:
In a sprawling novel that spans a unique phase in the history of Bengal and India, Aruna Chakravarti provides a fascinating account of how the Tagore women influenced and were in turn influenced by their illustrious male counterparts, the times they lived in and the family they belonged to. Jorasanko mirrors the hopes and fears, triumphs and defeats that the women of the Tagore household experienced in their intricate interpersonal relationships, as well as the adjustments they were continually called upon to make as daughters and daughters in law of one of the most eminent families of the land. ‘In her meticulously researched novel, Aruna Chakravarti has successfully re-created for the reader the world inside the Tagore home, at once glittering and fascinating, but also dark and challenging. The women of the Tagore family who are at the heart of this novel are complex beings who will raise many questions in the modern reader regarding the role of women in today’s society’, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, author of Palace of Illusions and One Amazing Thing.
About the author:
Aruna Chakravarti had been the Principal of a prestigious women’s college of Delhi University for ten years. She is also a well-known academic, creative writer and translator with seventeen published books on record. They comprise five novels, two books of short stories, two academic works and eight volumes of translation. Her first novel The Inheritors (published by Penguin Random House) was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and her second, Jorasanko (published by HarperCollins India)received critical acclaim and also became a best seller. Daughters of Jorasanko, a sequel to Jorasanko, (HarperCollins India) has sold widely and received rave reviews.Her novel Suralakshmi Villa, published by Pan Macmillan Ltd under the Picador imprint, has been adjudged “Novel of the year (India 2020)” by Indian Bibliography published in The Journal of Commonwealth Literature U.K. Her latest work, The Mendicant Prince, a semi-fictional account of the Bhawal legal case, was released by Pan Macmillan Ltd, in July this year to widespread media coverage and acclaim. Her second book of short stories Through a Looking Glass: Stories has just been released by Om International Ltd.
Her translated works include an anthology of songs from Rabindranath Tagore’s Gitabitaan, Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Srikanta and Sunil Gangopadhyay’s Those Days, First Light and Primal Woman: Stories. Among the various awards she has received are Vaitalik Award, Sahitya Akademi Award and Sarat Puraskar.
She is also a script writer and producer of seven multi- media presentations based on her novels. Comprising dramatised readings interspersed with songs and accompanied by a visual presentation by professional artists and singers, these programmes have been widely acclaimed and performed in many parts of India and abroad.
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