Rahul Bhattacharya’s new novel: Charu, motherless daughter of a railway worker, longs for freedom

Their quarters began to deteriorate. Nistarini Debi found it difficult to cope, even someone of her efficiency and energy. Without a daughter-in-law to command or condemn or commend, her very personality was dimmed. Unacknowledged by her, since she prided herself on cleanliness and purity, the house began to resemble what she would call in another a pigsty. Used utensils lay in heaps beneath the tap in the backyard; cats leapt over the fence and licked them out. The evening ritual of smoking out mosquitoes became irregular, so the Chitols were forever reaching irritably for their ankles after sundown. Too many meals for the children took the form of beaten rice with curd and jaggery. When anybody fell ill, the dread of another calamity overturned all flow and order.

It was natural, then, that she would enlist her granddaughter, for both their sakes. But unlike nature’s beautiful vines for which the child was named, whose beauty derived in some measure from their tractability, Charulata proved training-resistant.

“Soak those pieces of cauliflower, won’t you?” she would tell the girl, taking the trouble to explain why. “How will the gas go out of them otherwise?” “Will you burp less then?” Charu might answer with a...

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