The Beloved Charioteer-Shashi Deshpande’s Tale of Love-Loss- and Family

The Beloved Charioteer. 

 

Shashi Deshpande is an Indian writer who writes in English. Her remarkable works are: The Intrusion, The binding. Vine, Shadow Play, A Matter of Time, Small Remedies, Strangers to Ourselves, Moving On, and In the Country of Deceit. 

Her first published novel is The Dark Holds No Terror. She has two national awards to her credit: Sahitya Academy Award in 1990 and Padmashri Award in 2004. 

                     Summary in Brief. 

Priti is seven years old girl and presently she is talking to her grandmother. Both have so much deep bonding that they anxiously waited for to meet each other. Priti has to go to school and therefore, her grandmother has to remain alone at home. There prevails a deep silence in the house, and it is gone as soon as Priti returns home. Priti’s mother, Aarti, also lives in the house, but she doesn't have deep bonding with her daughter. She speaks less and Priti feels ignored due to this. 

Aarti, very often, gets irritated with her mother. She complains to her mother that did not tell her about her father's illness, that led to his death. After a few months, it so happened that her husband also died. She keeps on remembering her husband, whom she loved more than her daughter Priti.  

She never pays any attention to her daughter Priti. Aarti’s loneliness after her husband’s death makes her peevish. 

 

She often gets irritated with her mother. She complains that her mother didn't tell her about her father's illness that led to his death.  

 

One day, Priti asks her maternal grandmother if she can sleep in her bedroom. On being asked why she asked her that question, she says that her mother does not talk with her. She does not tell her stories. She wants to listen to stories from her grandmother. She also told her grandmother that Arti, her mother, keeps on smoking and reading books at night and the smell of smokes suffocates her. 

Ajji feels worried about Aarti’s mental state. Sometimes, Ajji tells her to go outside, but she doesn't go outside the house. She tells her mother that when she sees couples, it reminds her of own husband and she becomes upset.  

It seems that she loved her father too much. That’s why, she keeps on sitting for hours together in her father’s room. Ajji wants to bring her daughter, Aarti, back to her normal life. She does not want her to remain lost in her present world. 

One day by mistake, Ajji enters her husband’s room, in which Aarti is usually found sitting. She was sitting on a chair with her legs placed on the table, near the portrait of her father. 

By mistake, the portrait fell down and the glass of it was broken. Aarti wants to pick up the portrait and set the frame right. The glass was also lying scattered on the floor. Ajji stops her not to set the portrait right. Actually, she does not want her daughter to watch that portrait that made her too much obsessed with her painful past memories. 

 

Today, Ajji feels the urge to reveal to Aarti her past that had become a nightmare while living with her husband. She told her daughter that her husband was very cruel to her in spite of the fact she cared for him in every way. She cared for his food and health. But he was always cold and indifferent to her. When her baby son died, he didn't let her weep, not for any concern for Ajji, but only that he didn't like weeping.  She had to comb her hair before he woke up because he didn't like untidy hair. He never allowed her freedom to make a choice of the colour of her sarees. In the whole year, he provided to her only two sarees of the colours of his own choice. She couldn't breathe properly at night and even she couldn't drink water. even if she felt thirsty because it might disturb her husband’s sleep. She even feared to cough loudly. Ajji continued telling her daughter, Aarti, about all those things, because she was unable to control her feelings at that time. 

She did not want that her daughter Aarti may lose herself permanently in depression. She tries to drag her out of the pit of darkness that made her so much obsessed with her past memories. That was the reason, she told her all about her husband’s cruel behaviour with her. She also told Aarti how she felt after he had died. She felt like a school going child who feels relieved at the last bell announcing the closure of the school on that day. 

Gradually, Ajji and Priti try to make Aarti feel normal in her present-day world.