'The Dowry Bride'
By Shobhan Bantwal
Publishers: Kensington Books USA
343 pages.Price Rs 523/
US based debutante Shobhan Bantwal's first novel 'The Dowry Bride' is a good read. Set in the town of Palgaum, it is the absorbing tale of a panic-stricken run-away wife. But it could have been much more. So much more! With a title like that, it wouldn't have been unreasonable to expect a thorough and perhaps spirited handling of the practice of dowry and its abhorrent fallout. But Bantwal opts to play it safe by using it as a mere prop to introduce us to Megha Ramnath and her headlong flight into the night.
Megha the 'heroine' overhears her mother-in-law and husband-of-a-year plotting to kill her for the lack of a dowry. And what could have been a gripping, even insightful tackling of the subject becomes a 'desi' version of a Mills and Boon romance with strong cultural overtones. Nevertheless it dares to go where no-one has, even if superficially and is therefore applaudable.
Admittedly, by using this horrific accident-by-design as the starting point from where her story unfolds, Bantwal successfully draws attention to the ghastly, inhuman mis-use of the still prevalent custom of dowry. But she could have prolonged the agony, the suspense and the horror of the plot to highlight the surreal nature of the intended crime. By lingering a little longer on the shock, fear and dread of a betrayal that is so truly horrendous, Megha's dazed helpless plight would have made more of a 'case' for 'barren dowry' victims. Instead, by sending her in a convenient panic, so quickly to Kiran, who at best had been a well meaning cousin-in-law, Bantwal gives the impression of an author in a hurry, to tie up ends. And yet significantly the one truly uplifting moment in the book is when Megha finally decides to become her own person. Be that as it may, it is a story that is imaginatively drawn.
Bantwal also does well with her characters. In particular Chandramma's. The personality of the avaricious and callous mother-in-law, cold-bloodedly planning a murder in an attempt to make easy money has been cleverly delineated as indeed have all the other protagonists'. But for the unfeeling and heartless 'Amma', who is crucial to the plot, The Dowry Bride' would well have been just another run of the mill romantic novel with a murder twist. However, this facile endeavor to highlight a condemnable social practice justifiably raises the book a notch above the ordinary.
That, people like 'Amma' do exist and are allowed to get away with murder (with their sons and the rest of the family) speaks volumes about the kind of people, Northern India engenders. The sinister conversion of a practice that was meant to protect and raise the 'Izzat' (honor) of a bride into a viable weapon of murder is sadly and inconceivably true and in trying to reach out to an American audience in explanation, her inevitable use of Indianisms' and 'Indian-English' do tend to jar a little. Nonetheless, she is at her descriptive best while doing so.
Notwithstanding the 'Author's Note' once you realize, that it is not really a tale, tackling the system or even a fictionalized feisty stand against its practitioners, and is actually about how Megha - clothed in Indian family culture- finds herself a new beau, you settle down to a comfortable and enjoyable read. Yes, despite it all, 'The Dowry Bride' is a very readable and creditable effort. Go for it!
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