Bookmitta Reviews: Kanta Bharti’s ‘Ret Ki Machhli’ and Dharamveer Bharti’s ‘Gunaho Ka Devta’ | The Odd Angle

Gendered perceptions in the stories of love: The Odd Angle 

By: Jatin Mathur

Last week I read Kanta Bharti’s ‘Ret Ki Machhli’ (RKM henceforth), a Hindi autobiographical novel based on her life events which presents a close look into the life of litterateurs which gets obscured into their writings. The book builds upon the internal world of feelings, emotions of the author exposing the lust, love and longing. The book is considered a real account of the acclaimed story by Dharamveer Bharti in ‘Gunahon ka devta’ (GKD henceforth). 

GKD is an excellent story in terms of its emotional appeal, it seems as if it destroys all preconceived notions of love and attachments while convincing yourself to ‘fall’ in love despite the involved pain. It seems as if the novel presents the internal deliberations of the human mind where your amygdala pulls you towards ideas of love and your hypothalamus argues for sexual pleasure. Despite this internal struggle you finally lose your mind and settle with reality. It is these internal conversations which pose questions about our prejudices for attachments. One can conclude (if read in isolation) that the book challenges the taboo around desires in love relationships. However, apart from a notional view the characters seem to be shown involuntary without any agential effort to seek their love. This depiction seems quite apparent in the case of sudha as most decisions about the relationship are actually made by chandar, despite being perceived as ‘gunah’ (sin). Critically, the author seems to gather sympathy for the character of Chandar despite his sins as he loses his love which he himself is responsible for. The author acknowledges those sins but still confidently establishes Chandar as ‘Devta’ (God) though of sins. Sudha seems to be an imaginary character, non-representative in terms of women in love, shown unreasonably meek. Too often most books on love and human connection ignore the complexities of it, in actual and real domain love remains entangled in structures, ideologies and experiences, GKD also fails to capture it. The fear which emerges once you transcend the limits of identities for love and desire or suppression of the instinctive desire by morals both remain unaddressed in these descriptions. While most authors seem to avoid these complexities or else they ought to utilize their judgemental rationality and take moral position in terms of challenging structures hence end up presenting a prejudiced and ambiguous account of human love and friendship. This aspect comes out very clearly for the case of gender in GKD, which is exposed in my reading of RKM. I was shocked at my change of perspective about GKD when I read RKM. It got worse when I went on to search about Kanta Bharti on the web and couldn’t find even a single credible source for her life works and biography. This is a structural and ideological continuation of gender hierarchies from society to literary culture. RKM which tends to present an unpleasant account of suffering born out of misplaced masculine desires in the name of love is obscured and not celebrated as compared to GKD.    

RKM is a complex story of femininity and love marked by sadness however it is simple as a literary work presenting the truth as it is with some metaphorical depictions of human emotions. Unlike the philosophical account and ambiguity of GKD, Kanta Bharti materializes the story into the real with clarity. It is these descriptions and clarity with regard to human expectations and emotional dependence which are sufficient to create storms in the inner world of the reader. The story is a compulsive account which begets sympathy if not empathy for the main character but portrayal of protagonist as helpless and dedicated to love attachments seems uncommon. This portrayal is consistent with the GKD where the character of Sudha is shown agency-less and without autonomy disregarding herself. One reason for this perception of Kuntal and Sudha as weak and agency-less is this difference in time where contemporary women are comparatively more decisive. The empathetic account of her feelings is well written, such a rich description of one’s emotions and sufferings is seldom manifested into words. The smearing of love and friendship that Dharamveer Bharti has done on lust in GKD, that feral lust is uncloaked and put naked in RKM. Many male-authors have actually made efforts to present feral lust and instincts as love and desires, RKM is a feminine account which tells the inner feelings of a lover who encounters such descriptions in actual domain. I would say RKM is a sad story of emotional difference between men and women which exposes the literature world too. My effort in this blog is to unravel the unconscious celebrations of the prejudices in literary depictions, while it seeks to recognise the literary answer which Kanta provides to the Dharamveer.