Maa – Anurupa Devi, Translated by Sanjukta Banerji Bhattacharya

Description

This is a story of human emotions—love, greed, jealousy, forbearance, desire and forgiveness—as they play out in the inner sanctum of the home.

Maa revolves around four characters in a turn-of-the-nineteenth-century setting in the aftermath of the social churning caused by the Bengal Renaissance. Aurobindo Basu is the well-educated scion of a rich, influential Kayastha family. He has two wives: Manorama, the charming daughter of poverty-stricken parents whom he married against his father’s will and who was soon disowned by his patriarchal father; and Brajarani, a beautiful, wealthy, strong-willed lady who Aurobindo was forced to marry due to the threat of disinheritance.

While the old patriarch also disowned Manorama’s son Ajit, Brajarani was unable to produce an heir. Manorama lived in dire straits but found fulfilment in caring for Ajit; in contrast, Brajarani had everything that a woman could materially desire but was bereft of her husband’s love and was immensely resentful of her abandoned co-wife. What such a situation can do to a young, innocent mind is reflected in Ajit’s coming of age.

Maa is a period piece on the private world of Bengali women as viewed through the unique lens of an extraordinarily gifted writer who belonged to and knew that society intimately.