Three families hunt for suitable boys in 'Three Parts Desire'

Three Parts Desire
Shailaja Bajpai
HarperCollins
416 pages
Rs399

Three Parts Desire is aimed at the mass-market. It is about three generations of women — Mem, Didi and Baby — who are brought up to be independent and determined women, used to thinking for themselves. It spans 30 years, spread across four geographical locations — New Delhi, New York, 3 Chor Bagh, and a hill station. They are constantly being reminded that they should “do your family duty.”

It is the search for the best matrimonial alliance for their daughters that keeps these families preoccupied. This anxiety to locate a groom “in the same rank as ours” seems to loom large in every generation, especially since “A grown woman could not live at home with her mother and an ayah. What about her plans, her future? What about money?”

The three women are ably supported by their ayah-cum-companion, Sita, who has also brought up Didi and Baby from infancy. So Sita is in that peculiar space of being a close confidante of the three generations of women, so much so that she is able to reprimand them when required, but is equally protective of their needs and sensibilities and yet, is fully aware that she is unable to transcend certain set boundaries.

The tangled web of relationships that these women weave around themselves in each generation forms the main story of the novel, but the men are not forgotten. They are equally vulnerable in the decisions that they have to make regarding their careers, and of course, marriage. They too have no choice in the matter, except to follow what has been decided for them by the elders in the family.

As Kartik, a friend of Baby’s and the main narrator, discovers when he asserts himself in the choice of a bride that has been found for him — he is cast out of the family.

Shailaja Bajpai at her launch in Delhi mentioned that her favourite novelist was Jane Austen.

In Three Parts Desire she wanted to write an Austen-like fiction about a family, focused on feisty heroines. Bajpai observed that “names do not matter, but relationships do” and so Mem, Didi and Baby, the protagonists are not given any proper names, but they are identified by their relationships just as happens in the many saas-bahu serials that she likes to watch on television.

Although the author has not achieved Austen’s elegance, sophistication and restrained prose (Jane Austen would never have written soft porn; and even if she had, she would never have laden it with cliches as here), she has tried to show the complexity of a family that exists behind closed doors and the social veneer that one is expected to maintain.

The technique that Bajpai prefers to adopt is the mode of flashback, but unfortunately it does not seem to work very well. If it were not for the chapter breaks, indicating the year of action, it would have been impossible to gauge the different moments in time as there is no variation in the voices.

Jaya Bhattacharji Rose is a
consultant editor