Drenched Thoughts: A Review

Review by Seema Jain

Drenched Thoughts (Novel)

Author: Anita Nahal

Publisher: Authors Press

Year of publication: 2023

ISBN No 978-93-5529-637-5

No. of pages: 214

Price: ₹ 495 INR

 

 

Drenched Thoughts, a debut novel by the well-known poet, critic, and academic Anita Nahal, is a powerful work that thoroughly engages the reader’s attention.  Written in short paragraphs, the novel epitomizes urgency and speed, and, therefore, keeps the readers engrossed. The main plot of the novel revolves around the life of a single immigrant mom and her son, who leave India “to create new, peaceful, conflict-free lives” in their new destination, the US. Priya, the protagonist of the novel, decides to walk out of a bad marriage, in which she has to confront the unpleasant reality of emotional abuse, sporadic and erratic fits of violence and a constant threat to her sense of dignity and self-respect through public insults and demeaning humiliation. Some of the themes that emerge from the novel are domestic disharmony, emotional abuse, multiculturalism, diaspora struggle, gender equality, motherhood, and human worth, with finely balanced and nuanced assertions of feminist, rather humanistic beliefs and individual liberty. 

 

Seema Jain

The novel is primarily a saga of the struggles, courage, resilience, grit and determination of a woman, a mother, in the face of many odds. Holding on to a decent upbringing and education, enabled and nurtured by her parents’ values, this woman holds her head high and fights her battles with poise and strength. Whether it is at the professional front, the familial, or the emotional, she remains unflinchingly and uncompromisingly true to her basic tenets of individual freedom, self-respect, and dignity. Nahal through the eyes of Priya, the protagonist universalizes many felt emotions and resultant actions. To give a few examples, “While most immigrants she knew were running the rat race buying properties with picket fences, she ran the other way, clasping her son’s hand teaching him to be good, always be good” (page 15). Or when she succinctly observes: “Immigrants are home nowhere. / Like a slightly torn, unsettled banknote/Accepted with suspicion here and there” (p. 29). Likewise, water and rain have been used as symbols of auspicious augury (p.17) or rejuvenation. Priya does not want to be one of the millions in this world that give up and says, “I want to be unalike, distinctive. And I want to be a role model for my son and others,” (p.109). This novel is a journey of discovering one's selfhood, one's identity and one’s freedom.

 

The novel starts at a point when Priya’s son has just got married in America and the wedding day celebrations have concluded. At this momentous occasion in her life, Priya’s mind goes back and forth between her past and present, and the story unfolds through a series of flashbacks that reveal Priya’s past life layer by layer, unraveling all her struggles and challenges alongside her little joys in life. Despite all her trials and tribulations, Priya’s eyes well up with tears of joy and a sense of purposeful triumph after she has successfully raised her son and his marriage ceremonies are accomplished. Her intrinsic belief in her capacity to be a solid single mom is a formidable message in the novel. Nahal attempts thus to break the negative paradigm about the successful raising of children in broken homes.

 

Nahal has employed the art of story-telling authentically and directly to portray with great intensity and artistic finesse a woman’s difficulties, personal or professional. When the protagonist Priya’s husband publicly denounces her with stinging abuse, she writes, “She felt disrobed like Draupadi, once again” (p. 61). When Priya loses her father in an accident, she feels completely lost and rudderless, and poignantly expresses, “No one can comprehend the emptiness one feels when parents are no more. It’s indescribable, it really aches, somewhere invisible inside where one cannot reach in and rub balm” (102). When Priya feels weak in America over the immense changes in her life, and sometimes when she is on the verge of a breakdown, she asks herself: ‘Why God, why did we come here? In my forties! I left everything and came here. Why? What if something happens to me and I’m not there for Avijeet? What if something happens to him? I would die…’ tears began to roll down her cheeks.” But the next moment, an inner voice rings, “You came for freedom. For freedom” (129-130). This duality of emotions that people universally feel, and deal with, are sensitively expressed by Nahal.

 

At the stylistic level, the novel uses an alternation of poetry and prose. Inspired by 

Vikram Seth, Anita Nahal uses the Onegin stanza form for the poetry passages. During some tense and fervent moments, the shift to poetry endows the story in the novel with a rare intensity. Anita Nahal also employs some very potent metaphors and similes that befittingly enhance the beauty of the narration. Like in her previous poetry books, in this novel as well, Nahal writes with an amalgam of realist and surrealist forms, making her words highly imaginative and visual, one with which the reader can experience a deep immersion and vivid connection.

 

To conclude, it must be re-iterated that Drenched Thoughts is a captivating saga of a single immigrant mother’s struggles and triumphs, pitted against the forces of patriarchy and society, and across geographical boundaries. It is an extremely readable and inspiring sheroic tale with a potential to enrich one’s bookshelf as well as one’s inner self.

***

Seema Jain is a bilingual poet, translator and editor. Ex-HoD English at KMV Jalandhar, she has authored, edited and translated fourteen books, contributed to about 100 anthologies, as also to the Stanford University Archives on Life in Quarantine, besides working on some projects and having published two books with the Sahitya Akademi. Her poems are widely published, translated, anthologized and recited. She is a recipient of many awards. 

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Setu, July 2024