The Paris Wife by Paula McLain

Tears are still caught in my throat; I’ve just finished reading this intensely riveting novel, brilliantly told.  The narrative never falters, the interest never slackens as the reader is drawn into a sweeping tale of the early writing life and first marriage of Hemmingway, in the voice of his first wife – Hadley Richardson.

Because of the interest in the private life and craft of the great writer, all details were savoured – from his dressing and hairstyles to his disciplined writing schedule – he was dedicated to a fault – the daily grind and the agony, the delight in having written ‘something!’; his vulnerability in relationships and lack of trust that came from his early childhood and family situation as also from witnessing the horrors of WWI in which he was wounded with shrapnel lodged in his legs, and in covering the Greco-Turkish War (1920-1922) as a correspondent – of a man who did not seem to trust his allies and dropped his early mentors and closest friends. The sureness and confidence he had in his writing, he did not in his relationships.

I felt a keen stab of loss when all his early, painstakingly-written manuscripts were lost by none other than the beloved wife. His consequent coming to terms with it at once and not holding her responsible, was heroic. On her part, I did not think Hadley showed enough remorse and not for long. But when he begins to write afresh and the writing is finer and sharper, I felt perhaps all writers should lose their initial drafts to get rid of the scum and reveal only that which is deep and true and beautiful.

Though I often looked for one, I finally had to admit that there could be no cure for Paris. Part of it was the war. The world had ended once already and could again at any moment. The war had come and changed us…. (that was) Why we couldn’t stop drinking or talking or kissing the wrong people no matter what it ruined…The crisp and beautiful prologue prepares one for a peek into the life of the ‘lost generation’ – the absolute empty, meaningless lives of the rich, famous and the super creative in Paris during the early 1920s after the WW1, when allegiances forever shifting, and no relationship was sacrosanct. ‘Paris was Ernest’s smorgasbord.’

I felt every feeling that Hadley did in love and when it was slipping away till it had, irrevocably. But her character, very believable, came across in hindsight, as miss goody two shoes – she’s too nice and warm and beautiful to be real flesh and blood. When Hemmingway leaves her for Pauline, they have their tiffs and outbursts but when the friends ask her to fight back, she only says: ‘People belong to each other only as long as they both believe. He’s stopped believing.’

Deep down she knew that it was over and had weighed her chances well: What could I do or say? He might ultimately fall out of love with Pauline and come fully back to me – that was still possible – but nothing was in my control. If I gave him an ultimatum and said she couldn’t stay, I would lose him. If I got hysterical and made public scenes, it would just give him an excuse to leave me.

Her helplessness and hopelessness were heart-breaking. But Hemmingway was a victim too – a victim of his mind, a flawed human. ‘You make your life with someone and you love that person and you think it’s enough. But it is never enough, is it?’ It was absurd and very infuriating that he and Pauline were living as a couple with Hadley and he expected Hadley to accept it because he loved her too. He wanted both. ‘The arrangement could be deadly, but couldn’t marriage also be, if it banked the coals in you? You could grow very quiet in a marriage. A new girl got you talking and telling her made everything fresh again. She called you out of your head and stopped the feeling that the best part of you was being shaved away, inch by inch. You owed her for that. No matter what happened, however terrible, you wouldn’t forget it.’

The most poignant part was when he calls to speak with Hadley almost forty years later (the last time they speak with each other) – a world celebrated writer, so defeated in bearing out the consequences of his choices and leadings of his heart.

Alone in the crowd

You are here: Home » Supplements » Sunday Herald » Alone in the crowd
Shefali Tripathi Mehta, DH News Service, Jul 17 2017, 12:26 IST

Early Sunday morning, the phone rang. One of our neighbours was calling on behalf of another to say that they have left a bag of mangoes for us outside our door. Why did they not ring our doorbell and think it nice or necessary to say hello? The primary reason we exchange food, chats, concerns with each other in a community is to maintain camaraderie; to convey that we’re there for each other. Exchange of stuff cannot replace that.

Why is it not a surprise that the number of lonely people in big, crowded cities is on the rise? Is it not true that we’re not investing sufficient time and interest in forming meaningful relationships and day-to-day interactions with the people around us — neighbours, colleagues, and even family? According to studies, urban loneliness is as much a cause of early mortality as is obesity.

Chandrika is 24 and lives in a metro, away from her family. On a typical day, she leaves for work at 8 am and reaches home by 8 pm, to either cook a simple dinner, or order in, and then exhausted, calls it a day. On weekends, there is personal work and household chores to attend to. There is no time to socialise, meet up or make new friends in a new city. The interactions, even when there are people to go out and eat out with, remain superficial. She is alone in a city full of people.

Shift in priorities

What is revealing is how Chandrika is resigned to this situation. She says she is very clear that at this crucial stage at the start of her career, she would rather focus on it than invest time in making friends.

This is the story of a growing number of young people who we least expect to be lonely – not just those who stay away from their families, but also those who stay with one. There is only so much that they can fit into their lives and they would rather give the time they have to their careers and professions. Doing well in life is valued more than their being happy and having strong bonds with others. Our careers and professions have come to define us in more definitive ways.

Loneliness is generally associated with people who are single, old and socially awkward or those who choose to stay away. But with single, individual households on the rise, especially in big cities where people move for work or education leaving their families behind, it spares few. Too often, many of those who move to big cities and metros support families back home and do not earn enough to have their families come to live with them. This is especially the case with house helps, cooks, drivers and security guards. Also, social structures are in a state of flux — marriages are less lasting, people are marrying and having children late. So, more people than ever before are living alone.

There is a thin line between individualism and selfishness. Be yourself, realise your dreams, achieve your full potential — they are all very inspiring and empowering ideas to live by, but these may also be leading us to become excessively individualistic and to focus all our energies in our own achievements. My life, my money, my home, my time — we’re becoming more and more self-absorbed. Each person in the family is seeking and pursuing opportunities of personal growth that may not always contribute to a happy family life. Our days are neatly slotted to fit in work, commute, and housework, but there is nary a slot for conversations with family, meeting friends or calling up relatives. Unplanned visits or phone calls upset our schedules and are not welcome.

German psychoanalyst Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, in her seminal essay on loneliness, defined it as the ‘want of intimacy’. So it is not a surprise that loneliness can be experienced while living with family, in the company of others, if one cannot make meaningful connections with them.

Armchair society

Apparently, when the radio came, it was said that it would isolate people. We have transitioned many times since — to television, the computer, the Internet and the smartphone. The fact that modern technology has helped us to connect with our friends and relatives across the world cannot be contested. But it is still a my-will-my-time engagement. A person battling loneliness may not have the inclination to engage with ‘friends’ online. People who lack social skills, or have social anxiety, retreat into the ‘connected’ world of the internet and become lonelier from the lack of ‘real’ interaction.

When India won the World Cup Cricket quarter-final against Pakistan in 1996, instantly and instinctively, everyone in our housing society in Delhi came out cheering, dancing and beating thalis. I have not seen anything like that since. Even with all the communication on Facebook and WhatsApp, it is difficult to get a sizeable group of people together for a social cause or event. We’re given to armchair activism and there is a marked decline in our civic and social engagements that bring people together.

We also seem to need each other less. Mutual dependence is increasingly frowned upon. Everyone has help at their fingertips — whether it is to call a doctor, a cab, to order food or any other service. In small towns and cities, people still make the effort to visit the sick, the home-alone and the bereaved.

Neighbours and friends would earlier cook food for a grieving family. It was not just about providing food – it was about people coming together, talking, sharing, being around. When we do away with age-old traditions, we sometimes also lose vital human ties built on closeness and warmth.

Recently, when our friends had an open house, we had a wonderful time mixing casually with people of different age groups and backgrounds. It made me think of our childhood homes that were always ‘open house’, where people dropped by any time of the day and more often than not, shared a meal. Often, children in families that have limited social interactions are awkward with visitors. It is normal these days to visit someone and not get to meet and talk to their children at all. Children are no longer encouraged to meet or greet visitors.

Parents seem to prefer to have children depend on technology more than on human interactions. Look around in a restaurant and you are sure to spot a baby or two sitting quietly staring at the screen of a phone or a tablet. Parents get them hooked to these ‘pacifiers’ to free themselves of the responsibility of taking care of them, engaging with them. This, when people are clearly noticing good-versus-bad parenting. Recently, a blog post about a couple at an airport patiently caring for and comforting their twins, went viral. The writer called them ‘parenting champs’. It takes a lot to care for children. So does making and keeping friends. As for technology, whether it is a boon or a bane is totally in the hands of the user.

Give to receive

Manjul is a single parent, and when her daughter left home for the university, I asked her if she felt lonely. Quietly but very surely, she told me she’s too busy to be that. Manjul runs a not-for-profit for women who have fewer opportunities to earn and live with dignity. I’m sure she’s lonely sometimes, but she has chosen a way out. When we extend a helping hand to others, we help ourselves the most.

The elderly become lonely when they give up participating in life, feeling too old to follow their passions. The body and the mind do slow us down and life’s little tragedies – passing away of contemporaries, retirement, empty nest... can all lead to a greater feeling of not being useful, of abandonment.

But every individual, in any circumstance or stage of life – old, infirm, unhappy, grieving – has something to share with the world, something to give. Each of us has to go out and get to work, sharing our skills and stories, caring for someone, cooking, gardening, dancing, exercising, keeping oneself gainfully occupied so we help ourselves and others. This is the only way to guard ourselves against loneliness – to invest in hobbies and pursuits; to take interest in the work of others and to contribute to our communities in the meaningful ways that we can.

A recent news story tells us of a retirement home in the Netherlands that provides students with free accommodation in exchange for spending time with its elderly inmates. The company of young people helps the elderly cope with the challenges of old age and isolation.

There is also avant-garde R&D going on into building humanoid robots that not only assist humans, but can also express emotions. This year, a social robot, iPal, is slated to be launched in the US. The robot is expected to give company to the lonely – home alone children and the elderly. According to news reports, "Its emotion management system senses and responds to happiness, depression and loneliness. It can act happy when the child is happy, and encouraging when the child is sad." A scientific feat no doubt, but also one that exposes our human failing.

Sugar, sugar...

Just as she’s leaving for work, the girl digs this little box out of her bag and hands it to me saying, ‘Someone gave this to me for Sankranti’ and dashes out. I open it between morning chores and confusion and find nestled in a bed of roasted channa, sesame, coconut and peanuts, this little sugar pony. 

I leave it on the dining table. When the morning madness is over and I should get to my work desk too, I sit down to look at this translucent treasure.

How badly I had wanted these as a child and those that were brightly coloured – that sold all over the bazaar in mountains taller than me and blocked the footpaths. Mummy would pull me away if I lingered before one, amazed at the colours and shapes. We never buy these, can’t you see the flies and the dust, she would say. And the coloured ones? Tauba! Zehar – poison those colours are! 

Photo from www

So we walked around all the fun shops and to the sanitized Goyal Kirana Store in New Market where she spoke in Marathi with Goyal uncle who sat behind the jars of toffees and dry fruit of which I had my eyes stuck mostly to the rainbow coloured sweet saunf and flattened disks of stringed figs. I would rise on tiptoes in my red Bata sandals so Goyal Uncle could catch my eye and smile and hand me a little toffee from one of the jars. 

Photo from www

Sometimes, mummy bought me a seeti-wali lollipop and leaving me under the watchful eye of Goyal uncle, went to the bazaar inside.  I sat sucking the lollipop that coloured my lips pink but never whistled – only a minute spray of spit came out when I blew hard but no whistle, no toot. I watched the world go by – shoppers dragging crying children who cried louder when they saw me sitting with my shiny, pink lips, banging my Bata sandals on the little hard-board seat that had been carved out in a corner of that littlest shop.    

Photo from www

So we bought batashas only from Goyal Uncle who kept them stored in gunny bags and not in mountains on the floor where shoppers walked. On Diwali we offered those sedate-looking, round and hole-filled white batashas with kheel to the gods and then distributed it along with the mithais and namkeens to neighbours, visitors and the house helps. 

But in the give and take of Diwali plates, some bright and beautiful batashas would invariably sneak into our home and while Mummy was busy making polite talk with the bringer of the plate, I who kept a watchful eye for the poppy seed dusted anarsa and the coloured (the brighter, the better) batashas – hail happiness if there was a green house or a florescent pink bird - it would be quickly hid between the gathers of my frock and stolen away to the garden where I could suck on it to my heart’s content. 

Indian sweetmeat seller. Photograph from early 20th century. Caption reads: 'A Native Confectioner making Batasha (sweet meat)'.

Contributor: Lebrecht Music and Arts Photo Library / Alamy Stock Photo

दो लोग and Two by Gulzar

‘…one may cut a mountain in two, but people? 

It’s a hard task, Bhai, to cut one people into two. They bleed.’

This story of a group of Partition ‘refugees’ is in three parts. In part one, we are introduced to the main characters – Fauji, Lakhbeera, Tiwari, Master Karam Singh, Master Fazal and some more – all residents of Cambellpur (now Attock) a small kasba in the Punjab before the Partition. Simple people, living simple lives who do not understand the meaning of the division of a country – ‘Does a country break?’ They ask. This is the part that I found most ‘revealing’ and heart-wrenching because all partition stories that I have read, except Baldwins’s What the Body Remembers, have talked about the aftermath, the stories of the people trying to grow new roots. But this part, where the kasba-folk is trying to make sense of what partition would mean for them is very unsettling.

Karam Singh, a Sikh asks his Muslim friend Fasal, ‘If Pakistan is created, will you leave me and go to Pakistan? He did not know Pakistan was to be created right there, where he lived. And he would be the one who’d be forced to leave. When Master Fasal explains to him, his concern is still for his friend, ‘…do you want Pakistan? If it’s good for you, I will surely fight for your rights. My yaar wants Pakistan. All right then, Pakistan Zindabad!’

They piece together the idea of two nations from the rumours a truck driver brings of the rumblings beyond their world, news some hear on the radio that comes alive for four hours each evening and which they believe is the government’s voice. When the Hindus and the Sikhs begin to leave, it not just they but the Muslims watching the caravans leave in the silence and safety of pre-dawn, watching from the rooftops, who despair.

‘Where are they running off to?’ somebody asked.

‘Towards Hindustan.’

‘So where are we? We are in Hindustan, after all. Pakistan hasn’t been created yet.’

‘Who knows where it will be formed. This side or the other side. Is there a place where there are no Muslims?’
-
At times, one smiles at the naïveté of these people, but immediately, the pathos overwhelms. They talk:

Will Lahore remain here or will it go to the other side?

Where will it go? It will remain where it is.’

With the advent of the year ’47, they hear the words ‘camps’ and ‘refugees’ for the first time and the Hindus leave, saying, ‘we’ll return when things settle down’ – this still tugs at the heart – the helplessness of the people who did not want partition, who just wanted to live in their own homes, carry on with their lives with friends and family. When the exodus begins – the Muslim truck driver decides to drive his friend, the cleaner, the Sikh Lakhbeera to the safety of ‘the other side’, along with others who have the money to pay for their safe passage. They embark on the long, dangerous journey. On the way, they rescue two young Sikh girls and a small Sikh boy who begs them to take his old grandfather who cannot walk anymore.

Still, no one has a clue where they are going. They watch the Muslims going in the opposite direction.

‘They are going to Pakistan,’ Fauji said.

‘Where is that?’ asked Panna.

Fauji had no answer. ‘It will be somewhere. Someday.’

PART 2: The truck breaks down and the group disperses ‘like dry leaves in a storm’ to join the millions walking towards Hindustan. The story follows the life of some of them.

PART 3: An Englishman who has lived in India and whose daughter was born in the Rajputana, now Rajasthan, is betrothed to a Pal who has become a Paul in England - a Hindu refugee in India from Pakistan. This part highlights the fact that in England, as in any other third country, there is no difference between Indians and Pakistanis who meet as ‘lost lovers’. Paul wants to go back to visit his home, to visit Pakistan and his bride-to-be, Hindustan.
But ‘batwara’ does not end. People keep getting partitioned – the hostilities that mean nothing to them keep flinging their lives asunder. The ‘84 riots – the senseless massacre of innocent people is told from the viewpoint of a Sikh shopkeeper who is saved by a Muslim truck driver. The old ‘refugee’ mother of his, when she asks if the Muslims have burnt their shop, is told that ‘these are Hindus’.

‘There were a number of people in khadi egging on the mob’, earlier too, victims of partition talk of those that are leading the rioting and looting, spreading rumours and instigating hostilities ‘will rule us one day’. Then comes the Kargil War of 1999. Without giving away too much, I’ll quote another ‘refugee’, an old fakir on the bombings, ‘There they go again, the rascals! They didn’t let me sleep all night.’ – a rather detached, matter-of-fact statement by someone not just tired of war but hopeless. It ends with the poignant lines below.

The stories will tug at your heart and you will feel the utter helplessness of victims. Not pass-me-the-tissue stories, they prise open despair. But the novel is also about abiding friendships, love, concern, hope and duty that are beyond the confines of religion – the friendship of Fauji and Lakhbeera, of Karam Singh and Master Fasal; of a Muslim father whose son in law has been killed across the border, who pays for the safe passage of a Hindu girl and her son; of the Hindu servant who does not leave Pakistan because he could not abandon his dog; of the Muslim butcher who saves the life of a Sikh schoolmaster. These keep our faith in humanity restored. The images are stark, the emotions raw. I was choked with emotion several times due to shared experiences. 

Should you read it? Seventy years after partition, to not forget the terrible tragedies that befell our own – this side and that of the border, the religious partitioning that has kept the embers of hostilities ablaze – yes.

Hindi or English? Hindi, if you can, English if you must. I read it first in Hindi and loved how beautifully it captures the subtle nuances of the dialects that our ears are accustomed to. It best captures the sensibilities of its ‘rustic’ characters. But because present-day Hindustani has cast off a lot of its beautiful vocabulary, it is also a little difficult to understand some words. I understood TWO in English better but the translation, with which two skillful translators and Gulzar sa’ab himself have struggled, is uneven, there are repetitions and phrases that one wants to reassemble again – but the story still reigns and still keeps one hooked.

Personal note: My parents-in-law migrated from the Mianwali district of Pakistan (of which there is mention in the book), they also came with the ‘we’ll come back when the ‘halaat’ are better’ reassurance. They were both 15 and before they settled in Jaipur, tried to first dig in their roots in Jalandhar, Rewari and other parts of divided Punjab. So, by the time I came into the family, like most others, they had closed that early chapter of their lives and were reluctant to talk about their homes across the border till I started compiling stories for them, searching the internet for images of present-day Mianwali. Then they shared some stories. When my father-in-law had to leave with the rest of his family, his father, a doctor in the Army, posted in the Kalabagh Salt Mines was away. Daddyji asked his best friend, a Muslim boy to somehow inform him that the family has left for Hindustan. The friend not only walked 15 km on foot to take the message to grandfather, but he also wrote a letter to inform Daddyji that the message had been delivered. By the time we started to search for this friend, memories had already faded beyond recognition. That is why this book is relevant because we must keep the memories alive. Because ‘ये बंटवारे थमते ही नहीं’…

PS: Have been looking for this book for over a decade now. Will appreciate all leads and help with finding ‘Wichara Watan’ by Harish Chander Nakra.