THE INDIAN FAMILY IN TRANSITION: READING LITERARY AND CULTURAL TEXTS Edited by Sanjukta Dasgupta and Malashri Lal,
Sage, Rs 650

Family is the microcosmic reflection of society, which is why a survey of any given society usually starts with the family. And home, which represents the physical and emotional space shared by the members of a family, may be considered the domestic archive of a nation.

There has been a lot of speculation about the origin and the growth of the family. The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State by Friedrich Engels is a seminal text in this respect. However, the focus of the present book is not on the evolution of the family per se, but on mutations, overt or covert, taking place within the Indian family. It seeks to trace the shifts in power-relations, the ways in which patriarchic norms are either internalized, meekly accepted or petulantly challenged, as also the family’s growing vulnerability to market forces.

The 23 chapters of the book, coming under six parts, deal with the socio-economic perspectives as well as the literary and cultural representations of familial transitions. The fifth part incorporates memoirs by Meena Alexander and Shashi Deshpande, among others, and the book concludes with a dialogue with Amartya Sen.

The view of the family being “a gendered structure” recurs in the articles as a leitmotif. The marginalized status of women even in the 20th-century Indian family, their not having property rights, their lack of agency in decision-making have been discussed here. Judith E. Walsh, Mukul Mukherjee, Bonita Aleaz, Pushpa Bhave et al dwell on the woman question, cutting across economic and cultural differences.

Sarah Lamb has an unconventional take on intra-family schism. She shows that extra-family ageing can be explained by a network of factors — for instance, the ruthless professional demand on the younger generation and the elderly’s quest for independence and spiritual comfort. Imma Maini’s insight into the politics of home and food in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Interpreter of Maladies adds an interesting dimension to the idea of nationality. Shoma A. Chatterjee analyses the dynamics of “the decimated family” in Rituparno Ghosh’s films with a prologue that touches on the problems of live-in relationships.

In the introduction, the editors refer to the three categories defined by Amartya Sen — the glued-together family, the super-trader family and the despotic family. But changing gender roles, new concepts of conjugality and sexual preferences, and globalization are likely to throw up configurations which would defy any pre-formulated design. The book maps out that elusive reality-in-the-making.