Mother of 1084

Mother of 1084 is based on the template of the naxal movement in the 60’s which shook the education framework of Calcutta as students plunged into the field of politics with the hope of bringing about a radical change. It is a mother’s quest to find out the reason and the circumstances under which her son was killed. It is the awakening of a passive woman who took the comforts she lived in for granted, never questioning the inner workings of her family and the hypocrisy of the people in her world.

This novel in many ways runs on par with the theme of Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Woods which again takes place during the 60’s in Tokyo which is the period that brought along new ideals and thoughts like, freedom from having to live with one’s family as everyone was moving out, freedom of expression causing students to protest which was a feature of student-dom throughout the world at that point of time, freedom of sexual expression, etc. Although the backdrop of both the novels are the same, Norwegian Woods concentrates more on the trials and tribulations youngsters went through due to the change in social pattern. Although we know that all this happens during the course of the student’s revolution, there is hardly any mention of it.

Sujata is the wife of Dibyanath who owns his own chartered accountant’s firm. She belongs to a family in which everyone is very well established and economically independent. She herself works in a bank which is not required of her but she does so in order to have a breathing space of her own away from the family. From the very beginning we are introduced to the isolated world of Sujata where she feels alienated from everyone else. She is a docile and nice woman but it is this niceness of hers that Mahasweta Devi is problematizing and blaming for being the reason why society is exploiting her. She never lived her life as an individual. She never questioned her husband’s ambitions for their children especially her youngest son Brati. She simply cannot feel the bond that ties her to her husband and children, Jyoti, Neepa and Tuli. She believes that the only reason she is in this family is because there is no way out. It is this belief of hers that is uprooted in the end when she gets jolted out of her cocoon which is caused by her search for answers concerning Brati’s death and the realizations she hits upon in the process.

This novel functions on many layers. The first being, the story of Brati’s death and Sujata’s attempt to find the reasons behind it and the second is the Naxalite movement, the template on which the story is set, which keeps getting mentioned from time to time. The past is shown through dreams and memories, personal memories of Sujata that included only her and Brati. This shows that there was a lot more depth to this relationship than we are allowed to guess initially. Both of them had always shared a special bond and understood that they stood separate from the rest of the family as they knew that no one else could understand them. She knew that Brati never confided in her much but if there was anyone in this family he cared about then that was her and she is re-assured about this every time she thinks of the last time she saw Brati walking out and turning just once to look at her in a way that conveyed a lot which then she couldn’t understand.

The entire story consists of events that occur through the course of a single day. The narrative is divided into four parts, namely, Morning, Afternoon, Late afternoon and Evening. Each section is indicative of the stage of Sujata’s realization. The morning begins with preparations for Tuli’s engagement. Sujata feels as if no one but her remembers that it is Brati’s birthday, coincidentally also, the day he died. She however is not surprised by this considering her family had done everything to erase his memories from their house as much as it could be socially possible. At this point she feels deep anger towards her husband who on the day when the news of Brati’s death arrived didn’t bereave his son’s death instead, set about trying to hide the reasons behind his death lest someone in the society found out. One is unable to comprehend why the father of a dead son would behave this way. It is the reflection of a society where social status and power define relationships. Sujata was one person who could not see herself as a part of this.

Towards afternoon Sujata meets the mother of Somu who was one of Brati’s closest friends and who was killed with him. There she learns that on his last day he had stayed at Somu’s which she realizes is because he felt that the people in Somu’s family were less hypocritical than the ones in his own. Here we see how fate has brought together two women separated by a world of power and wealth, with nothing in common except for the deaths of their sons.

Her next stop is at Nandini’s who she knew Brati was in love with. Many things happen here. Not only does the get to hear the whole story about the series of events that led to Brati’s death but for the first time ever someone shook her mentally. When she told Nandini that she didn’t know the story, Nandini said “I know. You people never know anything. For people like you, these are just stray episodes. But you now know that it’s wrong to carry on presuming that one needn’t know why and how such things happen.”. This was like a slap on Sujata’s face. All this time she had thought that she and Brati stood on the same plane, that there was nothing that stood between them. But the fact that Nandini included Sujata in that category she contemptuously referred to as ‘you people’ showed Sujata that she herself belonged to the category that was responsible for her son’s death. She realized how ignorant she was about the world she lived in and that it was necessary to get politicized. She found no meaning in her passive life anymore. Here we get an insight into Sujata’s exploration of the complex relationship between the personal and the political.

Sujata goes back home a changed woman. She neither feels responsible towards her family nor does she care about them anymore. She knew that each one of them had forgotten Brati and she wanted to have nothing to do with people who could so easily forget her beloved son. Here we get a clear view of the kind of social circle she belongs to which is utterly hypocritical. It becomes unimaginably dramatic at the arrival of Saroj Pal who was responsible for the annihilation of Brati and can not come in because apparently he’s ‘on duty’. This along with the fact that he’s come in a ‘black car’ brings back memories of the same day two years ago when Brati had left Sujata. In the end, Sujata’s appendix bursts. This is extremely symbolic. Throughout the novel we are reminded of Sujata’s ailing appendix that needs to be treated. This symbolically corresponds to her ailing heart that pines for her son and the hurt caused by the unfair way in which he had been treated all his life. In the end she decided to leave the family if required or do anything that would bring about a radical change in her life. This is her breaking away from years of living a passive life, from years of being dominated by her husband, mother-in-law and now Tuli, from not having been given the right to show her love to her son when he was alive and grieve his loss when he was gone. This is her finally thinking about herself and the new beliefs she stands for, for the sake of her son, his memory and her acknowledgement of the fact that her son died for a cause that he deemed worthy.