Mahashweta

Keats once wrote, “A thing of beauty is a joy for ever. Its loveliness increases. It will never pass on to nothingness.”

While writing the above lines, the poet seemed to take a deliberate poetic licence and chose to ignore the human angle of life. The fact of life says that man has always been in pursuit of beauty. He wants a pretty picture of everything that is around him. And when this beauty turns into ugliness, he discards it with scorn and prejudice. Time is the greatest destroyer which ruins everything, be it love, affection or relationships. And beauty never remains forever. It fades with time. And so the liaisons attached to beauty.

‘Mahashweta’ is a hard hitting novel on man’s obsession with physical beauty. Whatever we may feel and love to say that beauty is not just skin deep, the fact lies that external beauty has always been dear to the human eye. A tale of love and betrayal, the novel talks about the journey of pretty and charming Anupama, whose life seems to fall apart when she develops leukaemia.

The protagonist hails from a modest background completing her education with the help of scholarships. She bumps into Dr. Anand and what a pretty picture she turns out for him. His rapt admiration for her beauty makes him forget all the odds to propose marriage to this poor girl. But Anupama’s fairy tale marriage suffers the first setback when she discovers a tiny white patch on her foot. Things start to fall apart. She is abandoned by her in-laws and her insensitive husband and left alone to survive in this merciless world. She wonders how a tiny white patch can make her lover turned husband to forget the eternal vows of love for her.

Being a woman of substance, she decides to fight back. She realises that her life is her own and she has to be responsible for herself. Slowly she makes her way into the fast paced life of Mumbai and paves an identity for herself as a Sanskrit lecturer cum social worker. Life seems to move in the right direction for her when again she bumps into another medico in her life. Friendship grows between Anupama and Dr. Vasant and so do the white patches on her skin. It is to be noted here that even the writer has deliberately avoided the white patches from appearing on her face. May be she wanted to justify Dr. Vasant’s attraction for her (another indication that physical beauty is indispensable when it comes to the so called greatest sentiment called love). Dr. Vasant’s marriage proposal to Anupama despite knowing her skin condition and the fact that she was never to recover from it seemed to be too filmy. And so was Dr. Anand’s recognition of his guilt and his effort to re-enter Anupama’s life.

The best part I loved about the book was Anupama’s admission of her state. She learnt her lesson the hard way that nothing is permanent in this word. Even love doesn’t last forever. Initial sparks fly off when one is faced with harsh realities of life. The sooner the white patches would grow over her face, the sooner she would be further scorned off by her loved ones. This makes her choose a life of reclusion from relationships and dedication to the service of humanity. She refuses to get entangled in the same circle of husband and family. Now she aims for a different path sans any love and further possible prejudice. The emotional maturity of Anupama is beyond comprehension when she refuses to complicate her friendship by getting married. She eventually decides to live her life as the original ‘Mahashweta-the white one’ but this time her fate was to keep her separated from her ‘Pundarika’ forever.

The title of the novel has been taken from ‘Kadambari’, a romantic novel written in Sanskrit by Banabhatta. The touching story of the brave girl will surely move your heart to pieces. It will urge the people to show empathy towards the people suffering from leukoderma.