Book Recommendation: The Binding Vine by Shashi Deshpande
Hi Readers! Once again a tiny book has overwhelmed me. A lot of emotions, heavy themes, flawed characters and binding them all together is simple and profound writing. The Binding Vine was my second read from Shashi Deshpande, and though I love her writing, I just cannot manage reading more than one book a year from this author. Such is the power and might of her writing which keeps her books in my mind long after I’ve read them!
~~GOODREADS DESCRIPTION~~
“There can be no vaulting over time,” thinks Urmila, the narrator of Shashi Deshpande’s profound and soul-stirring novel. “We have to walk every step of the way, however difficult or painful it is; we can avoid nothing.” After the death of her baby, Urmila finds her own path difficult to endure. But through her grief, she is drawn into the lives of two very different women—one her long-dead mother-in-law, a thwarted writer, the other a young woman who lies unconscious in a hospital bed. And it is through these quiet, unexpected connections that Urmi begins her journey toward healing.
The miracle of The Binding Vine, and of Shashi Deshpande’s deeply compassionate vision, is that out of this web of loss and despair emerge strand of life and hope—a binding vine of love, concern, and connection that spreads across chasms of time, social class, and even death. In moving and exquisitely understated prose, Deshpande renders visible the extraordinary endurance and grace concealed in women’s everyday lives.
~~THOUGHTS~~
The Binding Vine is a tale within a tale within a tale because even though it’s the tale of Urmi, it’s also the tale of all the people around her. And, within all these people, there are endless stories, of motherhood, parenthood, marriage, loss, grief, helplessness, vulnerability and so much more. In any Shashi Deshpande novel, there are multitudes of stories becoming and unbecoming right in front of the reader, and if you miss those, you will probably not enjoy the book. But, if you don’t miss those, you will be overwhelmed by how much there is to unpack in a tiny book.
On the surface, it’s the story of Urmi’s life after she loses her baby daughter Anu. It’s about the story of Urmi’s mother-in-law Mira who was in an unhappy and abusive marriage. And, it’s the story of Kalpana who is unconscious after an accident involving a rape, and her mother Shakutai who is the simplest woman of them all.
Reviewing a book such as this is quite futile, because no matter how much is written, it’s never really sufficient and can never measure up to how you feel while reading the book. We see Urmi struggle after losing Anu through a stream of consciousness writing, which isn’t always easy to follow, but works perfectly when describing a person’s state of mind consumed by grief. We see how she panics easily, how she worries about her son Karthik’s life and just about every possibility in which her loved ones could be taken away from her. The enormity of her grief is so huge that the reader is pulled into it and swirled through all the emotions that Urmi is going through.
The writing is so smooth that we see her getting a sense of normalcy back to her life. Urmi then finds the poems that Mira had written. The poems brim with melancholy, desperation and so much pain; all of it never spoken when Mira was alive, but all of it bled through the ink of her mighty pen. Finding out that your mother-in-law was never happy in her marriage because of your father-in-law; both of whom have now died. What does a person even do with that? All those feelings from long ago, relived, only to cause more pain, or was it an attempt to make meaning out of Mira’s life? Because only after reading Mira’s poems and diaries and scribblings over books did Urmi really understand Mira. Maybe somehow, she felt less alone in her own loss.
Urmi also finds herself attached to Kalpana and Shakutai. Shakutai, who kept blaming her own daughter because she was raped, because she wore lipstick and painted her nails and wore brightly coloured clothes and who was never afraid to speak her mind. Her own mother thinking it was her fault that she was raped. How does one think that about their own child? Was it just ignorance of how forward the society in general had moved in terms of women’s rights or just the acceptance of how her society, which was lower class, was still stuck in an age where women are blamed for everything? Or, was it just a coping mechanism and something so ingrained that she couldn’t possibly think of blaming the man who did this to her daughter? Perhaps it was all of it, because how does one really get in the mindset of a person going through this enormous grief?
Through all of these interwoven stories, there is a constant reminder of how each generation lives and feels and hopes. Shakutai’s mother was not able to give her the life she deserved, so she ensured her daughter Kalpana had it. But, are the mothers’ and daughters’ hopes and dreams the same? One generation of women who remain uneducated wanted their children to go to school. The children who are going to school want their own freedom. And then their children who simply want their mental health as a priority. Each generation having a different priority of what their ideal life should look like and yet the binding vine of emotions that always connects them.
The vine which makes the daughter who is now a new mother relating to her same mother she couldn’t connect with when she was younger. The vine which makes the recently married son relate to his father when he couldn’t find time to listen to him. And through it all, lucky are those who are able to express them to their parents and grandparents how they now ‘get it’. But those whose parents and grandparents have passed away, would they know their children would one day get it? Every time I think about this book, I uncover more entanglements, more complexities, more uncomfortable emotions which all revolve around the people surrounded by me whom I love the most.
I have rated The Binding Vine by Shashi Deshpande at 4.5/5 stars!
Here’s the book recommendation of That Long Silence by Shashi Deshpande.
Until next time,
About The Author
Aishwarya Shenolikar
Hello! I'm Aishwarya, an Introverted bookworm & writer. I have been reviewing books since 6 years on my blog - Mindscape in Words. My favourite genres are Historical Fiction, Mystery, Thrillers, Magical Realism, Poetry, Fantasy & Memoirs. I like the kind of books which evoke emotions on several levels leaving me wrecked, but also incredibly content. I'm dreaming for the world to paint a landscape full of words, more like Mindscape in Words. Hope you enjoy the view.
