The Illuminated: Why does the source of light matter?

Book: The Illuminated

Author: Anindita Ghose

Publisher: HarperCollins (2022)

Genre: Late coming-of-age, Grief

Anindita Ghose’s debut novel The Illuminated with a beautiful black cover page and chapter names corresponding to different phases of the moon is essentially a story about the moon and stars trying to shine after the sun disappears. It is the story of Shashi and Tara, a mother and daughter trying to cope up with the loss of their sun, the father, Robi Mallick a celebrated architect. Sashi, a Jadavpur graduate, married off young and lived all her life revolving around the ever-effervescent Robi. All people tell her is what she is not and no one, even herself, knows what she is or what she wants. It takes the death of her husband to jolt her out of her hard-set orbit of a posh south Delhi home and make her look at herself without the blinding light. For Tara, her father was the epitome of love from a man, and she goes on self-destructive relationships for anything that mirrors that love. She loses her ability to believe she can ever fill that gaping void with him. And while battling this void these women look at each other and find that solace and comfort they never found.

Even though centrally it is a mother-and-daughter story, Anindita expertly uses it to shed light on different facets of womanhood. There is strength behind the traditional Bengali mother Sashi. There is a vulnerability within the brilliant, modern Tara. There is humor laced in the roughness of Poornima, the house help. There is care in the touch of Noor, who defines herself as a feminist-lesbian-Muslim. And this undefine-ability is what defines Anindita’s women named after the celestial beauties of the night. And this womanhood multiplies exponentially with numbers. And that is the truth the Illuminated wants to illuminate us with.

In stories of women, the easy villains are men around them. Cheating boyfriends, abusive husbands, absent fathers. But Anindita consciously avoids these easy tropes. Robi is self-centered but goes out of his way to replace a jasmine plant he knows Shahi loves. Robi is introduced as a perfect dad, a perfect father, and a perfect man. We keep waiting for that facade to fall off, for a secret relationship, for a substance abuse problem, for any blotch on that blinding light to be revealed. But it never comes, and we sigh with relief. Robi just remains a perfect Sun. Radiant and shining. Sashi could have been anything she wanted. It wasn’t a bad Robi who made her life tragic. Tara could always see the abuse Amitab inflicted on her, but she chose to look away. Anindita gives women the agency to create tragedies for themselves and not reduce them to mere victims. She makes them Abhisarika Nayikas. And that is revolutionary and real.

Anindita builds well-researched worlds with astute clarity for her stars. The sprawling traditional Bengali home in Calcutta, Mallick’s modern yet classic South Delhi home, IILL campus in Mysore, Tara's cozy one-bedroom home in Dharamshala, everything is so vividly drawn. Sanskrit poetry and the heated discussions on its forwardness made me want to look at this seemingly dead language with a new lens. Even the posters of MSS, a fictional Hindutva group are designed with so much detail that it scares you.

The Illuminated has a lyrical quality to its prose. There are beautiful metaphors of the moon, sun, and stars strewn around. Mothers and daughters are compared to Nails and flesh. An orange hides within its layers a father’s love. Privilege lingers in the contours of an arched eyebrow. Pride in a taut hair bun and straightened neck. Lovers talk in poems in multiple languages.

Why is it easier to love a son? Draupadi regaining virginity was a boon for her or the men? Would Panini have written the Astadhyayi if he lived in poetry? What was a man who owned nothing? If remembering is love, what is forgetting? What else have I been blind to? Why couldn’t Omphale hold on to Heracles?

These lead to some of the book's most poignant discussions on politics. There is politics in the kitchen to full-blown news coverage and everything in between. The book deals with pertinent questions on gender dynamics, consent, female solidarity, reservation, and privilege.

In Sashi and Tara, you would grudgingly see yourself or women around you and that is no easy fete. To do that with such expertise in the debut novel spanning years and breadth of India is truly the mark of the arrival of a new self-assured female voice. May the light in us shine a little brighter with the Illuminated.