By Willie Gordon Suting
Pratima Srivastava’s novel The Driftwood does not only revolve around the central character Udit who leaves home. It is also about the pain that his father Shashank Joshi, mother Bina, his grandmother and his sisters Shweta and Sonam experience.
Udit’s constant rift with his father makes him decide to leave home. He gets a job in a hotel in Mussoorie as chief chef.
Udit, who later becomes the assistant manager of the hotel, chooses to live a solitary life, to be far from his family in order to find peace and contentment. But more than the pain that his family members experience, he suffers more as he feels incomplete without them. He earns good money from his salary, but in living alone he is haunted by memories of his Grandmother bathing him, his mother Bina feeding him chapatis and his sister Shweta who was like a best friend. When he severely suffers from typhoid, Udit realises how much he needed his family members. His only consolation lied in giving love and affection to a four year old boy Chhotu whom he adopts.
Shashank Joshi, in the years after Udit left, witnesses and experiences a lot of misfortune in the family. Shweta who survives a serious accident learns that she cannot walk anymore. The grandmother in her old age passes away suffering from many ailments. Sonam goes against her father’s wishes to marry an NRI and leaves home to settle with him. Bina the mother, in having repressed most of her feelings, is diagnosed with anxiety.
The novel ‘The Driftwood’, in many chapters, is a difficult read because of the pain and suffering in the Joshi family. Srivastava describes them with detail. One of the most memorable scenes in the novel is when Shweta discovers and reads the diary entries of Udit. The confessions of Udit reveal to her a man who is very sensitive and sad.
The novel has a happy ending after all the pain the Joshis go through. Udit receives severe injuries on the head when he is hit by a taxi with Mr Liddle inside as passenger. Being a cousin of the Joshis, Liddle asks for their help in the hospital. Shweta who goes through Udit’s belongings finds his wallet and reads his identity. Bina, Shashank and Sonam are contacted immediately that Udit has planned to come back home.
The novel describes the incompleteness and longing experienced by individuals when a loved one is far away from them. And that in this incompleteness, one lives in agony and pain.
The Driftwood, in the many chapters that deal with the suffering of the Joshis, is overly sentimental and self-pitiful.
It lacks the subtlety and suggestiveness in description. Udit and Shashank’s emotions are being described with effusiveness with no clever concealment whatsoever.
Udit, though being the central character who is the drifter, fails to cohere with the title of the novel for the reader never sees him as shifting or struggling from one place to another. In the hotel as Assistant Manager, he lives a comfortable life.
Bina, though suffering from anxiety, never shows any apparent signs of the illness. She is only being described as the mother who goes through stress and depression, and thus needing medication.
The writing style is lucid but with repetitions of several words like “empty-nest”, “drifter” and “confusion”.
Srivastava, in trying to make it a tragic family drama of the literary type, fails as she borrows too many plot elements from Bollywood and Indian television soaps. This predictability of incidents carries on to an excess as Srivastava gets lost in its oversentimentality.
Book: The Driftwood;
Author: Pratima Srivastava
Publisher: Niyogi Books
Pages: 299; Price: Rs 450 (Hardcover)
