To begin with, the idea of a bonsai kitten is horrifying. As the book quotes from a website, to create such a tiny creature, unimaginable cruelties are inflicted onto a normal kitten. The animal is pushed into a bottle, and kept there, with its bones chemically softened so that its growth is permanently stunted. The kitten does not live long, but that is apparently all part of its attraction — and it is the author’s contention that this is an apt analogy for some tragic human lives, too. Journalist Lakshmi Narayan’s book Bonsai Kitten follows the similarly constricted life of its protagonist, Divya. Despite Divya’s subsequent liberation, her journey is harrowing and painful — yet, perhaps, as Shobhaa De notes in her foreword, it will resonate with “countless wives” who will agree that their lives have also followed a tortured trajectory. This is a story of marriages made in tradition, and of lives spent in the confines of a home, with little hope of love or joy. Divya, around whom the book revolves, is married to Ramesh, a “Tam-Bram” groom handpicked by her family. Within a short while their incompatibility surfaces — he is self-absorbed and ambitious while she is trying hard to adjust and be the perfect wife. She cooks, cleans and looks after his every need — only to be rejected by him over and over again. Yet she struggles on, trying to please him and her mother-in-law who is anxiously awaiting a grandchild. Sadly, when Divya’s only and much loved daughter Latika dies young, she is doubly bereaved because it is a loss she suffers alone — with little sympathy from her husband. Worse is to follow. Ramesh goes to Singapore and now Divya finds herself even more isolated as she tries to adjust to an unfamiliar environment. Not only does she cope with the problems of social isolation, she finds that her husband has a new woman in his life. It is not long before he leaves Divya — quite literally high and dry — to be with his business partner with whom he is having an affair. Divya cannot return to India because Ramesh sold their Mumbai flat and invested all the money in his business, and she does not want to stay with her parents. She begins to lose all self-respect — she begs Ramesh and even his mistress not to destroy their marriage, but her pleas fall on deaf ears. The rejection is made much worse because the mistress is pregnant. Thus far the story is fairly predictable but it swings, interestingly, between a diary maintained by Divya and a third person narrative. It takes a turn for the better when Divya tries to rescue her life, after having hit rock bottom. It is through her local friends in Singapore as well as the Australian vet Wayne whom she works for that Divya begins to find her own identity. She becomes fond of Wayne’s young son, Giorgio. The child has special needs which is why, apparently, his own mother had rejected him. Divya and Wayne come closer and find themselves in a much happier place.
Lakshmi Narayan has mentioned in her introduction that she first thought of Bonsai Kitten book when she was challenged to write a Mills & Boon. But eventually she decided to write a book in which the “cosmic jester” would get a much larger role. Whilst Bonsai Kitten is far too dark to be ever classified as a romantic novel, it does have a few problems. To begin with, there is an over use of deliberately flippant language and slang even when Narayan is dealing with immensely difficult issues. This often distracts from the seriousness of what she is dealing with. It could be a way of making the novel more accessible, but one wonders if this recourse to informality could not be corrected through some stringent editing. The other problem lies with the book’s structure and the almost forced divisions within chapters, even when a paragraph is flowing quite naturally into the next. Because each chapter has many sub-divisions, a read through gets jerkier and less smooth. No reason is apparent for the chapters to be thus further segmented. For instance, there is often no change in time or place or even character. Perhaps the author wanted us to pause between paragraphs — but it is not quite clear why. And lastly, as Narayan mentions herself, this novel has many other larger stories buried within, such as those of the other women Divya encounters. Unfortunately, the style of writing and the packaging diminish their overall impact. But after reading this book, one certainly hopes that Narayan will try a much more ambitious novel next time, basing it perhaps on one of the many tangential stories and characters in Bonsai Kitten of whom we have only received a tantalising glimpse!
Note: The bonsai kitten spoof was created by an American university student to satirise and highlight how nature is increasingly treated as a commodity.
Kishwar Desai is an author, most recently of Witness the Night
