Published By Macmillan UK & India
THE MARRIAGE.
It has often been stated that the most difficult
task an author can undertake is the writing of a purely
contemporary novel; for detachment as well as narrative
skill is required. It is rewarding to find the necessary
expertise in Timeri Murari's The Marriage…an
ingenious Romeo and Juliet type of story set in the
Midlands. It is to Murari's
credit that he appreciates the shortcomings of his
own nationals as surely those of the indigenous workers
and it is this impartiality that makes The Marriage
an important social document'. CONTEMPORARY REVIEW,
London.
-The tragedy is in the contrast between the Indian
islanders and the native ones, between a closed primitive
mentality and an environment that rejects them. THE
SUNDAY STATESMAN, Calcutta.
-Mr Murari is able to present the blossoming of love
between Leela and Roger with great tenderness and
grace. Furthermore, the homesickness and love for
India
is woven through the story so skilfully that India's
presence is overpowering, and England
seems unreal and ghostly. Immigration, a self-exile
of sorts, and the particular types of corruption,
human limitations, and blindness which follows, are
crucial problems for many of us. I would recommend
The Marriage because it deals with themes and ideas
which are worth reading about and discussing, and
because it's a good story, well told. WORLD LITERATURE
WRITTEN IN ENGLISH.
-Back to Enoch country, and The Marriage, where the
extremes of Enver Carim are heavily muffled and prejudice
is conducted far more decently. Unlike Carim, Timeri
Murari approaches his subject with painstaking fidelity
to the grey realities of life. The novel is set in
an Indian community in the industrial Midlands
and is more concerned with the problems and compromises
of integration than with the apocalypse of breakdown.
Two stories are inter- woven to create a sense of
the personal and social tensions between immigrants
and indigenes: Tekchand, the leader of the Indian
community, is trying to arouse his fellow workers
to take official action against an extortion racket,
run by Indians and whites, by which new workers are
forced to 'buy' their jobs, while Roger, a young Englishman,
hopes to establish a relation- ship with Leela, Tekchand's
daughter.
In
both stories, the Indian characters find themselves
in conflict with their racial roles and instincts.
Murari patiently evokes the realities of trade unions,
work and the tangled threads of prejudice and fear,
and even though Roger is not much more than a pleasant
nonentity as a character, he also manages to establish
the boy's affair with Leela surprisingly well. The
two stories merge in a clever and plausible climax,
as a result of which Tekchand is blackmailed into
dropping his case against the racketeers, and Leela
is forced to leave Roger in order to play her role
as the submissive daughter. In the respective failures
of Tekchand and his daughter, the novel acknowledges
the obstinate strength of racial identities. It is
convincing because of the author's sincerity and sympathy
in dealing with all the main characters. NEW STATESMAN.
Published in the UK and India.
Interviews
Excerpt of Hindustan Times interview by Sudhir Sonalkar.
'How
The Marriage came about was that the London Sunday
Times had an investigative page called Insight,' Timeri
N. Murari explains. 'They had a call from an Indian
immigrant working in Coventry. He told them about
an extortion racket preying on the immigrants and
was appealing to the Times to help them. I was then
working as a freelance writer, mostly for The Guardian.
I knew the Times editor, so he called me up to hire
me as part of the Insight team investigating the extortion.
I went up to Coventry first to check out the story
and met the caller. It turned out that there were
thugs among the immigrants themselves who were working
the extortion. If an immigrant did not pay up, they
threatened to get him fired from his job. Obviously,
the local white shop stewards were taking a piece
of the action as well. The person I met had reported
all this to the police but the immigrants were too
scared to tell the cops anything, so the cops couldn't
get any affidavits, so they couldn't press any charges.'
The
paper sent three English reporters and Timeri Murari,
an Indian journalist, to look into the case. After
spending some ten days with the immigrants. Murari
and his friends were able to obtain two affidavits
and prepare a report. On returning to London, however,
they found to their dismay that the affidavits were
not adequate to prevent libel action against the paper.
And the report was never published. Murari was upset,
and egged on by a sense of injustice, decided to transfer
the whole business to fiction.
'Obviously,
the novel does not remain wholly true to the events,'
Murari said. 'I soon found myself immersed in the
broader question of looking at the Indian community
in England as a whole, and of fabricating complete
characters. The story line also changed, and semi-heroes
and semi-villains emerged, who played their role in
the unfolding drama and withdrew. But I was also wanting
to explore the loneliness of self-imposed exile. These
immigrants had voluntarily left their homeland, yet
they constantly yearned for their villages in the
Punjab. At the same, I wanted to look at the problems
of the second generation that had no idea about India
at all. They were born in England, educated in English
and, were to all intents and purposes, Englishmen
and women. Would they or could they follow the old
traditions and customs, including such important decisions
like an arranged marriage, or would they be more British
in their outlook? I wove in the love story of Leela
and Roger to explore that theme.'
