In the garden now there are several sounds: the chair being pushed and then toppling over, the screech of the table’s leg against the floor, Mother’s bangles cracking and both father and mother crashing against the table lamp, their shadows flitting across the wall and then flowing into the ceiling.
The Blue Bedspread is the debut novel of Raj Kamal Jha. There are many novels to his credit. He has been working with a wide range of disturbing subjects from domestic violence to urban decay and family relationships.
In The Blue Bedspread the story is told from the point of view of a brother who is informed that his sister had died in a hospital during child birth. The book is his letter to the child, explaining to her, about the dysfunctional family. Each chapter is meant as a story in its own right. As Jha puts it, “you can enter the book at any stage”. The narrative was conceived only while it was written.
The domestic violence that they have seen right from their childhood brings the brother and the sister closer and thus develops the incestuous relationship between the two. The blue bedspread became the shelter place for the two. In the end comes the confession. The narrator claims the child of his sister as his own. The atmosphere of the novel is that of darkness, guilt, repression, insomnia and hallucination.
The paper explores mainly about the family legacy of incest, alcoholism, child abuse, violence and isolation. Jha explores psychological behaviour of various human beings in the novel. He depicts especially the male female relationships which are mostly unhappy. |
