The Adjustment is a story taken from a collection of stories (Half a Rupee: Stories) by Gulzar, and offered here as an independent read. It is from eighth and final part of the collection, which deals with old age and facing last years with family and alone.
This one is about an old couple with an only daughter who is back with her parents with her two sons, after her husband brought home a second wife (since no illegitimacy of the said second marriage is mentioned, and since the old woman brought home her daughter, one may infer it is a Muslim family); the old couple has only this one daughter and that after years of praying and pilgrimages, so the old woman is unwilling to let the only child live in less than pleasant and honourable circumstances, although the old man bickers about it - but then they have bickered for over half a century of marriage and the old man thinks it takes time to understand another person.
The old woman though dies suddenly one day, and he is now left alone, in spite of the home filled by his daughter and the two grandsons. He begins to change in a startling way, speaking or acting like the wife now gone, and claims she is visiting him and occupying his being often. The family calls in a psychiatrist, who talks and more importantly listens to him for hours, and then questions why the family is bothered if this goes on. Which is wiser of him than generally one expects western oriented psychology professionals.
The writer stops the story where the old man is found napping in the bed of the wife now gone, wearing her feminine clothes. Perhaps he intends to shock the reader. That however depends on whether one is as wise as the psychiatrist that advised the family to let him do what consoles him, since it bothers no one.
Western culture now - post industrialisation and separation of genders into master and slave categories, or even before that due to inquisition and witch hunt carried on to weed out any possible knowledge or authority in lay persons and far more so in women - has heavy emphasis on gender separation in every sphere and especially in clothing, and women wearing trousers has been disapproved to the extent such liberties are strictly forbidden in professional circles, and more along such restrictions, never mind the weather making it extremely painful for anyone to shiver on a bus stop in skirts and nylons and even for anyone looking at this.
But before this discrimination began and spread to most lands, attire was more a matter of convenience with weather and other factors taken into account chiefly, and most cultures had - and often still do, unless tainted by colonisation from Europe - dresses not all that different for men and women.
So a reader being shocked at this merely tells about how conditioned he or she is by the post inquisition culture of Europe. For the rest, it should be perfectly fine if a bereaved old man finds some comfort wearing his dead wife's clothes and napping in her bed.
Saturday, April 5, 2014.
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