LANGUAGE IN INDIA

TOWARDS SELF-DISCOVERY -
A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE LEAD CHARACTERS OF ANITA NAIR’S
LADIES COUPÉ AND THE BETTER MAN

Poornavalli Mathiaparanam, M.A., M.Phil.
R. Saraswathy, M.A.

Among the various Indian writers writing in English, Anita Nair is easily accepted as an efficient practitioner of the genre of fiction. Her popular works include The Better Man (1999), Ladies Coupé (2001), and Mistress (2005). She mesmerizes the reader with her evocative language and descriptions with which her novels abound.

Anita on Her Novels

There is none better than Anita herself to talk about her own writing. Raising a question, "What makes your writing different from other Indians writing in English?" Anita writes,

First of all, my books are set in the everyday world of India.

Secondly, the characters who speak English in my book do so without making a farce out of it. To me, what a person says is more important than how they speak their words. And, this belief has found its way into all my writing. The other aspect is that in a book such as The Better Man that is set in a village, English is seldom spoken. But that does not mean that the average Keralite is illiterate or unaware of the world. He has probably read Omar Khayyam and Marx, Russell and Tolstoy in translation so that degree of education is perceived in the way he uses his words. So, if some of my characters sound erudite, they are, in the language they grew up speaking. In such a context, Hybrid-English or the lack of it makes no difference to the atmosphere or plot or characterization.

Thirdly, I do not concentrate on the cerebral [and sometimes the inaccessible] world. I aim at sharp characterization and it is this tension between characters that allows the movement of the narrative to progress at a brisk pace. While my ideas are very identifiable, relating to common sensibilities, I never make a conscious attempt to 'universalize' my story.
http://www.anitanair.net/faq.htm#4

Ladies Coupé and The Better Man

Anita Nair's novels Ladies Coupé and The Better Man have characters and themes of different nature, while at the same time these also have in common the idea of self-discovery.

The central characters of both the novels, as the stories progress, discover that they have never been living for themselves, but for others, governed by societal pressures. Thus, both the novels deal with how the lead characters shed off their masks, discover their selves, and start living for themselves. Thus, in this aspect, the lead character of Ladies Coupe?, Akhilandeswari, and of The Better Man, Mukundan, indeed, have similarities that lend them to comparison.

Ladies Coupé

Akhilandeswari, or Akhila as she is called in the novel Ladies Coupe??, is seen at the railway station, as the novel opens, preparing to go to Kanyakumari. The novel begins on a note of Feminism as she is irritated by the way women and the handicapped have to stand together while men stand separately at the ticket counter. It is indeed humiliating for her that women have been categorized along with the handicapped.

Akhila as the Father and Protector of the Family

As the novel unfolds, we come to know of Akhila's past. She was born into a Tamil Brahmin family, with her father, a government servant, as the only breadwinner of the family, and who had to support his wife and four children. However, Akhila is forced to take up the responsibility of her household after her father's death. She toils hard for her family, but no one seems to understand the fact that she too needs to have a life of her own, married with children. Her mother is more worried of Akhila's younger sister Padma's marriage and seems to have the notion that Akhila is a man, the head of the family, who has replaced her husband, Akhila's father. All of them seem to have accepted the idea that Akhila is to lead her whole life as a spinster. After her mother's death, Akhila is fed up with her routine life and decides to set on her journey to Kanyakumari.

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