Original Article
THE TEMPORALITY OF LONGING: WAITING, SILENCE, AND EMOTIONAL TIME IN SARAT CHANDRA CHATTOPADHYAY’S PARINEETA
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Supriya 1* 1 PhD Research Scholar, Department of
English, Baba Mastnath University, Asthal Bohar, Rohtak, Haryana, India |
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ABSTRACT |
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Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay occupies a singular, almost peerless
position in the canon of Indian literature as the quintessential chronicler
of the "private life.". Where the Jewish geniuses of his time, with
whom, or even with the greatest of them, the Great Nationalist Project was
underway, or the moral awakening of the Indian soul, Sarat Chandra retreated,
to the microscopical pang of the English fireside Basnet (2011). The epochal political movements in the
colonial Calcutta or even the changes of the British Raj do not consider the
time in his 1914 novella Parineeta. Rather it is estimated by the movements
of the grandfather clock in the fancy hallway Nabin Roy; the charmless and
inexpressive measures of the beating of the heart of Lalita. Keywords: Sarat Chandra
Chattopadhyay’s, Time, Parineeta |
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INTRODUCTION: The Chronotope of the Domestic Sphere
Sarat Chandra
Chattopadhyay occupies a singular, almost peerless position in the canon of
Indian literature as the quintessential chronicler of the "private
life.". Where the Jewish geniuses of his time, with whom, or even with the
greatest of them, the Great Nationalist Project was underway, or the moral
awakening of the Indian soul, Sarat Chandra retreated, to the microscopical
pang of the English fireside Basnet
(2011). The epochal political movements in the colonial Calcutta or even the
changes of the British Raj do not consider the time in his 1914 novella
Parineeta. Rather it is estimated by the movements of the grandfather clock in
the fancy hallway Nabin Roy; the charmless and inexpressive measures of the
beating of the heart of Lalita.
This paper
proposes that Parineeta is a profound study in Emotional Time. Unlike
"Historical Time," which is linear, objective, and documented through
dates and events, Emotional Time is inherently elastic and subjective. All the
above renders Emotional Time subjective and in contrast to the Historical Time
that is linear, objective and dated by the time and events, very elastic Nandi
(2023). It is one of those moments, upon which a
word of dispensation, or a scornful look can be prolonged throughout a
philosophical eternity, years of youthful friendship in one another are a
sentence or two of hindsight, a spell of nostalgia. Pondering over two columns
Waiting and Silence, this study research is underpinned by the strategies
wherein Chattopadhyay has developed a contemporary belief, feminize
subjectivity. Lalita, the main protagonist of the story, keeps the time of her
feeling hidden in herself, to be able to achieve some degree of agency, in
which the time of society will fail to offer her.
Socio-Historical Context: The Brahmo Samaj and "Social Time"
To understand the
tension in Parineeta, one must situate the characters within the specific
socio-religious friction of early 20th-century Bengal Ray (2019). It is not a family quarrel, it is a battle
between two incomparable Social Times, the dissident orthopraxy of the Hindu
tradition which may be represented in Nabin Roy and the reformist, progressive,
modern time which may be represented in the character of Girin and the
inclinations of the family of Gurucharan.
The Brahmo Movement as a Temporal Disruptor
Brahmo Samaj that
was launched by Raka Ram Mohan Roy and later developed by Debendranath Tagore
and Keshab Chandra Sen was aimed at eliminating elements of idolatry and caste
inflexibility in those who began the Hindu religion. The influence of Brahmo in
Parineeta environment takes the leader of the conventional home year. In the
situation of Nabin Roy, the social time is dictated by descends of castes,
blood relations and possession of the ancestral property Gupta
and Mahavidyalaya (2015). The process of learning is associated only
with time, the social advances and the radical concept companionate marriage in
the case of the Brahmo leanings.
The moment the
Lalita uncle Gurucharan starts to incline towards the religion of Brahmo the
reason being the difficult financial stand and in search of social phenomenon
the religion forms a sort of sort-temporal schism. Roy family feels that this
transition is selling out to the Hindu time that is immortal. This puts Lalita
in a pressure form of tension; she is in her trans-stage of existence; her
adherence to her previous state of being to existence is in conflict to new
time of reformation Girin imparts on her home.
The "Reformist Clock" vs. The "Ancestral Clock"
Girin as a
character is what provokes the contemporary experience of time to occur. He is
incidentally the symbol of a sex where women are not only educated but also
marriage is a choice of marriage to the matrimonial bonding and without the
dowry and debt bartering Chattopadhyay (2005). His coming speeds up the social occasion of
the family of Gurucharan and provides to them I exit mode of stagnation of
debt.
Nevertheless,
speed is a trauma to the main hero of the story Lalita. It is already in her
heart time when she is married to Shekhar with the silent communication of the
garland delivery. The need that the modern time Girin is the time that intrudes upon her of this holy
time of her occult pact Hoffheimer
(2009). Chattopadhyay does an incredible job of
proving that the social freedom bestowed to the women, using the movement of
Brahmo movement, resulted in the formation of a new emotional dilemma to the
transition women.
Economic Determinism and the Pacing of the Plot
With the
Brahmo-Hindu conflict in Parineeta, the economic period of the characters is
too big to be broken. The time bomb is the debt that Gurucharan owes to Nabin
Roy that determines the rhythm of the story Chatterjee
(1996). Of the old world is a debt generation
chain, a stale, remaining, repressive time. An example of a linear way out is
the Brahmo way out (as portrayed by Girin who offers financial assistance to
him).
Lalita does not
submit such external financial time measures, a chance to balance the emotional
side of her life. The fact that she has remained silent as well as her
submission of attitude to wait to Shekhar despite his viciousness and his
father in avarice demanding capacity is the unwillingness to conform to time
upon social reform or economic need Mishra
and Mishra (2012). She in her own Emotional Time where the
Parineeta (a betrothed woman) status is not hinged as by the legal, or
religious, pigeonholes with which that group of men she is playing with.
The Intersection of Silence and Reform
The Brahmo
movement had to name itself the Social Time-- voicelessness of protest, the
tasked argument about the reform, the end of silence with reference to social
vices. As a matter of fact, the idea and approach; the Emotional Time presented
by Sarat Chandra, this Indian Bengali family is based in the unspoken.
It is her silence,
the greatest weapon of retaliation that Lalita uses and the oppression of the
traditionalism of Nabin Roy and the reformism (which is instituted, yet
intrusive) of Girin. Her silence is somehow a mediator between two worlds where
she stands by to claim her dignity when her image concerning her future is
under discussion by the men in her circle who surround her socially and
religiously Mishra
(2008). This kind of silence allows her to explore
the process of childhood turning into womanhood the one that attests that the
things that happen do not always lead to any change, but are the ones that take
part quietly in the heart of a human being.
The Phenomenology of Waiting
The pattern of
narration in Parineeta romanticizes waiting to a great extent of being. It is
passive action and the phenomenologists would term it as active in that even
though the subject is seemingly not doing anything according to the eyes of the
world, the subject is actually waging a huge internal battle of hope,
preservation and moving emotional endurance Singh
(2020). These gaps between the existence of Shekhar
characterise the life of Lalita. It is more of an interstitial life of her
thriving on the edges of the narrative of the society.
Bergsonian Duration vs. Clock Time
In a bid to
examine the psychological environment of Lalita we are going to take note of
the chronos (quantitative time, chronological time) and Duree (Duration)
difference forwarded by Henri Bergson. Clock Time is a social phenomenon; it
can be also further categorized into minutes, hours and years and regards time
as a string of beads Sarkar
et al. (2012). Duree, on the contrary, the stream of inner
time is a qualitative, continuous feeling, which the past never comes behind
us, it is before us, and it pervades our present consciousness.
Lalita is not
continuing the years in a chronological series with the aid of which she has
been living before the eyes of Roy households. On the contrary, they are
unified, unbroken emotional attitude. Time is a long one, when Shekhar is away
on his expeditions, or transacting his business in the city, the time of the
outer world can easily read of the time passing, but when Lalita is time is
lengthened. The eternal present is developed into the waiting when Shekhar is
waiting to keep the silent promise of the garland.
And in this
condition of dureé the object of which she has thrown the garland upon his neck
is not of the past, but is a living breathing reality which is the decisive
shaper in her present conduct Bhattacharya (2017). It is the fact that she may turn off other
suitors, even accept humiliation in the society; she has already fallen in love
with him, in her Emotional Time. We could say that her waiting is somehow the
maintenance of such a moment of the past which will not be swept away by the
irrational passage of the social time.
The Threshold and the Window: The Architecture of Liminality
The spaces of the
novella are at least those at which this wait is being done, in the event that
the wait of the inner state of the characters is waiting. Sarat Chandra employs
architecture of Bengali house as liminal space and employs on the rooftop of the
house (shilekotha), the window (janala) and the boundary wall of the house Somaaya
(2008). Thresholds are time and space distances
that are between here and there.
The Boundary
Wall: probably one of the
most apparent chronotropic symbolism in the book is the fence that encloses Roy
mansion and small house of Gurucharan. It is the edge of classes and caste of
the 20 th -century Calcutta, and on the one hand, it is The touch point on the
way of Shekhar and Lalita Maiti
(2018). The communications they carry by this wall,
or through it, are transient and even scanty. The very wall is the sign of the
frozen time of their relationship-constructed which makes them address each
other throughout the piece and prolongs the time of their desire.
The Window: This is a term applied in the literature of
the Bengal where the window is the entrance of a world that the woman will
never get a possibility to enter. Lalita is in fact visualization of the active
passivity of the women by the way she is waiting at the window. She sees all
the social time of the street, Roy household through the window yet she is
still in her emotional time Saiam
(2012). The window reflects her wish that causes
her subjective wait a picture of iconic perseverance without words.
The Rooftop: It is
the location that lacks the vitality of freedom, no ability to receive the gaze
of patriarchal gaze inside the rooms. It is a house time up on the roof much,
and time of the kitchen, or time of the counting-house is secondary Ray (2011). The image of the wide duree which Lalita
bears in her is that of this case the wide sky.
Waiting as Agency
The act of waiting
is understood as weakness of feminine nature, subversion in most of the
classical interpretations. But in the phenomenological perspective of the
premier of Parileeta, the waiting is an agency of a sort to Lalita. In refusing
to act, she backs her back to the concept of the modern time, be it Girin or
the transactional time, which the creditors of her uncle require.
Waiting Lalita is
infuriating over the commoditization of her personality. The gift of the here
and now when she is choosing the husband of the garland, when she is bringing
in the world of the world of her boyfriend to her inner world Patel
(2012). At last, the novella is resolved not by the
time passing through it, but by the fact that the social conditions which had
tried to rewrite the Emotional Time of Lalita in and to itself failed and were
not so true.
Theoretical Framework: Bergson, Bachelard, and the Bengali "House"
In order to arrive
at the emotional climate of Parineeta, one must forego the Newtonian meaning of
time which views time as a linear absolute and encloses things and embrace a
more psychological meaning of the term time. Such theorists will constitute the
essential part of this study because they will be used to produce the required
vocabulary they are Henri Bergson and Gaston Bachelard Mahima
et al. (2019). The combination of these, not only brings with it the
implication that Bengali home is a place, but it is also a stage of the soul in
which the time is experienced, rather than being perceived.
Bergsonian La Durée: The Fluidity of Inner Time
The idea of Henri
Bergson which is the most significant to the depiction of passion by Sarat
Chandras is that of La Duree (Duration). Spatialized time is Clock Time (time
of science and of the marketplace), according to Bergson time is a time we
imagine as being marks along a line, or numbers on a dial Ausaja
(2009). This is not the situation of our inner life
though. The consciousness as described by Bergson is a flux, according to him,
where past is devouring the future and filling it up on its way.
Parineeta has made
this duree as a form of a character of Lalita. One can observe that a viewer
would see there are several years between her childhood and when she is married
to Shekhar. It is the Social Time of Calcutta, and she is becoming old, her marital
ability is becoming less, and the debt of her family is becoming larger. But in
her time within herself, the moment she has shaken the garland off upon
Shekhar, is no past, it is a present, present tense, existence, life, a present
and a present Ali et al. (2021). Her perceptions are not passing minute
after minute but it is the interminable, unending existence, flowish. The art
of genius Chattopadhyay is such that time is not a chain of events before the
lover but this experience. The suspension is not like a break between two
events, but rather is an explanation of the current situation.
Bachelard’s Poetics of the Household: Space as Soul
Bergson an
initiator of time and Gaston Bachelard an initiator of space. In his master
piece work, the Poetics of Space, Bachelard is of the view that house is a
state of psyche being. It is an instrument that examines the soul of a man
since our memories about our initial experience and our strongest emotions,
these are the ones that they retain in their memory Raj (2009). The architectural design of the two
neighbouring houses Roy mansion and the cottage of Gurucharan in Parineeta is
symbolic expression of problems of characters conflicting inside.
Roy mansion
represents and is a symbol of the oppression age. It is a seat of uncle light
furnishing, great grandfather clock and austerity. Time in this instance is
defined in terms of greediness by Nabin Roy and patriarchy by Shekhar. It is a
stagnant time sphere and the cage is the tradition. On the contrary, the house
of Gurucharan, that is poor, and that which is being dismantled by its gloss of
debt is a House of Humanized Time. It is a vacant nest of helplessness; the
meals of family and the Childhood of her Pop was with Shekhar and Lalita they
used to have a long time ago.
The Chronotope of the Boundary Wall and Corridors
The two houses
symbolize the two time realities with location change as a time change between
two places where Lalita lives. It is not the physical wall, but that of
chronotropic boundary.
The Corridors: According to Bachelardians, corridors are
spaces of transition and uncertainty spaces. Lalita stalks Roy family Tripto
and Ali (2023). The fact that she is actually waiting is
literally portrayed because she is engaging in it without uttering words in
these transit areas. She does not belong to the Roy family; she is not an
outsider but she is a real person in the hallways, neither the state of the
ever-changing nor the existence.
The Shared
Wall: It is the place where
Time of the Law (the property rights of Nabin Roy) and the Time of the Heart
(the meetings of the main characters secret) confront each other. The moment is
crushed as the physical wall pressures us in the Shekhar and Lalita talking
between each other. They are forced to talk fast, mumble and however much time
they spend together is becoming so many times more explosive.
The Domestic "Nook" as a Sanctuary of Silence
The eyes of
Bachelard can provide the value of the nooks and corners where the soul can
retreat and dream. She takes shelter either in the bedroom of Lalita or the far
end of the roof. In this she does not dream about the recipient of the
creditors of her uncle, or that of the jealousy of Shekhar Mukhopadhyay (2023). Her nook quiet is in a degree which is no
otherwise than a species of reverie- state, which causes her to be able to
conduct her duree without breathing interruption.
It is with his
Bachelardian insight that we would come to the fact that Lalita, is not a
passive subject of her situation, but a maker of her interior world. At the
same time as the outer world is evolving, his uncle considers the decision to
resort to Brahmoism and Calcutta to become modern, Lalita is standing in the
externalism of her home paradise.
The Anatomy of Silence: Power and Subterfuge
In this part, the
semiotics of silence is explored within Parineeta Johny
(2024). This silence is not a nothing, but as thick
a substance as the death of the world, and is charged with it, as are the
stages of the social contract of silence, of ethical willed rebellion, as that
stage of the transition in which the world of the child play is transferred to
the world of the adult passion.
The classic
literary criticism on the colonial Indian novel conventionally assumes the
notions of silence as an image of the subaltern or to the oppressed- an image
of agency deprivation. The silence in Parineeta is radically reinvented though Ghosh
(2023). Not the lack of speech alone, but a real
mode of communication, is capable of executing that, which the social taboos
and the distribution of classes, language, fails to do. The silence of this
novella is a kind of protective garb of the weak as well as of the morally
decisive people even.
Lalita’s Silence as Moral Superiority and Gambhirya
The other cultural
peculiarity of the Bengali culture that determines the personality of Lalita is
Gambhirya (solemnity or seriousness). She is a woman, who is also an
emotionally loaded woman even at a young age. Her strategy of silent being is
the most predictive of this seriousness. When her uncle Gurucharan turns his
unbiased mounting debt into the stuff of town scandals and gossip, Lalita makes
neither complaint nor in her own defence. The fact that she does not speak
suggests that she does not desire to be part of social time scandal.
This is no
subaltern silence, unable to speak but the silence of the stoic that has no
wish to speak. It is because she holds her mouth tight by the weight of wasting
her life in poverty and at other times pompousness of Shekhar that the high
morale dominating in her suffices to support the day Mishra
and Mishra (2012). Even her silence puts pressure on people
surrounding her and it is even better that it causes Shekhar to question his
own noise, his own ego and his own inconsistency. To an extent, silence can be
regarded as the reflector and, in some way, as a way of returning the moral
inadequacies of the world of the speakers to them.
The "Emotional Vacuum": The Return from Giridih
This is the climax
of the anatomy of silence in which Shekhar goes back to his visit and discovers
that Lalita has grown up without Shekhar. It is a masterpiece of acting when it
comes to what I would refer as Vacuum of Emotion.
In their growing
years their relations had been by word, romantic on the basis of dictates and
bickering. Helping him back, the vocabulary used in his life during his
childhood cannot be used anymore Saiam
(2012). The attraction which now has grown between
them in their adult lives has no already prepared social language in the
strictness of their relation as neighbours. They come before and among one
another, and cannot seal the gap that is open. This inability to find a new
language is a kind of vacuum, a vacuum of nothingness in the condition of high
stress, which forms the movement of the plot. Because they are unable to
express their love in a direct form they do it indirectly; Shekhar by remaining
jealous and domineering is of course, and Lalita by remaining more aloof and
submissive. This is the case, which is not uttered at all, and the focus of
tension in the story.
The Secret Covenant: The Garland as the "Loudest" Silence
The climax of the
story of silence is obviously the symbolic act between the gift of the garland.
This scene in Bengali literature is unique in structure because there was no
noise that would be involved in a traditional Hindu wedding Ray (2011). No shells of conch, no Vedic mantras
(chanted), no visitors, no witnesses.
The marriage is
taking place in the middle of the night, completely quiet and thus, this makes
the marriage go into a time-free zone. It is the silence of this, which makes
it a sacred one to Lalita. It is a betrothal of two souls, which does not
involve the verification of the social clock. Even the silence is a guarantee
of the truth to her.
With Shekhar,
however, considerations of silence are the source of high anxiety. His
rationality cannot perceive it to be a reality since in the social sphere the
marriage was not voiced. He is being tormented by the silence of that night Patel
(2012). Despite the fact that the unspoken contract
is a strength to Lalita, it is a nightmare to Shekhar and therefore,
demonstrates the gendered difference in the experience of silence where it is a
refuge of truth to the woman and a nightmare of absence of the demonstration to
the man.
The Phenomenology of Waiting: The Long "Interstitium"
Not waiting is
neither an accident nor event in the story world Parineeta lives in, but in
reality it is the predominant psychological disposition which is employed by
all characters to treat world Mahima
(2019). Novella is riddled with cross-over waits:
Gurucharan waits: until he can have a financial miracle that will save his
face; Nabin Roy waits: until the time elapses and the clock of the law runs
out, and he can take possession of the land that his neighbour Callicott
mistakenly declares his own; Lalita waits: until the man she has so silently
married acquires the emotional maturity she takes him to. It is such
interstitial between the silent vow and the social recognition in which is the
moral heart of this novel.
Waiting as an Active State: The Power of Will
To Lalita it is no
passive submission before the lot of fate, but a question of radical and
extended will-power. She is in a state of extreme liminality since the exchange
of garland. She is in a social no-man-land. not the frolicsome body Shekhar can
make fun of or the realizeldubois so avowed that the Roy family will accept him
as a wife Chattopadhyay (2005). She is neither a stranger nor a neighbor.
Liminality compels
one to be vigilant of him/herself. Lalita is forced to selectively censor her
behaviours, her words and even the air that she breathes so as to be in
conformity with a marriage which is the only one that she believes in. Her
waiting is not passive in the sense that it consists of rejection of any other
possibility of being which is realized every day. The wait tracing to Lalita
becomes a resistance when Girin gives her a way of escape something that is a
wedding based on the modern respect and economic stability Hoffheimer
(2009). Girin was to be a time traveller, that to
pass with Shekhar would be to move in the time of Social, to wait with him in
the time of Emotional. Another confirmation of her being stronger than the
pressures of poverty and social transition that are slowly stressing inwards,
is her suffering.
The Stages of Waiting: The Window and the Rooftop
The designated
degrees of feminine emotional life were defined inside architectural specifics
in the land of early 20 th -century Bengal domestic space Chatterjee
(1996). The window, the rooftop (shilekotha) in
parineeta do not belong to a house, but are literally walls of the actual space
Lalita occupies as her interstitium.
The Window as a
Frame of Longing: The window
is a viewing screen upon which Lalita is gazing at the world of the Shekhar.
The window is the only place in Bengali literature where a woman can feel the
outside but safe by the inside. It is the window, which in the case of Lalita
is where she can measure the geographical and sexual distance between her home
and his.
The Rooftop
(Shilekotha): It is the roof
where we can liberate ourselves vertically. It is at the roof during which
Lalita is also free to spend her time in an emotional manner, out of the reach
of the elders as well as the work of the kitchen Mishra
and Mishra (2012). The roof is her nest of reverie where she
may dwell in the flashbacks of the garland trade without the loss of the
cold-blooded transactional reality of unpaid debts of her uncle.
The Cruelty of Delayed Recognition: Shekhar’s Reactive Time
As long as the
waiting Lalita does is active and founded on one truth, the waiting that
Shekhar does is responsive and fragmented. The male gaze characterizes his
patience of waiting; a possessive one and a one who cannot afford Lalita the
right to do what she wishes to do. Shekhar is even waiting till Lalita is going
to retaliate or confess, and is forcing his security issues over his silence on
her.
The sorrow of this
is the emotional clock which Shekhar has is always out of time with Lalita.
Since she is in the eternal present of their marital life, he is suffering in
the present of late recognition Mishra
(2008). He goes about her like an object that is
waiting to be passed by him unaware of the fact that he is the one that is
under fire.
The meanness of
what he has made him wait is what gives him pride. He passes the months and
years chilly, and he only opens out through his love upon the appearance of a
threat in the person of Girin. This demonstrates that emotional period of the
characters in the case with Shekhar is ruled by the jealousy and external
competition, whereas only inner persuasion is observed in the case with Lalita Singh
(2020). His discovery is a discovery of
crisis-response but her discovery was an exploration of foundational-truth.
Here is the key theme of the two-factors of the man who is waiting to own and
the woman who is waiting to live.
The "Long Interstitium" as a Moral Test
Last, but not
least, there is the Parineeta long wait which is a type of moral test ground.
It gets rid of the superficiality of their relationship, the squabbling like a
kid, the disparity in social status, and it is applied to expose the nature of
their characters. It is the perfected silent patience that the time when Lalita
is removed out of the silence that results in making her the moral centre of
the novella Bhattacharya (2017). The interstitium is none too soon, it is
what it always needed the swellings of pride in Shekhar at last to sink in the
long run under the heavy load of the emotional permanence of Lalita.
This section gives
the socio-political context, and the comparative discussion that needs to be
done in order to convert the paper into a research work. Indeed, putting this
touching tale in the context of the Bengal Renaissance we come to a mental, but
also to a socio-historical criticism.
VI.
Socio-Historical Intersections: Brahmoism and Class
The silence of
Parineeta was a psychological spin-off of desire yet a Social Silence needed by
Bengali society: the tensions between ideologies of the dawn of the 20 th
century. The transformation of the family of Gurucharan to the Brahmo Samaj,
even though it might have been the first one caused by financial stress,
introduces another type of Time Somaaya
(2008). This is the era of social change, secular
education and of a new, modern and individualistic identity that reminded of
the repetitious time of orthodox Hinduism.
The Clash of Calendars: Orthodox vs. Modern
One can even speak
about the central confrontation of the novella as a Clash of Calendars. On the
one hand, Roy family lives with Traditional Hindu Patriarchal Calendar. Having
this insight, our world enjoys a time that is mediated by Kula (lineage) and Achar
(custom) Maiti
(2018). The wedding is a bargain which is entered
into to protect caste purity and property consolidation. By the ways of Lalita,
she is valued in Nabin Roy calendar through her dowry and the debt of her uncle
and a chess piece playing in a game of conquering the ancestral land.
The antagonist
Girin on the other side is Time of the Modern/Brahmo. The calendar is promoted
by progress, movement and equality in the society. In Girin case, time might
have been spent better- educating Lalita, medical service to poor and activism
of rights of women. It is a time that is linear and optimistic.
Lalita gets into
the Inter-calibration of these two worlds. She admires the freedom that Girin
gives her in the contemporary society but in her mind she is bound to the old
custom that she has with Shekhar Saiam
(2012). It is primarily her wait to a solution in
which she can become a modern woman (that is by making her intellectually and
emotionally free) without severing the lines of her traditional love.
VII.
Comparison: Parineeta vs. Devdas – Decay vs. Ripening
In order to value
how Chattopadhyay approaches the concept of Time in a new way based on his
successes, it is essential to make a comparative study of Parineeta (1914) and
a masterpiece composed by Sarat Chandra (which he published earlier) (1917)
based on his work. Though, both stories are the story of childhood lovers and
the impediments of the classes, in the chronological order, they have
inverted-polar structures.
Table 1
|
Table 1 Devdas and
Parineeta |
||
|
Feature |
Devdas |
Parineeta |
|
Primary Mode |
Regret and
Nostalgia |
Endurance and
Hope |
|
Temporal
Focus |
The Lost Past |
The Potential
Future |
|
Outcome of
Time |
Physical and
Moral Decay |
Emotional
Ripening |
|
Symbolism |
The Train
(Speeding toward death) |
The Wall
(Static, waiting for collapse) |
Devdas: Time as a Vector of Decay
The aspect of time
is devastating in Devdas. Devdas is a retrograde man, whose Emotion is a
dreadful era of regrets Ray (2011). Time is the only thing that can make him
lose a state of decay and his alcoholism, ruining of his body and death in the
no man land of the gate to Paro are the indicators of the same. It is a subdued
hope of waiting in the Devdas. The protagonists are not able to advance to the
current reality by prototyping their emotional clocks leading to a colonizing
break.
Parineeta: Time as a Process of Ripening
In a sharp
contrast, time in Parineeta is exhibited as a kind of Ripening. The waiting of
this novella is not life squandering but maturing and making a final union.
And, should Devdas be the Fall, Parineeta the Ascent.
The future is what
rescues Lalita and Shekhar since they dedicate their emotional time to grow up.
The separation is when they are stripped of the childish squabbling, the
shallow pride which belonged to them in the first place Patel
(2012). Lalita is applying her Internal Duration in
an attempt to form a visionary cocoon around herself as opposed to Devdas who
is rendered incapacitated by the past. It is not that when the union eventually
comes about is to go all the way back to an absent childhood but the choice as
an adult relationship.
Time can destroy
(as in the case of Devdas) or it can be sanctified by confronting the
appropriate form of silence and patience as suggested by Chattopadhyay. The
most favourable notion of the agency of the Bengali woman that Sarat Chandra
can suppress is the process of Lalita, with which the socio-historical turmoil
of her family causes the gradual development of her personality.
The Resolution: Breaking the Silence
The final section
of this research paper is how the tension of time and silence developed in the
writing of the novella was solved Mahima
(2019). It serves to blend both philosophical
arguments of Bergson and Bachelard and the emotional end of the text.
VIII. The
Resolution: Breaking the Silence as the "Collapse of Time"
A phenomenological
interpretation of Parineeta is that the resolution is that of a standard
romantic reunification, but a phenomenological time travel aids in revealing
that there is more in this explanation of a Collapse of Time Ausaja
(2009). Years of incessant insomnoliteness of the
Internal Time, the secret marriage of Lalita, the External Time the misery of
her social position which she is an unmarried, poor neighbor have kept the
story going. It is resolved when at long last these two non-similar timelines
strike and converge.
The Moment of Recognition
The secret about
the garland is discovered by the mothers of Shekhar thereafter revealed to
Shekhar Ali et al. (2021). The revelation that has now dawned on him
is interrupted (not by word or phrase) this time by this revelation that it is
a suddenness and revealment and Power which cannot be disputed. It is such a
breaking of the silence, like a time-bomb.
The above scheme
which has been identified as Bergsonian asserts that this is the triumph of the
True Time over the Clock Time. The three year gap, feelings of jealousy and
social ostracism are not only ended, they are erased out of her memory. It is
the violent search in the scorching sun heat of this moment of realization that
renders the time of their misery meaningless and turns it into a moment. The
True Time, the Time of mutual belonging, concerning which, across a number of
years, there has been a de facto potency, at once overlays their physical
distance, which is the Time of Clock.
The Validation of the Silent Covenant
He does not do
anything novel when Shekhar finally confides that Lalita was his wife; he is
validating some prior action, the silence of which was held in a status of
quietness. The resolution goes to show that it was not one of the whims of
childhood that the garland exchange happened, but it was a time-hook Raj (2009). It can be said that the time is the reason
of the breakdown here since in the human feeling world, it is not the emergence
of the bond that makes the strength of a relationship, but the survival of the
bond in the inner heart. The waiting periods have also been discovered to be
the periods of preservation rather than the periods of loss.
Conclusion: The Legacy of Parineeta and the "Clock of the Heart"
One of the most
significant works of Indian literature is the Parineeta by Sarat Chandra
Chattopadhyay because this work offers a complicated examination of how
duration and identity are experienced out of our perception. Setting forth to
develop the plot whose subject was the domestic virtues of waiting and silence,
Chattopadhyay supports not the passivity of women, but displays another sort of
feminine strength, the strength of making the time on oneself as a reaction to
the external disorientation.
Love as a Function of Endurance
The Parineeta
tradition has been the awakening of the fact that love is very much a long term
exercise. Lalita achieves a high morality status which outshines all other
characters in the novella because she learns how to wait. The social ceremony,
which is the finishing touch of the book, does not make her the Parineeta (The
Betrothed), but the three years of perfect psychological devotion that preceded
it. The remaining wedding is merely but a show; marriage was a covert affair
which was performed in the silence of her belief.
The Universal "Emotional Time"
Lastly, Sarat
Chandra has proposed that a human being has a clock within the heart. Since the
world surrounding the Calcutta in the 20 th century was rapidly changing to the
time of the Modern Nature, the time of reform, the time of debts and interests,
in other words, the Economic Time, Lalita has remained in the time of the
Emotional Time. This is the subjective perception of time, which is governed by
the memory, the desire and the silence it is this time which forms the human
experience in the world that Chattopadhyay creates.
According to the
novella, the actual domination is the ability not to get this internal clock to
fit the vile and cold standards of the community. Sweet Lalita presents us with
silence as a language of its own and an element of patient waiting at the silent
moments of the house of Gurucharan which are the Roy mansion shadows. Parineeta
is an eye-witness of the truth that though the social world may demand words
and show, however, the most important truths of the human soul are such as are
embodied in the long interstitium of the human heart.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
None.
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