Custody, Manju Kapur's latest book is a tender, restrained and honest look at the fall-out of divorce on an Indian middle-class family and the legal system that comes into play in the process
Custody, Manju Kapur's latest book is a tender, restrained and honest look at the fall-out of divorce on an Indian middle-class family and the legal system that comes into play in the process
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Urban, upper middle-class Delhi is the setting for Manju Kapur's fifth book, Custody, a startlingly sincere chronicle of marriage, divorce, children and the Indian legal system.
Kapur, who taught literature at Delhi's Miranda House for over 25 years, and whose previous works include the acclaimed Difficult Daughters and The Immigrant, has covered the entire gamut of relations and emotions that transcend the modern Indian family.
Custody is a gentle, restrained look at the repercussions of divorce in a social setup on the cusp of change in the 1990s. THE GUIDE speaks to Manju Kapur on her experiences while working on the book.
What was going through your mind as you developed the plot of Custody?
All kinds of things, but mainly I wished to show the effect of divorce on all the people involved, not only the couple, but the extended family as well. Of course each marriage is different and divorce can take place for any number of reasons, but in a conflict situation many nasty traits, hitherto dormant, become exacerbated, and I was interested in the result such a conflict would have on my characters.u00a0u00a0u00a0
Why did you choose a plot where the Indian legal system comes into play?
If you are writing about divorce in India, you have to bring in the legal system, since it is notoriously difficult to get divorced, especially if one partner is against it. There has been a lot of press about our judicial process, particularly where the backlog of cases is concerned. You hear of under trials languishing for decades in prison for example. In my own way, I wished to focus on the issue of delay in our courts anybody who has had to fight a case will testify to how trying this can be.
Is the urban Indian family of today different than it was, say a decade ago?
There are more job opportunities for women more chances therefore of independence. There is also more exposure to outside influences, to western influences, with all the baggage such exposure brings. This is not to say that every family mirrors this change, but things are changing more rapidly than they did a decade ago.
Were your characters based on individuals you've interacted with or were they created from imagination?
My fiction involves imaginative reconstructions. Obviously I don't write in a vacuum, but neither do I use recognisable people or situations.
Custody, Manju Kapur, Random House India,
Rs 450. Available at leading bookstores.
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