Hello and welcome to the Discourse. Rich Like Us is a novel by Nayantara Sahgal, published in 1985, 10 years after the dreadful period of Emergency in India. In 1986, she received the Sahitya Academy Award for the novel.
Nayantara Sahgal belongs to the Nehru-Pandit family. She is the daughter of Vijaylakshmi Pandir and Barrister Ranjit Pundit. Pundit Jawahar Lal Nehru was her mother’s brother, and Indira Gandhi was her cousin. Despite such close proximity with the ruling family of India during that period, Nayantara Sahgal expressed her opposition to tyranny, political corruption, and Nepotism. In 1974, she was about to be appointed as the Indian ambassador to Italy. But because of her critical views on the Indian government, she lost her job. Nevertheless, she continued to oppose and protest the tyrannical attitude of the government. The novel ‘Rich Like Us’ also depicts a woman standing for righteousness, the rule of law, and justice, and suffering consequences due to political corruption.
The story covers 40 years from the 1930s to the late 1970s during the Emergency in India. The novel is divided into several chapters. Some chapters are narrated by an omniscient third-person narrator, while some are narrated by Sonali, one of the main characters of the novel.
The title ‘Rich Like Us’ is introduced as a question, and continues as such throughout the novel. The novel begins with a British businessman interacting with an Indian couple. He says that all he has been told teaches him that if the poor of India would "do like we do, they’d be rich like us." However, when he sees the poverty in Indian streets, he finds it difficult to believe.
Characters of ‘Rich Like Us’:
Rose is one of the lead characters of the novel. She is an English lady, born in East end London who falls in love with a rich Indian businessman Ram. She belongs to the poor working class of London and unconvincingly tries to hide her Cockney accent from her high-born friends. In the 1930’s when she was a young, quick-witted, intelligent, and romantic girl, she met Ram, an influential rich businessman from India at a chocolate shop in London. They discuss India and Ram compares India with Cythera. According to Greek mythology, the Island of Cythera is the birthplace of Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty. Rose feels intellectually defeated by Ram and instantly falls in love with Ram and to show her love, she buys an old postcard of Cythera. Ram says that India is wonderful where everyone is loved. Rose decides to marry Ram and comes to India. In India, she comes to know that Ram is already married to an Indian woman named Mona. Mona is a submissive woman, a loyal and obedient wife of Ram. Ram admits that he loves Mona and Rose equally while he also begins a short-term affair with Marcella, another British woman. In India, Rose realizes that reality is far different from what Ram depicted India to be. He faces patriarchal discrimination in India and struggles to find a home in this foreign society filled with ancient customs and norms like Sati, and orthodox rituals. Yet, Ram continues to intellectually dominate her and she continues to love him. She lives in the second story of the big mansion of Ram while Mona and her son Dev live in the first story of the building.
Dev is the son of Ram and Mona who fails to accept his father’s second marriage and believes that Rose will harm his business and inheritance interest. He’s a greedy, spoiled brat of a rich father who wishes to attain everything without actually earning anything. Nisha is Dev’s wife, a modern yet submissive Indian woman.
Sonali Ranade is the other lead character of the novel. She is an upright civil servant in the Ministry of Industry. She has been a rebellious and intelligent student throughout her life. Her father tried to arrange her marriage but she opposed it and ran away to London for higher studies where she got admission to Oxford. She meets Ravi Kachru at Oxford who becomes her close friend. Ravi Kachru is an Indian intellectual who is influenced by Marxism. Ravi tries to dominate Sonali intellectually and they do fall in love but Sonali fails to accept his Marxist ideals. She says, “I did admire his (Ravi’s) commitment…. But I couldn’t understand why we had to keep cutting and pasting Western concepts together and tying ourselves to them forever as if Europe were the center of the Universe, and Marx were the last words on Mankind.” Ravi proves to be a hypocrite who prefers power over his own ideals. In India, Sonali lives with her father, her elder sister Kiran, and Kiran’s husband. Other characters include Bheeku, an old street beggar. Rose keeps helping him, feeding him, and taking care of him.
Summary of Rich Life Us:
The story begins in the 1930s when Ram, an Indian businessman visits London for a business trip. In London, he meets a vivacious, young British girl at a chocolate shop. He learns that she belongs to the British working class because of her accent and grows a friendship with her. During their discussion, he learns her name is Rose. Rose is deeply impressed by Ram’s intellectual prowess and immediately falls in love with him and they decide to marry. Ram convinces Rose to come to India and live with him. In India, Rose comes to know that Ram is already married to an Indian girl and he also has a son named Dev. Dev is a spoiled brat who enjoys the perks of being a son of a successful father. He dislikes Rose because she is critical of him and tries to make him learn the ways of honesty and hard work. Dev is also skeptical of Rose because he believes that Rose overshadowed his mother Mona. He believes that Rose grabbed the rightful place of his own mother. Mona too feels cheated and ignored by her husband and tries to commit suicide. However, Rose saves her and tries to be her friend. Mona and Rose develop a gentle friendship while sharing the same husband but Dev despises this arrangement between his two mothers. Rose realizes that though Ram loves her, he is poly-amorous as Ram begins an affair with Marcella, another British woman who is married to Bryan.
Time passes by and India gets independence. Ram continues to attain business and political success while Dev becomes a young, brutish, and ill-mannered rich businessman with friends in the political section of Delhi. He gets married to Nisha, the daughter of an influential politician.
Rose grows a friendship with Sonali, a young and upright civil servant in the Ministry of Industry who is pitted against the contemporary bureaucratic regime. Sonali heroically fights the malice in the bureaucratic hierarchy which has seeped to the core and corroded the Indian society and its long-cherished values. During her younger days, she was a rebellious student who opposed her father’s bid to marry her to some rich businessman and decided to go to Oxford for higher studies. At Oxford, she met Ravi Kachru, a childhood friend with whom she studied at school. Ravi introduces her to the vast world of intellectuals. It is with him that her political knowledge blossoms. Ravi's ardor for communism deepens, yet Sonali, despite Ravi's efforts, questions its plausibility. Sonali mentions, "I did admire and envy his commitment, it was so cloudless. But I couldn't understand why we had to keep cutting and pasting Western concepts together and tying ourselves to them forever as if Europe were the center of the universe, and the Bible and Marx were the last word on mankind." Sonali discusses communism with Ravi, stating that she doesn’t want to stick to any doctrine. Her motivation is personal: being a woman she has lived too many restrictions to voluntarily have another one in her life. Sonali states ‘I don’t like dictatorships, not even of the proletariat, not even as a passing phase because who knows the phase might get stuck and never pass’.
Despite their differences, they develop a romantic relationship. Yet, Sonali is doubtful if she wishes to marry Ravi. She feels that Ravi is actually bossy, rigid and selfish and if she married him she’d have to agree with him all the time, and thus, they break up.
After their education, when they return to India, Sonali observes sudden changes in Ravi. Ravi involves himself quickly with the ruling party and marries Nishi, the daughter of the Indian Prime Minister’s second cousin. Meanwhile, Sonali becomes a civil servant and joins the department in the Ministry of Industry. She finds it difficult to believe that Ravi, who once supported Marxism so much, defended the autocratic rule in India and supported the call to Emergency in 1975.
Rose is still living with Ram in his house along with Mona, Dev, and Nisha, Dev’s wife. Forty years have passed and now Ram is an old, weak man who suffers a heart attack. Rose continues to nurse and serve him. Dev has grown up to become an indolent young man who has seriously been affected by the unusual double marriage of his father. Now when his father is bedridden he sees the opportunity of forging cheques to get his father’s money on his account. Rose notices the ill-intentions of Dev and learns that her rights as a woman and wife are deteriorating, so she turns to her friend Sonali for help.
Sonali is already grappling with the dominant nature of Dev who is trying his political power to attain a license to open his new venture, a fizzy drink Hapyola factory. With an admirable rare courage, Sonali refuses to grant permission to open the fizzy drink Hapyola factory to Dev the spoilt son of Mona and Ram. She rebels overtly and fearlessly against the bureaucratic setup. Patriotic, committed, and honest that she is Sonali suffers a rude jolt when she gets her transfer order. Instead of receiving appreciation for having done her duty with a sense of patriotism, she is victimized by the bureaucratic system. She is replaced by Ravi Kachru who immediately allows the license to Dev. Sonali suffers the loss and says, “The emergency has ended my career, but suddenly I did not want a career in the crumbling unprofessionalism that bowed and scrapped to a bogus emergency.” Sonali further suffers the wrath of the political establishment as her father, a shopkeeper is imprisoned for no obvious reason. Meanwhile, Dev succeeds in eliminating his other enemy too as Rose is murdered by the goons sent by Dev. Her death leaves Soali depressed. Marcella and Bryan helped her and encouraged her to take up a research project on seventeenth and eighteenth-century India.
Anyhow, the emergency ends, and the political power at the center changes. So does the fortunes of Ravi. He again changes color and tries to adapt to his older ways. However, Sonali believes that his efforts are truthful and comments, “Kachru becoming Ravi again, of friendship resuming, of love having been really love and not a mistake he had been trying to forget.”
So this is it for today. We will continue to discuss the history of Indian English literature. Please stay connected with the Discourse. Thanks and Regards!
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