Abstract

QUEST FOR HARMONY BETWEEN URBAN AND NON-URBAN ELEMENTS OF LIFE: A STUDY OF KAMALA MARKANDAYA'S TWO VIRGINS

DR. L. R. YADAV

Volume: 3 Issue: 1 2013

Abstract:

This novel describes the adolescent awakening of two sisters named Lalitha and Saroja, belonging to a lower middle class family of a south Indian village. The problem that Markandaya has taken is—the struggle between urban and non-urban elements of life, between pre and post independence, between old and new, between traditional eastern and modern western ways. It was the challenge before post-independence India to consolidate and preserve the new form of society that still was in the grip of poverty, ignorance and backwardness. People had to work hard to make India free of all these evils. However, those who took participation in the movement for freedom, not an insignificant number, though at the lower cadre, belonged to India’s villages. Appa was one of them. So was Appa’s idol, Rangu. Both had been fighting for independence, not like some as Appa said bootlickers, who had fawned upon the Sahibs for crumbs from their tables. The British packed; those who had fought for the freedom of India were rewarded. Sometimes he (Apu) told the villagers that he fought for the country and at others he said it was because he had given his all. Amma said, he had lost all through his own folly. This is a strange attitude. The freedom fighters who fought for India’s liberty, now feel Jittery in the face of freedom. As an activist Appa participated in the movement in a very zestful way which his wife called his ‘folly’.

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