Mamta Kalia

you. No one has read them in the last one
hundred years. Read them and then we
shall talk further.”
These letters are great achievements of
the novel – outstanding examples of prose
drenched in love. Victorian morality that
considers all contact between men and
women outside marriage taboo matches
amazingly with eastern notions. The sanctity
of the woman’s body and the fear of it being
polluted through sexual contact dwarfs
before the exalted love of Mitva and
Chhutku. But Chhutku is missing in direct
narrations.
During questioning by the police, it
comes out of Allen’s mouth that when the
murder took place he was with the girl, but
in the court he maintains silence. Allen’s
silence itself becomes the cause of his being
sent to the gallows. This is an outcome of the
Victorian moral values surrounding the
purity of a lady. If we speak in terms of the
frame of the novel, this silence finds its voice
the first time in Fr Camillus’ diary. But here
too all he says about the girl is: “Can you
cause a bad reputation to the person you
love?”
Vibhuti Rai has used the technique of
visual images too in this novel. The ghost of
Madam Ripley Bean shows some scenes to
the journalist. This is in fact a re-adaptation
of one of the ancient techniques of Indian
narrative tradition. Bhavabhuti in his Uttara
Ramacharita shows the past story of Rama
through this technique. From the scenes the
ghost of Madam Ripley Bean, playing the role
of a video operator, shows the journalist, fill
the blanks of which we get clues from Allen’s
158 :: April-June 2010
letters and Fr Camillus’ diary. Now the
alternative scenario is revealed, in which we
meet Allen and the girl Chhutku. Here
contact between the pahadi [mountain]
culture and colonial culture is at a different
dimension. The love of two lovers who have
connections with the ruling class finds
expression through pahadi songs and
folklore. The Victorian fear of ‘going native’
is meaningless here. The letters and visual
images are estimable parts of the novel; at
the same time, these non-traditional
mediums are also tools in pursuing the truth.
Actually, there are three pivots to the
frame within which the love story takes
shape – Fr Camillus’ diary, Allen’s letters, the
scenes shown by the ghost of Madam Ripley
Bean. Seen in the context of this frame, Allen,
who is recorded as a murderer in
government documents, emerges as a
playful lover and a living human being.
In the contemporary memories of
Mussoorie, Madam Ripley Bean exists as a
miserly, mean old woman who fears her
father as a teenager does even at the age of
seventy-five – and this even though it has
been years since her father died. In the
construction of the novel, ghosts contribute
in several ways. There is no need to mention
here that in fact it was her father’s ghost that
Madam Ripley Bean feared. The seller of old
books, who had purchased Madam Bean’s
father’s books, says: “When I started going
there, it had been many years since the
father died. But he used to visit her every
day and rebuke her severely, though
Madam was already approaching old age
then.”