Get Ready for Battle

In this 1962 novel Ruth Prawer Jhabvala pokes gentle and mostly affectionate fun at an urban Indian family. Gulzari Lal is a prosperous property owner and the easy-going and kindly patriarch. He has long been separated from his wife Sarla Devi, but is content with his mistress, the plump, wily and honey-tongued widow Kusum. She would like to marry him, but that would involve a divorce from Sarla Devi which her brother, Brij Mohan, forbids as an insult to his family's honour. So one strand in the novel is how Kusum attempts to secure her heart's desire. Another strand concerns Gulzari Lal's rather ineffectual son Vishnu who works in a desultory way in his father's office and who mixes with the `modern' younger generation, to the dismay of his very traditional and limited wife Mala, an unhappy and lonely figure. A third strand is about a `colony' of very poor people living in Bundi Busti, a slum area on the edge of the town, and who face eviction by property speculators: Gulzari Lal and Vishnu, though not wicked or unscrupulous by nature, become drawn in this scheme, while Sarla Devi, who sees herself as a social worker, is working hard to save them from eviction. She and another character in the book, Vishnu's friend Gautam, represent the ascetic side of Indian life, critical of what materialism is doing to modern India. There is also a mystical side to Sarla Devi. All these characters are well and richly drawn (Kusum in particular); they frequently quarrel, but as nearly frequently make up afterwards: it's sometimes a little hard to keep up with the complications of their relationships. And the Indian settings, indoors and out of doors, are of course very well observed.