One day the couple receive a call from Mohan’s sister lamenting the fact that her son Ashish failed his college exams due to poor attendance and would have to attempt them again. It was in these things, which didn’t talk or, strictly speaking, have lives, that her days played out: her relationship with the shirts, neatly ironed and folded, was so much more direct that any other interaction these days.” She had scrubbed at some of them to remove the mark, but it had been the collar, not the stain, that had begun to despair and fray. It wasn’t his fault nothing could be done. It was still there, the mild ring of dirt inside his collars, like a smudged pencil line. “Four of Mohan’s shirts, collected this morning from the ironing boys, lay on the bed.
I love how Joseph details Laxmi’s frustration with their emotional detachment, as for instance in this excerpt. An avid reader, Mohan wishes he could do more than just write letters….his secret desire is to write stories worthy of publication and Laxmi, frustrated by how his dreams make him distant from her, turns to the television for company. Both seem frustrated by this mundane existence. When we first meet Mohan and Laxmi their days are mundane with set routines and nothing much happens to alter it. Mohan is a letter writer (one of those quaint jobs which have vanished today) and from his seat under a tarpaulin near the main Post Office he sits and writes letters for those who are illiterate – anything from heartfelt letters to the completion of bureaucratic forms, while Laxmi is a homemaker. The story revolves around empty-nesters, Mohan and Laxmi Karekar, whose lives are pretty humdrum and unremarkable.
In the book, ‘Saraswati Park’ is the name of a housing complex in a suburb somewhere deep in the heart of Mumbai. Saraswati, the goddess of knowledge and the Arts in Hindu mythology has always been my favourite deity. The title alone was enough to draw me to this book.
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