A review by raji_c
Yashodhara: A Novel by P.S.V Prasad, Volga
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
I find myself cheating a lot on this task I have set myself of reading a book from each of India’s states and union territories. For instance, I loved reading Liberation of Sita by Volga, so when I had to read something from Andhra, I didn’t do much research and opted for another one of her works.
This one did not have the same impact as Liberation, but it is still a wonderfully imagined work. Volga is an amazing writer. She imagines meaty female characters and makes them real. That is what I love about her work. This is no different. We have all heard the story of a young prince Siddhartha leaving his young wife and new-born son and heading off to seek enlightenment and eventually become the Buddha. But we know next to nothing of this young wife. In fact, I did not even remember her name. After having read Volga’s book, I will not forget Yashodhara, Siddhartha Gautama’s wife.
Volga imagines the Budhha’s intellectual equal — dare I say his superior — and charts their journey together from their first meeting to their mutual desire and eventual communion of minds. She challenges us to imagine a woman who shares the Buddha’s instincts and impulses but also understands far better than him the limitations imposed on women, who has the foresight to see in his pursuit of truth the possibility of equality for women and encourages and even facilitates a peaceful and dignified severing of bonds so that he can follow his path of introspection and learning. The Yashodhara she imagines is striking. And the marital partnership she presents is no less so, although it might seem utopian.
Initially, I struggled with the book and I think that might be because the translation wasn’t the smoothest. As I have said before, Jerry Pinto’s translation of Sachin Kundalkar’s Cobalt Blue is, for now at least, my gold standard of Indian language translations. This one is not quite the same. But if one sticks with the book, I think, it gets better in the latter half and the philosophical discussions between Yashodhara and Siddharth are quite interesting. And it is not only sexism that is addressed but also Brahminical hegemony maintained through expensive and meaningless rituals: ‘All people have spiritual needs, but they do not understand them. Before they understand them, they are introduced to meaningless religious practices. They are made to believe that following superstitious customs is a pathway to spirituality. These religious sacrifices and oblations to gods make people insensitive to human suffering.’ Which seems very topical even today.
This is actually a short book but since I had trouble engaging with it initially, I took a little longer to finish. But it is quite an interesting read.
This one did not have the same impact as Liberation, but it is still a wonderfully imagined work. Volga is an amazing writer. She imagines meaty female characters and makes them real. That is what I love about her work. This is no different. We have all heard the story of a young prince Siddhartha leaving his young wife and new-born son and heading off to seek enlightenment and eventually become the Buddha. But we know next to nothing of this young wife. In fact, I did not even remember her name. After having read Volga’s book, I will not forget Yashodhara, Siddhartha Gautama’s wife.
Volga imagines the Budhha’s intellectual equal — dare I say his superior — and charts their journey together from their first meeting to their mutual desire and eventual communion of minds. She challenges us to imagine a woman who shares the Buddha’s instincts and impulses but also understands far better than him the limitations imposed on women, who has the foresight to see in his pursuit of truth the possibility of equality for women and encourages and even facilitates a peaceful and dignified severing of bonds so that he can follow his path of introspection and learning. The Yashodhara she imagines is striking. And the marital partnership she presents is no less so, although it might seem utopian.
Initially, I struggled with the book and I think that might be because the translation wasn’t the smoothest. As I have said before, Jerry Pinto’s translation of Sachin Kundalkar’s Cobalt Blue is, for now at least, my gold standard of Indian language translations. This one is not quite the same. But if one sticks with the book, I think, it gets better in the latter half and the philosophical discussions between Yashodhara and Siddharth are quite interesting. And it is not only sexism that is addressed but also Brahminical hegemony maintained through expensive and meaningless rituals: ‘All people have spiritual needs, but they do not understand them. Before they understand them, they are introduced to meaningless religious practices. They are made to believe that following superstitious customs is a pathway to spirituality. These religious sacrifices and oblations to gods make people insensitive to human suffering.’ Which seems very topical even today.
This is actually a short book but since I had trouble engaging with it initially, I took a little longer to finish. But it is quite an interesting read.