Women Existence in Jaishree Misra”s Ancient Promises

Jaishree Misra’s Ancient Promises, a sensitive account of a girl’s efforts to find her destination in life, is full of keen psychological observations, and culminates in a sane and balanced view of life. Transplanted from her home and the familiar world of Delhi at the age of eighteen to a highly conventional and aristocratic Nair family in Kerala, suffering from the pangs of separation from her first love, married to a man who is neither good nor bad but simply an ‘expert in the art of escape’, and surrounded by nasty and sly in-laws who will never let her belong to their world, the problems Janu has to face are numerous. All her efforts to endear herself to the family of her husband, which includes even begetting a child who is supposed to bridge the gap between herself and her new family, are in vain. It comes as a terrible shock to her when her child is declared ‘mentally handicapped’, but her intense attachment with the baby forms her best protection, and surprisingly, also her means of salvation. She starts rebelling against the snobbish conventions of the family, and slowly there emerges the first faint outline of a plan of escape. She manages a foreign scholarship to go abroad, and it is then, when she is almost ready to get out, that the panicky husband and in-laws try their best to stop her. The last step in this man oeuvre is to take away her daughter Riya. Still she goes to London and completes her course. These are her stolen days of perfect happiness with her lover Arjun. But she must return to Kerala to get her Riya back, because she believes that a life of happiness built on the pain and sufferings of other people cannot last. There is a hole in her soul which only her daughter can fill. Thus her return to Kerala is at the risk of losing even the only other happiness of her life, that is, Arjun. Back in Kerala, things suddenly turn out in her favour, she gets the divorce, Riya is returned to her, and she is ready to start a new life with Arjun. This paper analyses how Janaki, a woman molded according to the dictates of Manusmrithi emerges as a new empowered woman who controls her destiny. Janu disrupts the mould in which she has been created by the patriarchal society. The novel ends optimistically and the author's note in fact reveals the ultimate gift that Janu receives at the end as an ancient promise fulfilled.