Vardan by Premchand

The beauty of the novels of Premchand is in the plot. I think it is too early to make any judgmental statement on the literary quality of the writings as this is the first novel of Premchand that I read with an academic inclinations. However, I do not want to wait till I read all his novels either. At least I can make some judgements based on the novel that I read.

Vardan is a novel that is set in Varanasi. The story is of three families and two main characters. The hero of the novel is a young person who is the only son of a father, a rich construction contractor who later leaves his wife and only son is search of peace. When the head of the family leaves for Kumbha snan he never comes back. As usual the mother of the hero is a housewife with little knowledge of what her husband has been doing all these days. She was not involved in the nitty-gritty of her husband's entrepreneurial venture. She is lost in the web of the account register of her husband and ultimately gets out of it by selling all her property except the house. To make both ends meet she lends one portion of the house. A family comes to stay in the house. The family had a girl child, only child of her parents, the heroine of the novel. Both the hero and heroine start loving each other. Premchand wrote novel in a different era and love had a different meaning. However, one thing that took me by surprise was one instance when the small girl expresses her desire to marry the actor to his mother. The mother says that the actor is like her brother. The girl boldly asks if she, the mother of the actor, wants to make her daughter-in-law or not? I think this instance was very strong in the novel. I doubt if any writer in that era would have gone to this extent. Even today when love between two small children is mostly perceived as "bhai-behan ka pyar". The use of love has a very different meaning during different stages of life. In the novel it is quite explicit that the love between the hero and the heroine was not 'bhai-behan ka pyar'. I remember that similar kind of confusion has been depicted in one of the novels of Khalil Gibran, in Broken Wings. In that novel too the hero and the heroine love each other and both as brother and sister as well as like two young lover.

The concept of love has been depicted in the novel, right through the novel. The confusion and dilemma remains. In the due course of dilemma the heroine gets married to a son of a rich family. The heroine is well versed in literature and this person is a vagabond. He is into all kinds of adventures right from enjoying females to falcons. This guy is adept in anything except studies. He is a real hero when it come to kite flying, stealing ornaments and roaming around. The heroine's family come to know about this boy but it was late. The girl is married to this kite flying genius and is staying in her parents house after marriage as it was during those days, the concept of Gavna. The heroine was married when she was only thirteen.

As the heroine is staying with her parents she meets the hero who was badly trying to forget her. He is very upset. In meantime the mother of the heroine dies and she leaves of her husband's home. The hero leaves for Allahabad for higher education. The husband of heroine is ashamed of the brilliance of his wife and decides to study in Allahabad. After reaching her husband's house the heroine thinks that a 'Hindu Nari' should only and only have a place for her husband in her heart and nobody else have any space in it. She feels that her love with the hero before marriage was a sin and after marriage even thought of him will be a deadly sin. Now her only and only love is her husband whatever he is. Suddenly there is cholera in the town and many people get into the grip of it, scores of people die. The father-in-law decides to buy a village. The entire kinship shifts from Varanasi to the village. It is in portion that Premchand describes the state of Indian village in those days. The description of the village is through the letters of the heroine that she writes to her husband.

The husband of the heroine is a 'rasiya' by nature. In Allahabad he fells for the daughter of the gardener. One day he is caught when he was with the gardener's daughter in her room. He runs for his life boards a train and finally gets killed when he jumps out of the train when he saw ticket collector approaching him. Once again the cycles of pain and agony starts. The heroine is assumed to be a bad omen, the typical "kulakshni". However, there is no great attempt to picturise the ills committed to the heroine. She is left alone with a house help to survive in Benaras her mother-in-law stays in the village. The heroine started writing poems. Her sister-in-law gets to read her poems and subsequently also took it to her husband. All were impressed and the poems were published in journals. The heroine had lot of admirers and she becomes a very successful poetess.

In meantime the hero of the novels leaves the house for a walk to never return back. When he came back he was a saint. The purpose of his life was to worship the motherland, Bharat mata. He is very popular in his work and many people, rich and poor, old and young, join him in his effort to eradicate the ills of the country. The female who used to stay with the heroine fells in love with the hero and started to believe that she is his wife. The heroine was also responsible for this animated love. I think the inclusion of this lady in last few pages was more like compulsion than a choice. It appears very unnatural and I doubt this event was originally in the mind of the Premchandji. It is a compromise I guess.

The writer is a member of the society and he has to abide by the social circumstances. Apart for the influence of the social circumstances one also has to look into the commercial viability. Something against the social norms is also against the market as the market is embedded in the society. I doubt the people would have accepted if the heroine falls in love after she has become a widow. It would have been a crime in the Hindu patriarchal society, a blasphemy. Therefore the writer, Premchandji, discovers a new character and puts it into the last few pages in the novel. It appears to be synthetic but then writer has to abide by some of the social norms.

The novel ends with the female who used to stay with the heroine becoming a priestess and serving the cause of the country.

This novel is not very impressive either in the quality of the plot nor in the descriptive content. The novel has the cycle of pain and happiness of the kind that we read about Premchandji's writings but the intensity is missing. I do not know when this novel was published but definitely not during the peak days of Premchandji's writing.