When I visited my parents during festivals or family gatherings, the conversation would center around people like Raju, a character in the novel, who were on the lookout for poor, ignorant young girls with whom they could “act out” a marriage and then, sell them to the Indian brothels in Mumbai for a couple of thousands of rupees.[break]
Like the author, I was a mute spectator of all that was happening. That must have been partly because I was still too small to tackle the social anomaly or because I didn’t want to be attacked by the prostitution ring which ran with the blessings and strong protection from local and national level leaders and even the law enforcement agencies of that time.
With the passage of time and with the Maoist revolution seated deeply in the hinterlands of Nepal that lasted for 10 years from mid-nineties until 2006, things have certainly changed. Although the remnants of this oldest trade aren’t going to be eliminated overnight, they certainly have decreased significantly.
Though its plot is sad, the novel, ‘Maya, My Love’ is an interesting read. Written in a somewhat meditative narrative, the story takes us directly to the heart of the main characters Maya and Raju, the victim and the victor, respectively. Its plot is simple – Raju, himself a victim of a poor somewhat dysfunctional family leaves the village and grows up with the ills in town; falls prey to the prostitution ring and becomes their contractor; goes to a hilly village; acts out a marriage to Maya; returns to the town with her; takes her to a brothel in Mumbai and sells her. After a few years, Maya returns to her village with a deadly disease and she is stigmatized.
The twist in the novel comes when readers come to the realization that the victor is a victim as well. Readers are left to draw their own conclusions to this open ended short novel. Maybe Ranjan, also the founder of Spiny Babbler, who has five other books to his credit, could write another novel as a sequel to this one.
While Ranjan has done a great job in narrating this heard but forgotten story to the readers of English, it could have been even better if he had written it keeping foreign readers in mind. My point here is that the readers who have not been to Nepal or aren’t familiar with the lifestyle, customs and traditions, might find it hard to connect with the subplots since certain things that need justifications are left unexplained.
If this novel was published at the time it was written, I’m sure it would have been able to create a national or regional debate about women trafficking that was so infamous at that time. For now, it makes for a good read that raises the issue of human trafficking, though in a fictionalized form.
The writer, host of a TV Talk Show “American Conversations: Connecting Frontiers” is a linguist-on-call at Random House.
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