Marriage under the arclights

Manjima Chatterjee on dissecting marriages in Limbo and keeping the local sensibilities in her prose intact

Manjima Chatterjee's Limbo splits open marriages, drags out the niggles and lets the characters attack their discomfort. Three couples, three marriages — each through silences and outbursts reconcile to a life together or apart.

Chatterjee's Limbo captures marriages in contemporary India travelling through new and old relationships, metropolis and suburbs. Her couples are shorn of names and severely entrenched in their gender identities. The oldest couple looks back at 40 years of marriage stuck in an udan khatola (a kind of cable car) over a holy place. The young, cosmopolitan couple squabbles over dishwashers, maids and remote control. Between the newly-wed suburban couple, dialogues are sparse with the “contemporary woman trapped in a traditional framework and the man caught up in his manhood.”

Full report here Hindu