Probable Title- A Psychological Ghar Wapsi in A Season of No Return:

Space and Identity in Gurdial Singhs Eponymous Short story

In this paper I argue, the character of Kauri in A Season of No Return
(written in nineteen sixties by Gurdial Singh) undertakes a real as well as a mythic
journey from the village to the city. In her psycho-geographical journey, Kauri
negotiates the rejection of the village which is outliving its utility - a part of Kauris
self. She struggles to embrace the city space, which symbolizes for her the nonvillage.
In order to substantiate my argument, I will expound the thoughts and actions
of Kauri as narrated in the short story A Season of No Return. In addition, I attempt
to view Kauris internal conflict in the light of Ashis Nandys formulation of the
journey as a metaphor for an expedition to the borders of the self (Preface; x),
elaborated in the book An Ambiguous Journey to the City in which he theorizes the
formation of the self in modern India through a re-reading of Freuds psychic
apparatus of the Id, Ego and Super-Ego.
In my reading of Ashis Nandys An Ambiguous Journey to the city, the
village is seen as a repository of both Id and the Super-Ego- primordial passion and
authoritarian conscience- and the self associated with the city is seen to be
organized around an ego so autonomous that it yields agency to nothing outside
itself. Nandy argues that the individualism at the heart of the self associated with the
city, sheltered at its center not the classical potentially emancipatory ego but an
overtly gilded ego. In this sense, Nandy is not imposing the Freudian psychic
apparatus in toto to expound the selves associated with the city and the village, but
rather problematizes it. He propounds that the autonomous Freudian Ego is replaced

by a new primordiality- the crack pot rationality and objectivity of the modern public
self located in the city. (Preface; viii)
In the short story, A Season of No Return following Nandy, I would argue
that Kauri indulges in a controlled regression to the village, which can be read as a
form of play with visions that chalk out another possible point of departure for the
city. (preface; ix) In effect, I attempt to propose that in Kauris tussle between the
village and the city at the level of her imagination, a neurotic condition emerges in
her. Through Kauris thoughts and action in the short story, I detect the symptoms of
melancholia as formulated by Freud, and posit that this physical manifestation of the
loss of the village enables the revelation of the mythic journey from the village to the
city.
Kauri, the central character of A Season of No Return is geographically
uprooted from the village to the city in order to take care of Santokhs (her son) wife
during her pregnancy and to simultaneously learn about her daughter-in-law, who
Santokh married of his own will. Reluctantly accompanying her son, Kauri had a
blurred vision of the foreign land as a space thousand miles away (380). Initially,
the urban space appeared to be some kind of a paradise as her son and daughter-inlaw took care of all her needs. However, with the passage of time, Kauri becomes
restive and indifferent towards her daughter-in-laws sweet words and to all the
luxury and material comfort that is provided to her.
In light of Ashis Nandys argument, the daughter-in-law can be seen as the
representative of the self who identifies with the city to such an extent that it
constructs an autonomous ego in her , which yields agency to nothing outside itself.
This autonomous Freudian Ego located in the city is replaced by Id (crackpot
rationality and objectivity) in the daughter-in-law - by her desire to view everything

rationally and objectively so much so that the conversations between her and Kauri
are only at the level of material needs or of chores related to rearing Kaka. For
instance, A Season of No Return opens with the daughter-in-law entering Kauris
room with a cup of tea in her hand and repeating the very same words in her
characteristic sweet voice which Kauri had been hearing for the past one year, Maaji,
pranaam! Its six oclock. Please have you tea. (377) However, the narrator informs
that the daughter-in-law does not wait for Kauris response, in much the same way as
the id demands an instant gratification of the desires from there and doesnt engage in
a dialogue regarding the same. It should also be noted that does Kauri wish to respond
to the daughter-in-laws arbitrarily imposed routine.
In addition, Kauris husband can be seen as the Super-Ego for Santokh- the
authoritarian conscience embedded in the village. However, in the process of
making the decision to marry a woman outside their biradari and thereby
disregarding the decision of his parents, Santokh disassociates himself from the
Super-Ego. This disassociation can be seen not only at the level of dismissing his
fathers wish but also in his act of pyscho-geographically displacing Kauri for his own
personal benefit. This is evident when Santokhs father sarcastically comments on his
decision of taking Kauri to the city: Bhai, you do whatever you wish to. As if you
have ever sought my advice on whatever youve done so far? Dont you worry about
me! I could always go to the gurudwara and eat at the langar. (380) As guilt is one of
the dominant mechanisms through which the Super-ego keeps an authoritarian
conscience alive, we can see how Sanotkhs distancing from his father is a pyschogeographical journey that he embarks upon.
Kauris confinement in the enclosed government quarter, the commercial
attitude of Santokh and the daughter-in-law and the imposed clockwork life relegates

Kauri to the margins of her self. She constantly mourns the idea of community
that the village symbolized for her.
Sigmund Freud in his essay Mourning and Melancholia (1917) posits that
mourning is the reaction to the loss of a loved person, or to the loss of some
abstraction which has taken the place of one. (243) According to Freud, melancholia
is the pathologic manifestation of mourning and he catalogues its mental features as:
profoundly painful dejection, cessation of interest in the outside world, loss of the
capacity to love, inhibition of all activity, and a lowering of the self-regard (244).
However, in melancholia the subject fails to identify the object-loss and even if the
object-loss is identified, the subject is unable to identify what about it evokes a
painful dejection. Moreover, Melancholia also has an influence in the somatic realm:
the subject is unable to consume and digest food and encounters difficulty in sleeping
(insomnia).
These symptoms enlisted by Freud can be detected in Kauri from the outset of
the story: It had been almost a week now, [that Kauri did not know]what sound
sleep was. (377) Insomnia, thereby, is the first medical condition that can be detected
by the reader. As the story progresses, the reader learns that Kauri has been assigned
to devote her full time and attention to kaka, her grandson who is handed over to her
daily at exactly thirty minutes past six by Santokh. During the grandmothers
engagement with Kaka, the reader is provided a window to the inner working of
Kauris mind and actions:
And while talking to him, she repeatedly stole a glace towards the
kitchen, the daughter-in-laws room, and the bathroom or just stared
blankly at the walls, her ears attuned to the sound of the footfalls.

(That strange moment a strange dread could be seen lurking in her

eyes.) Suddenly she felt a wave of nausea sweeping over her
(A Season of No Return; 378)
Kauris painful dejection can be seen as a result of her anxiety- the fear of
being left alone in the enclosed government quarter. Her act of mourning the loss of
village life and the discomfort with her entrapment in an absurd circularity plays out in
Kauris actions when she is given the bottle of milk by the daughter-in-law and
simultaneously reveals her inhibition towards this daily task:
[The daughter-in-law] repeated the same sentence she has been
spouting at that hour for the past three month now, Please Maaji, give
kaka his feed. Perhaps it was the first time in three months that Kauri
had not responded with her usual warmth saying, Give it to me,
child. (A Season of No Return; 378-379)
The reader is also provided with a glimpse of Kauris cessation of interest in
the outside world: when the Gujarati woman, her neighbor greets her from the
verandah, something cross(es) [Kauris] mind that she decide(s) not to respond.
Another instance which unveils Kauris vexation and restlessness is when Santokh
returns from his office with a few friends: She could constantly hear the sounds of the
peeling laughter and the tip-tapping of her daughter-in-laws chappals coming in from
the living room. It felt as through their neighbors son was firing shots with his gun.
This was enough to make her restless all over again. (385)
As noted above, Freud claims melancholia also has an influence in the somatic
realm of the subject. This claim holds true in Kauris case as she is not only unable to
sleep- not having had a wink of sleep the previous night (385)- but also faces
difficulty consuming food- With great difficulty, she managed to finish half the

parantha a sudden pain stabbed her back and she lay down towards kakas feet.
(380)
Although Kauris actions and thoughts expose her melancholic condition,
which is informed by the loss of the sense of community located in the village, she
consecutively indulges in a controlled regression to the village. Its a controlled
regression as This can be seen in her regular visits to the gurudwara where she could
meet several Punjabi women. In addition, the park outside the gurudwara enabled
Kauri to reconstruct the sense of community. She made a special bond with a woman
from Jalandar with whom she would share all her grieves and sorrows. This
constructed space of the park in the civic society serves as the mahaula of the
village- a space where people would make either new acquaintances or renew the old
ones. (381)
However, her unconscious attempts at recreating the village in the city space
were not effective. From her conversations with the woman from Jalandar in the park,
rearing kaka to talking to the maid, Kauri achieved relief only temporarily. There was
constantly a feeling of restless that lurked in her. Several times she voiced her desire to
return back to the village: Kaka, please take me back to the village. However, her
son always shunned her desire with the same rhetorical question: are you being
inconvenienced here in anyways? (382). Thereby, Kauris desire to return to the
village- the moments when her nostalgia for home would grow into a nagging
obsession she would resort to the act of dreaming about her village in the night:
The open courtyard of the house and the children frolicking about
theretheir hands dripping with fresh cow dungbursting into loud
guffaws as they chased each other.
(A Season of No Return; 382)

Kauris dream brings to the forefront the open space of the village that was
rooted in Gandhis ethical and cultural dictum- an agricultural community which lived
a pure way of life that was close to the nature. The depiction of the village life in
Kauris dream then, can be seen in stark contrast- both spatially and morally- to the
urban city lifestyle which replaced Gandhis dictum with grim instrumentality and
precepts of reason. This instrumentality can be seen in the relationship of Kauri and
her daughter-in-law where the earlier filial bond of mother and daughter-in-law (albeit
governed by the patriarchal positioning of saas-bahu in a Hindu household) has been
replaced by new labour equation. Now, Kauri would become a burden to the family if
she doesnt serve her role of babysitter in the household, she follows the instrumental
logic which gives force to the nuclear family in the cityspace, as opposed to the joint
family in the village space. When Santokh and his wife, finally decide to send Kauri
back to the village:
In a composed manner, he was trying to explain it to his wife, What is the way out
now? Even I can see the problems itll create; but well engage in a maid.

This replacement occurred due to a new conceptualization of the time-space in the

modern entity of the nation-state, following the establishment of colonial rule and the
emergence of Indian nationalism in the nineteenth century. Wedding the tenets of
Gandhianism with Nehruvian socialism, the nationalist movement sought authenticity
and

identity

through

the

self-sufficient

rural

communities

(http://www.mkgandhi.org/revivalvillage/) and propounded a vision of progress for the

agricultural community. This was supposed to go hand in hand with Indias emergence
as an industrial power, a development that was supposed to happen with assistance
from the British and Russian nation-states. However, these ides of the nation state did

not match with the political realism of the nation after independence, which in the
context of Punjab entailed a coping with the task of rehabilitation post-partition and
also the emergence of the Akali Dal which claimed a separate state identified on
linguistic majority. This separatist movement known as the Punjabi Suba movement
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punjabi_Suba_movement,
https://books.google.co.in/books?
id=qJaHAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA3&lpg=PA3&dq=1950s+punjab&source=bl&ots=ebR6
N7455E&sig=njtNb8k6fMQWAkHexhLoYWGwXxg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEw
iP47PK18LLAhXPJI4KHWvIAZs4ChDoAQg9MAc#v=onepage&q=1950s
%20punjab&f=false) was synonymous with the rise of the Akali Dal party and it took
place in the around the time as the writing of this story. Even though, its historically
noted as a much less violent struggle as compared to the Khalistan movement, the very
moment of secession encouraged an identity politics which sought to see linguistic
choice tied to regional identity. This was accompanied by an urban industrial vision- a
desire for progress and an alluring lifestyle, which can be seen in Santokh and his
wife. However, this very desire for modernity brought with it a state of individual
alienation and cultural uprooting in the couple.
Kauri in contrast to Santokh and the daughter-in-law can be positioned as
psychologically homeless in the city space due to her inability to embrace the civic
virtues and in her constant failure at recreating a village community in the city. She
mourns to reunite with her mental and physical home- the village to such an extent that
it pathologically manifests itself into fever.
In the preceding paragraphs, I have tried to read the incomplete psycho-geographical
journey from village to the city as an interpretative framework to understand Kauris
behavior in her sons urban residence. I would like to end this paper with some

questions emerging from the limitations of my methodology- how do we psychoanalyse the manifest content of Kauris recurring dream of children playing with cowdung in an empty courtyard, when we have just one re-telling of the dream in the
scope of the narrative? Is it the repressed desire to access the non-productive
communitarian space of the village which finds wish-fulfillment in the dream world?
Even if I read Nandys division of psychic apparatus in the selves associated with the
village and the city, what primordial passions thrive in the space of the village, which
will be replaced with the urban primordiality of rationality and objectivity? Finally, if
not the controlled regression that Kauri indulges in negotiating the selves associated
with the village and the city, what systemic changes need to be brought about which
undoes the binary between village and city apart from the Liberalizatio-PrivatizationGlobalization measures which give birth to the problematic concept of the glocal or
even global village?