What lies beneath the Blue Bedspread

Volume 2 Issue 2 Monsoon Edition 2022

Abstract

Aim: A comparative study of: Narration/narrative technique, with reference to Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children and Haroun and The Sea of Stories, and Sibling Relationship, with Reference to Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. Methodology and Approach: My paper examines the narrative technique of the novel, drawing parallels with the narration of Rushdie’s self-conscious narrator, Saleem Sinai, of Midnight’s Children and also with the issues of ‘telling’ and silence in his Haroun and The Sea of Stories. The sibling relationship of the novel is compared with the relationship of Arundhati Roy’s twins, Estha and Rahel, from The God of Small Things. Outcome: The Blue Bedspread is Raj Kamal Jha’s maiden attempt at novel writing. His prose is deceptively simple and bare. Yet, the tales he weaves are dark, dense and surreal, often containing brooding, repugnant elements. The book is constituted of thirty-one stories revolving around a family that has a murky history. Conclusion and Suggestion: It is a non-linear narrative and the stories can even be shuffled and rearranged, without having a disrupting effect on the main narrative. The novel talks about the issue of narration and about the dependability of the ‘truth’ told. The narrator questions his own version of the tales told and introduces the reader with the possibility of many more versions of the ‘truth’. The study brings out the conditions that the siblings brave as they grow up and shows how disturbing secrets of families, that are mostly kept in the closet, like abuse and incest, are frankly discussed.