An Exploration Of Narrative Technique In Gita Mehta’s A River Sutra

Abstract

Gita Mehta is one of the well-known contributors in Indian English Literature. Indian English Literature has a long tradition of women writers such as earlier novelists Kamala Markandaya, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Anita Desai, Shashi Deshpande, Arundhati Roy, Kiran Desai, etc. Compared to these women novelists Gita Mehta’s contribution is though quantitatively less but it is qualitatively significant because of her handling of the subject-matter and form. As a diasporic writer, she dedicated her writing towards Indian culture and society. Her first work is Karma Cola: Marketing the Mystic East published in 1979 and this first book is a series of interconnected essays weaving Mehta’s impressions of India’s mysticism. Her first novel Raj, published in 1989, is a thorough and colorful historical story that follows the progression of a young woman born into Indian nobility under the British Raj. The novel is a magnificent mixture of history and fiction. Later on she published another novel A River Sutra in 1993. The novel centers on India’s holiest river, the Narmada. It is in the form of interconnected stories. She published another non- fiction Snakes and Ladders in 1997 which is a collection of essays about India since Independence. She defines her India through insightful, intelligent and often witty eyes with a smattering of personalised anecdotes that define it not so much as a set of essays, but a collection of lives.