Word: dhan
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...cynicism. Like most tragedies, the dark and demoralizing narrative arc of Mountains Painted with Turmeric is predictable - its heft relying on the inexorability of disaster to come. From the start, there's no question that things will end badly for the good, penurious farmer of "limited intellect" whose name, Dhané (or "wealthy one"), is a barbed irony...
...plot that propels the novella, but rather the intimate, unfolding portrait of village life in eastern Nepal that Chettri sketches in masterfully stark but occasionally lyrical prose - like a brisk, cold brook dappled with sun. Chettri vividly conjures the social and natural landscapes in which Dhané's miserable story takes place, from trade councils lorded by ruthless landowners, to placid livestock pastures and swollen rice paddies pleating the hills. The book "might not entertain its readers, because that is not its aim," Chettri has written. "I have simply tried to give a picture of the villages in the hills...
...impossible to separate the natural and human realms of the book. Everything is rooted in the soil, from Dhané's financial crisis that stems from the repossession of his livestock - floated as security for a bad loan - to the elemental metaphors of wood, fire and water that Chettri uses to define his characters. Strapped with debt, Dhané's "thoughts raced by like a powerful torrent"; Maina, his wife, bemoans the "log that fate had flung at them" after learning that Jhuma, the sister, has been raped. The swaggering soldier, who blinded Jhuma with his khakis, foreign words...
...Mountains Painted with Turmeric is a well-captured docudrama, and Jhuma's acquiescence makes sense in a novella that chronicles life in an isolated 1950s Nepalese village. Dhané's misfortune, though heartbreaking, is also true to life. Readers may pity him as he and his family are run out of town, and yet, as rural tragedies go, theirs is distressingly mundane - and timeless...
Feelings are even stronger in rural areas. Explains Ram Dhan, 28, a peasant farmer from Uttar Pradesh: "The reason villagers aspire to father sons is because, apart from being able to help us in the fields, they will bring the family dowry. It is one way of improving our lot." With sentiments like these, even reformists concede that completely eliminating dowries is impossible. Hence, families throughout India will continue to greet the birth of a daughter as a sign of bad luck...