The Portrayal of Subjective Anguish, Forfeiture, Veracity, Affection and Conviction in Namita Gokhale’s The Book of Shadows

Abstract

Namita Gokhale is a distinguished short story writer and suffragette novelists in Indian Writing in English. She was born at Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh in the year 1956. She completed her education in English Literature from Jesus College and Mary College, Delhi. Gokhale surpasses her characters to bridge a gap between Indian writing in English and provincial languages. She has written nineteen books which consists of short stories, fictions and non-fictions. Being a feminist writer, she delineates women’s pain of seclusion, corporal disorder, conceptual heaviness, discomforts, sentiments, moods and perceptions. She reflects the excruciating life for a woman, her painful experiences and her quest for survival.

            The foremost purpose of this research paper is to showcase the personal grief and loss, veracity, affection and conviction in Namita Gokhale’s well-known novel The Book of Shadows.  She portrays herself as a protagonist, an acid attack survivor, looser of her love and an alienated entity. Rachita, the protagonist of the novel, serves as a replica of Namita Gokhale. Rachita suffers all the oddities and being an emancipated woman, she finds solitude in the Himalayan hills as she spends her childhood there. She searches to fill the void in order to find true comfort.