Do murdoṁ ke lie guldastā: Ritratti di genere e gioco intertestuale nella prosa di Surendra Varmā

Abstract

Do murdoṁ ke lie guldastā (A bunch of flowers for two corpses) is a novel by Surendra Varmā, published for the first time in 1998. It is a sort of reversed Bildungsroman, with a highly theatrical flavor, still almost unknown among Western readers and largely overlooked by Hindi scholars. With this paper I aim at investigating two specific aspects of the text that may encourage reflections on a planetary scale: the deconstruction of conventional gender roles and the presence of intertextual irony. After introducing the plot and the main characters — not only the corpses mentioned in the title, but also the city of Mumbai where most of the events take place — I will firstly linger over the pictures of masculinity and femininity provided by the author, and the beneath problematization of conventional gender roles. As regards this, I argue that  Surendra Varmā’s novel should be read as a possible counterpart of Hindi feminist writing, as it represents a different perspective from which to observe the transformations of gender roles and of the relationships between men and women. Subsequently, I will show how the author plays with intertextuality, introducing ironic and often desecrating connections between Itihāsa (particularly the Mahābhārata) and his characters’ vicissitudes. Both these aspects of the novel are extremely thought-provoking and allow to link Varmā’s work to a conspicuous part of contemporary planetary literature.