A Lyrical Ecofeminist Tale: Book Review of Sonali Prasad’s “Glass Bottom”
Set against the Arabian Sea, the novel narrates the interconnected lives of Gul, Arth, Luni, and Himmo — mother-daughter pairs who live by the sea.
Glass Bottom, the debut novel of Sonali Prasad, is a tale that is centred on the idea of Ecofeminism. Revolving around the stories of its four female protagonists, the story interweaves the complexities and tragedies of these women with the vast enigma of the sea and its exploitation by humans.
Set against the Arabian Sea, the novel narrates the interconnected lives of Gul, Arth, Luni, and Himmo — mother-daughter pairs who live by the sea. Luni is working in a beauty parlour and has a strange obsession with collecting hair strands which she uses as threads to draw pictures on a cloth tapestry. The story hints that Luni had survived an abusive marriage and had run away to save her daughter. Living among the fisherfolk, she is a single mother who is often plagued by the memories of her past. Her daughter Himmo, a curious and lively girl who loves to collect abandoned slippers and odd objects from the sea, is navigating the struggles of growing up and the absence of a father. In contrast to this working-class mother and daughter stand Gul and Arth. Gul works in the geology centre and is a scholar. Her daughter Arth who works with an artist and is grieving her grandfather’s demise, carries the weight of confusion, anxiety, and estrangement from her mother. Tied to their lives is the sea which is constantly getting encroached upon and exploited in the name of development plans. The carcass of a whale shark that washes up on the shore and the brewing of a storm bring these women to reflect on their losses, on nature and life itself.
Luni and Himmo live a separate life from Gul and Arth and although there are no direct interactions between these pairs, their lives run parallel to each other regardless of the divide in their economic and life circumstances. It is interesting to note that all four women are obsessed with collecting things. Luni collects hair from her parlour, Gul collects stones, Arth collects newspaper clippings and Himmo collects washed-up slippers from the beach. Given that these women carry a sense of loss within them, this act of collecting things appears as a desperate attempt to reclaim that loss, a habit that ties them together.
The eco-feminist aspect of the text is not limited to the four protagonists but to all the women living around them. The author notes that in the event of a calamity when storms and the turbulence of the sea afflict the people of the coast, the men “who had known to run away from the waves” and “keep their heads above water” survive, but women, who are taught submissive gender roles but not survival skills, end up dead:
“The women, meanwhile, trapped by duty to their loved ones and the very thing they thought gave them currency- a forehead curl to mark the spouse’s fortune…got tangled in grass, metals and bushes; did not seek higher ground if the waves had stripped them naked; and were found gashed, wrapped, strangled…clinging to their old and young” (147)
The author also notes how mindless urbanisation and destruction not only affects nature but also the indigenous and poor people living by the shore who are displaced and ruined. Their houses, including Luni’s, are threatened by a bulldozer and the road it creates keeps moving forward like an unstoppable force, nonchalantly eliminating the people in its path:
“A few familiar faces looked out of the windows and regarded the road. The inevitability of it. It seemed to leap out of heads in power to cut through and climb over anything. No matter what the cost, or who got displaced in the process. No court order or sacred concern could halt it for too long. The tribes of the island knew this after little remained of them and their protest.” (72)
Such lines reiterate the idea that the exploitation of people and nature is the conscious doing of a capitalist power structure and its excuses of development. This becomes more evident in the story when the grand hotel by the sea is allowed to stay while the houses of poor people are accused of encroachment and razed down.
The novel has a fragmented narration. Dreams and unconnected sentences create a sense of absurdity and ambiguity. It makes the narrative hazy, clouding the characters, and allowing the reader to pick up hints about them from the haze. This makes the characters mysterious and detached. Even though some aspects of these characters, like the tussle between mothers and daughters, are relatable, largely, these women are elusive and beyond comprehension.
The two main reasons for this are the lack of context and direction in the movement of the plot and the highly complex language. Apart from the fact that this story is happening by the Arabian Sea, all other factors that define the characters are vague. Who are these women? Where did they come from? What do they wish to achieve in life? These questions are ambiguously and vaguely answered and the author spends more effort in tracing the present psychological turmoil of these characters, which without context does not exact empathy from the reader. The plot keeps meandering without an aim and the ending is as ambiguous as the beginning. The significance of the whale and what happens to these four characters at the end are not very clear. The artist who is mentioned repeatedly in Arth’s stories vanishes midway along with the missing boy Arth tried to find, to zero in on Arth’s and Gul’s mother-daughter relationship. The backstory of the grandfather is also revealed much later and it would have enhanced the plot if the author had given hints about the grandfather figure and organically led up to the conflict between Gul and Arth.
The poetry in Prasad’s language is commendable and it stands out. The high lyricism of her prose deserves special remark. However, a more concrete rendition of her ideas could have made the story as enjoyable as the poetry in her lines. The language is often cryptic and does not help in the interpretation of the context. Many of the descriptions only lead to ambiguity which disrupts the flow of reading and the reader’s comprehension.
Glass Bottom is a story with a lot of potential, but it may not be everyone’s cup of tea. The idea behind the story is interesting but the execution could have been better. If not for the story, readers who love lyrical prose can surely give this book a chance.
This review is written by in exchange for a review copy from India.
