A critique on The Soul Wills It

by R. Vasundhara Devi

This story is set in a fictitious island far from the reach of civilization. The indigenous race were white-skinned had a refined feeling-association with nature and a mythical structure of consciousness that renders their universe sacred and mysterious. The rational-mechanistic civilization with its confrontationist relationship with nature now invades their land. The military dictator becomes enamored of a native woman, a mother of five children. He kills her husband and four children and takes her away. How she conducts her life in her captivity is the story.

“My husband had only a stick to defend his family. He would not abandon his dharma while life still resided in his body. He was a courageous man.” “My soul’s pleasure, the dharma with which I was born is devotion to my family. Mourning is my continuing relationship with them. I have no relationship with you even though I live here” “Soul and body appear together in this world and must go on until death releases the soul; I have no right to commit suicide.” “You people don’t know what the soul’s pleasure is”

These are some of the observations of the captive woman.

This is a deceptively innocent-looking story with almost a crude, sketchy plot; but its concerns are deeply existential. It challenges us to figure out what the writer intends to convey. The message is not in words but in the way the story is structured. Why the woman maneuvers to live and die the way she chooses shows her strength and also the message.

This world is of appearances and a soul comes into it with an agenda of self-presentation, which may be termed the soul’s desire. Man has some capability for self-awareness by virtue of his reflexive thought. His unacknowledged agenda is his dharma, his pledge to the world he entered into. The cosmic order, the mind and the heart are hereby harmonized and he attains fulfillment. That is the soul’s pleasure. The superficiality so typical of modern times when man has no time to stop and to think is the result of losing sight of this connection. The endurance to go through with this deliberately chosen individuality is what we call character, the courage to be – this is the message we gather from this story.

Sri Viswanatha’s convictions are rooted in Hindu culture with its assumptions about self-renewal and reincarnation. He is perhaps attempting to make us ponder over the hidden dimension of reality, our convictions about transcendence, the interconnectedness of man and his environment.