All is well with the Lulla inhabitants. However, a turning point comes when Thenga Jani flees with a Christian girl Santosh Kumari. Thenga Jani, the only son of Ramchandra Muduli, the headman of Lulla village, is betrothed to Saria Dann, the only daughter of Hari Jani, a respectable elder of the community. But Thenga falls in love with Santosh Kumari, a Christian Domb girl and violates the tribal codes. They decide to run away to Assam to work on tea estates and plan to build their dream home in a town where the rules of the tribal society do not prevail. Thenga Jani and Santosh Kumari’s elopement could be seen as an act of dishonouring and disregarding tribal values and ethics. For Mohanty, the decadence, degradation and downfall of the tribal
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That was a piece of good news. He could forgive all of us. He would bear the burden on his shoulders. However one led one’s life, all sins could be wiped off in his blood some day or other. (Mohanty, Ancestor – 32). This novel has been compared with Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958). In both cases personal tragedy is interfaced with public tragedy. The Ibo community in Things Fall Apart and the tribals of Lulla village in The Ancestor are affected by outside …show more content…
Das (1997), the translator, points out Mohanty’s concern about the outsiders’ disintegration in peaceful life of the tribals as he writes in “Translator’s Introduction”:
We know then that the disapproving eyes are dangerously near; the end is at hand. The gradual corrosion of innocence by a creeping, crawling, lurking evil is as maddening as any modern method of torture: it is not only destroys but debases and humiliates. The contrast between natural and man-made calamity is glaring. Sukru Jani’s wife, Sombari, we are told, was dragged away one day by a man – eating tiger as she collected dry twigs in the forest. Sukru Jani suffers, but for him this event is comprehensible: it is the infinitely convoluted process by which he and his children are transformed from free men into “gotis” or serfs, bound to the Sahukar (moneylender) forever. He cannot comprehend why a man should be arrested and fined for cutting down trees in the jungle.
That the government officers, instrumental to the local moneylender – landlords, are exploitative, this is evident from Kau Paraja, the Goti of Paraja’s head man, who exposes the dark desires of the revenue
That was a piece of good news. He could forgive all of us. He would bear the burden on his shoulders. However one led one’s life, all sins could be wiped off in his blood some day or other. (Mohanty, Ancestor – 32). This novel has been compared with Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958). In both cases personal tragedy is interfaced with public tragedy. The Ibo community in Things Fall Apart and the tribals of Lulla village in The Ancestor are affected by outside …show more content…
Das (1997), the translator, points out Mohanty’s concern about the outsiders’ disintegration in peaceful life of the tribals as he writes in “Translator’s Introduction”:
We know then that the disapproving eyes are dangerously near; the end is at hand. The gradual corrosion of innocence by a creeping, crawling, lurking evil is as maddening as any modern method of torture: it is not only destroys but debases and humiliates. The contrast between natural and man-made calamity is glaring. Sukru Jani’s wife, Sombari, we are told, was dragged away one day by a man – eating tiger as she collected dry twigs in the forest. Sukru Jani suffers, but for him this event is comprehensible: it is the infinitely convoluted process by which he and his children are transformed from free men into “gotis” or serfs, bound to the Sahukar (moneylender) forever. He cannot comprehend why a man should be arrested and fined for cutting down trees in the jungle.
That the government officers, instrumental to the local moneylender – landlords, are exploitative, this is evident from Kau Paraja, the Goti of Paraja’s head man, who exposes the dark desires of the revenue