& çâÌæÚUæð´ ·¤è ¥ôÚU Îð¹Ùæ ÁæÚUè ÚU¹ð´ ¥ÍæüÌ ¥ÂÙð ÜÿØ ÂÚU ŠØæÙ ÚU¹ð´Ð ãæÚU Ù ×æÙð´, €UØô´ç·¤ ·¤æ× ·¤ÚUÙð âð ¥æÂ·¤ô ©gðàØ ·¤è Âýæç# ãôÌè ãñ ¥õÚU ÁèßÙ ·¤æ ¹æÜèÂÙ ÎêÚU ãôÌæ ãñÐ ÖÜð ãè ÁèßÙ ×ð´ ç·¤ÌÙè Öè ·¤çÆÙæ§ü €UØô´ Ù ¥æ°, çÁ™ææâæ ¥õÚU ©ˆâæã ÕÙæ° ÚU¹ð´Ð ŠØæÙ ÚU¹ð´, ÜÿØ ã×ðàææ ¥æÂ·Ô¤ Âæâ ãôÌð ãñ´ çÁ‹ãð´ ÂæÙð ·Ô¤ çÜ° ÂýØæâ ¥æÂ ·¤Öè Öè àæéM¤ ·¤ÚU â·¤Ìð ãñ´Ð

A complete story about the struggle called life

Muneera Parbeen studies complex relationships in a painful war
THE story about two Igbo sisters, the beautiful Olanna and the smart Kainene, in Half of a Yellow Sun stretches through the tough sixties in Nigeria.
It is essentially a story' about love and war, for it is during wars that love faces its toughest tests. Olanna and her twin Kainene face the same demons throughout their Lives, being bom to the nouveau riche business class of the privileged while facing the real people in the "real" life they chose to live, something their parents so easily evade.
But the story isn't only about their lives. What's integrated within this story is the struggle for the independence of Biafra. A communal war fought at a great expense for three years. And that's what makes this novel so rich.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie brings to life the struggle for dignity and the struggle to keep alive at a time when both seem impossible.
The novel boasts such memorable characters as Ugwu, the houseboy working for Gianna's revolutionary lover Odenigbo, Odenigbo himself a university professor from a plain village background - - a growing intellectual who attracts Olanna because of his visions and dreams for the people - -Richard who is Kainene's white lover, the quieter character who tries to find his own identity throughout the story, and the many other colourful characters who get intertwined in the lives of the main characters in the story.
Uqwu. the poor houseboy, is one of the main characters in this story who weaves the story through. He is the most observant, picking up on everything from the moment he arrives to work at Odenigbo's house. He is the symbol of the plain local that Odenigbo believes in and wants to improve life for. Ugwu
makes use of this opportunity as his thirst for knowledge is satiated by his master's indulgence in him. Ultimately Uqwu is the only one in the entire story whose life improves through war and
Odenigbo lives with books, and the thoughts in his mind train through plains no one has ventured into before. He does not allow foreigners in his evening discussions at home. Instead he sows the seeds for thriving intellectuals to meet in his house and articulate their opinions about the political goings-on in the country.
This is what attracts Olanna to Odenigbo. the fact that he believes in what he sees as the rights of the ordinary people, a world far removed from that of her parents, who wine and dine the hot and the not of the country for business opportunities, not entirely unwilling to bait their beautiful daughter to bring in new deals. Olanna escapes after meeting Odenigbo. Her not-at-all good looking twin Kainene also escapes by becoming a clever businesswomen herself and indulging in her own intellect and what she sees as not-conforming to her parents, by choosing a white lover who she deeply loves but very rarely acknowledges as important in her life.
Through moments of lapse, infidelity trickles into the lives of these people, leading to estrangement of relationships, Olanna from Odenigbo and Olanna from Kainene.
Ultimately the war and real life keep all together as survival becomes the only goal.
Adichie s strong characters work their ways through the tensions leading to Biafra's struggle for independence and through war itself. She brings to life the rich characters during a critical period of Nigerian history. Half of a Yellow Sun focuses on the experiences of small groups of people who experience the conflict from very different points of view and different stages of life.
There is a conflict in this story between the traditional and the tribal and also between the modern and the bureaucratic. It is a mix that exists in any country or community in the presentday world. Adichic also captures some-
thing else in this novel that transcends communities. Cultures evolve and things change, but education, especially English medium education, leaves a mark on the minds of the locals in any community that almost devalues their own culture and heritage. The constant struggle is that the middle class always chase their golden dream by trying to cross the border and get on the other side, that of the English progressive, or what they perceive to be progressive.
This is where the characters in the story shine. Odenigbo is the intellectual who does not bow to these thoughts but wants to work against them. Education to him is the means of capturing what is the best and applying that good part. To the poor peasant boy Ugwu, however, English is the key to gaining respect, and he does so in the eyes of fellow houseboys and gardeners, and even villagers, with his better English accent and grasp of the language.
To Olanna, however, it is a way of life, as it is to her sister Kainene, though neither of them talks about it. To their parents, though, it is a life that they must uphold in order to preserve their status and hence very important. And to the outsider in this story, Richard, Kainene's white lover, who prides himself as a local, it is more than a way of life; it is something he is willing to forego in order to find an identity he chases throughout his life.
Then there are the conflicts between the Igbo people and their non-Igbo friends, ethnic differences exploited by war and patriotism that ultimately divide them into two sides. Human relationships, however, can also transcend these divides.
What Adichie brings together in one single novel is the complexity of ordinary life, which is never simple. There are crude depictions in the story, where violence leads, such as when Olanna relates the "vaguely familar clothes on headless bodies", or corpses' "odd skin tone - a flat, sallow grey, like a poorly wiped blackboard", something from the
war that even a sheltered girl from a privileged background like Olanna isn't spared from. During the war she struggles to keep her child alive, at first horrified to let the child chase lizards to eat like the other children at the refugee camp she lives in.
Ultimately Kainene and Olanna let their cook roast crickets and lizards' legs to food they treat as delicacies. That is the reality of survival.
Then there are the glimpses of growing up for Ugwu, from his adolescent desires and forays into a maturity of his passions, to the ugliness of rape.
The book also brings alive the everyday descriptions of food beginning with Ugwu's creativity in the kitchen, of hot watery pepper soup, spicy jollof rice and chicken boiled in herbs --- descriptions that will water your mouth and make you want to create similar fervour in your own kitchen.
Ugwu's search for herbs to cook something to meet any occasion, Odenigbo's mother's fight to out the white-witch Olanna from the house to using magic to keep her son to herself, Richard's houseboy Harrison's snobbish attitude in cooking only western food to please his master and the flow of beer and brandy in Odenigbo's house for his intellectual gatherings all prove the fact that food is an important part of people's life.
Half of a Yellow Sun is a story about the war without everyone being focused on the war. It is a story about complex human relationships, without relationships being the focal point of the story.
In other words, Half of a Yellow Sun is a complete story of human life in a faraway land, where the people are struggling for the same things as we are in another faraway comer of the world. Muneera Parbeen is a journalist and writer.