Chronicle Of The Peacock Essay

The consequences of the decisions made by the leaders or the king are to be endured by the common public. There is a severing of familial bond as well as the bond between the
King and his public in both the texts. Brothers in the Epic and the two communities, Hindus and Muslims, both fight for land, property and power. As a consequence of War, many people had to leave their homelands without a single penny and with no assurance of a secure future. The pain of exile from one’s own land is beautifully captured in Intizar Hussain’s “A
Chronicle of the Peacock” where “‘Once upon a time, he (peacock) used to sit on the wall of paradise, and now he sits on the wall of our terrace.’ His grandmother said, ‘Yes, son, that is what happens when we are exiled

Gandhi’s advice...that in certain circumstances, even suicide was morally preferable to submission.” (Butalia, 196) Thus
Yuyutsu becomes a means to talk about the thousands of people, mostly women, who committed suicide to save their ‘honour’. But the question remains, what is this ‘honour’ and who determines it? The threat of impurity and being raped by a man of the ‘Other’ community was engrained in their minds to such an extent that they internalised it to be their duty to the society and their family. Though ‘Andha Yug’ stands for every class being devoid of their ‘honour’, we see women still cling to the societal beliefs that were, in Althusser’s terms, engraved through dominant ideologies. The idea of honour then does affect the gender identity. The nihilism that leads to committing suicide invites death but what is interesting to note is that Lord Krishna while accepting Gandhari’s curse in Act four say, “If I am life/ then,
Mother/ I am also death.” (Bharati, 123)

Thus where Andha Yug talks about futility of war and the massacre that made