(When you reflect on your family, you always have an attitude of that of saints while it is not when you think of the society, in general. But, as we see in this murder, it is a psychological game of deceit, pretense and hypocrisy.
Marriage is an institution by itself. It grows from the ancestors and come to us through our grandparents and parents whom we follow in our life. When the elders in the family show scant respect to these social norms, what happens is a tragedy.)
The deconstruction of the family of the protagonist Ms. Indrani and the other characters in the recent tragedy shows that the root of the family of all the characters involved are rotten to the core. The background check of all the characters involved shows deep rooted vice which unfortunately is not uncommon in our society. It just needs the circumstance and fate to come together of this vicious force that results in the tragedy. This observation compelled me to compare Ms. Indrani with Lady Macbeth of Shakespeare’s Macbeth
The tragedy happened just as it had happened in the case of Lady Macbeth. Lady Macbeth’s ambition complemented by Macbeth's secret desire to become the King (as reflected by the prophecy of the Witches) has resulted in the killing of King Duncan . Macbeth becomes the King of Scotland and plots more murders to cover one murder.
The situation is made possible by two factors - one, the sibling factor. King Duncan's wife and Lady Macbeth are siblings or cousins. The former had a stronger claim to the throne resulting sense of deprivation and of revenge in the latter. This is the background for the resulting tragedy.
Second factor is purely circumstantial. That Macbeth should hear prophecy from the three witches (Desire, Ambition and Greed) just before King Duncan's declaring his wish to stay at the Macbeth's castle! This I say is FATE and CIRCUMSTANCE.
Coming to Ms. Indrani's fate, it is no different from Lady Macbeth but with some difference in circumstances and society. Her ambition to be a successful business tycoon supersedes every other aspects of her life. She has more than one Macbeth to help her in fulfilling her ambition. Her daughter happened to be her antagonist. Her husbands are Macbeths who need to prove their virility (financial and social besides personal) by siding with her in one way or the other in her gruesome deeds.
Ms Sheena, who is disowned by Ms. Indrani, comes back in her life as a beautiful young girl with the same quantum of ambition. She captivated her mother’s Macbeth to amass wealth to become her rival. Sensing danger, Ms. Indrani would have panicked. And so the inevitable thing happened. She could have sorted out the problem had she been bit sensible in dealing with Sheena right from the moment she had introduced her to her new family and business. Of course, the reason for the introduction is to use Sheena for stashing illegal amount. Ms Sheena’s supposed flirting with members of Peter’s family is no surprise. It is again ambition of Ms Sheena (prototype of her mother Ms Indrani) that created rivalry that Ms Indrani cannot stand.
The role of her first husband and his two children with Ms Indrani are suspect. Ms. Indrani could have been a victim of blackmail and treachery by them. Mikhail’s oft repeated speech in cable news about videos, photos and documents related to his mother Ms Indrani seems to make some logic in this regard. It is this background that Ms. Indrani could have taken the extreme step.
Moral issues involved
Ms. Indrani seems to suffer from sex identity complex. She seemed to be victim of abuse by men (including her father) during her childhood. Her adolescence must have been a nightmare for her. She knew that having come from a poor family, she had to bear with all abuses. Society ridiculed her. (The claim of being her boyfriends by some is a big joke.) Forced to be married at the age of 17, and becoming a mother of two children with a person whose background is bad, if not worse, considering her secret ambition (that is fed by a desire to avenge men) to make a mark in the male dominated society. She married another person who gave her some respectability in the society. But her ambition ‘to seek and made her marry for the third time and she became the dream itself.
As Lady Macbeth suffered, Ms. Indrani too had anxiety and suspicion. Her past seems to cast shadow on her future. Her children whom she had hitherto left high and dry started claiming their pound of flesh. They may have schemed (as she had done before) along with their biological father (the first husband). Caught in the web of deceit and vice, blackmailed by her own blood, she had no other move but to commit this act. So the tragedy unfolded!
Her ambition reminds me of Tennyson’s Ulysses,
It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy’d
Greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when
Thro’ scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour’d of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’
Gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!
As tho’ to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
……………………………………………….
……………………………………………….
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Her condition in business life then must be that of Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost
`Is this the region, this the soil, the clime,’
Said then the lost archangel, `this the seat
That we must change for heav’n, this mournful gloom
For that celestial light? Be it so, since he
Who now is sovran can dispose and bid
What shall be right: furthest from him is best
Whom reason hath equalled, force hath made supreme
Above his equals. Farewell happy fields
Where joy for ever dwells: hail horrors, hail
Infernal world, and thou profoundest hell
Receive thy new possessor: one who brings
A mind not to be changed by place or time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be, all but less than he
Whom thunder bath made greater? Here at least
We shall be free; the almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition though in hell:
Better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven.
So the nemesis follows. I wonder what she hallucinates at her prison cell. How much of washing she needs to get rid off the scent of blood!
I have little or no word for her Macbeths who seem to have shown unflinching loyalty to Lady Indrani to satisfy their own ambitions! Is she just an ambitious woman exploited or is she just one more victim of modern day Macbeth’s business ambitions? The three witches that foretold the doom of Macbeth can stand for her on the Judgement’s Day!
(This article does not consider any legal basis for the incident that happened. It is partly based on media reports and partly on suppositions. The case is sub-judice at the time of writing this blog and hence inappropriate to give judgement on characters involved. The purpose is to compare the incident with one of the characters in Shakespeare's tragedy, Macbeth to highlight on the moral and social issues of the modern day. I would like the readers to appreciate this article on the moral and social issues involved rather than as a personal issue of the people (in the incident mentioned above) concerned. Your comments regarding the same is duly appreciated).
Reference : Macbeth(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Macbeth)
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