The Sea Has the Answers by Shuma Raha is a beautifully crafted novel. Set against the high-octane backdrop of the unfolding #MeToo movement in India in 2018–19, the author weaves a delicate and thought-provoking narrative around Urmi, a sensitive and intelligent housewife married to Shankar Das, her high-flying husband and CEO of a leading advertising agency in Kolkata. Shankar is accused of rape and sexual harassment in the workplace. While referencing the way Shankar deals with the fallout at work, the author Shuma Raha, with laser-sharp focus, casts Urmi as the central figure of the narrative.
Readers are quickly drawn into Urmi’s emotional and psychological world. She is a housewife and mother who has always felt loved and respected by Shankar, who appears deeply devoted to both her and their precocious, intelligent teenage daughter, Devika. The allegations emerging from Shankar’s workplace therefore catch Urmi off guard and compel her to examine her life, the decisions she has made, as well as those she allowed Shankar to make on her behalf, forcing her to come to terms with her own role in the debacle she now faces.
Urmi feels compelled to leave her swanky Kolkata home and social circle to navigate the tsunami that has engulfed her life. She chooses to spend time in her ancestral family home in the small seaside town of Kinjala, where she spent much of her childhood. It provides the perfect space to reflect on her past, enabling her to understand her present better and begin considering how she might build a future for herself.
In this deeply meditative novel, Urmi refuses to be swayed by the noise and the shrill, shallow opinions of friends and family. She knows she must arrive at answers about how she wants to live her life that are consistent with her own values and core principles. Embedded in her search for answers is a sensitive, but never preachy or overbearing, critique of the way society—those in her immediate circle, the media, corporate culture, the police and the political establishment—views sexual harassment and responds to, or silences, such complaints.
Urmi fearlessly interrogates her own attitudes and responses to the accusations swirling around her husband, just as she examines those of others caught in these webs of power, misogyny, violence and entitlement. In her attempt to understand the accusations against her husband, the reader also comes to see that allegations of harassment and violence are not always clear-cut, but are often drawn in shades of grey. How these stories are told, and by whom, unfolds across many shades of truth, perception, compromise and ambition.
At Kinjalka, Urmi is keenly attuned to the many changes underway in the once small, sleepy seaside town she knew as a child. There is an ever-growing ashram, led by a charismatic godman, that is reshaping the town and bending it to its will. Urmi’s intelligence and sensitivity bristle at these changes. Unwittingly, she becomes involved in a violent and disturbing incident at the ashram, enabling her to see her own situation in a new light. A chance meeting allows her to break free from the social bonds she had maintained meticulously and without question. In doing so, she begins to liberate herself psychologically and emotionally, choosing to follow her own desires.
The novel is absorbing and sustains its tension throughout, as three interwoven narratives—Urmi’s own story, the events unfolding at the ashram, and those taking place at her home and in Shankar’s office—work together to keep the reader thoroughly engaged and eager to discover what happens next. The taut narrative, the exploration of the inner workings of Urmi’s mind, and the accompanying social insights make the novel both a compelling read and a work that raises many significant and relevant questions in India today. While Urmi is the central figure, the other stories and characters raise issues of class, caste and religion, making the novel far more than the story of one woman’s journey to make herself whole again.
The novel ends without sweeping conclusions. True to life, it leaves the reader with unanswered questions about whether, and how, justice will ultimately take its course. The future of the tenuous and unconventional relationship that develops during Urmi’s time by the sea is left unresolved. Whether Urmi will succeed in rebuilding her life is also left open.
This psychological drama, rich with subtle social commentary, makes for excellent reading, made even more enjoyable by the generous print size and comfortable spacing between the lines. It is difficult to put down, remaining absorbing from the outset and building to a crescendo before arriving at a quiet, thoughtful and provocative conclusion.
Shuma Raha takes a difficult subject—sexual harassment in the workplace—and examines its ramifications through the eyes of a thoughtful woman, revealing the treacherous path that many women and families must navigate. While #MeToo brought these stories to light and demanded accountability, The Sea Has the Answers reminds us that abuses of power over women, whether in the workplace or in other spheres of life where men wield authority, are not new. They are as enduring, varied, violent and nuanced as the waves of the sea. Some of these waves are tidal in their force, much like the #MeToo stories that overturned the lives of prominent men and their families. Yet the novel also reminds us that there are other waves which, through persistence and the passage of time, are equally powerful, even if their effects are less visible. These quieter currents shape the contours of our social and cultural world in ways that are often far more insidious.
