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ISSN 2278-9529
Galaxy: International Multidisciplinary Research Journal
www.galaxyimrj.com
The Criterion: An International Journal in English Vol. 11, Issue-II, April 2020 ISSN: 0976-8165

“Social Brainology”: A Psychoanalytic Execution to Explore the Issue of

Identity in Durjoy Datta’s Wish I Could Tell You

Riyanka Chatterjee
Kazi Nazrul University
Asansol, West Bengal.

Article History: Submitted-29/03/2020, Revised-29/04/2020, Accepted-01/05/2020, Published-10/05/2020.

Abstract:

This paper highlights the unconscious memory of the brain that leads to the exposure
of certain practical characteristics and activities relevant in different characters of Durjoy
Datta’s novel Wish I could Tell you. It clarifies or at least tries to project the possible reasons
behind the that-ness of the characters. Important female characters such as Anusha/Mohini,
Sunita ji, Neelima ji and Karishma, and the gay characters like Saraansh, Nimesh, Nikhat,
Male characters like Gautam/Ananth, Mohini’s father and Ananth’s fatherand others
everybody has some outset of the unconscious mind resulting from either their own past or
the social construct. These unconscious mindset leads to not only certain behavioural orders
but their own ways of thinking, their own ways of calculating, representing ideas and finally
emerging towards a self-acknowledging truth. Following the story towards the end at certain
point the identity of the protagonist becomes the most confusing question. From the
beginning of the novel till the second last chapter it seems that Anusha and Gautam are the
joint protagonistsin the novel, the pretext of the novel also justifies it, but as we reach to the
last chapter the readers and critics could also point that actually Saraansh is the unidentified
hero here. His own life is not revealed in details, neither he is popularised by the author from
the beginning but yet it is a story of his exploration of his already believed epiphanythat he
could achieve through proof he was constantly searching for.So, this paper would find the
unconscious status of the characters and also see this story from Saaransh’sviewpoint. For
this I would take shelter under the Freudian concept of Psychoanalysis.

Keywords: Social, Brainology, Psychoanalysis, Identity, Explore, Unconscious,

Behavioural, Self-acknowledging, Protagonist, Epiphany, Freud.

Introduction

Psychoanalysis is a therapeutic technique for the treatment of the unconscious mind,

one of the methods is by regular talk sessions of the patient with the analyst where the

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patients are free to talk about their insecurities, fantasies and other psychological disorders
that are hindering their normal life. Through the analysis of the unconscious conflicts of the
patient and bringing that unidentified conflict to the patient’s knowledge often lead to a cure.

But when we come to the world of literature this therapeutic treatment becomes a
theoretical ground on which textual works can be analysed along with their authors. At times
we find authors writing a literary piece that can be a representation of their mental state due
to certain circumstances. There can be cases where a writer constantly writes about stories
about the opposite sex betraying the one. A continuation of this can be a result of his/her own
life. On the other hand, a writer who have authored several books only on feminism may have
seen and also undergone certain consequences that violated her as a female. These female
authors do not project feminist ideas because they are comfortable to write that or they are
female but because they have only this idea prevalent to their conscious mind which is a
result of some past incident or a series of incidents occupying their unconscious, such authors
are Taslima Nasrin, Kamala Suraiyya et al. Most of the writers choose to follow a trend or
many trends, or even no trends and are forcefully put to one or the other by critics.

At other conditions critics judge the characters of the text, read their conscious mind
and guess their unconscious. In this paper we are going to study this area of the novel Wish I
CouldTell You by Durjoy Datta.

Durjoy Datta is an Indian author and Screen-writer. His novels basically deal with the
romantic life of the young generation in India. Though a student of Mechanical Engineering
he started writing early and published his first novel while he was still in college. He took his
post-graduation in the field of Finance and Management, but he quit his job at American
Express as a marketing analyst to become a fulltime writer.

His 19th novel Wish I Could Tell Youtells the story of Anusha who is a disillusioned
and heartbroken girlwho joined an online donation collecting company and got a medical
case of a coma patient named Gautam. She works on this case very hard and finally makes a
romantic video where she confesses her love for him to the audiences and collects enough
money for his operation, but before she could see him wake up, she met an incidental
accident and switched to coma. When Gautam revived and saw the video, he falls in love
with the girl whom he never knew before.

When Anusha joined the company she decided to join the department that collects
donation for entertainment such us, if there is a nice filmmaker who wants to make a good

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film but don’t have a budget, or even an important documentary and don’t have the monetary
resource, or a good singer wants to make his/her own album and fall short of money they all
can come to the WEDONATE.COM where their campaigns are made as required and it is
shown online where people can donate money for them. But, Anusha was recruited under the
medical department where they ask people to donate for medical purpose. Anusha had a bitter
past. She had a happy family, her father loved her and her mother a lot. Her father was her
ideal. But, one day, she found that her father has another family, he cheated on her mother,
her mother also got to know about this recently, but for her sake they were together. She and
her mother asked him to leave the house for once and all. She wanted to become a writer, so,
she joined WEDONATE.COM as a campaign writer. She got a medical case to campaign for.
A young boy named Gautam was suffering from a brain tumour and gradually slipped into
comatose, this was a failed campaign as people did not pay for him. He had a very bad
reputation on Twitter by getting on people’s wick. She worked hard on his campaign and
proved to people that he does not have such a behavioural habit and he had changed to such a
vehement due to his tumour, which is true. Often brain tumour patients fall short of empathy
and does this kind of weirdthings. Still there were very little improvements. Finally, she made
a video where she urges the audiences for help as she fell in love with him and want him to
be saved. In the video she named herself Mohini and Gautam as Ananth on Gautam’s
mother’s choice. The video becomes viral and she was able to collect the money. But another
guy named Amit Modi whom Gautam destroyed on Twitter was furious at Anusha and he
chased her one day after her office and bashed her head. She was heavily injured, due to
internal bleeding she slipped to coma.

After operation Gautam revived and joined WEDONATE at Anusha’s place. He fell
in love with Anusha or his Mohini after knowing about her. His parents also liked her a lot,
specially his mother who had a secret intension to make her the daughter-in-law of her
family. He heard from his parents that she used to visit him regularly and used to pass time
sitting beside his bed and watching the pictures he took throughout his life. He felt that
spending time with his living corpse, watching throughout his pictures learning about him
from different people made her fall for him. But, Anusha’s mother said that it was a planned
video only to save his life and nothing else, she does not love him, in fact a different girl
named Rachita was first selected for the role of Mohini.

Gautam was not the guy that he seemed to at the beginning. His truant attitude is
really a result of the tumour. Since his childhood he is a progressive photographer and his

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parents also passionate his hobby. Once he loses his only three-year-old sister at a car
accident, people did not help him take his bleeding sister to the hospital fearing that the blood
would stain their seat covers. His sister died; his girlfriend dumped him but nothing could
cause him to lose his empathy for people. His ill behaviour at the twitter after his tumour
attack made him what he really is now and turned people against him.

One day a guy named Saraansh visits him at WEDONATE and offer to make a film
on that video with the money that too he would gather from the same source. His proposal
was accepted by the company, but Gautam was not ready for it. He knew that Anusha’s
mother would not allow it. But, Saraansh and Sarita of WEDONATE forces him to meet
Sunita ji (Mohini’s mother) for her approval. Sunita ji only considers it on one condition that
only the life story of her daughter would be focused and not Gautam’s. She did not like
Gautam who got famous because of her daughter’s video.

Saraansh is a fresh out of the movie school, his parents did not want him to pursue
filmmaking as a career, rather they wanted him to handle their button business, but when he
did not stop they stopped talking to him, cut off his finance and threatened to take away his
car and the driver. So, when he got to making this film which he knows would surely put fire
in the audience’s mind he finally promises his boyfriend that he would move with him at the
end of the year. While working on the project, he found that the confession was fake, it was
planned just to save Gautam. But he could never believe that, he actually wanted to believe
that Anusha was really in love with Gautam. Once he steals Anusha’s laptop from her home
and he found an uncut part of the video that got shoot by chance because Anusha forgot to
turn it off, in that video she reveals to Gautam’s living corpse that she is actually in love with
him. He shows the video to Gautam who finally becomes happy and continues to wait for her
to propose her after she revives.

Character-wise Theoretical overview

If we judge the characters on the psychoanalytical point of view, we can understand

the working of their unconscious mind that lead to their circumstantial behaviour. We will do
a character-wise criticism to know Anusha’s change twice, Saraansh’s thriving for the truth,
Sunita ji’s not liking Gautam and superior behaviour to his mother, and the social construct of
human mind and others.

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Gautam’s father

Every person in this world has some form of preconceived notions which is the
product of the society. It is not needed that his personal experience would lead to some
psychological construct. Gautam’s father is such an example of psychological construct of
the society. The first sentence of the novel starts with his dialogue. He says, “Everyone
dresses up for the first day of work, beta,”. Proverb says, your first impression is the last
impression. A person throughout his life at every moment creates impression to different
people. One whom we have always seen as very nice and calm person may outrage one day
suddenly due to his personal frustration. It happens that people seeing him for several years
would feel the shortage of temperance but someone who visits the office for the first time
would always have an opposite impression regarding him. This is a preconstruction of the
brain. Whatever we come through regarding someone’s behaviour, clothes etc on the first day
may switches to the unconsciously conscious memory so whatever changes we find gradually
that sits in our conscious brain if it hits a lot, if that later perceived knowledge shivers our
conscious memory then only that flows to our unconsciously conscious mind otherwise it
remains to our conscious brain for some time and then slips to the dark that cannot be
recollected.

Another such construct is that we divide male and female not on the basis of the
physical body but rather on the basis of social characteristics. A girl can only be cute not a
boy. Boys are only made to be handsome, in fact we use a modified term for a cute looking
boy – “chocolate hero”. We often hear parents dressing their male babies with female attires
thinking that it would make them look much sweeter than the original one. Gautam was also
dressed with a frock on his uncle’s wedding; hence, his father says, “you were three… and
you looked so cute”.

The dressing sense is also an important thing to learn for formal and informal
gatherings. Children from the very young age are given uniform for their school. We often
assume people to be rich or poor, qualified or illiterate from their dressing sense. In a
corporate office it is always assumed that the employees would always be suited-booted so
Gautam’s father brings a suit for his first day at office. He is a perfect example of the society
made psychology.

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Neelima ji

Neelima ji is a perfect replica of Indian mother with all superstitions and fear for the
well-being of their children. It is such a psychological continuity of general mothers that
make her like Anusha a lot. A girl though just doing her job becomes important for her and
gets her favours because that job is beneficiary for her own son. Every mother in general
wants their sons’ good to be fulfilled and that too by a lady who would accompany him
throughout his life. The way they love their son favour them more than anything in this
world, care for them more than anybody else, they want their wives to continue with the
procedure. On the other hand, the girl Karishma diverted her son from his best feature
photography. It is for Karishma that Gautam did not pursuephotography as a career in which
he was very good at and also his parents supported him in it, and chose Engineering. So,
somewhere in her mind she is not the perfect replica of Neelima ji for her son. It’s for her
own feelings of beneficiary for her son that judged between Karishma and Anusha and not as
individuals. Even Karishma’saffair with Arvind did not shook her more. Show-off in one way
or the other is a very relevant characteristic that goes in the back of almost all human mind.
One is compelled to show off knowing or unknowingly. One who is rich and submissive at
some situation or the other exhibits his well-being through his/her choice of high brand
products, buying an Adidas shoes instead of a normal one, although he is doing it for his own
comfort people would have eyes on it that is ten times more costly than theirs. Not only
riches, but every other public characteristic namely, respect, position, and even devotion in
every field this show-off is unavoidable. Neelima ji accompanied her son to the Vishnu
temple on the first day of his office and she chanted her mantras aloud. Actually, her
knowledge about the mantras are even better than the priests and she proved it by chanting
loudly. At the unconscious level her brain hints on the point that being a Khatri she knows
about the devotional rituals more than a born brahmin, hence Ananth says, “At the
neighbourhood temple, Maa-Papa are the only ones chanting out loud, making a spectacle of
their devotion to Vishnu” (Datta 2). After coming out of the temple they become “their
natural, unintimidating selves, burdened with taxes and everyday struggles like potholes,
spoilt milk, and moulded bread”(Datta, 3).God is not a being to human but a shelter, a
comfort zone; hence, to true devotees like Ananth’s parents temple is a place where worries
does not disturb them, they feel uplifted from all twist and turns of life there. Their devotion
works in their unconscious mind to make that normal place crowded with different people to

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be a place for sanctity and saturation. We think that it is the idol of God, aroma of flowers
and incense sticks, the lamps and candles that make the environment, but actually it is the
devotional attitude that makes the environment beautiful to us.

The memory of the image of the child as a baby, as a toddler makes such strong
impressions on the unconscious level of specially the mothers that they could not fully accept
their children to be adolescent enough to walk their own. Hence, they always took extra and
unessential measures to protect them. Gautam does not want his parents to accompany him to
the bus stop, he is a grown up now and feels embarrassed when his parents stop bus for him
and makes him to enter at first and until he sits down properly did not allow the bus driver to
leave. He says, “they chide me, say I’m careless, that I will trip and come under the wheels of
the bus” (Datta 4). Not only their extra care, but their daughter’s death causing from a road
accident worked so vehemently in their unconscious that they even did not leave their adult
son on the road alone. They actually have a fear of losing their child in the mind although
they do not themselves acknowledge it.Neelima ji’s road fear took such a state that when her
son desired to drive his father’s scooter, she dragged it to the flyover and left it there so that
her son could not find it. She did not do the same for her husband who drives it for years, so
it is clear that she is afraid of losing the only child she is left with.

Anusha

Anusha being the only child always was pampered by her parents, specially by her
father. He always used to fulfil all her wishes; her father was the hero of her life. But
suddenly falls from Heaven when she finds that her father has another family, he had built the
same designed house for them and he possess a son their whom he provided same first floor
which he built for her. She used to say to her parents when they think of having another
child- “I will smother the baby if you make one” (Datta 56). Such a head strong pampers
loving girl when comes to know that she has an illegal sharer of everything, it disillusioned
her in all ways. It put such an impression to the unconscious mind that she shook all her
empathetic sense from her heart. This is why she does not see the medical cases with emotion
and sympathy, but she practices the cases with tactics of mind game. She tries to reach to the
emotional ground of the audiences through studying the basic human psychology and diluting
the case histories and actually she succeeds through that.

When she was in eleventh standard, she fell in love with a random guy named Karan.
Karan was a man of nineteen, Gautam gives a perfect detail of the boy, he says,

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Karan was nineteen, older, second year of college, someone much wiser… Unlike other boys
around her who were struggling, he had settled into his height. He had left puberty long
behind. He knew of the strength in his arms, the energy, the sinewy muscles, the voice. His
facial hair wasn’t light but hard and grew vigorously. Karan was a man. He’d joined a call
centre in the second year of college. Every day he used to wear freshly ironed shirts, tuck
then in neatly in his pleated trousers, and leave for work. (Datta 88)

But when she comes to know from her father that this guy is an emotional
opportunist, she did not think twice to beat that fellow with her hockey stick in his own
house. She was a part of her mother. It was she and her mother together whom her father
loved most. She was not jealous of her mother for her father which Freudian theory suggests
as a father daughter relationship. It was she combined with her mother as if still in her womb
and the others. She even helped her mother to punish those women who used to seduce her
father. It seems that her father was quite handsome which attracted different ladies of her
neighbourhood, Ananth narrates to Saraansh “Over the years, there have been many Rameek
Aunties in Mohini and Aunty’s life” (Datta 107). So, it can be assumed that Karan’s
handsomeness was a replica of her father’s, she could see her a younger generation of her
father in him. She fell for him and in her unconscious mind she became her mother (she
always used to imagine herself along with her mother as an entity) and Karan her father. The
way she behaved with Karan shows that she had a secret wish to be her mother. She always
has seen her mother revenging people doing wrong to her, so she also did the same and very
violently took her revenge. Although, at the beginning Karan resembled like her father to her
but, when her father goes against the boy the one entity splits to two different individual and
she listened to the more known and comfortable one rather than the least known suddenly
differing one.

As every human brain has its own trajectory of emotional flow and thought processes
and external trauma though causes certain haemorrhage to the unconscious as a result of that
we starts behaving differently than our own selves, but, the inborn flow also searches for
someone or something that would bring back the inborn trajectory to its usual flow. The brain
feels comfortable once again getting shelter from its original beliefs. For Anusha Gautam
became that someone, at first, she thought he has changed due to some similar situation
which she has undergone, may be due to his sister’s accident or Karishma’s affair or
something relative to such similar situations. But when she got the answer that it was his

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illness that made him unempathetic jerk at first, she become hopeless to find no similarity in
him with her.

I must concede that you have disappointed me of late. I thought we were the same you
and I. But as it turns out, we are quite different. The doctor’s confirmation that your
behaviour wasn’t in keeping with your true nature, and it was all because of the tumour,
might work in your favour if put across in a way that people warm up to it and donate to your
cause, but it broke my heart.

What good were you to me if you didn’t hate the world with the vengeance that I did.
(Datta 190)

But at the same time, she was hopeful because she has introduced with the real self of
Gautam who possess a forgiving nature who loves to believe in humanity and never turns
cruel to even those who harms him. Somewhere unknowingly, she was wanting to forgive
her father and from him she got this courage to do so. Therefore, after discovering his story
she helped her father to gather money to pay off his debts and bring up his son in a better
way. In all this that living corpse of Gautam became such an evident partner that she could
not stop herself from falling in love with him.

Sunita ji

Anusha’s mother Sunita ji led a very happy married life. She had a loving husband
and a ‘papa’s little girl’ kind of daughter which she cherishes a lot. Her husband had many
admirers in the neighbourhood but she felt proud to possess him as the most important person
in his life. She is disillusioned when she suddenly finds his husband has another family and a
son who enjoys the same superiority on him. She was shattered that a husband who was so
loving, who left his parents who were never happy with Anusha because they wanted a
grandson instead of granddaughter resulting to familial unrests, a man who always worked
hard for his family is nothing but a cheat in real. The past is revealed in the video clips that
was made for the film-

‘A busy hospital. A woman screaming, legs splayed apart. The doctor holds up a
baby. It’s a girl. The woman smiles nervously. Cut to the nurse coming out of the labour
room, baby wrapped in a hospital cloth. The father comes and holds her. After a pause, he
smiles. He looks at the mother. The mother looks a little scared. The father runs a loving hand
on her mother’s face. They both have tears in their eyes.

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‘Cut to the parents and the baby enter the house. Dada and Dadi look at them, and then
away…. No one’s happy.

‘Cut to the little girl crying. The mother gets up. The father taps the mother, asking her to
go to sleep. He then picks up the child, lulls up to sleep… ‘Cut to the father shouting at Dada
and Dadi who are pointing their fingers at the door. The mother is holding the littlegirl’shand,
cowering at a distance. The fight goes on.

‘Cut to the father teaching the girl. It’s a different house now… Cut to the wedding dance
floor. The girl’s watching on. There are only two people dancing like teenagers. Her parents.
There’s a big smile on the girl’s face. She joins her parents and starts to dance.

‘Cut to her father working at a construction site. There’s a woman who’s looking on. Just
then, the mother and the daughter barge in, they both pick up a rod and start to beat up the
woman. The father intervenes and takes them away.

‘We slow down the music. Everyone is happy. (Datta 108-109)

This perfectness has become a fault a cheat to her. So, when she sees the faultless guy
Gautam, he seemed fake to her.

She doesn’t like the boy.

He’s too perfect, that’s what Sunita Sardana doesn’t like about him. He’s always too
nice, too subservient. Time and again, Sunita has put him through the hoops and he jump
through them with a big smile on his face. (Datta 50)

She does not like him although he always tries to satisfy her and shows acute passion
for Anusha. In him her unconscious mind could sense her betraying husband it seems to her
that what her husband did to her this guy would do the same to her daughter. May be for this
reason she told to Gautam immediately after he wakes up that the confession was pre-planned
just to save him and her daughter did not love him. Actually, she knows her daughter more
than anybody else so she knew that Anusha is really in love with him, she out of fear wanted
to put this perfect guy away from her daughter. Her daughter was the only support of life to
her. She was with her since she fought with ladies admiring her husband but now, she is not
under her control she fell in love with somebody and went beyond her boundaries for him,
she felt as if she is losing her. Already a beautiful slender lady had snatched her husband she
could not give up her daughter now.

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A little embarrassment crept in, and that too didn’t last long. What stayed on was the
jealousy. She was losing her daughter to a boy. (Datta 50)

It seemed that Neelima ji even would not marry off her daughter fearing to lose her.
Actually, she had two comfort zones in her life her daughter and her husband. Now her
husband has already betrayed her so the only pillar of her life is her daughter. Now her
husband’s incident has such an impression in her brain that she even could not risk to allow
her daughter to have beneficial and true attachments. She does not even like Neelima ji to
take care of Mohini, rather she would keep a paid nurse for.

It takes an hour and half for Neelima ji to finish with Mohini. Mohini’ mother had
come to the room twice to check but Neelima ji had chased her away and asked her to rest.

Neelima ji had been shocked -and a little angry- when she got to know that Mohini’s
mother had a nurse that came over to take care of Mohini. She had come to the house and
thrown a tantrum. But Mohini’s mother had said sternly that this was her final decision.

‘She is ours too,’ Neelima ji had said.

‘She’s mine,’ Mohini’s mother had replied. (Datta 217)

Saraansh

About him we come to know that his parents do love him but they don’t understand
him. He has a boyfriend who wants to be his life partner. So, for him he was never devoid of
love and according to his experience one’s partner becomes the most prominent support of
upliftment and success and all good. He met with Sarita asking for some funds for a school
movie but he was declined. So, hen Sarita asked him to make a film on some other story and
then saw the video his own nerves were very active, his mind first got the story as a love one.
A girl urges to the audiences to donate money for the treatment of his dying boyfriend. As
that story was the first impression of the couple to his mind it sits in his unconscious mind so
tight and moreover his belief on love with no bad experience compelled him to not accept the
truth that the story is a pre-planned one. It seems that proving the story to be true has become
as important to him as making the film. So, at times he adds up things to the story.

We cut to Mohini here, sitting alone, we track the camera around her. As we do a
trolley shot, her clothes are changed. She’s in college now. She looks up from her phone. We

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see her stair straight into the camera. Dispassionately, she walks into the college. A boy
approaches to talk to her. “Fuck off”, She says and enters the college gate.’

Saraansh looks at me.

‘What do you fell? He asks…

‘Won’t it paint her too harsh?’ I ask.

Saraansh shakes his head. I sense a shift. It’s his story too and he’s going to fight for
the way he’s going to tell it…. This is the moment people will see why she was drawn to you,
why she fell for an asshole like you. She saw her reflection in you, and made that beautiful
video,’ he says. (Datta 133)

He suffers from an inner conflict whenever situations lead that the story and the truth
are contradictory.Therefore, he continuously strives hard to find the truth.

Mohini hadn’t changed. She had remained the same- both before and after Ananth.
Every story has to have a character graph, this one had none.

It shouldn’t have mattered to Saraansh, whose job was to tell stories and this was just
another one- but it deeply rankled him.

‘I need to not think of it,’ said Saraansh to his boyfriend. (Datta 184-185)

When it was proven that Anusha did not love Gautam he at least wanted to believe
that Gautam had changed her from harsh to kind. Atleast identifying this would satisfy him in
any way. So, when he heard that her father needed money and she helped him by
campaigning instead of thinking her past bond with her father to be the reason he resumes
that it would be Gautam’s case that changed her.

Mohini would not get anything out of it. It wasn’t even an interesting story she came
up with it. There was nothing for her to even gain creatively. If anything, because of the
deeply personal nature of the story, it would have been very painful for her. If Saraansh knew
the old Anusha correctly, before Gautam and her fake love story, she would have loved to see
her father suffer. She would have sat back and enjoyed watching her father destroy himself.

This was out of character.

There could be only one reason for it.

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He remembered the screenshot, the time of the post. It would have been during the
time she was working on Gautam’scampaign. She could have been knee-deep in Gautam’s
history.

This meant only one thing.

This meant, finding Gautam, finding his story, being around him, had changed her. (Datta
188-189)

At another moment he sees the video enacted by the other girl in the team and there
also he tries to find out the difference between the two videos to prove his theory.

Saraansh watches Rachita’s video repeatedly. Each time, he comes out more impressed.

‘Can you stop playing that now?’ I ask.

‘Look at this?’ he says and points to the screen. He pushes play and then stops.
Then pushes play and stops at another place. ‘Do you see the edit jumps? It’s very smooth but
the light changes. Also, look there.’…That’s Anusha directing Rachita…But…but… if you
check Anusha’s video, it’s a one take. There are no edits, nothing… I think she directed
herself unlike Rachita who was directed by her. What I want to see are the shots she rejected
and the outtakes,’…’It will be you and her, alone in a room. We can see how she was around
you…After all that she has gone through with her parents, the betrayal and all that stuff, don’t
you think she is capable of fooling herself that she wasn’t in love with you? Maybe she was?
One look, one tender moment, that’s all it takes,’…

The positivity which he carries within helped him to find the actual truth. He finally
finds the uncut shots where Ananth’s Mohini really portrays her love to Ananth.

Gautam

About Gautam the first thing that gets to our mind is his brain is the only physical
living being that affects and gets affected he is nobody. His brain worked frantically only
when it got physically diseased. It is full of such positivity that nothing could overwhelm it
emotional shortages have hurt him but could not ruin his real essence. Immediately after he
gets rid of the tumour, he was again the same sensitive good-natured man he was ever
before.Like many he is at times obsessive regarding certain things, some are obsessed with
video games, others with dance, serials, cooking, reading etc. Gautam is obsessed with

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Could Tell You

photography first since his childhood. Later on, his love for Anusha, his love for humanity
drags him to WEDONATE platform to save people needing fund for medical purposes.

Conclusion

Psychoanalytic approach is an approach to understand human behaviour that focuses

on the role of unconscious thoughts, feelings, and memories. In this respect Austrian
neurologist Sigmund Freud divided the mind into the conscious and the unconscious, which
is later divided by him into Id, Ego and Super-ego.

According to Freudian theory, the id is the component of personality that forms the
basis of our most primitive impulses. The id is entirely unconscious, and it drives our most
important motivations, including the sexual drive (libido) and the aggressive or destructive
drive (Thanatos). According to Freud, the id is driven by the pleasure principle — the desire
forimmediate gratification of our sexual and aggressive urges. The id is why we smoke
cigarettes, drink alcohol, view pornography, tell mean jokes about people, enjoy torturing
people and engage in other fun or harmful behaviours, often at the cost of doing more
productive activities.

In stark contrast to the id, the superego represents our sense of morality and socially
accepted attitude. The superego tells us all the things that we shouldn’t do, or the duties and
obligations of society. The superego strives for perfection, and when we fail to live up to its
demands, we feel guilty.

In contrast to the id, which is about the pleasure principle, the function of the ego is
based on the reality principle — the idea that we must delay gratification of our basic
motivations until the appropriate time with the appropriate outlet. The ego is the largely
conscious controller or decision-maker of personality. The ego serves as the intermediary
between the desires of the id and the constraints of society contained in the superego.

This constant battle between the id and the super-ego results in such behavioural
patterns of the characters of the novel. In case of Gautam the super-ego remains strong
enough to dominate the ego till he is attacked by tumour and loses the strength to id.In
Saraansh’s case to get a positive proof of his theory his Id worked to steal Anusha’s laptop.
But it does not result to any harm rather it releases a blooming positive effect to both the lives
of Gautam and Anusha. Sunita ji’s husband had a very weak super-ego he felt tempted to

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commit an illicit guilt. Anusha, her mother Sunita ji, and Neelima ji all had a constant
conflict in their mind working under the ego. Anusha finally could achieve the close-contact
with her super-ego while her mother could not achieve that and her ego continued to be over-
ruled by the id. But for Neelima ji it was the fear of loosing her only living child that clicked
her ego and through out the different events that occurred in this novel she could reach to
love her assumed would-be daughter-in-law.

In this novel it seems as if the writer has first written the story and then arranged it in
haphazard manner to retain the interest. Though, this story revolves around the two characters
Anusha/Mohini or Gautam/Ananth, but this novel does not give the two the superiority.
Through their story actually Datta tried to focus on the eternal truth of the victory of love and
sanctity in this cruel and selfish world through the hands of Saraansh. So, in my vision not
Gautam but, Saraansh is the hero of the novel, the mouthpiece of the author, not because
finally Anusha fell in love with Gautam but because Gautam’s good could change and revive
an emotionally injured Anusha.

Works Cited:

Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory.

Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press,2009. Print.

Tyson, Lois. Critical Theory Today: A User-friendly Guide, 2006. Print.

Nayar, Promod K. Contemporary Literary and Cultural Theory: From Structuralism to

Ecocriticism. Pearson, 2009. Print.

Datta, Durjoy. Wish I Could Tell You. Penguin, 2019.Print.

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