Possession

In this novel a father sells his son Valmiki to Lady Caroline Bell, a rich aristocratic woman, for five thousand rupees under the pressure of extreme poverty. His mother observed : "He has already decided. Did you not hear him? It was the money - it was too much for him. But it is always so, men are ever free and easy with that for which they have neither suffered nor laboured." Caroline takes the boy to England and raises him to be an artist. In psychological and spiritual terms Valmiki suffers degradation and looses much of his identity. In the end, he eventually returns to India to discover his true self. The novel emphasizes the cultural conflict between East and West. --www.writershideout.net et al.