THE STORIES in this slim, elegantly produced volume deal with the lives of middle class urban women, a few with men and a couple of stories are of young boys, not over a period as in a novel but go into the immediate moment. The characters are portrayed so vividly that the reader feels she has actually met them in real life.
A theme in several of the stories is the suppressed feelings and unfulfilled ambitions of women in a patriarchal society where the women’s voice is not heard. A young girl is marred off to a man as her family feels that “ as a District Magistrate’s wife she will live in comfort and without care”. Her nani told her, “ Give him time. It matures like pickle, love does. She was giving him time.” She painted but her husband never bothered to even look at her painting.
“He never said anything, never complained. He never smiled either”. But how much, she asked herself. Each day is a burden with nothing to look forward to. She sat all day looking at the Ganges.
And there is Damini bhabhi who is a slave to her mother- in law, whose every need she has to attend to and, in addition, she has to put up with a foolish but honest husband. She accepts her daily drudgery as her fate. When the mother- in law dies, Damini is at last free.
“She looked away and for the first time I heard her let loose from within a chuckling of great abandonment.” She used to spend hours performing puja every day, but after her newfound freedom, she said “ what need have I of God now”. All grooms in our matrimonial want “ fair complexioned” brides.
When their daughters are dark- skinned, parents worry as to where will they find boys who will marry them.
Rita’s family is much relieved when she, who is dark- skinned, is engaged to an IPS officer. “ I had visions of a different world, a world that came to me from dog- eared National Geographic and Life magazines, lands of adventure where one wore dresses and not yards of silk spun around legs yearning to get out of their closet feet.
But how could I talk of this to a fettered world of woman, one fettered by volition… They said I was getting bad tempered, too willful.” Rita agreed to the marriage but developed a secret relationship with their servant’s son; when this is discovered the engagement with the IPS officer is called off and she is married off to a tall, thin buck- toothed widower.
We are all familiar with a character like Professor Memsahib who spends her married life looking after every small need of her husband. “ She too liked spit and polish but whenever she talked of new sofa cover or some changing in the house, he would say — shush, I am preparing a paper. Never wanted to be disturbed… He worked with his brain, and what a fine brain, nothing must disturb its equilibrium”. Often she would read his name in the newspaper about some agreement he had refuted, but if she asked him, he would say: “ You won’t understand.” She had no identity of her own; she had been just an extension of the professor sahib and even after his death continued be called Professor Memsahib.
In this story there is a small error. “ I have in front of you Rashbehari Bose,” says her husband, “ There see him in the distance… This is the man who dressed as a Pathan escaped from prison.” Does the author mean Subhas Bose who escaped from his house detention as a Pathan? Twilight is a moving story of a woman in the last years of her life, living with her son and daughter- inlaw who resent having to care for her and are waiting for her to die.
She knows this and dreams of the days gone by, her beautiful garden and her husband who brought her flowers every day. Equally evocative is the opening story of the little boy Chhotu living in filth and poverty under a Delhi flyover.
These boys make their living by collecting rags or picking pockets.
Chhotu is caught and handed over to the police who beat him mercilessly. “ The newspaper gave it in small print; death of yet another minor in police custody.” The stories are set in Indian cities and deal with situations most of us are familiar with and can relate to. There are no post- modern, post- apocalyptic settings.
The stories are written in an easy flowing language, thus making them extremely readable and enjoyable to one and all.
The reviewer is Chairperson of the National Gandhi Museum
