Skip to main content

Women as Victims or Survivors



Book

Title: The Blue Scarf and other stories

Author: Anu Singh Choudhary

Translator: Kamayani Sharma

Publisher: HarperCollins India, 2023

Pages: 188

There is no doubt that the Indian social system is overtly patriarchal and hence a lot of women endure restrictions of all sorts. There are exceptions like the matrilineal tribes of the Northeast. The 12 short stories in this volume by Anu Singh Choudhary focus on some women from the patriarchal societies of India, particularly North India. Originally written in Hindi, the stories have been translated quite effortlessly by Kamayani Sharma though the book does show a few signs of poor proofreading.

The very first story, First Look, shows us the rising aspirations of a few women from a remote village and the futility of those aspirations in a world where even marriage is a business deal. “With this deal, we’re interested only in maximizing profits for both parties,” The boy’s father says. But the girl’s family can’t ever touch a deal of the sort that is being offered.

Many dreams crumble. But the women know how to deal with frustrations. After all, they have dealt with so many already. They accept this too with the “bittersweet consolation” of some rationalisations like “This sort of thing happens…”

In the next story, The Last Puff of the Cigarette, the female protagonist is quite a contrast. She asserts herself, her liberty, even by going to the extent of smoking cigarettes and drinking vodka. Her Boy is unable to reconcile himself with that sort of assertiveness. He’s too ‘good’ for her, the Girl decides.

The third story, The Way Things Were, shows how a female teacher alters the world of a young female student. The girl was born 18 years after the marriage of her parents. Their son had hanged himself because he thought death was easier than dealing with his dad’s pain on coming to know about his failure in math. The girl child becomes ever more special to the parents. But she knows that she is a kind of substitute for her dead brother. The teacher brings about a transformation to that situation and helps the girl discover her own identity.

Shyamali Sengupta’s 21-year-long search for her college crush Swati Prakash is the theme of the next story. They had been the best of friends until one day Shayamali got into Swati’s bed in the hostel. Swati changed her room in the hostel the same day. Twenty-one years later they meet again at Tirupati, the temple town. They have realised by now that love can have many shades.

A poignant contrast is presented in The Lines of Destiny with its two women: one a very rich one who is unable to bear a child in spite of all the medical care she gets and the other a very poor one who can work till the last moment and then go into the labour room and give birth to yet another healthy child of hers. The story raises the question about the worth of a woman who can’t bear a child for the family.

The live-in relation of Avi and Naina in the story titled The Live-in has a theme similar to that of The Last Puff of the Cigarette: Incompatibility of certain relationships. “How is marriage possible when in a live-in wasn’t?” is a question that the two young protagonists who are supposedly in love must answer.

Most stories in this collection question the very value of life. “From being born to going to school to attending college to marrying – it’s all without reason,” says the story, Life the Pain, Life the Cure. Is life an incurable disease whose medicine is life itself? The protagonist of this story is still finding the answer.

Anu Singh Choudhary
The meaning of life and human relationships is what binds these 12 stories together. There are many break-ups here. Some make compromises and go on. A few learn the essential lessons from their experiences. Anu Singh Choudhary has created some unforgettable characters in these stories.

 

 

Comments

  1. Sounds like an interesting compilation.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sounds like stories of quiet rebellion and backlash. Interesting. What are suppressed find different ways of expression.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Your comment reassues me that my review is quite right. 😊

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...

India in Modi-Trap

That’s like harnessing a telescope to a Vedic chant and expecting the stars to spin closer. Illustration by Gemini AI A friend forwarded a WhatsApp message written by K Sahadevan, Malayalam writer and social activist. The central theme is a concern for science education and research in India. The writer bemoans the fact that in India science is in a prison conjured up by Narendra Modi. The message shocked me. I hadn’t been aware of many things mentioned therein. Modi is making use of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan’s Centre for Study and Research in Indology for his nefarious purposes projected as efforts to “preserve and promote classical Indian knowledge systems [IKS]” which include Sanskrit, Ayurveda, Jyotisha (astrology), literature, philosophy, and ancient sciences and technology. The objective is to integrate science with spirituality and cultural values. That’s like harnessing a telescope to a Vedic chant and expecting the stars to spin closer. The IKS curricula have made umpteen r...

Two Women and Their Frustrations

Illustration by Gemini AI Nora and Millie are two unforgettable women in literature. Both are frustrated with their married life, though Nora’s frustration is a late experience. How they deal with their personal situations is worth a deep study. One redeems herself while the other destroys herself as well as her husband. Nora is the protagonist of Henrik Ibsen’s play, A Doll’s House , and Millie is her counterpart in Terence Rattigan’s play, The Browning Version . [The links take you to the respective text.] Personal frustration leads one to growth into an enlightened selfhood while it embitters the other. Nora’s story is emancipatory and Millie’s is destructive. Nora questions patriarchal oppression and liberates herself from it with equanimity, while Millie is trapped in a meaningless relationship. Since I have summarised these plays in earlier posts, now I’m moving on to a discussion on the enlightening contrasts between these two characters. If you’re interested in the plot ...

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...