Book review: A poignant poetry of great ambition and greater failure, and a spirited fight

Tanuja Chandra, known for her intense portrayals of love and hope in the face of searing communal strife, social prejudices and gender violence as a co-scripter/director in movies such as Zakhm, Tamanna and Sangharsh, makes her debut in the literary world with this collection of short stories, Bijnis Woman. These are stories from the master raconteurs in her family, stories spun into the fabric of family time with her mausis, buas, chachas, phupaas and cousins, reminiscent of an age already past, when families would come together in summer or winter vacations, and generations of siblings and cousins spend time together, lying on “chataayis in the baithaks” or on “khaats in the sun”, telling and listening to kissas that became richer and more poignant with each retelling. “These chronicles have acquired the status of folklore in our family,” says Chandra in the introduction to the book. “For me, it was extremely important to write these stories down before they were lost forever, because they form a history as important as the histories of kings and queens.”

The stories emanate from “places big and small” in Uttar Pradesh, like Lucknow, Badaun, Sapnawat and Pilibhit, and the author feels that they reflect something unique and unusual about the people of UP. “Uttar Pradesh, in my experience, is filled with such stories…bursting at the seams with urgent longings and intense desires, alongside an abject inability to fulfil them,” she says. The characters are brought alive with minute observation and loving strokes. We hear of the god-fearing man never seen without his red tilak, even when he visits a brothel. We meet a girl who drags her disfigured foot as she walks, which earns her the nickname of cheenti, “ant”, and a don who lovingly bathes his lathi in oil every morning to keep it supple. We are thoroughly entertained by the soldier who returns from service with a cartful of colourful tall tales about his own valour, and by the unforgettable revenge of the court peon when his lady love is called into question.

What tinges these tales with their own unique flavour is not its geographical location — they are far too universal than that — but rather the times they are set in. They hold up a mirror to the overall state of the country in that age — its prejudices and fascinations, its ambitions and limitations, its transgressors, its freethinkers and its rebels. In the author’s words, “These stories are a record of ordinary people who lived through their own unique times and circumstances…and leave us enriched with the taste of a world close to us in lifetimes, but already so far away.”

Among other things the stories reflect the state of women even two generations back — their repressed identities, their fortitude with their sufferings, their desperate flights to freedom. We find out at what cost a newly-wed, seemingly “dumb bride” keeps mum even when her insulting in-laws give away her only mementoes of her dead mother — her saris. We hear the triangular tale of the feisty young girl who tastes love with a married man and risks her reputation, the man who lets the moment slip and the docile wife who is transformed in that moment. We meet a lazy daughter-in-law with a strange ailment and a widowed young girl who begins to live only when she gives away her old life to the river. We hear of the rose-tinged first romance of a handicapped girl, and how, in its fleeting reciprocation, it is complete and enough, and the emotion of a lifetime.

Some of these stories bring out the way in which society’s gaze, if allowed, could transform the very nature of relationships and sometimes change even the love of parents towards their offspring to a form of violence. It also seems to point to the observation that the reasons for the way people behave and act are not superficial and skin-deep. They lie buried deep in their psyches, unfathomable to outsiders till the head breaks open and reveals the worms of their desire.

And so these stories touch a chord. They talk of being fulfilled in love, being conned in love and the regret of losing it all through one’s own error, of betrayal and loss of innocence, of the surprises life throws at us and the grace with which we are required to handle them. We relate to these characters because, theirs is the poignant poetry of “great ambition and greater failure”, and a spirited fight nonetheless.

This brings us to the last in this collection of 14 stories, “Bijnis Woman” — “businesswoman” — the story of a woman with a good but unambitious husband who catches life firmly by its horns, and trains herself to become an astute businesswoman trading steel and clothes. In all of life’s moments big and small, emotional and humdrum, she is committed to sniff out opportunities so that her children can have a better life. This woman seems to be a transitional figure between the women of that age, and the next.

As we turn the pages of this volume, we are already inching into a different age — this modern age of financially and emotionally-independent women entrepreneurs. In the process, we barter nostalgia and regret for new hope and faith in human enterprise — new things for old — just like the bijnis woman.

The writer is a translator and a language consultant