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Exploring the hypocrisy of Indian society

Published : Nov 6, 2016, 2:18 am IST
Updated : Nov 6, 2016, 2:18 am IST

When I’d first met Renee Ranchan, almost 18 years back, she came across as a restless poet —- one of those introverts cocooned in her own little world, observing the churnings on, in and around, and u

When I’d first met Renee Ranchan, almost 18 years back, she came across as a restless poet —- one of those introverts cocooned in her own little world, observing the churnings on, in and around, and unleashing them on paper later.

To Each With Love: A Satiric Rendition is a collection of six short stories. The wordflow nudges one to ponder our hypocrisy-laden layered lives. Our deceitfully contrived ways outdoing all those bogus development theories. In fact, I am reminded of Mulk Raj Anand’s oft-spoken one-liner: “We are becoming a third-class lot”, with so many layers heaped upon us!

The foreword written by Reginald Massey, a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, is very refreshing. I loved the way he describes writers as “toiling wordsmiths”, along with this accompanying backgrounder, “in my experience, forewords tend to take on magisterial tones. I do not believe that those of us who belong to the Great Republic of Letters should deliver obiter dicta about our fellow citizens. We are all co-intellectual workers. Since we all use words, we are all craftsmen. In other words toiling wordsmiths, such as ironsmiths, silversmiths and goldsmiths.”

For the first time in my writing years, I read about the “seductive” prowess of the written word in that matter-of-factly way. To quote Massey from his foreword, “Ranchan’s stories have a strange charisma about them, and that is what seduced me to read them with pleasure and immense interest. They explore the hypocrisy of Indian society at every level, and she delves deep into the psychology of the Indian Mother figure, who sustains, and at the same time devours Mother India.”

And if I may say, Massey’s strong foreword ends on a note that’s potent enough to set you in the reflective- introspective mood. It gets starker as you start reading Ranchan’s stories. Though the settings, characters and background of each story differs, the undercurrents remain unchanged. Tearing through the layers of hypocrisy is a bunch of woven, webbed and well-fitted stories that reflect our everyday living patterns. Ranchan’s take on the manipulating prowess of women is bold. Women controlling clans as their bodies begin to age even as their their minds start working overtime — plotting, scheming, setting one against the other.

Ranchan’s stories and characters unmask and rip through those age old perceptions. Almost along the strain one could say “Hey! all men aren’t wolves, have a look at the crafty ways of women!” Several of the male characters in the stories can be termed bechara hapless weaklings as they seem well-trapped in the harnessing powers of the women around them.

There are definite patterns and tales are relatable. Ranchan’s descriptions are superb. For example, “For your Loins, sir”, or “Plus the scraggy girl had a prominent pear-shape pelvic girdle that assured ample child-bearing facility”. I was left wondering what this central woman character’s body would have looked like! Or these lines from another short story titled “The Fiefdom!” “Nathu apparently missing the nightly fix that went into becoming a much-married man, a Pati Parmeshwar had got into his filthy, paapi head that she, Pinky, could substitute for Biwi Lajjo. The low life had dragged her halfway over the staircase, before poor she had bit those smut-soiled hands and fled (no, not outside she couldn’t leave the Memsaab’s precious house in Nathu’s cruddy custody) to the kitchen. Here, she managed by God’s grace to pick out the sturdiest, long-handled ladle with which she hit him on his forehead, while he in a deranged with desire rage blocked (with his boyish body) the kitchen entrance.” And another bunch of sentences from the story titled “Lalla”. “Yes, Lalla, the teacher of Geography was a bitter person. Her discontent taking on the silhouette severe, when she thought of the over-shore students. The Thai girls those Sikh girls whose fathers were in the cloth trade or something akin were more tolerable. Rather less contemptible or admirable. At the start of the term she would wheedle out a bundle of saris from half a dozen of them. The American georgette prancing as chiffon sorts, with large, loud flowers in colours so much in your face, that Lalla would appear more mammoth wound in them. And with a gluttony ballooning her face, with curled in covetousness fingers appropriate the bags that the Thai girls carried them in. Those flower-power patterned, see-through travel bags made of thick planked plastic supported by a pair of dependable, sound, moulded-for-your-hands handles.”

Though each one of these six stories could have been developed into a novel or a novella but Ranchan has kept them limited to the short story level. I wonder why Readers would have loved to read more to these fleshy tales; only at some odd joints there are bones sticking out!

Humra Quraishi is a Delhi-based writer, columnist and journalist. Her books include Kashmir: The Untold Story, Views: Yours and Mine and Absolute Khushwant