Venkatraman, Padma - Climbing the Stairs
Vidya is fifteen and dreams of going to college, but she's afraid she'll be married off. But soon, tragedy strikes as her father becomes more and more involved with the Indian independence movement, and she and her family are sent off to live with her paternal grandfather. There, the women are separated from the men, and Vidya's life is so limited that the only freedom she can find is in the library upstairs. And life gets even more complicated as Britain calls on Indian volunteers to help fight the Axis powers.
This reminds me a lot of Keeping Corner in how it deals with the ideas of Indian independence, feminism, and Hindu philosophy, although I think Keeping Corner did a better job in terms of execution. This book combines many interesting elements but is ultimately less nuanced than I would like.
First is that Vidya is the only woman with agency in the book. Her amma is fairly peripheral to the plot, as is her friend Rifka, and all the other women and girls are shown as evil (periamma, her cousin, her teacher, her other aunt) or ineffective (her third aunt). This wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that many of the men in this book are the ones who end up helping Vidya-Raman, Kitta, and thatha. And they're the ones Vidya talks with the most about her future hopes and dreams; they're the ones she engages with on issuees of feminism and oppression.
My other issue is the portrayal of the US as a fellow British colony and possible ally. I have a very hard time accepting parallels between the US Revolution and the Indian independence movement. I don't know that much about the Indian independence movement, but I feel it is not particularly flattering to draw parallels between it and a revolution that started mostly for the purpose of financial benefit and the protection of rich white guys' profits and property. I am, of course, heavily influenced by Conquest and Octavian Nothing in this reading, but that is why I have a problem with the image of the US as a potentially safer space for Indians. I also hate that Vidya's protests that the US didn't treat American Indians well (understatement!) and kept slaves, and that they were countered in a sentence or two with "No country is perfect. And they emancipated the slaves!"
That said, I was glad that the book grounds Vidya's growing feminist consciousness in Hindi roots and in the Indian independence movement, and that even though her relatives are sexist, we also get to see a flip side in her father.
This reminds me a lot of Keeping Corner in how it deals with the ideas of Indian independence, feminism, and Hindu philosophy, although I think Keeping Corner did a better job in terms of execution. This book combines many interesting elements but is ultimately less nuanced than I would like.
First is that Vidya is the only woman with agency in the book. Her amma is fairly peripheral to the plot, as is her friend Rifka, and all the other women and girls are shown as evil (periamma, her cousin, her teacher, her other aunt) or ineffective (her third aunt). This wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that many of the men in this book are the ones who end up helping Vidya-Raman, Kitta, and thatha. And they're the ones Vidya talks with the most about her future hopes and dreams; they're the ones she engages with on issuees of feminism and oppression.
My other issue is the portrayal of the US as a fellow British colony and possible ally. I have a very hard time accepting parallels between the US Revolution and the Indian independence movement. I don't know that much about the Indian independence movement, but I feel it is not particularly flattering to draw parallels between it and a revolution that started mostly for the purpose of financial benefit and the protection of rich white guys' profits and property. I am, of course, heavily influenced by Conquest and Octavian Nothing in this reading, but that is why I have a problem with the image of the US as a potentially safer space for Indians. I also hate that Vidya's protests that the US didn't treat American Indians well (understatement!) and kept slaves, and that they were countered in a sentence or two with "No country is perfect. And they emancipated the slaves!"
That said, I was glad that the book grounds Vidya's growing feminist consciousness in Hindi roots and in the Indian independence movement, and that even though her relatives are sexist, we also get to see a flip side in her father.