_What The Body Remembers_
I stopped reading it at pg 224, almost halfway through the book. 'Tis just too sad for me. It is well-written and hauntingly evocative of an India which no longer exists in cities. Set in Punjab in the 1930s, it is the story of two families as they go about the normal business of life, which back then meant getting married and having kids.
And so we visit an India where girls are stifled and live in fear of attracting attention from males-not-related-by-blood. For if such an attention is received, it must be the girl's fault [the brazen hussy!] as men-have-important-work-to-do-and-don't-look-unless-the-girl-does-something. It is an India I am sort of familiar with, sort of because women in my family talked about it a lot, usually when I wanted to wear jeans and they talked of how easy I have it, and how I must be grateful enough to not push the boundaries further. It is an India where women have nothing they can call their own - not their life, not their mind, not even their children. If they can lay claim to anything, it is to their pain and suffering.
I am familiar with the mind-set, and thus with the characters which inhabit the book, but I can't stand tragic compliance with the smothering rules. I can accept the fact that the society has weird rules, I have never been able to understand why women internalise them. Oh, I can understand it intellectually, but never emotionally. I have never been the sort to go quietly into the night and I am invariably saddened when people choose to do so.
I am a wuss, I admit so freely. Those of you who aren't might wish to read this book. At first, the writing will strike you as choppy and uneven, but then the rythmn of the tale would draw you under and the words would cement your ties with the world they describe. The characters are well-etched - Roop and her annoying fixation with marriage, Satya's sad predicament as her barrneness leads a second wife into her home, Papaji's worry that a physical disability would lead to his daughter's spinsterhood, Nani who pays her debt with her last gold ornaments, Sardarji and his Mr. Cunningham, these are all people I know. The politics and the society are well rendered too, as are the prejudices of the Indians and the British. I will definitely finish the book, but slowly.
And so we visit an India where girls are stifled and live in fear of attracting attention from males-not-related-by-blood. For if such an attention is received, it must be the girl's fault [the brazen hussy!] as men-have-important-work-to-do-and-don't-look-unless-the-girl-does-something. It is an India I am sort of familiar with, sort of because women in my family talked about it a lot, usually when I wanted to wear jeans and they talked of how easy I have it, and how I must be grateful enough to not push the boundaries further. It is an India where women have nothing they can call their own - not their life, not their mind, not even their children. If they can lay claim to anything, it is to their pain and suffering.
I am familiar with the mind-set, and thus with the characters which inhabit the book, but I can't stand tragic compliance with the smothering rules. I can accept the fact that the society has weird rules, I have never been able to understand why women internalise them. Oh, I can understand it intellectually, but never emotionally. I have never been the sort to go quietly into the night and I am invariably saddened when people choose to do so.
I am a wuss, I admit so freely. Those of you who aren't might wish to read this book. At first, the writing will strike you as choppy and uneven, but then the rythmn of the tale would draw you under and the words would cement your ties with the world they describe. The characters are well-etched - Roop and her annoying fixation with marriage, Satya's sad predicament as her barrneness leads a second wife into her home, Papaji's worry that a physical disability would lead to his daughter's spinsterhood, Nani who pays her debt with her last gold ornaments, Sardarji and his Mr. Cunningham, these are all people I know. The politics and the society are well rendered too, as are the prejudices of the Indians and the British. I will definitely finish the book, but slowly.