the one with the many tales

"I wonder why grown-ups always complete their sentences when talking about pleasant things, but always leave them unfinished if it's something unpleasant. Like 'Ah, a woman's fate..' or 'Oh, three girls..'. There's always silence after these half statements."


The Inner Courtyard, Stories by Indian Women(edited by Lakshmi Holmstrom) isn't a book I'd usually pick up by myself but when presented it by a person(I'm entirely confident that her taste in books is similar to mine), I made the attempt to read the many short stories within its pages and I fell in love with quite a few.


Vishwapriya.L.Iyengar's The Library Girl crawled under my skin and refused to leave. It's the story of a girl in a Muslim neighbourhood or basti. Ever since her father made her(Talat) drop out of school, Talat goes to the library to read(without her father's knowledge) and learn what is beyond her reach. We hear her mother argue for Talat to go to school(her little brother Tahir goes, yet not Talat) and her father firmly dismisses her with an admonishment for comparing Talat to Tahir.
("Buy her silk, satin, velvet, silver -but, fool woman, don't compare her to Tahir.")
Talat, popularly known as the library girl, flounders on after dropping out of school. She plays, she learns, she is the girl who learns to dream. Her father surprises her one day with a burqa as a gift, a black silk one with fine net mesh as the face covering. Talat, happy and delighted, with the gift doesn't consider with the consequences of it.
("Her mother rubbed salt into the goat's breast and did not know whether glass crystals were being rubbed into her own. Only her father's eyes shone with pleasure.")
She slips off to the library always but there are no friendly greetings; no one even seems to recognize her. She runs to the library yet even the librarian doesn't see the Library Girl. She sees only a woman running in a burqa and waving her hands, falling down and crying. They all go about their day; missing the library girl who was no more.
("Within the veil, a darkness seized Talat. It bandaged her mouth,her eyes, and sealed her voice. Today her smiles had lit nothing. Blank faces became ash in her gaze. She wanted...she wanted to lift the veil and say,'Look..it's me. Only me in a Persian robe. It's a joke.' But the robe had hands that clasped her mouth.")
It's hard to explain what made me love this story so much. Maybe its the lyrical nature of the story; its in third person narrative and written in a form that makes you feel like you're there too. The little undercurrents that Talat doesn't seem to see, the larger picture that she doesn't seem to know; everything leads to the inevitable end and you weep for the loss of one so bright as well.


Another favorite was Girls by Mrinal Pande. The protagonist is a young girl; the middle child of three girls. She is being taken along with her sisters with her mother to her parent's home to stay there for the remnants of her pregnancy. The girl thinks of how much she hates coming to her grandmother's house(her mother is always meaner to her and her father never accompanies them) and tries to amuse herself by various small means(usually like a boy) which makes her mother more angry.
Through various conversations("You are born a girl and you'll have to bend for the rest of your life, so you might as well learn how" ; her grandmother, "Oh goddess! Protect my honor.At least this time, let her take a son back from her parent's home") and observations, she puts together the significance of being a girl in her family.
("That girl must be harassing her. She was born only to plague my life.")
This strikes a chord in every girl's heart. While having never been discriminated against for being born a girl(by my family or anyone else), it is quite difficult to not empathize with the protagonist for the difficulty of her situation and the lifelong struggle she'll have to face. Told entirely, in first person narrative, this story brings a lump to the throat.
Mrinal Pande, skillfully hints at the environment and the people; the words just pull you in and absorb you.
I, initially, typed a whole rant about how girls are discriminated against in favor of boys but I don't want to turn this into some sort of wild discussion. This is a blog post about a book I read; a book which has some stories that mean a lot to me. A book, I'll treasure.


("When you don't love girls, why do you pretend to worship them?")


P.S - the books features 18 stories by a lot of prominent writers some of whom are Anita Desai, Mahasveta Devi, Shashi Deshpande, Kamala Das and Vaidehi. These two are merely part of the book and are in no way, the most important ones.