Sunday, June 29, 2003		Books

Life, love & loneliness in a woman’s world
Padam Ahlawat

Baker’s Dozen
by Shoma A. Chatterji. Rupa, New Delhi. Pages 161. Rs 150

FROM the title of the book one would think it had 12 stories. A thirteenth story, however, has been given as a bonus. The story goes that in Britain one loaf of bread was given as a bonus on the purchase of a dozen loaves.

These are stories of women and their relationships with their husbands, parents and children. Some of the stories are touching and sensitive. Bloodlines, one such moving story told in an easy, flowing style, is about a young woman and her mother. The twentyseven year-old daughter moves to London after her marriage and writes to her mother for the first time. In the letter she pours all her feelings and despite loving her mother and at the risk of sounding ungrateful, she blames her mother for her parents’ divorce. She seems to have taken a liking to her father, with whom she used to spend weekends while living through the week with her divorced mother. She resents being deprived of her father’s love. That the father and mother both love their daughter is true. But, she feels, that as a child of a broken marriage, she is the one who has suffered the most. The daughter feels that the marriage broke up because of her mother. At school, she shares a friendship with Renuka, who also has divorced parents. In her case the court decided that she would live with her mother, while her brother would live with their father. She writes how lonely she felt when her father married again and migrated to the U.S.A. She wants to make efforts to ensure that her own marriage succeeds. At the end of the story her mother reveals that the man she thinks is her father is not her real father.

In Diamonds Are Forever, a rich couple is trapped in a meaningless marriage. In a Negative Sense, the protagonist Aruna is married into a large family. She is a dutiful daughter-in-law and works all day at home despite a very good academic record. Then one day she is offered a job in a faraway town. Having always said "yes" to others, she changes the whole equation with another "yes" and revolts against a dead marriage.

The story titled Love Letters on a Mellow Afternoon is imaginative and is sensitively told. The romantic and delicate love letters are from Dilip to Renu. In one letter Dilip write as Othello to Desdemona and in another as Saleem to Anarkali. Ronita is a sensitive woman trapped in a loveless marriage to a top CEO. They have wealth but lack the love that makes life meaningful. Ronita consoles herself by reading these love letters that were written 20 years back. For 20 years Ronita has been reading these letters in the hope of arousing her husband’s jealousy. He knows that these letters were written by her former lover. The story becomes more pathetic when it is revealed that these love letters were not Ronita’s but were addressed to her sister.

Another story that stands out is No Forwarding Address. It is the story of a woman who was widowed five years ago. She is uneducated and raises her four children with love. She goes to Dubai to earn money. When she returns with electronic goods for her family she finds that her son has sold her house in Kerela and moved away with his family without leaving any forwarding address. Her love has been repaid with ingratitude. She is left heart broken and homeless.

The author has written several sensitive stories about women. That she can write with feeling and emotion is evident from the stories.