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Gendered Space: Anthology of Stories
edited by Jehanara Wasi and Alka Tyagi.
Fiction seems the most inclusive of all art forms, coterminous with the entire realm of experience. It also springs from a desire on the part of the writer to give form to his or her ideas and feelings about life. Through these short stories, some of the most well-known writers in India, like Indira Goswami, Mahasweta Devi, Rajee Seth, Ismat Chughtai, Paul Zacharia, have shown fragments of the lives of Indian women. Unlike the structure of a novel, which tends towards a beginning and an end, the structure of a short story is normally open ended like all life experiences. The theme of most stories, except the first two, is gender relations cutting across race, class, age and institutional boundaries. There is a gender order as a site of relations of domination and subordination, struggle for hegemony and practice of resistance. Another important aspect of these stories is the depth to which regional-language writers understand the lives of the common people. The fine tapestry of expression woven out of these experiences, the sheer variety of themes, the maturity in handling nuances is praiseworthy. The collection can be divided into three categories. The first of this is the quintessential women’s characteristics of being feminine, gentle, living life by the prescribed patriarchal norms. The stories in this category include A Girl Called Stella by P. Lankesh, in which a dedicated nurse serves her old whimsical patient. This sub-text is the life of this old man who prostitutes his own wife. The Deadline by Lal Singh is another piece pulling at your heartstrings. The protagonist serves her dying brother-in-law in all possible roles—a mother, a wife, a lover. The Profession by Ismat Chughtai reveals how a woman is misunderstood, if she doesn’t fit into the prescribed roles assigned to her by society. In the second category are stories of women’s rebellion, some quiet, some fierce. In Satyakaam and Jaababali by Amitabh, the woman gives birth to the child conceived in a gang rape and enters her name as both father and mother in school records. Liberation is also a final shedding of old slave mentality. The third category reveals more complex subtleties of exploitation of woman. In the Saint and Witch, the husband enjoys the status of a saint, while the wife is withdrawn, an ugly witeh. After she becomes a widow, she declares the barren life she has led, as her saint husband was a eunuch. The Whip becomes a metaphor for male domination and its agent that oppresses. The eighteen stories are all so powerful, so true to life that you are moved to think of the lives of Indian women. No haranguing on women issues, nor speeches, declaration can have the effect of understanding their struggles, their plight and their aspirations and because of the verisimilitude of these characters, you empathise with them and feel these stories should be part of any gender sensitisation course. |
The
book is a compilation of short stories translated in English from major
Indian languages. The stories provide a glimpse into Indian women’s
experiences and life. Literature can be a vital record of what human
beings undergo and imbibe what they feel. These life experiences are
normally woven into fiction. Literature is, thus, fundamentally an
expression of life through the medium of language, though in a fictional
form.