Women have always struggled in one way or the other in order to cope with patriarchal expectations of them which exist everywhere irrespective of caste, culture or nationality. In doing so, many women have lost their lives and continue to do the same. There have also been examples of many who managed to hold their grounds amidst harsh criticism, but then there have been attempts to make the lives of these women unbearable. Rita Joshi’s The Simla Paintings and Other Stories offers a collection of short stories which pan across to the struggles of women set in colonial India and modern day Delhi. This volume of six stories delineates the experiences of women struggling to endure and survive in a very demanding society.
One of the stories which shocks the reader is The Goddess. It charts a horrifying trajectory of young virgins who are made to begin their lives as goddesses and later fall to the status of prostitutes once they attain puberty. Their journey begins at the centre only to be later pushed to the margins. “Periodically a young girl is chosen from the village community and installed as the living goddess.” After these young girls’ elevation to the status of living goddesses, they are confined to a little room where they are made to sit from morning till evening, decked up to look like goddesses.
The offerings that are made to them in the form of “handsome sums of money” are not only owned by their parents, but are also split among their father, brothers, uncles and cousins. That is to say, a living goddess aka a young girl is subtly made the bread winner of her entire clan only to protect an inconceivable age-old tradition. Once she attains puberty, the source of income of the family ceases. She is now sold off as a prostitute to the highest bidder because nobody wants to marry a goddess owing to some uncanny superstition. It is at this point that Joshi highlights the plight of these unwanted young girls. From birth till death, they lead a life according to the wants of society. Throughout their lives, they are accepted as goddesses while rejected as women, or even human beings.
Another striking piece of writing in this book is a novella, The Awakening which was published independently in 1993. It is written in rhyming couplets following the example of Vikram Seth’s novel The Golden Gate and tales in verse. Joshi includes it in this volume in a shorter version as it fits with the general theme of this collection of stories about women and their search for expression and place in society. Its “heroine”, as Joshi calls her, is named JR and “this JR is neither male nor callous.” At the same time, the initials JR can also be read as the inverse of Joshi’s initials. Hence, it seems that Joshi is reflecting upon her own life through this novella in third-person.
The story highlights JR’s life in “a women’s college of repute” oscillating between “An English Honours degree/counts well for matrimony” and hoping “women would rise/education would make them wise” while feeling “her talents are being deployed/ In ways that leave her annoyed” all along. Along with her are other members of the staff, all women, who also strive to survive in the middle of furore and uproar, rebellion and strife. JR is a strong woman fighting all odds at her workplace which is why Joshi ends the story with an anxious question, “What future will her writing faceIJ”
The eponymous short story, The Simla Paintings indulges the reader in an imaginary treat. The reader ends up in Simla along with the characters of the story. The cold breeze of Simla reaches the reader unveiling the condition and status of women in royal families. The story is a perfect example of a woman coming to terms with and attempting to cope with the politics and corruption of the supreme level. Both her inner and outer worlds are portrayed through the mediums of paintings and diary entries. Conflict and violence ensue as she resists authority and dares to express her desire. In this story, the situations range from the unsteady to the ominous. Fraught with alarm and danger, the story engages the reader in a retrospective inspection of events related to a royal family set in colonial India.
Stories like Curtain Call and Driving through Delhi One Evening assimilate how a woman can appear differently to different people. Their experiences are portrayed and dealt with sensitivity and insight. Yet, the two stories leave the reader in search for a more intriguing ending. And, at the same time, the stream of perspectives offered in the two stories is quite exhausting.
Joshi’s short stories are linked at the centre with a unique theme of women in search for expression and identity. Each of the female protagonists’ innermost thoughts illustrate what can happen when women are faced with society’s expectations. Through these stories, Joshi captures women painting their surroundings with strokes of hard work, sweat and blood, expecting recognition and a fraction of love in return. To appropriate Maya Angelou’s words, “The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.”
The reviewer is a PhD ResearchScholar in Comparative Indianliterature, Delhi University