Renée Ranchan’s To Each With love: A Satiric Rendition is a collection of short stories that lays bare some hard hitting facts about India’s social fabric. A sharp exhibition of hierarchy in the social strata, this book merges human sentiments with social hypocrisy. Comprising six stories, Ranchan juxtaposes satire with seriousness, humane with humour.
In this collection, the readers meet Vimla Jain in the opening story, the subservient daughter-in-law who is under the pressure of giving birth to a son to save her marriage. The second story is about Chander who leaves his native village and becomes a domestic help in the city. Then there is also the spinster lalla, a Geography teacher in a school in the hills, who is frustrated with her single status. In stark contrast is Rebecca and her contemplations about her family. On the other hand is Kashmiri Mataji who recalls her glorious and happy past as she is about to die, and so on.
Although written in a light hearted manner, the shocks in the stories turn towards surprising events. The author deftly employs humour to detonate the grim moments.
Even though the characters and their circumstances differ from one another, what brings them all together is the fact that human beings are all victims of circumstances and it is in the most grueling and testing of times that one’s psyche and conscience are laid bare. Ranchan highlights how even the daily and ordinary could nurture abundant stories. The home may be a familiar turf but it could also be so close to us that we fail to see it in its true essence. Every one of us is a story and the author takes the opportunity to underline the same in this anthology.
Ranchan has also devoted much time to building a strong narrative for her female characters. Issues of gender and patriarchy come up to the fore with vividness. Oppression of women has been highlighted with effect and leaves the reader thinking about the plight of women, more so in spaces where they have no channel to exercise their rights or voice their dissent. The book starts with this social issue as the first story, ‘For Your loins, Sir’, is a long story set in the early years of independent India. With minimal characters, it is a poignant portrayal of the grinding circumstances women have to face in the country. It makes one realise that the oppression of women is an internalised norm in India and even though the story is set decades back, it unfortunately still holds true to the contemporary times. Interestingly, the meek Vimla’s nemesis at the same time is also a woman, her mother-in-law. The sororophobic mother-in-law subjects Vimla to the most regressive and suppressive norms and that only shows how decadent customs are blindly passed from one generation to another.
‘The Fiefdom!’ is another interesting tale that is laden with dark humour. It depicts the dominance of a domestic help for working couples and how they can manipulate their employers. Chander walks the readers through a metamorphosis that almost everyone who has migrated from one city to another might grasp, regardless of their social status. While making one feel nostalgic, the story also has familiar philosophical attributes that seek to communicate directly with the reader.
These stories are soothing and with a lot of action in them and are peppered subtle uncertainties that strengthen the author’s narrative, the author succeeds in creating intrigue. There is a risk of jargon overpowering the tales at times but underneath that layer are stories that everyone can relate to.