Page 101 - DENG503_INDIAN_WRITINGS_IN_LITERATURE

Unit 11: Rupa Bajwa: Sari Shop—Theme

She left school after barely completing class nine and works in a beauty parlor as an assistant. Notes
Even though real-life-problems keep intruding in the form of a broken home which can barely
survive the next monsoon and a vile sister-in-law, she is essentially happy reading Filmfare, watching
Shah Rukh Khan movies and making up stories to her nephew, whom she loves like her own son.
However, her carefree existence is disturbed by reality. The financial troubles are unending and
domestic disputes escalate to such a point that her gentle, nonplussed father can not bear the
onslaught of his son and daughter-in-law’s taunts, and quietly dies. Rani has lost the connection
she had with her brother and his wife, who now treat her as nothing more than a burden to be
pawned off. It does not take her long to realize that the city she has loved from the first day will
only now only suffocate her. She packs her meager belongings, bids her nephew a tearful goodbye
and leaves Amritsar to work as a maid for Sadhna, a woman who has been disillusioned by a
savage literary market place.
In Sadhna, we perhaps see an autobiographical glimpse of the author herself. Sadhna is a frustrated
novelist whose first book released to great critical acclaim but who has now been struggling –
unsuccessfully – to write her next. Acclaimed as the new ‘literary find’, she was expected to
release her second novel within the subsequent couple of years. But she did not – could not –
because she had lost the ability to write. Literature was not, as she had thought, a truthful, pure
place where one could work hard to filter away the lies. It was a lie itself now, living it a savage
marketplace.
Rupa Bajwa’s first novel, The Sari Shop, was an immense success and released in 2004. This eight
year gap between her first book and the second, Tell Me A Story, is highly reminiscent of Sadhna’s
story. I wonder whether she experienced the same emotions Sadhna talks about.
Backtracking to the plot: Rani comes to Delhi, to try and make sense of her life. According to the
blurb, “…and her solitary journey of love and loss begins.” It does not, not immediately. For the
fifty pages that follow her arrival to Delhi, the pages are hazy, almost going nowhere. Rani comes
across people completely alien to her, who spend thousands on a bottle of wine and can’t bring
themselves to be genuinely sad for a friend who has just lost a father.
This contrast becomes a little lost on the reader, initially. But the author has been gifted with the
art of getting into the skin of her characters. Her words flow unrestricted and we follow the
transformation of Rani into a sensible adult who has learned what life is quite early in her life. She
has lost sight of the simple pleasures of life and has nobody to turn to. But an interesting friend is
delivered in the form of Sadhna and it looks like she has begun healing from the pain of her loss,
when another bombshell drops and her mettle is tested again. The novel ends at a disconsolate
note, just short of abrupt and the reader is left feeling strangely out of sorts, wanting for more.
Exactly what a good novel should do. To sum it up, I would say that the author has an excellent
eye for detail and writes about ordinary people going about mundane tasks in a way that makes
it highly readable.
Rani is with her nephew, watching Ravan being burnt as part of the Dusshera celebrations: When
she opened her eyes, the fireworks were still going, the crowd was still cheering. And Rani had
the strangest feeling. Hundreds, maybe even thousands, of humans had gathered, had put up
effigies of a man, his brother and his son, and for some wrongs that the three had supposed to
have done, god knows how many years ago, wrongs that these people had not even witnessed,
they were punishing them. And they were celebrating the punishment. The hatred was being
carefully kept alive. It did not seem like the celebration of good conquering evil. It seemed like the
celebration of savagery, of unforgiving cruelty, of harsh judgement.
Rupa Bajwa’s The Sari Shop, set in a world far removed from the one FIE usually addresses,
explores the power of language through a narrative device. Ramchand, the sari shop attendant,
glimpses the world inhabited by those who speak English in India and hopes to make sense of this
world through a knowledge of English. The book he picks up – Complete Letter Writer – leaves him
absurdly adrift among Phyllis and Peggy writing to each other about a motor tour to Caernavarvon
and Betws-y-Coed.

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