Page 84 - DENG503_INDIAN_WRITINGS_IN_LITERATURE

Indian Writings in Literature

Notes the disabilities attaching to female status were felt to be so great as to override differences of a
class kind would it be realistic to regard sex as an important dimension of stratification.”
The delineated female characters in Sari Shop are better halves of someone rich and famous or
somebody affluent and known. They are no entities in themselves. The novelist has called them all
Mrs Sachdeva/ Kapoor/ Bhandari/ Gupta or the other. They have no name and identity of their
own. It is all borrowed from husband’s hierarchy and tradition. The feminist concern should
embark on this hired ’image-identity bargain’ of upper-upper class woman. For Kamla, the drunk,
mad , ruffian sari assistant Chander’s wife the title is not Mrs. Chander anywhere but Chander’s
wife or that charred Kamla, ‘the mad woman in the attic’ kind.
Bajwa introduces a gallery of female characters, all distinct and apart in style, language, mannerism,
ideology and in particular how they choose a sari, admire its texture, colour and fabric and fancy
it wearing them. Mrs Sandhu wife of a chief engineer in Punjab State Electricity Board , epitomises
‘power psychology’ “as her rolls of fat jiggled as she waddled” into her spotless house, furnished
with latest gadgetry and fashionable architectural feature. Her picture perfect frame is summed
up as “ A beautiful house, status family, a caring husband and good looks... what more could a
woman ask for.”
Mrs Gupta the wife of a wealthy industrialist sits in her bedroom on a large bed covered with a
peach satin bedspread, reminding of the “burnished throne” (A game of chess, The Waste land,
T.S. Eliot). Her unusual, ‘perky’ and ‘over confident manner’ smelled through her room beaming
of various loreal cosmetics, lakme, and her recent venture with feng shui, established her as
another consumerist character. Mrs Sachdeva, Head of the English Deptt. at a local college, “liked
to look plain and businesslike”. She felt she “wasn’t one of the idle housewives that this city was
so full of. She was a literate woman” after all.
Mrs Bhandari, wife of the DIG of Police, who took pride in calling herself a ‘social activist’, ‘spoke
perfect English, had an unerring taste in clothes and any party that she organized was bound to
be success.’ was another straw brilliantly sketched by Bajwa. And then rich Ravinder Kapoor’s
wife and daughter, who had at one go, bought pashmeena shawls worth 10 lakhs, had enough of
money and poise to astonish any millionaire in the town.
The personal likings and dislikings of women also rest on these social gimmicks. Mrs Kapoor
dislikes Mrs Sachdeva the ‘ordinary professor-type service class’ women, coming to their mansioned
house. Mrs Sandhu finds Mrs Bhandari ‘snooty’, may be because ‘her English is so good’, but her
heaven of peace lies in the fact that ‘Bhandari’s are certainly not very rich and have only daughter
still not married.’
The social nature of women is exposed in the eyes of Ramchand at times narrator, sufferer and
omniscient observer with critical eye of a psychologist who peeps into their minds, hypocrisies,
values and life style for “he had watched innumerable women choose saris He had seen variety,
he had seen envy he had seen despair. He knew well the bitterness of a plain woman wordless
triumph of the beautiful ones”.
He finds in Mrs. Kapoor “a certain ruthlessness in the way she picked up a sari, ran a sharp eye
a sharp eye over it and had glint in eyes before making up mind”.. Among the various sari images
created by the author, the imagery used in describing women of different classes picking up the
right sari is amazing to see. And in all the cases, Ramchand is made to observe and feel the things,
sometimes with Prufrockian uneasiness and sometimes with moralisings of Tiresias.
Mrs Sachdeva the literate woman, Head of an English Department, likes dullish colours in choosing
a sari, symbolic of her argument to stay apart from homogenisation with other females. The
gorgeously decked up Rina Kapoor as bride dazzles Ramchand with her laughter and the way she
sweeps the marble staircase regally with her bridal outfit leaves him spellbound.

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