Page 96 - DENG503_INDIAN_WRITINGS_IN_LITERATURE

Indian Writings in Literature Gowher Ahmad Naik, Lovely Professional University

Notes
Unit 11: Rupa Bajwa: Sari Shop—Theme

CONTENTS
Objectives
Introduction
11.1 Theme—Rupa Bajwa
11.2 Brief Description to Sari Shop
11.3 Summary
11.4 Key-Words
11.5 Review Questions
11.6 Further Readings

Objectives

After reading this Unit students will be able to:
• Know the story of real life of Indian People.
• Discuss various themes presented by Rupa Bajwa in Sari Shop.

Introduction
This is a poignant story of real life India and real life Indian people. It was completely believable.
The protagonist, an earnest & simple sari-walla named Ramachand, works hard everyday, studies
English on his own, lives a clean and modest life dictated by his beliefs in right and wrong,
accepting the simple truths of his life and history.... the circumstances of his birth and sudden
orphan status, the fact that his schooling abruptly ended with his parents' death, the loss of his
inheritance through unscrupulous relatives, the limitations which became his reality by virtue of
circumstances. Then his whole belief system is upended by an encounter with a colleague's wife
and the reality of her brutal and bitter existence. I felt the story was incredibly realistic, a story
about the real India, not the India we see through the eyes of Indian immigrants to the West, or
those educated in the West or with western values. No, this was an India I have not read about
before. It was very eye-opening and tender and sad

11.1 Theme—Rupa Bajwa

The nature of corruption is the theme that runs through two recent novels set in contemporary
India - Akhil Sharma's An Obedient Father (2000) and Rupa Bajwa's The Sari Shop (2003). Both
novels feature lower middle class protagonists with limited education, in North Indian settings
where the struggle for upward mobility is the defining quest. Despite significant overlaps in the
cultural territory they explore and the conclusions they reach, however Sharma and Bajwa offer
interesting and instructive contrasts in perspective. While Bajwa is the native born and bred,
Sharma's parents emigrated from Delhi to the USA when he was still a child. Can the differences
in tone and viewpoint stem from the difference in the authors' relation to the setting?
Numerous reviewers have described Sharma's fictional universe in An Obedient Father (hereafter
AOF) as 'unrelentingly grim'. The place is old Delhi, the time the early 1990s when within the
course of a year, petty bureaucrat Ram Karan's life is turned upside down. His wife dies and so
does his son-in-law; at home, his daughter Anita returns with her own daughter Asha to live with

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