I love the part in South Asian movies where instead of showing the consummation of a love scene, it cuts to flowers blowing in the breeze or to spectacular sunsets. Privacy in the East is best left to the imagination.
This is certainly not the case in Balli Kaur Jaswal’s novel Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows. It has received much hype in the Reese Witherspoon book club – the Good Housekeeping seal of approval for potential screenplays in the US. Witherspoon is the actress who has been credited with transmuting many books onto the screen, including the critically acclaimed movie adaption Little Fires Everywhere.
This novel has all the makings of a coming of age masala potboiler. It describes how Nikki comes to terms with her Sikh heritage, coping with the push and pull of being a second-generation immigrant in London, and the contradictions inherent in life in multi-racial England. She ends up working and living in a pub, much to the consternation of her mother and sister. In addition, she offers to teach English lessons at the local community Sikh gurdwara in Southhall. There, she teaches a haggle of middle-aged women, many of whom don’t know how to read or write, let alone the sophistication of creative story telling.
Balli Kaur Jaswal
And this is where the novel becomes interesting, for these women have imaginations wilder than the humdrum lives they are leading. The book contains a hilarious set of stories being orally told as the women opt for creative story-telling which they can then document. These are passed around among the group, and then these stories find their way into the local community, livening up the personal lives of many of the residents.
One often thinks of middle age as an invisible period. Even the women own up to it: they discuss sex or other issues as though they were comparing the price of vegetables. And where else can one see stories based on the juiciness of aubergines or the multifaceted purpose of ghee in securing marital bliss?
It makes one think differently of these women. They have longings, desires and imagination as much as men. But if one only sees them through the prism of their outward appearances – provincial, backward, suppressed by society and their hierarchical structures – one misses out on their other dimensions.
For Nikki, the ability to see these women as being able to give voice to their long suppressed emotions and longings is an eye-opening experience. It helps her own dimension of self-identity. She realizes that being modern does not mean that one has to discard one’s history, values and cultural system. One can embrace certain facets of modernity without being regarded as ‘shameless’.
The biggest fallacy she debunks is that modern girls are ‘fast’ and that conservative ones are ‘good’. That takeaway alone is very important – that one should not be guided by others, or their view of what it means to be Sikh (or Muslim for that matter), or a girl, or what the societal values are.
Even the women own up to it: they discuss sex or other issues as though they were comparing the price of vegetables. And where else can one see stories based on the juiciness of aubergines or the multifaceted purpose of ghee in securing marital bliss?
I reflected on this more than usual this week when asked to speak to a number of Pakistani girls thinking of their lives post college. The expectation is clear: to follow a linear path. Grow up chaste, get married and have kids.
What if they did not want to follow that narrow path, or if they wanted to create their own? The statistics bear this out – Pakistan stands near the bottom of women’s participation in the workforce globally. Half of Pakistani women don’t go to school and are also ten times more likely than men to be involved in household chores. Societal norms are hard to break. Nikki reflects that the difference between her mother’s life and hers is one of choice.
Nikki’s story is like so many coming-of-age tales in real life. Her father is gravely disappointed that she drops out of law school and decides to pursue another direction. His subsequent death in the story gives her a sense of lack of closure. What if she had continued with law school and then her father would not have planned the trip to India and died of a heart attack?
“In traditional Indian morality tales,” Nikki thinks, “ wayward children were the primary cause of heart conditions, cancerous lumps, hair loss and other ailments in their aggrieved parents.” Parents live their unlived dreams and aspirations through their children, condemning them regardless of their inclinations to blue collar jobs like doctors, lawyers and engineers.
A recent article in the New Yorker “The Allure of Unlived Lives” discusses how we reach junctures where we have to make choices and wonder afterwards what that life might have been, had we not chosen this direction. Each should have the freedom of choice, so that we can choose what is best for us – even though it may fly in the face of parental and societal expectations.
Imagining other realities could be fodder to exercise our fantasy or make-believe worlds. And the widows in this novel are liberated – first by fantasy, and then in turn by their bravery when fantasy refuels their alternate lives. They re- imagine themselves in their make-believe worlds – by speaking of taboo topics whether lesbian relationships with their sisters in law, regaining power in their marriage (with a little bit of help from ghee). Though they hide between the walls of sobriety and conservative behavior, their inner authenticity is given a voice.
They relate to their younger modern teacher with empathy and a sense of protection. The aspect of frustration of their humdrum everyday lives gives way to a much deeper world beneath – of self-awareness, deception, even murder. In one episode, one of the ladies, upon reading the stories, looks at her husband with a startlingly new vision. She discovers in their relationship that it is possible to find humour and passion and the sense of possibility, despite the death of their daughter.
Perhaps the gender stereotyping one has grown up with has conditioned us unduly. Even in our local TV dramas, it is much easier to talk about violence, child marriage and rape than it is about passion and sexuality. We fall victim to that. We are embarrassed at seeing actors kissing in Bollywood films, but accept similar (if not worse intimacy and explicitness) in Hollywood movies.
Jaswal’s thought-provoking novel is a 21st-century guide for desi aunties who want to use an aubergine for other than cooking the husband’s lunch.
