Balancing Act - Working Mom or SAHM?

It all began with the many conversations with Choxbox over these things. Then Starry wrote this piece which discussed if it it really was a choice - being a WM or SAHM.

So when I came across this book, I immediately picked it up.

pic credit flipkart

Balancing Act
Written by Meera Godbole Krishnamurthy
Zubaan-Penguin publication

Tara Mistri is a high-achieving student, professionally trained, all set on an upward career graph, when along comes marriage, children, and everything that comes with it. Husband earns well enough for the family, making it essentially unnecessary for her to go out and earn a living. Unless you count her dissatisfaction with it all. A feeling of not being with it all that sets in.

Tara has a personal Yakshi (yuk-she, as she sometimes calls her) who keeps hounding her, chipping away at her defensiveness of the situation. Now don't we all have our own personal Yakshis? That little voice that niggles away at our conscience, making us hear home truths, whether we recognise them or not? Anyway, I digress.

Now Tara has had a few years away from the 'real world', as everyone around her puts it. Ennui has set in. Although she loves her children to bits, and wouldn't want to exchange her time with them for anything, there has been something of the soul-destroying in the cloistered existence she has been leading. This is more so because people- extended family, friends and acquaintances alike think she is being the 'good housewife'- making it seem like a situation out of her control. So why is she still at home? It feels as if it is to fulfil some role-model destiny that she has no say in. She feels as if everyone pities her, views her with a thinly disguised contempt for just 'letting go' and 'going with the flow'. It comes to a point where she feels patronised even by her extremely supportive husband and her dearest friend, a careerist woman who has no intentions of 'settling down to domesticity'.

What does Tara do about it? Does she manage to silence the annoying Yakshi? How does she deal with the feeling of inadequacy that colours everything she does and every relationship in her life? What about the demon of 'societal expectations'? Does she end up on a path chalked out for her by others' expectations, her own boulder on the shoulder, or does she carve out her own way? Is the choice finally made for her, or does she choose it herself? What, finally, is this path she walks on, and how does that affect things?

Balancing Act is a book worth reading, by anyone who has had to question the why of what she is doing with her life? Career woman? Stay-at-home-mom? I was not completely convinced as to her reasons for choosing what Tara finally did, but at least it was her choice, weighed against the road not taken.

Further, the book is not just about the pros and cons of working outside the home or not. It is also a search for identity. Of who we are, what we want from life in the broader sense, in the micro sense. Our place under the sun. Balancing the intricacies of relationships- spouse, mother, friend, daughter- and demanding that the counterparts in turn take a hard look at how they relate to you. A feminist viewpoint.

We, as women, have far more choices in our lives than our mothers had. How we exercise those choices so that we can have a fulfilling life, is what this book is all about. It is an engrossing read. There were some places that made me think, introspect; keep the book down for a while.

A book that must be read, so relevant to the current tug-of-war between working moms and stay-at-home-moms. Thanks, Starry and The Mad Momma for the links.

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As an aside, or rather as a logical continuation of the thought process here, it is all about what you choose. We are often not given access to choices, or we are presented with choices that are not real choices at all. Even more dangerously, sometimes we have an illusion of having a choice, or of actually choosing what we want, when society decides what you may or may not have an opinion on. A fool's paradise of sorts. It usually is a happy state of matters for the person, as they do not realise that they are being duped.

As the saying goes- 'Suraj nikale, tab savera'- all about new beginnings and second chances. It is when one makes informed choices, without being told they cannot choose this or the other option, that there is real peace to be found. Which sometimes seems like a long, long way away. Far on the horizon. But real, not a mirage!

About idlis, dosas, commoners and kings

History as it is taught in Indian schools borders on the boring, and most people turn to the sciences at the end of their schooling in a desperate attempt to get rid of the subject. History, though, can be the most interesting of subjects if it is approached as a narrative of events, a story with all the elements of wonder and drama that it undoubtedly holds. Storytelling is one of the most powerful ways to activate our brains, just like a smell or music that are both powerful triggers for memory. Sometimes even reminding one of things long gone, that we may have not been conscious of remembering.

To focus on this, Saffrontree held a fest of fiction and non-fiction based on Indian History in the first week of Decenber. It has a wonderful bunch of books that deal with Indian history in a fun way. Do go to the posts and read all about these books.

Here are my contributions. Both of these are books A has thoroughly enjoyed. They have been extensively used for school projects this year, she has been recommending them to her friends AND her history teacher, and we've already gifted many copies of the first to a few close friends.

pic courtesy flipkart

Let’s Go Time Travelling: Life in India through the ages
Written by Subhadra Sen Gupta
Published by Penguin Books India
Age 9-12 years

In her interview in The Hindu at the publishing of her book Let’s Go Time Travelling Subhadra Sen Gupta says, "My target readers are the kids in classes 6 to 8, who begin studying Indian history. The book aims at making history less intimidating for them and also talk about things that kids are curious about. The stuff that textbooks leave out, like food and clothes, transport and school."

Very true. History textbooks have a way of putting the child off the subject, unless there is an exceptional teacher in the offing. This book fills in exactly that void. For my daughter in the 6th grade, this was THE book to read, much in the mould of the irreverent Horrible Histories series.

A period of close to 5000 years has been divided into 4 parts- Early India from 2600 - 500 BCE, Ancient India from 300 BCE – 1100 CE, Medieval India from 1200 – 1850 CE and British India from 1800 – 1940 CE. I give the dates here not to overwhelm the reader of this review with dates: something that always put me off from an academic study of history, but to demonstrate the scope of this slim and wonderfully crafted book.

Subhadra Sen Gupta ( interviewed here on Saffrontree) deconstructs the weight of all that history and distills it into bite-sized parts. She keeps her finger firmly on the pulse of the middle school child who is lured into wanting to find out more after reading the short story at the beginning of each chapter, comprising ordinary people from that particular period. The story tells a lot about their thoughts, ideas, customs and beliefs. She focuses on the ‘storytelling aspect’ of history, giving a holistic yet richly detailed view of each era.

Along the way, we get a peek into how historians decode the data they have at hand from archaeological findings, written records, period literature, and any other relics of a period to recreate the how and why of all that has happened. For example, we can know what food people of a period ate and why. In the chapter on the Pallava and Chola dynasties, we learn that people ate many varieties of the dosa, but the idli was not invented yet. How? From the references in the literature of the period. Odes to dosas, but no idlis. Also that spices used in sambar were pepper and tamarind. Chillies and tomatoes were a colonial import, brought by the Portuguese from the Americas in the 1700s.

An enjoyable book, and a valuable addition to the study of Indian history, along with Anu Kumar's 'In the Country of the Gold-digging Ants' and Roshan Dalal's twin volumes by Puffin.

pic courtesy flipkart

Victory Song
Written by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Published by Penguin Books India
Age 9-12

Neela is a spunky 12 year old girl living in the British India of the 1930s. It is a few years before the Quit India movement. Freedom fighters are everywhere, in the guise of ordinary people. Neela befriends a young freedom fighter, Samar, during her elder sister’s wedding. Neela's father has to go away to Calcutta on some patriotic work soon after the wedding.

Samar is seriously injured during a raid on a British facility. He takes refuge in Neela’s home, where he is kept in hiding until he is well, as the British soldiers are looking for him. Soon, Neela’s father goes missing in Calcutta. The feisty little girl dresses up as a boy, a wandering minstrel, and takes Samar’s help to go to Calcutta to find her father.

What happens to Samar and Neela in Calcutta? How do they find her father? The rest of this riveting tale on the backdrop of the freedom movement against British rule has to be read to find this out.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni brings us a book for pre-teens that takes us into the everyday world of a girl of the period, complete with people’s attitudes about 'girls should be seen and not heard', and how it is this feisty girl’s courage and resourcefulness that saves the day.

Crossposted at Saffrontree.

Anne Frank - on Womensweb

This review of one of my all time favourite books (reviewed for the 2nd time on my blog) was written by me as an entry to the June 'The Book that Hooked Me' contest at Womensweb. It was published on the site as one of the five reviews shortlisted.

This review is based on the Definitive Edition of the book. Published by Penguin books.

Pic courtesy flipkart

If she had survived the Holocaust, and lived to this day, Anne Frank would have been 83 years old, on the 12th of June, 2012. Would she have realized her dream of becoming a published writer? I think she would have. Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl is one of the most riveting pieces of work that I have ever come across. What makes it so compelling is the fact that the writer was just an ordinary girl in her teens, writing about the ordinary things of everyday life as lived in extraordinary circumstances.

In July 1942, Anne's family, along with some of their friends, went into hiding from the Nazi persecution of the Jews. They remained hidden in the Secret Annexe (as Anne calls their hiding place in a hidden area of her father's office building). They were helped from the outside by loyal non-Jew friends, who kept them supplied with food, essentials and news.

Unfortunately, they were discovered in August 1944. Anne's diary has its last entry on 1st August 1944. In the 2-odd years that they remained hidden, she wrote all her thoughts and experiences- the good, bad, and the ugly-  in a diary that she received for her 13th birthday, from her father, Otto Frank. Miep Gies, the lady who was one of their helpers, found the diary along with other papers after their arrest, kept it safe, and handed it over to Otto, who returned after the war as the only survivor.

Anne literally grows through her diary entries - we see her blossoming as a person, as an insightful, thinking, caring human being. Entries in the beginning show her to be a relatively spoilt, fairly self-centered little person whose otherwise quick mind is engaged in many inconsequential things. We see little girls like this around us so often.

Anne says this of herself- "I look back at that Anne Frank as a pleasant, amusing, but superficial girl, who has nothing to do with me. I'd like to live that seemingly carefree and happy life for an evening, a few days, a week. At the end of that week, I'd be exhausted, and would be grateful to the first person to talk to me about something meaningful. I want friends, not admirers."

I must have been around 13 years old when I discovered this book. Just around Anne's age when she began her diary. I was mesmerized by the book, amazed at her thoughts and feelings, which so closely mirrored my own as an adolescent. I connected with Anne and her thoughts, across the divide of time, place. I was drawn into her world. I think my fascination with history: specifically, the Holocaust, and my interest in writing, somehow began with this book.

Her ruminations on the books she read were also my first brushes with feminism, of a sort. "I was greatly struck by the fact that in childbirth alone, women commonly suffer more pain, illness and misery than any war hero ever does. And what's her reward for enduring all that pain? She gets pushed aside when she's disfigured by birth, her children soon leave, her beauty is gone...I don't mean to imply that women should stop having children - what I condemn are our system of values and the men who don't acknowledge how great, difficult, but ultimately beautiful women's share in society is."

Anne’s journey is one of loss, but also one of hope. Hope for a better tomorrow. Again, in her words- “I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.”

Book review: Letters from a Father to His Daughter

Letters from a Father to His Daughter
Written by Jawaharlal Nehru
Published by Puffin Books, Penguin books India
Ages 8+ yrs

A father and his daughter. The bond has to be seen to be believed. When I see A and her father together, the affection is palpable. They often get into discussions about deep things- of late it has been religion, as we have friends of many faiths, and gender issues, especially those encountered at school!

By the nature of his work in the struggle for the freedom of India, Nehru was often away from his family, and his daughter was away at boarding school. Letters being the prime means of communication at the time, Nehru wrote these, which, according to the foreword written by him, were 'personal letters addressed to a little girl, ten years of age.' They, however, speak of many things. In the preface, written in 1973, Indira Gandhi writes, "they deal with the beginnings of the earth and of man's awareness of himself. They were not merely letters to be read and put away...they taught one to treat nature as a book."

The letters speak of the beginnings of the universe, the formation of the earth and its landforms, of pre-history, the beginnings of mankind, the migration of human beings- he shows great learning and vision in his conclusions- "It may be that the German and the Negro are descended from different types of men, but some time or other they must have had the same ancestor. The differences must therefore have come in by the process of adaption to their surroundings...so we find that people's complexions are the result of the climate they live in. They have nothing to do with the worthiness or goodness or beauty of a person." Explained wonderfully in this vein in language easy enough for a 10 yr old to understand.

He goes on to speak of races, religion- early beliefs and faiths, religions as we know them now, languages- the beginnings of communication by making meaningful sounds, of making meaningful marks leading to writing, of the relationships of the different languages of the world. He speaks of civilisation, the division of labour - leading to the patriarch- which led later to kings and kingdoms. And of ancient civilisations all over the world. About trade and travel.

He speaks of the coming of the Aryans to India, and the Ramayana and the Mahabharatha- I loved the simple way in which he has explained the gist of these great epics- again, putting them in an interesting perspective.

Of the Ramayana, he says, "The Ramayana, as you know, is the story of Ramchandra and Sita against Ravana, king of Lanka, that is now Ceylon...it may be that the story of the Ramayana is really the story of the fights of the Aryans against the people of the South whose leader was Ravana."

And the Mahabharatha- "It tells of a great fight between Aryans and Aryans. But apart from the fight, it is a wonderful book, full of great ideas and noble stories. Above all, it is dear to all of us because of that jewel of a poem which it contains--the Bhagavad Gita."

The book comprises 30 letters in all, short, independent reads each, or read in a sequence. Each is a story lucidly told, a father's affection for his daughter coming across in each. These letters were written over the summer of 1928, and retain all of their freshness for every child who has the opportunity of reading them. They have to be, of course, read in the context of terminologies used in the early 1900s, some of which might not be politically correct today.

This 2004 edition by Puffin is hardcover, printed on crisp white paper, and an easy-on-the-eyes font. With a fresh foreword by Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, Nehru's great-grand-daughter.

A loved it.

A logical follow-up to this book would be Nehru's Glimpses of World History, which was written from October 1930 to August 1933, as letters addressed from prison to his 13-16 year old daughter,  published much later.

Pic courtesy flipkart. Crossposted at Saffrontree and Bookreviews.

Violence against Women - some more books.

Here are some more books that speak about Violence against Women, and in a way that really brings home the fact that it is a universal phenomenon, and can take varied forms, from the most subtle to the extreme.

Pic courtesy flipkart

Dear Zari

Written by Zarghuna Kargar

Published by Chatto & Windus, an imprint of Random House

The story of how this book came to be written is very similar to that of 'The Good Women of China'  reviewed by me here. Zarghuna's family went as refugees to the UK after the Soviet backed government in Afghanistan fell to the Taliban. There, Zarghuna worked as a radio presenter for the Afghan Woman's Hour on BBC World Service. (Go on, click on this link to read about Zarghuna's book in her own words.)

She came across many ordinary women who told the reporters their extraordinary stories of daily struggle in a country who values its girls so little. Where boy-children are preferred, and a woman is an object of pity and malicious gossip if she does not give birth to boys. Where girls are denied an education because they are 'plants growing in the neighbour's courtyard.' Where girls as young as 10 yr-olds are given away or sold by families routinely to settle disputes or pay a debt. Or to get a bride in exchange for their son. Where girls are not educated in their own biology, but are expected to somehow know what to do when married. Where the bleeding by a woman on her wedding night is celebrated as a proof of honour, and anyone not able to give this proof or unable to give it because of an ignorance of what it is all about is hounded all her life by her in-laws and society. Where the pressure to have a boy leads some families to bring up a girl as a boy, who is treated as a boy and later a man by everyone, who is denied her feminine side all her life, although she gains in terms of freedom in society!

Zarghuna's experience with these stories motivated her enough to try and get out of her own disastrous and abusive arranged marriage.

A book worth reading. One learns so much about a country which we share a heritage with, with many similar (good and bad) traditions, and which we unfortunately do not really know much about.

Pic courtesy uRead.com

Death  by Fire
Written by Mala Sen
Published by Penguin books India

Mala Sen, who passed away in May this year, was also the erstwhile author of another controversial book on the life of Phoolan Devi, based on actual interviews with the female bandit when she was in prison. That book, too, highlights the violence faced by a young phoolan Devi, and her subsequent joining of the dacoits.

In Death by Fire, Mala Sen highlights the forced burning of 18 yr Roop Kanwar on her dead husband's pyre as a sati. Something that has happened even though the practice of 'sati' has been outlawed for more than 200 years now. She also takes up the case of 'bride-burning'- a horrific form of dowry deaths - violence in the extreme that many young women have been facing.

Mala Sen takes us through the struggle she had to undertake to have people agree to speak to her about the issues, and the hostilities she had to face while researching for the book. She also tries to analyse the whys and hows of the social dynamics of the situations that she highlights, leaving us with some answers and many questions.

Pic courtesy flipkart.com

Dowry Murder:
Re-investigating a cultural whodunit
Written by Veena Talwar Oldenburg
Published by Penguin books India

Veena Talwar Oldenburg, a historian in the US, of Indian origin, has herself been a victim of dowry related domestic violence, which, as she puts it, "could easily have culminated in murder instead of a legally acquired divorce." She links female infanticide and foeticide to dowry deaths, the only difference being that the former are in the natal home, and the last happens usually in the marital home.

Fact one: Dowry has historically, since many centuries, been also called 'Streedhan" or the wealth of a woman, given to her by parents in lieu of her inheritance, a safety net to fall back on in hard times. This is other than the 'bride-price' given to the girl's parents in some communities.

Fact two: The communities in which the incidence of dowry deaths is high are also those that historically prefer the male child.

Fact three: During British rule in India, they passed many legislations that they thought would be more in keeping with the civilised (read western) world.

Although they did a lot of good this way by outlawing horrific practices like sati and child-marriage (which continues in pockets even now), by universalising education, etc. among others, they also unwittingly did women a disservice. They introduced individual property rights, which reduced the status of women from co-owners of shared familial property to dependents on the male members who now owned this property.

Soon the connotations of dowry as the "bride's wealth" changed to "wealth brought for us by the bride". And the ownership of this wealth naturally went to the head of the household.

The author then goes on to deduce how this unique combination of age-old customs and traditions, along with misguided legislature by 300 years of colonial rule, increased consumerism post-independence, and greed calling for competitiveness in exhorbitant expenditures in weddings and dowry, with technology helping all this along- all contribute to the continuem of selective abortions of female foetuses, killing of female babies, neglect of the female child and finally, domestic violence, both in the parents' and marital home, and finally, dowry murder.

A must read for someone working in the field of domestic violence, as also for sensitizing society to this montrous practice.

Pic courtesy flipkart

The above three books are have been written by women who have been trained in the discipline of investigation and research, and have based it all on fact, not to mention first-hand experience of violence for the mere fact of having been born a woman. So they know very well how to listen to the unspoken behind women's silences

Something that is addressed very well in the groundbreaking programme "The Vagina Monologues" by Eve Ensler, now published in book form.

The book I have (which I haven't read completely yet, but have browsed enough to get the essense of) is a special edition by Villard books to mark the 10yr anniversary of V-Day, the dynamic grassroots movement to end violence against women and girls. In the blurb, it says, "Witty and wise, this award winning masterpiece gives voice to real women's deepest fantasies and fears...spellbinding, funny, and almost unbearingly moving...it is both a work of art and an incisive piece of cultural history" And no, it is NOT pornographic.

Then there is this extraordinarily useful book that I have, called Body Talk.

Pic courtesy flipkart.com

Body Talk
Written by Anjali Wason
Published by HarperCollins
Ages: 15+, young adults

Other than the expected information about biology, hormones, sexuality and feelings, this book has a useful chapter on sexual harrassment and abuse- at home, on the streets, at educational institutions and the workplace. All in a lucid, easy-to-relate-to, no nonsense way without resorting to coy euphemisms, but not in a very harsh, forbidding way, too. Perfect for the young lady about to face the world. The only lacuna is that the tone takes into account only urban, educated, upper class women, so this might not be a completely helpful books to other girls out there, poised on the brink of womanhood with dreams in their eyes. 

Review: Lord Ganesha's feast of laughter

Today was Ganesh Chaturthi, the 4th day of the waxing half of Bhadrapada. The birthday of my favourite god, Ganapati. This is a big festival for us Maharashtrians, and is celebrated in most houses. The festival was made public by Lokmanya Tilak, when the British put a curfew on public gatherings. In the guise of getting together for the Ganesha festival, freedom fighters would hold their meetings. Today, it has become something of a public nuisance, as there is no longer that need. Ganesha, however, still reigns over our hearts.

Pic courtesy Penguinbooksindia

Lord Ganesh's feast of laughter
Written by Meera Uberoi
Illustrated by Agantuk
Published by Puffin books, an imprint of Penguin Books India
Read aloud 4+, read alone 8+

Ganesha, or Ganapati, is probably the most beloved of the Gods. He is the remover of obstacles, the god of learning, and the one whose name is taken before beginning anything. The primordial sound 'Oum' is attributed to him, and one of his many names is 'Omkara'.

Ganesha is also seen as a benevolent god, and is often a favourite with children. They are also fascinated by the unlikely seeming form- one with an elephant's head, a large belly, and with a mouse as a vehicle to boot. Many of his stories have a childlike quality of fun. 

Meera Uberoi's book has many of these stories. Some known, some not so well known.

Do you know...
That Ganesha was the one who created the first tabla when his irate father Shiva broke his mridungam into two?
That Vyasa overcame a bad case of writers' block after invoking the help of Ganesha?
That Ganesha is wedded to Siddhi (accomplishment) and Buddhi (intellect)?
That Ganesha won a race for going around the world against his brother Skanda, once by going around his parents, a child's world, and once by going around the world in his mind, by reading up all of the available knowledge about the world?
That Ganesha swallowed and contained the demon of anger, Krodhasura (krodha=anger), who was destroying the world, and that is the reason why he has a belly that hangs down (Lambodara)? "Even today, anger must be swallowed to control it, just as Ganesha did."

These and many other tales make up this collection of stories. There are also some folktales about Ganesha other than the usual tales from the Puranas, which makes the collection complete- mythology and folklore.

Meera Uberoi's narration is very endearing, in terms that children use as a matter of course.

"Shiva's wife, Parvati, daughter of Himalaya with its sparkling streams, was pretty easy-going but disliked being disturbed when she was bathing. And Shiva never seemed to remember that. He strode in whenever he wished, cool as you please, and this really annoyed Parvati."

"'I knew it was one of your sneaky tricks!' Skanda exclaimed hotly. 'So tell me, how did you manage it?'
'We-e-ell,' drawled Ganesha, scratching one large ear, 'you didn't say which world. Parents are a child's world, so I walked around our parents--thrice.' Seeing that his brother was ready to explode, he piously added,'The scriptures say so. Ask Father.'"

A loved the book, and was giggling throughout. She has recommended it to all who would like to read fun-filled tales about the elephant god, whose birthday is today, Ganesh Chaturthi.

Crossposted at Saffrontree.

Book Review - THE OTHER SIDE OF SILENCE: Voices from the Partition of India

Pic courtesy flipkart.com

THE OTHER SIDE OF SILENCE
Voices from the Partition of India
Written by Urvashi Butalia
Published by Penguin Books
1998.

Urvashi Butalia, the writer, has impressive credentials. Along with Ritu Menon, she set up Kali for Women, the first feminist press in India, in 1984, and later, Zubaan Books. Born to in Ambala, India, to parents who were refugees from West Punjab, now in Pakistan, she grew up hearing stories of  the Partition, which tore apart the Indian subcontinent at the time of its freedom from British rule.

She began her research as a process of making sense of her family's personal tragedy. One thing led to another, and over time she realised that what 'history' tells us of the Partition are the bare political facts: tales of warring political parties and the British involvement in the whole gory process, the loss of property and lives, the statistics of the largest mass migration in recent history and violence in the riots between the Hindus, the Muslims and the Sikhs caught in the unfortunate event.

There was not much data on the renting apart of the closely enmeshed fabric of society and the actual sufferings of the flesh-and-blood people caught in the crossfire. The feminist in her also became aware of the huge conspiracy of silence (this term has also been used in reference to the victims of that other regrettable horror of the same time, the Holocaust) that enfolded the suffering of those considered to be of 'not much account' and therefore on the margins of citizenry- the women, the children and the harijans.

"But the 'history' of Partition seemed to lie only in the political developments that led up to it. These other aspects - what had happened to the millions of people who had to live through this time, what we may call the 'human dimensions' of this history -- somehow seemed to have a 'lesser' status in it. Perhaps this was because they had to do with difficult things: loss and sharing, friendship and enmity, grief and joy, with a painful regret and nostalgia for loss of home, country and friends, and with an equally strong determination to create them afresh. These were difficult things to capture 'factually.' Yet, could it be that they had no place in the history of Partition? Why, then, did they live on so vividly in individual and collective memory?"

Ms Butalia takes us through these events as pieced together from first-person accounts of survivors. The stories seem fantastic, the violence, the bloodiness ant the loss inexplicable, as does the almost mythological account of a society where the different religions had lived together in harmony, love and trust. Surely something had gone seriously wrong somewhere for the anger to have erupted as it had, killing and maiming millions, and creating a legacy of communal disharmony, and an almost pathological enmity between the two countries which were once part of one whole. A whole that had effectively driven their colonial rulers away.

The feminist in the writer notes some very interesting aspects of the problem. Even the interviews were necessarily taken in a family setting, where men did most of the talking, and women were often silenced. While men spoke of the politics, the killings, the violence, the women's experience of Partition was largely defined by the death of children, abductions, sexual violence, honour killings, forcible co-habitation/marriages with their abductors, their making peace with it, especially after children were born of these relationships.

During their interviews, Ms Butalia tried to listen to the unsaid, the silences, the sudden breaking-off of the narrative, the nuances. "In my work, the more I looked at women's voices and found them inserting themselves into the text, the more I realised that the silences did not exist only around women, but also around others, those whose silences have been even less important to society. The search for a history of women was what then led me to a search for a history of others. The voices of women, of children, of untouchables, to me provide not only a different perspective on the history of Partition, but they also establish this history as a process, a continuing history, which lives on in our lives today in a variety of ways." 

Then there was the ultimate insult to injury- the Abducted Persons (Recovery and Restoration) Act, 1949. A lot of this has been pieced together from accounts of social workers who were actively involved in the operation. Ostentiably to recover abducted women and children and return them to their families, the Act would not take into account the women's choice in the matter, something that all citizens were given upto the late fifties. After being abducted, these women often got assimilated into those families, bore children out of those relationships, but were torn from these children when they were 'recovered' to return to their families of origin. The original families would often refuse to accept these 'children of sin' which were left with their abductor-fathers. Quite often these children ended up on the streets with the other children who had been displaced or orphaned in the Partition. Both the women and children were refused the 'choice' that citizens of both countries had at the time.

First-hand accounts by some of these children, adults at the time of interviewing, underscore the same conspiracy of silence. Many of them glossed over their accounts, unable as adults to relate their memories of the horrors. Some of them, like a Sikh survivor who was just 9 at the time of Partition, had memories overshadowed by one particular incident- the death of their own familiy's hands of almost a hundred girls and women to 'save' their honour - an incident immortalised in the book and later movie Tamas.

In fact, most of these personal stories have been found to a large extent in a multitude of short stories and novellas written by many noted authors who have lived through the Partition- Amrita Pritam (Pinjar), Saadat Hasan Manto (Toba Tek Singh, Kingdom's End and other stories), Gulzar (Raavi Par and other stories), Khushwant Singh (Train to Pakistan), Bapsi Sidhwa (Ice-Candy Man), Bhisham Sahni (Tamas), and more. Many of these stories have been made into film, reaching a larger audience. Many bollywood movies, too, speak of the Partition or 'Batwara' as it is called in Hindi.

History, as told in history books, however, sticks mostly to the bare facts and statistics of the Partition. 'The other side of silence' tries to address this deficit in a more factual way, that can be corroborated, than the fictionalised accounts. Showing us that the fiction is not a very long way off reality.

More than twelve million people left their roots and migrated, about ten million of these crossing the western border. Around two million died in the violence. An estimated  75,000-1,00,000 women are thought to have been abducted and raped by men of religions different from their own (and indeed sometimes by men of their own religion). An estimated 50,000 children were born to the abducted women, an an unaccounted number of children were abandoned or simply lost. "People travelled in buses, in cars, by train, but mostly on foot in great columns called kafilas, which could stretch for dozens of miles. The longest of them, said to comprise nearly 400,000 people, refugees travelling east to India from western Punjab, took as many as eight days to pass any given spot on its route."

Ms Butalia has very honestly admitted that her work does not represent the whole of the history of Partition, but is a very personal history, her reading of the interviews she took. She also candidly admits that it is probably a very one-sided view of the whole thing, as by 1984, when she began her research, it was no longer possible to obtain access to those on the other side of the border, and cautions communal groups from using her research to reach their ends.

Here are some more excerpts from the book.

Am entering this book in the 2011 South Asian Reading Challenge at S.Krishna's books.

PANNA

Last year I visited the Strand book sale in July, and picked up an autobiography by Kamala Das. It was an interesting read, the story of a strong woman with a mind of her own. So when I recently saw this book, I was intrigued, as I did not know that she wrote for children too. This is her first book in English for children. It was published after her death on 31st May 2009. Yesterday was her first death anniversary. A tribute to this great writer who has written in Malayalam and English.

PANNA
Written by Kamala Das.
Cover and Illustrations by Puja Ahuja.
A Puffin original published by Penguin Books Ltd.
Ages: 8+

Cover image: Courtesy Penguin Books India.

Panna is a very beautiful girl who lives in a fishing village in India with her brother Moti. They are orphans and have only one another. The villagers think she is like a princess.

Moti went fishing everyday with the other fishermen, and Panna waited on the beach for him. Everyday he would return with his catch and sell it, and get lovely things for his sister.

One day, she waited for him like everyday. All the others came back, but there was no sign of Moti. She waited till it was night, and tired out, fell asleep on the beach. "The tide came alive. It hit the shore like a hissing serpent..." The waves came up the beach, stronger every time, and pulled the sleeping Panna into the sea. This part of the story is almost like the passing of Panna into the other world, a metaphor for Death.

In the tale, here begins an adventure. Panna finds herself in a strange land under the sea where there was a moving green sky, pearl-studded lanes, fish-ladies in their coral houses and oystermen who spewed pearls every time they laughed. She enters the Fish-King's palace, where both he and the Fish-Queen are asleep on their thrones. They wake up to the jingle of her anklets.When asked Panna says that someone brought her there while she was asleep. "I want to go home." But the Fish-King does not want her to. She would stay there forever, at the bottom of the sea.

The conversation between the three is very funny, and has a irreverence about it reminiscent of a mixture of the 'Queen of Hearts' and the 'Mad Hatter' from "Alice in Wonderland." One almost expects one of them to shout: "Off with her head!"

When the king falls asleep, the queen takes Panna to her 'bed-chamber'. On the way, she sees a great black monster howling, chained down. On asking, the queen tells her that it is the wind, who creates a lot of mischief, and sinks boats. Rambling around the sea-world, Panna forgets all about Moti.

But Moti has reached the sea-shore by now, and is searching for Panna. The tide is out and the waves gentle. There is no sign of Panna. Moti runs around, looking for her, wading out into the sea, calling her name. The Fish-King hears him calling out, and does not want Panna to hear. He wants Panna to stay in the sea and not leave. So he casts a magic spell on the water. This illuminates the water around Moti and he is changed into an eagle. A black eagle with yellow eyes. The eagle flies over and around the waves, searching for any sign of Panna.

In the morning the fishermen came out of their huts and saw the huge bird flying in circles over the sea.
"An eagle. Perhaps we will be lucky today," they said.
Every day, even today, the black eagle flies in circles over the sea calling out for the little girl who went down to the sea world.

A beautifully written fairy tale of the love of a brother for his little sister, and his continuing search for her. In the time honoured tradition of Indian legends and folk-tales, this is a story from the coasts of Kerala. Written by one of Kerala's greatest women poets, Kamala Das.

This is what Ruskin Bond has to say about the book on its cover page. "A famous poet gives us a lovely story of fairy-tale magic set along the sea coast near her home in Kerala. Just right for reading aloud to your children, or starting them off as readers in their own right. Kids will love the Fish King and the Fish Queen, and little Panna will steal your heart . . . "

The illustrations by Puja Ahuja are in the Madhubani style and add to the unreal and lyrical quality of the tale. The story itself reminds one of Hans Christian Anderson's "The Little Mermaid" with its sad ending. Even A agreed that it did, after I read her the story in the original. Not the popcorn version of Disney movies.

Picture of Black Eagle: Courtesy Wikipedia.

Crossposted at Saffrontree.