Life as I know It

Some of the greatest novels that I have read and still recall fondly have one thing in common – memorable characters whose joys, sorrows, successes and disappointments seem very real and personal. A Suitable Boy sketches not one, but a multitude of characters, from a genius child of ten to an irascible doctor of seventy, whose contours start appearing as we are introduced to them, and who, by the time we finish the last page with a sigh, have taken an indelible shape on the canvas of our minds, and a select few of them find a way into our hearts. A Suitable Boy begins with the wedding of Pran Kapoor and Savita Mehra, the elder sister of Lata Mehra, whose mother, Mrs. Rupa Mehra, vows to find “a suitable boy” for her younger daughter as well. The incidents span over a period of a year and the story culminates with the wedding of Lata almost a year later. During this period, Lata falls in love with Kabir Durrani, who, among other things, is a Muslim. The setting is a little after

8th of March was celebrated worldwide as International Women’s Day. As a woman, I received wishes from friends, colleagues and family, but the day held no special joy for me as a woman. In a country like India where crime against women is on the rise, where politicians and netas make outrageously sexist remarks with impunity, where a certain Prime Ministerial candidate flippantly attributes something as grave as malnutrition in his State to ‘figure-consciousness’ of girls (can you believe that?), where rape victims and their families are asked by the Church to ‘stay away’, where eve-teasers and acid-throwers get away with light sentences, where extremists barge into private parties and beat up and molest girls, where a young girl stepping out of a pub is molested and stripped by a crowd goaded on by a reporter, where thousands of tribal and low caste women are raped with an audacity that is shocking, where Nirbhaya faces an unspeakable ordeal but doesn’t go down without a fight… I

I just finished reading ‘The Life of Mahatma Gandhi’ by Louis Fischer and one word that can describe my feeling at the moment is awe. We were taught in school about India’s history, about our freedom struggle, about our fearless leaders and their countless sacrifices. We studied the contributions of leaders like Gandhi, Nehru, Patel, Ambedkar, Lajpat Rai et al to our struggle for independence, but as we grow up and become enmeshed in the humdrum of our daily activities, these names begin to have diminishing relevance in our lives. So what brought me, a humble fiction reader, to pick up a 526 pager, non-fiction account of the life of M.K Gandhi, authored by a foreign journalist? To begin with, it was a debate with my friends about Gandhi, which started with the discussion about Nathuram Godse, the man who shot Gandhi on 30th January, 1948. Was Gandhi a saint or an evil genius? Was he a soft-hearted democrat or a dictator with a soft touch? Was he responsible for the partition of I