The Higher Education of Geetika Mehendiratta (Disha Books, Orient Longman 1993)
Anuradha Marwah Roy’s remarkable first novel, intelligently crafted, touchingly told. Free from stylistic affectations, her fluent prose is devoid of the subverting impact of pleonastic frills – a virtue few debutante-writers can claim to possess. Reflecting a bilingual sensibility, what emerges as a very obvious concern is her desire to be recognized as a natural storyteller.
Bishwadeep Ghosh in ‘The Sunday Times of India’.
What is not to be taken for granted are the clear flashes of insight into character, the incisive use of dialogue to pad out the even tone of the narrative style, so that Geetika becomes unforgettable not just for her polysyllabic name (which she hates) but because she has been so believably and recognizably put together – the new Indian woman coming to terms with herself in an Indian society from which she can expect no quarter and to which she will grant none.
Carol Andrade in ‘The Metropolis on Saturday’
The book is wholly modern and yet Indian enough, is fluently written and easily read.
Muriel Wasi in ‘The Hindustan Times’
It is a charming story, written blandly and without excessive emotion, about growing up. The style is reminiscent of Sue Townsend’s Adrian Mole series.
Prita Maitra in ‘Sunday Magazine’
Geetika, the girl, the teenager, the post-graduate student rings true. You delight in her discoveries and share her pain.
Sunil Mehra in ‘The Pioneer’.
Geetika traverses the geographical and mental space between a small town in Rajasthan and the national capital. First novels are notoriously unreliable for future projection, but collectively these books point to an indigenous state of good literary health.
Meenakshi Mukherjee in ‘Far Eastern Economic Review’
Idol Love (Ravi Dayal Publisher, 1999)
Anuradha Marwah-Roy’s novel, Idol Love (1999) addresses the rise of the Hindu Right. The “Ramins”, as she calls them, in a clever conflation of “Brahmins” and a newly reincarnated deity “Poornaramin” rule over the new-old Raminland in an Indian dystopia reminiscent of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Significantly, it is a strategic use of the Bhagwad Gita that is decisive in converting a “no-win situation” into a landslide victory for the Ramins in the general election. The novel’s female protagonist, an English-educated writer who has been working with a secularist coalition, finds herself co-opted and used by the very forces she had been opposing. By the end of the novel, her voice has been completely silenced and her “karma” defined for her by the state as the “action of dedicating her womb to her race,” her social status based upon her caste and her power to give birth to sons.
Josna Rege in Colonial Karma: Self, Action and Nation in the Indian English Novel. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004) p 159.
Anuradha Marwah-Roy’s Idol Love (1999) presents a chilling picture of an Indian dystopia in the twenty-first century.
Antonia Navarro-Tejero in The Essentials of Literature in English Post-1914
Idol Love by Anuradha Marwah-Roy presents a chilling picture of an Indian dystopia in the twenty-first century. The Hindutva agenda has been carried to its logical end. Society in Raminland is ordered on the precepts of Manu and women are honoured as ‘Ardhanginis’ (better halves). Careers are open to women if they give up family life and become ‘Sadhvis’ ( female hermits). The capital Rajdhani has been sanitised and the lower classes (‘Dasa’ slaves and religious minorities called ‘Drohi’ traitors) have to get special passes when they enter it for doing all the menial work. The novelist’s attention to detail in recreating day to day life in India makes this dystopia utterly credible.”
M.K. Naik and Shyamala A Narayan in Indian English Literature 1980-2000 (p 95)
This is an intricately crafted story, and marvelously innovative in the use of English to suggest Indian languages - the author indicates subtle differences between the Hindi spoken by the Dasas and the Urdu of the Drohis without using a single italicized desi word. A novel of ideas, Idol Love is an ambitious risk to take at this moment when fiction by Indian women seems largely to swirl gently around the vicissitudes of quotidian life.
Nivedita Menon in ‘The Book Review’.
It is a modern love story set in contemporary Delhi against the backdrop of the Babri Masjid demolition and has an interesting twist.
Renu Govil in ‘The Statesman’
Anuradha Marwah Roy’s second novel Idol Love is soaked in the suicidal sadness of unrequited love or alternatively the love of idols in a Hindu state, is shown to be a hypnotist seducing us into false prophecies.
Manish Chand in ‘The Asian Age’.
Anuradha Marwah-Roy is erudite, has a way with words and compels attention.
Khushwant Singh in ‘The Hindustan Times’
Dirty Picture (Indialog Publications, 2007)
Serious, responsible, yet funny and ironic, that is Anuradha’s writing.
A criticism – a false criticism that is levelled all the time against women’s writing, is that it tends to be internal and domestic. I think in that sense Anuradha is not a woman – the larger world is her domain. So that she unites in her writing two kinds of sensibility – one that is intimate and personal, and the other that deals for example with politicised religion and socially disruptive forces.
It is not easy to write about such things, and in a way that will induce people to be concerned about them, but I think she succeeds brilliantly. In Dirty Picture, particularly she has managed to bring all her interests together in a narrative that is both disturbing and persuasive.
This is a story that needs to be told, but because of its complexity, it is not an easy story to tell. But Anuradha persisted, and we all owe her a debt of gratitude that she did. This particular incident at least will not be covered by the dust of ages.
Manju Kapur, the author of Difficult Daughters’
While most contemporary feminist writers see no reason to transcend their comfortable urban locations to engage with poverty, male domination and issues that trap middle class women in India’s forgotten, small dusty towns, Anuradha Marwah presents an unflinching picture of two sisters “who become a victim of their own mindset” in her third novel Dirty Picture (published by IndiaLog and priced at Rs 195).
Richa Bhatia in ‘Indian Express’
Dirty Picture by Anuradha Marwah deals earnestly with difficult realities. Set around the Ajmer sex scandal of the early nineties it goes beyond the news to discover reasons and processes.
Nandini Nair in ‘The Hindu’
To weave in fact and fiction, biographical and imaginative elements and structure a story that would hold the readers’ interest could not have been an easy task.
Purabi Shridhar in Femina’’
An Unputdownable book
The Hindustan Times
There is ambition, desire, politics and much more in this novel about small town India. An interesting read.
Ramya Sharma in DNA
Well crafted narrative and perfectly moulded incidents make this novel a must read.
Sumandra Singh in Merinews.
Blame it on the novel being sufficiently disturbing or on the fact that the lives of the protagonists in the novel could be anyone’s story today, Dirty Picture in its cut and dried format is evocative.
Preetika Mathew in And Persand
Required Discomfort
Anuradha Marwah's first book, 'The Higher Education of Geetika Mehendiratta', was the story of a young woman in a provincial setting, struggling to make some very bold decisions (Keeping a baby born out of wedlock).
Her second, Idol Love, was a complete departure from the earlier theme, a futuristic satire on the nature of gender relations and the constantly changing equations between the two.
However, in 'Dirty Picture', Marwah goes off in another direction and she does it with equal felicity, if such a word may be used about what is essentially a most unpleasant subject - the sexual exploitation of young women by politicians and the law in small towns.
As she has done in her first two books, in writing about what is essentially an 'underwritten' subject in Indian fiction writing, Marwah, who teaches English at Zakir Hussain University in New Delhi, uses authority. She writes from the perspective of the insider, at home in the small town milieu, an environment that you usually carry with you when relocating (as she has done) to the metropolis.
She used it well in her first book, she employed 'authority' in her second, and the fact that her own background is very different proves no obstacle at all in fleshing out the characters of Bharti and Reena, two sisters who are exploited in different ways.
In "Dirty Pictures", the author uses a foundation of solid fact to create her most believable scenario. She also empathises so completely that the most memorable segments comprise the use of stream of consciousness as a literary device to mentally box Bharti in so completely that she is helpless in the face of the circumstances that overwhelm her. Left with no option, fire becomes a way out. Even so, when it happens, it is a shock.
The case itself took place in Ajmer in the early 90s and as a former resident of the town, the author brings alive the ambience so vividly that it is difficult to put the book down. Against your better judgment, you keep hoping that there will be some happy endings. But life takes over!
In a recent telephone conversation, Marwah described her book as certainly very dark, but not desperate. Why not, since there is no halfway happy ending for any of the protagonists, except perhaps Reena, and even for her; it's just the triumph of hard lessons learned and a sort of self-awareness achieved.
Because, she says, the book focuses upon the real, the fact that life is tough, and with the rallying cries of liberalisation, globalisation and change ringing in everyone's ears, it is just going to get tougher.
"Mores are changing and the lessons women are expected to learn can be very cruel," she declares, what could help, in her opinion, is developing greater degrees of self-awareness.
She talked about her own visit to Ajmer when the story broke (exploded), and her first view of one of the victims in a picture published in a local newspaper. It showed her with her eyes blacked out and two men with their hands upon her breasts.
The girl's hair was neatly plaited, which is when, Marwah realised, she was a schoolgirl. One of the victims later committed suicide; others vanished within families, a lot of the newspapers practiced self-censorship because it was felt the situation should not be exacerbated.
But the ending was far from satisfactory, even though the law did step in. Ultimately, private agendas had to be addressed.
The book itself is worth a read. And while it may not be one that can be easily re-read, it can be allowed permanent space on one's bookshelf because, after all, it is telling the story of a modern India trying to come to grips with the fact that nobody - and nothing - is ever perfect, whether in towns or cities.
At best, we come to grips with the stresses that unhinge us and ensure that they become part of an urban legend that is recognisable without being terrifying.
Carol Andrade in ‘The Times of India.’
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
About my just-released novel 'Dirty Picture'
Like many fictions, this novel too is based partially on facts, some of which may already be known to the reader via media coverage.
My novel, however, is intensely personal. The characters took birth instantaneously when the nude photograph of a young girl crashed into my life - on May 16, 1992 by way of ‘Dainik Navjyoti’ - a local Hindi paper published from Ajmer. Her eyes were blotted out. Fully dressed men with lascivious eyes flanked her on either side, fondling a breast each. Her hair was plaited into neat braids. Dirty Picture is about that girl; the eyes I created for her; the two men in the photograph; what I read in their expressions; and other imaginary characters.
Some events described in the novel did take place.
In April 1992 ‘Dainik Navjyoti’ broke the story of a ‘sex-scandal’ in Ajmer. It named influential men, most of them from the minority community of Muslims. They had been coercing several schoolgirls into sex. They had taken photographs and made video films of the act, the report alleged.
The way the scandal was written and read in Ajmer tells its own story. The first signed article in the press came out on April 22. The authorities seemed unmoved. The newspaper went on to publish two subsequent reports supported by photographs on May 15 and 16. The photographs shocked ordinary citizens - to the extent that many petitioned the newspaper to stop publishing more - but the authorities were still not convinced of the need to take action. In a press conference the Home Minister of Rajasthan admitted to the newspaper that he had seen 75-100 similar nude photographs one and a half months ago. The Deputy Inspector General of Police, Ajmer range, who was also present at the same conference, corroborated his statement saying that the police had arrested four of the involved men under ‘disruption of peace’ in April but had to release them on bail after two days. The police chief tried to explain away the situation by lamenting the limitations of police power. The police can only act after a complaint or an F.I.R, not on the basis of press reports.
People of Ajmer took to the streets. There were bandhs and demonstrations by various organisations. Allegedly to prevent a communal riot breaking out in the traditionally somnolent town, the authorities invoked the National Security Act (NSA) and arrested eight of the men named in the press reports on May 27, 1992. The NSA was in all probability being used in the context of a sex-crime for the first time.
During the long and protracted court cases that followed eight more arrest warrants were issued, several petitions to extradite the accused who had fled to foreign countries made, and one of the accused - claiming to be falsely implicated - committed suicide.
The mood of the authorities seemed to swing from helpless passivity to active vengefulness. Turning down the appeal for bail application of some of the accused the Jaipur Bench of the High Court observed in 1994, “The modus opprendi [sic] of the exploiters had been to trap innocent girls under false allurements and friendship, then they were sexually forced under terror or even by use of force and their obscene snaps were taken to blackmail them in future. Some girls were blackmailed to the extent of bringing other girls for the exploiters. The magnitude of the scandal can be visualised by the fact that it had rocked the State of Rajasthan and its impact was felt all over the country.”
The Ajmer District and Sessions court gave its judgement in May 1998 holding eight men guilty and sentenced them to life-imprisonment.
To me, however, the guilt seems pervasive, the crime, continuing. I was born and brought up in Ajmer. Although based in Delhi at that time as now, I experienced the Ajmer scandal close to the bone: the doubts, the slander, the cynicism, the heart-breaking conclusions. During my visits around the time the stories were coming out in the press and for a long period after that, I would hear people talk about the ‘scandal’. This is what I heard: ‘Ajmer tapes’ are still freely available in the blue-film circuit. Muslim men consider it their obligation to ‘spoil’ Hindu girls. The real culprits have escaped; the arrested men are scapegoats. The real culprits are bureaucrats and politicians; the arrested men are scapegoats. Why did the girls keep going back to their tormentors? Could it be that they were enjoying the sex act? Certain Hindu sub-communities have issued whips against their boys marrying girls from Ajmer. Three of the girls involved in the sex scandal have committed suicide. It wasn’t suicide; the families murdered their girls to escape the stigma. What else could they have done?
I tried to investigate. In 1996 I met the journalist who had broken the story in the Hindi language paper. Santosh Gupta impressed me as being courageous, forthright, and progressive in his outlook. I went through the statements the girls had submitted in court. I watched a video-clip. I spoke to one of the lawyers who had represented the accused. I had a conversation with my reluctant mother who was the Vice Principal of Savitri Girls College, Ajmer at the time of the scandal. I interviewed a police constable. I read all the articles in the press I could lay my hands on. I wanted to meet the victims but my contact Santosh Gupta refused help, “They are trying to build a new life. Some of them have got married. They don’t want to talk about the past.”
The message was clear: decent people do not dwell on the dirty picture. The purdah of shame had been draped; I was being told off. The police constable had mentioned the burning of many photographs in the police station to protect the identity of the daughter of a senior police officer. The decision of the newspaper to not publish any more photographs, the arrest of the accused under NSA and the effort to prevent a foraging of the presumably ‘salacious’ past in order to facilitate new lives for the girls were meant in the same vein.
My novel is an attempt to go beyond the purdah and reveal what festers within.
Anuradha Marwah
New Delhi
My novel, however, is intensely personal. The characters took birth instantaneously when the nude photograph of a young girl crashed into my life - on May 16, 1992 by way of ‘Dainik Navjyoti’ - a local Hindi paper published from Ajmer. Her eyes were blotted out. Fully dressed men with lascivious eyes flanked her on either side, fondling a breast each. Her hair was plaited into neat braids. Dirty Picture is about that girl; the eyes I created for her; the two men in the photograph; what I read in their expressions; and other imaginary characters.
Some events described in the novel did take place.
In April 1992 ‘Dainik Navjyoti’ broke the story of a ‘sex-scandal’ in Ajmer. It named influential men, most of them from the minority community of Muslims. They had been coercing several schoolgirls into sex. They had taken photographs and made video films of the act, the report alleged.
The way the scandal was written and read in Ajmer tells its own story. The first signed article in the press came out on April 22. The authorities seemed unmoved. The newspaper went on to publish two subsequent reports supported by photographs on May 15 and 16. The photographs shocked ordinary citizens - to the extent that many petitioned the newspaper to stop publishing more - but the authorities were still not convinced of the need to take action. In a press conference the Home Minister of Rajasthan admitted to the newspaper that he had seen 75-100 similar nude photographs one and a half months ago. The Deputy Inspector General of Police, Ajmer range, who was also present at the same conference, corroborated his statement saying that the police had arrested four of the involved men under ‘disruption of peace’ in April but had to release them on bail after two days. The police chief tried to explain away the situation by lamenting the limitations of police power. The police can only act after a complaint or an F.I.R, not on the basis of press reports.
People of Ajmer took to the streets. There were bandhs and demonstrations by various organisations. Allegedly to prevent a communal riot breaking out in the traditionally somnolent town, the authorities invoked the National Security Act (NSA) and arrested eight of the men named in the press reports on May 27, 1992. The NSA was in all probability being used in the context of a sex-crime for the first time.
During the long and protracted court cases that followed eight more arrest warrants were issued, several petitions to extradite the accused who had fled to foreign countries made, and one of the accused - claiming to be falsely implicated - committed suicide.
The mood of the authorities seemed to swing from helpless passivity to active vengefulness. Turning down the appeal for bail application of some of the accused the Jaipur Bench of the High Court observed in 1994, “The modus opprendi [sic] of the exploiters had been to trap innocent girls under false allurements and friendship, then they were sexually forced under terror or even by use of force and their obscene snaps were taken to blackmail them in future. Some girls were blackmailed to the extent of bringing other girls for the exploiters. The magnitude of the scandal can be visualised by the fact that it had rocked the State of Rajasthan and its impact was felt all over the country.”
The Ajmer District and Sessions court gave its judgement in May 1998 holding eight men guilty and sentenced them to life-imprisonment.
To me, however, the guilt seems pervasive, the crime, continuing. I was born and brought up in Ajmer. Although based in Delhi at that time as now, I experienced the Ajmer scandal close to the bone: the doubts, the slander, the cynicism, the heart-breaking conclusions. During my visits around the time the stories were coming out in the press and for a long period after that, I would hear people talk about the ‘scandal’. This is what I heard: ‘Ajmer tapes’ are still freely available in the blue-film circuit. Muslim men consider it their obligation to ‘spoil’ Hindu girls. The real culprits have escaped; the arrested men are scapegoats. The real culprits are bureaucrats and politicians; the arrested men are scapegoats. Why did the girls keep going back to their tormentors? Could it be that they were enjoying the sex act? Certain Hindu sub-communities have issued whips against their boys marrying girls from Ajmer. Three of the girls involved in the sex scandal have committed suicide. It wasn’t suicide; the families murdered their girls to escape the stigma. What else could they have done?
I tried to investigate. In 1996 I met the journalist who had broken the story in the Hindi language paper. Santosh Gupta impressed me as being courageous, forthright, and progressive in his outlook. I went through the statements the girls had submitted in court. I watched a video-clip. I spoke to one of the lawyers who had represented the accused. I had a conversation with my reluctant mother who was the Vice Principal of Savitri Girls College, Ajmer at the time of the scandal. I interviewed a police constable. I read all the articles in the press I could lay my hands on. I wanted to meet the victims but my contact Santosh Gupta refused help, “They are trying to build a new life. Some of them have got married. They don’t want to talk about the past.”
The message was clear: decent people do not dwell on the dirty picture. The purdah of shame had been draped; I was being told off. The police constable had mentioned the burning of many photographs in the police station to protect the identity of the daughter of a senior police officer. The decision of the newspaper to not publish any more photographs, the arrest of the accused under NSA and the effort to prevent a foraging of the presumably ‘salacious’ past in order to facilitate new lives for the girls were meant in the same vein.
My novel is an attempt to go beyond the purdah and reveal what festers within.
Anuradha Marwah
New Delhi
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