There has been a flurry of book launches and book-related events recently in Delhi. My mailbox is flooded with invitations and announcements, some related to the Delhi Book Fair, others to the regular book discussions organised by the India International Centre, Habitat Centre or Sahitya Akademi. Each one of them is scheduled for a time that is the worst to go from Noida, where I live, to Delhi. Honking cars and taxis, lurching buses, dare-devils on two-wheelers and slow-moving delivery vans — they are all out to clog the roads. I decide to stay home and read a book instead.However, there are some that do rouse me from my self-imposed solitude to make that perilous journey to town during rush hour. Some days ago, Poonam Saxena (who readers may remember as a columnist who writes on Hindi writing) launched two very engaging books translated by her from Hindi into English. Not only were the books an account of the life and times of a well-known writer couple (Mannu Bhandari and Rajendra Yadav), respected across the world of Hindi writing, but a chronicle of that period. Mannu was known for her fiction (her novels were made into films too), while Rajendra Yadav was the legendary editor of Hans, the magazine that mainstreamed new writing in Hindi. He was a familiar figure with his trademark dark glasses and pronounced limp in the IIC library, and slightly intimidating to those of us who were ‘English’ writers or readers.Theirs was not a perfect marriage and yet, they were bonded in a way that was a mystery to many. After the lively discussion on these two books, I came away with many questions that have always engaged me. Why is it that when a woman writer pens a memoir or autobiography, she is more open, frank and honest, while a male writer is often unable to rise above a certain self-absorption and navel-gazing and tries to cover up his lapses as a father, son or husband?Readers familiar with Rajendra Yadav’s life are aware of the many extra-marital affairs he had (he seldom hid them) and his lofty patriarchal attitude towards those whom he dismissed as middle-brow. It was almost as if he gave his seal of approval as the final arbiter of what constituted good, modern writing, ignoring many (mostly women) writers — Mannuji and my own mother among them — as homely, middle-class writers who lived in small towns and so had small horizons. He was not alone in this — the Big Boys’ Club of important writers in the ’70s and ’80s was mostly composed of left-leaning ‘intellectuals’ who did not allow the smells of the kitchens from popular women writers to enter this sanitised space, cleared for high-minded discourses and comments.Today, when many courses in universities are constructed around gender and feminist or Dalit writing, these early biases seem as if popularity and real-life stories about actual characters were beneath academic notice. The travails that women writers went through as they played multiple roles as wives, mothers, daughters-in-law were not important social contexts, while the men were allowed to shut themselves in their rooms to write, is a story that needs to be told.Interestingly, Yadav’s book was called ‘Mud Mud Ke Na Dekh’ (translated as Echoes of My Past), Mannuji’s is called ‘Ek Kahani Yeh Bhi’ (translated as ‘This Too is a Story’).I can think of several women writers who wrote not because they wanted to break some glass ceiling, but because these were stories that were boiling inside them like milk on their stoves. I can confidently say that many such writers have outlived those male writers who received Sahitya Akademi and Padma awards, decided by those who pronounced their verdict on what ‘they’ considered high-minded literature.When I look to other areas where women were cast in secondary roles, politics comes readily to mind. The grudging respect that women like Jayalalithaa, Mayawati and the redoubtable Mamata Banerjee evoke despite their foibles is for the place they fought to carve out from the men. Their relentless fight for recognition on their own terms is what one day we will assess with greater respect. These were no baby-log or madamjis who were handed power by husbands and fathers and their connect with the women voters was a bond that political parties can only imagine. Sadly, some of them succumbing later to the very political style they fought so vehemently is another story, but give me a feisty and honest woman politician any day. It may take many years for women to wrest power from those men who fear their rise, but there is no doubt that it will come one day.It is not easy being a woman, no matter which field you wish to enter. Yet, their talent and their resilience is a gift from nature that men were denied at birth. Fond and adoring mothers, dutiful wives and the network of social support that was unquestioningly provided to earlier generations of men is now waning. The patriarchal world that denied women an equal place and rights is receding and the world is becoming more open and just even if the old order will take many more decades to change.And once women take over, there will be many more stories to read. What a pity, I won’t be there!— The writer is a social commentator
