Reviews & Musings

“Do you have any tea?” Patrick Jane is standing in my kitchen, looking into a cabinet he has opened without permission.  “You have just walked into my house,” I say, “and that's the first thing you ask?”  He turns around, holding a tin of tea, and gives me that infuriatingly pleasant smile.  “It's a very important question. People tell you all sorts of things about themselves when you ask them direct questions. They lie, they exaggerate, they give you the version of themselves they'd like you to believe. But tea?” He taps the tin lightly against his palm. “Tea is much more revealing.” 

  "Till now, I have created stories based on lives of other people, but this time I have been so bold as to write my own. "  There is a reason Mannu Bhandari calls it an act of boldness. For a South Asian woman, writing her own story has never been a simple literary exercise. Women are raised to preserve families, protect reputations and absorb pain without leaving behind a record of it. Even those who write are expected to disguise themselves behind fiction, softening uncomfortable truths until they become acceptable. To tell the truth about marriage is to risk being called disloyal before being called honest. A woman's life has long been narrated by others. To seize the pen and say this is what happened to me is to reclaim authorship over a life that has too often belonged to everyone else.  That is why This Too Is a Story , translated with remarkable sensitivity by Poonam Saxena, matters. Not because it reveals the private life of one of Hindi literature's most bel...