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After a
very long time I read something really engaging and interesting about the life
of an Indian woman, someone with whom we all can relate at some point of time.
The book called Sita’s Curse-The Language
of Desire by Sreemoyee Piu Kundu revolves around the life of Meera Patel,
who struggles between her desires which she cannot possibly share with anyone.
Sreemoyee, known to be an erotica writer, smartly delves into the psyche of a
woman’s mind through the character of Meera and how she goes through different
phases of her life knowing and compromising with oneself.
When I was
scrolling through a few book names to be ordered from Flipkart, I wasn’t at all
ready about buying Sita’s Curse. I
hadn’t heard about it before but when I read the short synopsis of the book on
the website, I couldn’t stop clicking on the “Buy Now” button on the right
side. Don’t know why but I wanted to give the book a try. I have read
women-related books before. I have always been a bit interested in feministic
paperbacks and am quite fond of Shashi Deshpande’s work since my college days.
And I found that kind of charm and engaging quality in Sita’s Curse as well.
The story
is an erotic sexual saga of a middle-class housewife Meera Patel. A wife, who
is not satisfied with her husband physically as well as emotionally, a daughter-in-law
who is constantly on the knife head for simply not being able to conceive a
child, a sister who had lost her twin brother at the time when she probably
needed him the most, and a daughter who could never tell her parents what she
really wanted from life. Living in a jam-packed housing society in Mumbai,
Meera gets metamorphosed from a 17 year old newly married girl to a woman who
achieves her freedom by giving in to her physical longings. The climax of the
book is slotted on the 26th of July, 2005 in Mumbai, the day when
the city experienced evil in its truest sense and when the lives of many
innocent people faced a tragic end.
Sreemoyee
did an amazing job in showcasing the inner self of Meera, or for that matter,
the inner self of any middle-class young wife in India. Very often you get hold
of a book which makes you think and also you probably get uncomfortable reading
it. Sita’s Curse is one of them, with multiple love-making scenes described
minutely, the book also made me hover upon the meanings between the lines.
Meera is a sad, helpless, confused, protagonist and many of you might not want
to relate her character with anyone in real. But the way Sreemoyee portrayed
her sadness whenever Meera missed her brother, her helplessness whenever she
had to get the thrashings from her husband and her in-laws, her confusion when
she wanted to cross the laxman rekha
but was clinging to her marriage, everything seems so real. I don’t think anyone
else could have portrayed her the way Sreemoyee did. Perhaps the fact that
Sreemoyee is a woman herself made her much more aware of the intensities and
contemplations of Meera Patel.
The book is
not only about Meera and her struggles but it also revolves around certain
issues which are still considered to be a taboo in the Indian society. A woman
should never talk about her desires openly, if she initiates sex she is not a
good women, if she seeks for a partner of her choice she is going against the
rules, and so on. No matter how many times we say that women are equal to men,
the fact remains that we are still subjugated by the hypocrite Indian society
and Sreemoyee finely described it in her book although by hiding it in the
interior of her lines.
The wife
who never got anything from her husband Mohan and who suddenly attained what
she wants from Yosuf, a guy she met on a sex website. Her desires, both
physical and emotional, made her want something more from life. In Sreemoyee’s
words, “When I was living in Mumbai, I
had passed a dingy chawl in Byculla while travelling to office. I would see
this beautiful angelic woman every day. She had the most melancholic grey-green
eyes and sometime she would be looking at the clouds and sometimes feeding
chillies to a little parrot. Our glances would intercept and it became a
strange unspoken dialogue between two women who didn’t know each other. This
continued till the floods hit Mumbai. After resuming work, I never saw her
while passing that same chawl. Thus, “Meera Patel” is my tribute to her.”
This book
can be a tribute to anyone, any woman who is not able to speak up her mind in
front of the society. Erotic genre is what came after Kama Sutra but when your
friends might tell you that reading such stuff isn’t good for a girl or a boy
like you, I feel that this is something which everyone should read. One must
read it to know how engaging a book can really be. However, if you are not
liberal minded, you might not like the genre of the book. However, it’s now time
to embrace this form of literature which will only make us enjoy such stories
with beautiful inner meanings in a much better manner.
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