When ‘they’ meet

Not shaped by gender discourse alone, “Ladies Club” presents a vivid account of the contradictions and binaries of the social space.

December 04, 2014 06:44 pm | Updated April 07, 2016 02:42 am IST

Namita Singh

Namita Singh

Not infrequently women writers while looking at myriad emotional complexities of life and recording the tales of broken ties and unreciprocated love and perennial neglect through the prism of feminist sensibility produce a searing narrative of indictment of “Patriarchal Society” in which we live in. Contrary to the dominant narrative of the contemporary fiction, one of eminent Hindi novelists and short story writers, Namita Singh in her latest novel “Ladies Club” presents a vivid account of the contradictions and binaries of social space of living, not shaped by gender discourse alone.

She creatively uses “freewheeling” at ladies club and other places as a trope to interrogate with various themes that are uncanny, puzzling, ominous, fascinating and intriguing. She weaves a panoramic and equally vibrant view about the residents of the campus of a central university through a plethora of female characters who strive for maintaining the hierarchies by sticking to elaborate rituals of cultural aspirations. Unlike other campus novels, here student life is not central and female residents Shahnaz, Leela, Shashi Bala, Salma, Kulsum, Vimlesh and Hameeda’s dialogues and actions produce a parallel autobiography of self-attainment instead of narrating a poignant tale of a world of lost memories fading into oblivion.

The novel, firmly located in the shared legacy of India, turns attention on an in-focus subject – communal conflict – and the novelist, quite against run-of-the mill technique, does not try to put blame equally on two communities when violence occurs.

The author through her incisive narrative, without being offensive, makes it clear that if Hindus and Muslims are to be blamed squarely then there will be no scope left for protest and the characters reeling under a maze of dogmatic beliefs and superstitions spur the readers into contemplation and introspection.

Zarina and Vijander’s wedding story does not upturn all accepted norms but silently overwhelms human frailties and takes a completely new approach to deal with complex terrain of life. Namita Singh’s nuanced narrative weaves around quite a few strands on which a warm rapport can be stitched up between two religions. Does man’s greed remain unfulfilled or he feels exulted in containment? The narrative does not give a straight forward answer but creatively explores all the possibilities. The novelist is primarily concerned with the showing of events how they take place without making it clear whether they are real or true.

Namita Singh offers very contradictory variations concerning middle class. One of the characters, Salma belonging to the middle class seems always wary of relations. No matter how close she is to someone, she does not open up and religiously sticks to formalities. Divided into well knit and carefully structured chapters, the author quite meticulously acquaints the reader with glimpse of small ironies in our day-today life and tells us what it means to be socially acceptable.

Some of her characters seem under imagined and it becomes quite evident when they try to convey a message, they sound a trifle simplistic. Laced with lingering memories, the novel slides away into objective study of wistful past and provides a clear eyed understanding of what ails the future in a refreshing prose that is a remarkable delight.

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