Book: The Sari Shop

Author: Rupa Bajwa
Publisher:

Rupa Bajwa`s debut novel The Sari Shop joins the ranks of increasingly popular South Asian fiction. A young woman of 28, based in Amritsar, India, Bajwa`s prose is fresh and authentic. Her description of the streets, the lifestyles and common peoples` indulgences and the glittery world of socialites, with bustling Amritsar as the backdrop, is believable.

The beginning of the novel reveals Bajwa`s eye for detail as she creates a vivid picture of an average day in the city. In her own words, 'money, congestion, and noise danced an eternal, crazy dance here together, leaving no moving space for other gentler things'. Ramchand, a young boy, is a typical sari-shop assistant. He hesitatingly begins each day, folding and unfolding saris finding himself dissatisfied with the monotony.

Intermittently, Bajwa introduces the flip side of the coin; the nouveauriche, pseudo-intellectuals, painfully conscious of their status, looking down upon the less fortunate, exchanging artificial pleasantries and gossiping. These people are portrayed in a candid yet moralistic manner; one cannot help but sense Bajwa`s harsh judgment. The character of a young to-be-married Rina, adds a little grey to the black and white polarized world Bajwa has created. But unfortunately Bajwa stoops to the very folly that her character Rina indulges in, taking a superficial `romantic` view of ordinary people`s obscure lives. Rina and Ramchand are chosen to be the rebels in their respective lives, trying to break out of the mould. Except of course, their past and their destinies are worlds apart. Ramchand takes a selection of saris to Rina`s lavish home, for her trousseau, and is intrigued by her fluency and intelligence. Ramchand then ambitiously purchases English books and a dictionary, reading them feverishly for the next few weeks. Ramchand is eager and enthused, finding a new motivation to start each day. The other men who work at the sari shop, are not granted the complexity they needed to afford them a useful place in the story, except Chander. Chander and his wife Kamla, who is repeatedly wronged and beaten down at the hands of a cruel fate, are over-dramatized in an effort to show how the poor suffer under the injustices of cruel moneyed families. Bajwa`s charming quality is the simplicity with which she shows Kamla`s attachment to red beads, Ramchand`s innocent despair while playing with dough and Lakhan`s pathos.

Kamla`s revenge brings her downfall, yet upon seeing her plight, Ramchand is rendered helpless. His inability to detach himself from who he is and the world he inhabits drags him down into confusion. On realizing how inconsequential his life is he withdraws into a 'broken, vacant state' locking himself up in isolation for weeks. He sets aside his ambition on a shelf where he cannot reach it and resigns himself to returning to the sari shop, the only place where he eventually fits in.

While providing an insightful account of life in Amritsar, Bajwa`s weakness is exposed. In an attempt to keep the language and the theme grounded, she does not allow all her characters to evolve. The characters created by writers such as Jhumpa Lahiri and Rohinton Mistry almost take on a life of their own, reaching conclusions, allowing us to relate to them yet maintaining an element of surprise.

In the second part of The Sari Shop, one hopes to find a culminating point to the journey of the characters, but is disappointed. Mahajan`s `elaichi-flavoured` tea, Ramchand`s decrepit room and the dead woman`s eyes, are beautifully expressed, sparking one`s imagination, but somehow towards the latter part they are not enough. The story is heart-warming, an honest and sincere attempt at carrying the reader into a city of 'grey concrete buildings, shops, signboards, tiny temples and crowded streets thronged with people, cows, stray dogs and vegetable carts'.

We expect to find Ramchand a changed man or at least more poignant in his outburst when he has long been grappling with the feeling that he is nothing more than 'an ineffectual, affected, half-baked creature trapped in a bad, pointless movie'. His realizations are not life-changing as Bajwa did not quite grasp or compellingly express Ramchand`s angst. Possibly Bajwa is using overstated realism to show the true picture of a life beset with extreme contradictions and disparities. This is the kind of book which can be read cover to cover, without a pause setting it aside, impressed but discontent, hoping that Ramchand (as well as the reader) had come away with something more.