topics: |  fiction | india | diaspora

Book Review

There is something about the romance of paris that weakens even hard-headed literateurs. Take Taslima Nasrin's French Lover, where the protagonist discovers herself after a suppressed Indian womanhood (via a steamy french lover), and leaves her traditional husband and starts her independent life.

So you can't quite blame a chic-lit meets horatio alger story for adopting the paris romance. Follow Tanya Khan, daughter from a proper Muslim family in Mumbai, as she manages to lose herself in paris. Eventually, she becomes a model, and rises to the dizzying peaks of her profession by virtue of her good looks and her poise. In the entire process however, she stays within the moral confines of Indian womanhood - no sex before marriage, and not even alcohol (almost) - and you realize that this is not a story with ambitions of realism.

the storyline is trite - the indian-ness shallow and unconvincing. the jibes about india's airports and phone systems are familiar cribs of those who return to India and are struck by the airports.

the characters are rather one-dimensional, but the story keeps moving. in vesting her heroine with a streak of good fortune, daswani is definitely onto a readable formula. what is shocking for me for a woman writer in the 21st century is how the original husband-to-be returns to the narrative as the white knight.

it's a virtue-shall-win tale, very much in the spirit of horatio alger, but with islamic overtones. also, it is as sexist and biased as alger. but it's a quick read, and you just keep going...

it starts off well, as you see next.

Excerpts

[page 1 is promising:]
I am behind a dressing screen, in a back room at a nightclub in Paris, a nude
thong barely covering the area that only my future husband is ever meant to
see.
Apart from that, and two small, circular Band-Aid-type things that have
been stuck onto my nipples, and which I am later told are called "pasties," I
am naked. ...

OED: pasty: A decorative adhesive covering for a woman's nipple, worn by a
stripper. Usu. in pl.
[ pasties, those small circles of material that are glued to the areolae of
  strippers in towns where bare nipples are forbidden. ]

I am alone in Paris, almost nude, looking like a corpse, surrounded by
smoking, drinking sinners.

I am a Muslim girl, culturally more accustomed to a black veiled burka...

Someone tugs a skinny sweater over my head, instructing me to purse my lips
to prevent the purple from staining the white knit.  ...

I teeter toward [the stage]. The poodle pees in my hand.
I hear clapping, whistling, and deafening music.
This is my moment.

background: Mumbai

When I turned thirteen and my breasts started to blossom and hair appeared in
the unlikeliest places, I stopped being my nana's little girl.
... he stopped putting his arm around me as we watched TV on the couch or
holding my hand when we went out to buy sticky pink candy from the street
vendors or helping me brush my hair at night.

[the family was separated at partition - mother's side remained in Lahore,
she goes to stay with lost Aunt Mina in Paris, where she is to meet her
husband Tariq Khan, to whose family nana has already committed marriage.

At Pasha de Hautner's office, it didn’t appear that anyone ever ate. All the
girls ... were mere slivers of womanhood.

    Nilu nodded, then was silent for a minute. "Tell me something," she asked
as we arrived at the entrance to her building. "After everything you’ve been
through, do you think you would do it again, leaving India and all? With all
that you’ve lost, I mean with your family and all, has it been worth it?"
    I gave her a hug good-bye and, just as she was pulling away, whispered
into her ear: "Yes."

Whoever decided to name Mumbai's international airport Chhatrapati Shivaji
should maybe have thought about it for a bit longer. ... it used to be called
Sahar — sweet and simple. [the name] was monstrous to enunciate...
[enunciate??]

bio

kavita daswani (b.1964) has written three books till date, all dealing with
the difficulties of the indian-origin woman in finding brides.  they all go
through the matchmaking process and it just doesn't work for them.  yet, the
characters remain true to their indian upbringing.

in her own life, she went through a number of matchmaking sessions.  raised
by indian parents in hong kong, she visited mumbai a number of times seeking
matches.  at the well past sell-date of age 30, she spent 3 months looking
for a groom.  "Everyone around me was so desperate -- far more than I was --
that I should get married."  She tells in an interview how once she was
almost getting married to

       a man from Nashik, who couldn't be more unsuitable -- particularly
       when we found out that he had spent two nights in prison for having
       strippers in a bar he owned.

but her aunt said, 'What? She's 30. Does she think she can do better?'
Many men rejected her because she was not fair enough.  Others wanted to know
if she could cook (and were rejected).  So on. (interview at rediff)

Six years later, she got married at 36 to a businessman from Los Angeles,
whom she met through a common friend.  Her first book, For matrimonial purposes,
came out in 2004, followed by Village bride of Beverly Hills (2005) and
Salaam Paris (2007).

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