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Sita's Curse by Sreemoyee Piu Kundu is a must-read for contemporary women, exploring women's desires that are often suppressed in our society.
Sita’s Curse by Sreemoyee Piu Kundu is a must-read for contemporary women, exploring women’s desires that are often suppressed in our society.
Sita’s Curse by Sreemoyee Piu Kundu is being labelled as the first ‘Feminist Erotica’ novel in India. It is quite an important genre to begin with, given the oppression of sexual liberty in Indian women. Even before I start writing about the book, I can easily predict that it will be shunned by innumerable readers (after they’ve read it in hope of some raunchy scenes).
Sita’s Curse is about Meera, a Gujarati housewife settled in the obscure lanes of Mumbai. She has a tumultuous yet ecstatic childhood with her twin brother Kartik. They understand each other through some cosmic bonds that only twins can share. Later, Meera is married to Mohan from Mumbai. And much later, she moves in with him and his family in a semi-chawl.
Meera is not an extraordinary woman. Or may be she is. As one progresses through the lines and pages in her life, a small incident here or a feeling there seems to be taken from the readers’ lives. Meera has the usual desires of a woman, those which are forbidden in our society, those we cannot be vocal about. She is shattered when her husband, marriage and home don’t turn out the way she had expected them to be. Yet, she tries to win over them, to love and understand them, to surrender herself to them. Her efforts turn futile as she fails to conceive a child, not for her own fault though.
The treatment of unfruitful women in our society, the domestic violence and mental torture that they have to face are an integral part of Meera’s story. Things turn fatal when these are blended with superstition and religious fanaticism. Amarkant Maharaj thus enters Meera’s life, meant to be a Messiah. His spiritual strings and ideas get intertwined with Meera’s unquenchable thirst for the unknown. The men in Meera’s life are important the way in they treat her and vice versa. Kartik, Mohan, Amarkant Maharaj and Yosuf – all play critical roles in shaping Meera the way she is.
The latter half of the book is probably more intriguing than the former. The author introduces an interesting angle spanning a short time in Meera’s later life comprising of the Mumbai floods of July 2005 and her encounter with Yosuf. Love surpasses every desire and Meera embarks on the most important journey of her life after a tragedy.
The author has woven a cocoon of a story around her protagonist Meera. Erotica is not the main focus of this book in my opinion, Meera is. Erotica is only what happens daily in our lives. The courage to spew it in words is a lot to take and the author has been successful in her mission.
Meera is beautiful, bold, sensuous, loving, and everything all women are. This is a must-read book for contemporary women, to explore a part of themselves that is waiting to be set free from the barbed cage of our society.
Publisher: Hachette India
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Aspiring author, book critic, editor at Writersmelon. read more...
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Shows like Indian Matchmaking only further the argument that women must adhere to social norms without being allowed to follow their hearts.
When Netflix announced that Indian Matchmaking (2020-present) would be renewed for a second season, many of us hoped for the makers of the show to take all the criticism they faced seriously. That is definitely not the case because the show still continues to celebrate regressive patriarchal values.
Here are a few of the gendered notions that the show propagates.
A mediocre man can give himself a 9.5/10 and call himself ‘the world’s most eligible bachelor’, but an independent and successful woman must be happy with receiving just 60-70% of what she feels she deserves.
Darlings makes some excellent points about domestic violence . For such a movie to not follow through with a resolution that won't be problematic, is disappointing.
I watched Darlings last weekend, staying on top of its release on Netflix. It was a long-awaited respite from the recent flicks. I wanted badly to jump into its praise and will praise it, for something has to be said for the powerhouse performances it is packed with. But I will not be able to in a way that I really had wanted to.
I wanted to say that this is a must-watch on domestic violence that I stand behind and a needed and nuanced social portrayal. But unfortunately, I can’t. For I found Darlings to be deeply problematic when it comes to the portrayal of domestic violence and how that should be dealt with.
Before we rush to the ‘you must be having a problem because a man was hit’ or ‘much worse happens to women’ conclusions, that is not what my issue is. I have seen the praises and criticisms, and the criticisms of criticisms. I know, from having had close associations with non-profits and activists who fight domestic violence not just in India but globally, that much worse happens to women. I have written a book with case studies and statistics on that. Neither do I have any moral qualms around violence getting tackled with violence (that will be another post some day).